Safe For Work Worm Ideas thread

Basically, a thread for posting and discussion of various Safe For Work ideas using the Wormverse, and/or characters thereof (NSFW ideas go in the NSFW forum, below). Anyone can post an idea to it.

Here are a couple to start off with:


I call this 'Paragon Interrupt', for lack of a better title:

The hours leading up to the Bank Robbery very much sucked for Amy Dallon, and the previous day or two weren't good, either. Carol was a bigger bitch than usual, Mark was depressed, depressing, and unhelpful, and Victoria managed to make her feel worse, instead of better. By the time Lisa notices her, Amy has begun wondering if she could provoke one of the villains, perhaps Bitch or this new bug girl, into killing her - and then started feeling guilty for that. Tattletale quickly works this out, and Attack Mode is interrupted by Suicide Prevention Mode. She takes Amy to an empty office to talk, and may or may not end up kidnapping her (otherwise, Tt gives Amy her contact information, so they can talk). Amy is going to be very confused by this, but eventually develops a friendship with Lisa.


This one is like the previous, but in Hard Mode (or at least, Angst Mode), and doesn't have a name. The bank job goes as canon for Worm, but a few days later, Lisa is out for a walk, when she sees Panacea again, looking at a particularly tall building, and realizes that Amy is thinking about the fact that if she went to the top and jumped off, she would simply experience flying for a while, and then be dead, because the impact wouldn't give her time to suffer, nor any chance for someone to save her. Lisa also realizes that her threats at the bank are partly responsible for Amy wanting to kill herself. Also, she's pretty sure Amy's smart enough to figure out who she is, if they interact too much.


This one I don't have a name for, but it's an early interaction with, or at least, impression of, the Undersiders (and could be considered another Paragon Interrupt, though for a different reason):

Given the wide range of capes and motivations available, it occurred to me that there could be anti-union villains. In this case, a guy called 'Strike Breaker', who goes around attacking and sometimes killing unionizers and union leaders. Despite the name, he doesn't only attack during a strike, or even during preparations for a strike - he attacks when he notices a union being especially strong, or aggressive, or surviving when it shouldn't, as with the Dockworker's Union in Brockton Bay.

Strike Breaker attacks the Dockworker's Union offices with the intention of killing ('executing') the leaders, including Danny Hebert, but is interrupted by the Undersiders, who beat him up, tie him up, and leave (see, they were going to rob some place nearby, but the money had already been moved, and Tattletale noticed Strike Breaker, and decided to both redirect their aggression somewhere other than the failure of intelligence, and to muddy the waters about whether they're villains or not). Thus, the first Taylor hears about the Undersiders is when they save her father's life. This may even be before she triggers.

Then Strike Breaker escapes from PRT custody, which rather sours her on the PRT. If you want this version to be a Tinker Taylor, perhaps she triggers as a result of worrying about whether Strike Breaker will go after her father again.

 

How would this Strike Breaker escape? And if he's a serial murderer of people whom by definition have lots of friends in the public who are angry, disgruntled, and connected why has he not be sent to the cage or ran afoul various gangs who would recruit heavily from strong unions who in this horrible economy would be a target demographic for recruitment..

What's this strikebreakers and his teams powers?

 

Undersiders!Amy hasn't really been explored, and Lisa de-mindfucking Amy would be the way to do it. Amy and Taylor can be therapy buddies. I'd read it.

Strike Breaker seems like a really ham-handed way to do... nothing different from canon? Taylor still joins the Undersiders, but with a different powerset maybe. Also, a cape who focused on killing Union leaders... that's pretty gimmicky, as far as capes go.

One idea I had was for when Taylor turned herself in, she left instructions to bust her out if she didn't give a signal after a few days. She wanted to see if Dinah's prophecy involved working with the PRT. Now, since Dinah sees probabilities and has been known to be wrong on even high-end ones, it'd be interesting if she fucked up here. Taylor gets arrested, but instead of Alexandria trying to get her to break out, Tagg is rushing her paperwork for the Birdcage, to show people that the PRT is still in control. Taylor gets wind of this and realizes Dinah fucked her, and breaks out when the Undersiders attack.

Instead of roaming the world being a heroine, Taylor stays as Warlord of BB. The story is about the Undersiders solidifying their control over their sections, repelling half-hearted attempts from the law to push them out and decisively halting villain incursion into the city. Individual capes may join up like Parian and Foil did. There's also exploration on the far side of the portal, Bitch running wild with her dogs, setting up a settlement on the other side, basically a game of SimCity - Capes Edition.

It'd be a lot less "Cosmic Powers" and more "Political Drama with Superpowers." Undersiders are damn skilled, but they could be toppled by a dedicated push. They work reputation, PR and key battles to keep people from building the desire to make that push.

Given that so much of Worm is presumed to be a Simurgh plot, I'd explain it with Scion getting into a Final Deathmatch with her and vaporizing her, preventing her from pushing Taylor into going Khepri. Scion is dealt with some other way, or maybe not at all inside the scope of the fic.

 

Undersiders Amy hasn't really been explored becuase it doesn't make a whole lot of sense without gross amounts of mind control or personality shattering. Amy has lots of ties into the establishment. Lots of power. Lots of fame. And first meeting with them was in a personally threatening situation where in they threatened to murdered a lot of innocent people and played helter kelter with her life and her sisters in specific.

Many of the ideas for Amy joining presumes she cares more about Brockton Bay in specific than she actually does.


And the idea in general ignores that if you somehow get past all of that by sheer gravitational mechanic the undersiders are more likely to get pulled off the street by her in the establisment then she is to upset her sister by joining them.

 

I've been having an idea recently: What if Coil wasn't an asshole?

He still shoots the dumbass stopping his helicopter from escaping Nilbog, but let's be honest, how many of you would try to rescue some dude who's having problems tying his shoelaces when the hordes of the damned are swarming at you?

So he buys his power from Cauldron and proceeds to make an absolute fuck-ton of money with his save-scumming. He meanders over to Brockton Bay, hires some mercs to get into this whole "fighting people" thing, but finds he needs some parahuman muscle if he's gonna compete. He notices some girl who's doing suspiciously well at hacking ATMs and whatnot.

Split timeline. In one, he offers her a healthy paycheck and benefits. In the other, canon recruitment. She accepts the offer in timeline one, and he cancels the gunpoint recruitment.

From there, it proceeds roughly according to canon, except wherever Coil is an asshole (kidnapping Dinah, manipulating the Travelers) he instead acts decently. Hiring Dinah is trivial for someone of his wealth, and the Travelers need somewhere to stash Noelle anyways while they find a way home. Tattletale facilitates things nicely.

As a story, it'd pretty much be "and then Coil won, because he's got the holy trinity of Thinkers." But as Coil Quest, I think it'd be pretty interesting to see the choices people would make in his shoes.

Whaddya think?

 

Could be interesting, although he'd still probably be taking over the town and going for Benevolent Dictator status.

Once he hires Skitter to gather information for Tattletale/Dinah to work with, that plan would take several massive leaps forward.

The excitement of the story would come from him trying to remove the gangs without setting himself against New Wave and the PRT.

It would be good as a shadow moves/Noir style fic.


On a completely unrelated note, I'm not sure why this thread exists on QQ when the one on SB is better for it's purpose overall. I'll still browse them both since I'm here anyway, just curious about it.

 

It's so we can feel all superior and snobby when we talk about those unaware simpletons on SB. ;D

 

Amen, brother. *secret handshake*


Anyway, I really do think a Coil Quest could be awesome. A 'good' Coil would almost certainly succeed in taking over Brockton Bay. Between the Travellers, the Undersiders, his mercs, Uber and Leet, Dinah and Circus, he's got enough muscle to do toe to toe with the rest of the city combined. And not pissing off Taylor is good for his prospects.

It would be harder to get the mayorship without icing the mayor, but really bribing 2 of 3 candidates should be enough for any man. Without being willing to bully the mayor into lobbying for Brockton not to be condemned, that could be a problem though.

 

Be cause the ones there go too fast to keep up with.

 

How about a Pact idea?

Idea: Blake is a Spacebattler. Hilarity ensues once he wins the duel with the faerie familiar, and decides to use Glamour to whistle-up fictional characters, or turn himself into a hotblooded Giant Robot pilot, or something.

 

I dunno, Bii. That sort of thing seems out of character for Blake, especially since it'll lock him into either summoning a giant demon on his deathbed or passing on a buttload of negative karma to his heirs, even if his dies of old age.

 

Goddamnit Lunaryon. How the heck is he stealing my ideas (even if it's only similar) and making it better? (And no overly dark tones too!)

*eyes the one on QQ and wonders if they're the same person*

 

Don't think I've seen this idea before: Taylor triggers while feeling that her luck has been terrible, and gains the power to Administrate Probabilities. That doesn't just mean she gets lucky (this isn't the right subforum for that), rather she can control her own luck, and the luck of others, to a fine degree, manufacture reasonably plausible coincidences, and even perceive probabilities (see possible futures).

I had this idea for another character, but it can work quite well for Taylor, herself.

Alternatively, Dinah or Sarah/Lisa gains this power.

 

Or really good precog.

 

It would not be the first time (giant understatement) that a character in a fanfic gained abilities that would be impossible in the canon the fic is based on.

 

So, random thought I had.

A random person (or a canon character) awakens with the Storyteller Shard. This is a permanently active thinker ability that allows them see the world around them as if it were a story. Additionally, they effectively have a TVTropes database analyzing whatever they want. This ability does not alter the world in any way, but instead gives them an additional perspective as if they were reading their own life.

They can see the trend and knows that this world is doomed to a bitter ending, but they have no idea how. Thus a Dangerously Genre Savvy Cape (or Cowl) enters the fray, desperate to Earn their Happy Ending.

 

Oh, god. Please tell me that you're continuing this!

 

What's drunk taylor's power? Happy drug addiction escapism that boosts health and makes friends when she shares? What does her father think?
I have to know!

 

Looks like some kind of drunken pre-cog or mind-reading, given the way she's pulling out facts even Tattletale can't.

She needs to be a master of drunken martial arts as well, or else anyone would just punch her to shut her up.

But yeah, superpowered drunk is the best idea.

 

What if she hands Scion a Brewski post leviathan?

 

[embed=425,349]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7mnWycRYCo[/embed]

I like this idea. ;D

 

Idea: Worm/GURPS: Infinite Worlds crossover. The interdimensional Nazis from Reich-3 stumble across Earth Bet, and proceed to make an alliance with Empire 88. Infinity, while investigating this, winds up running into Taylor, and she winds up joining ISWAT, or becoming an undercover agent for them or something.

 

I was re-reading Drunken!Taylor and had an amusing thought.

As soon as Tattletale sees her, their powers might interact and they just stand there staring at each other as their powers let them know that Taylor knows about Tattletales power and that she knows about Taylor's power who knows that Tattletale knows about Taylor's power who knows that Tattletale knows that Taylor knows that Tattletale knows that....

Basically they get stuck in a feedback loop of being aware of each other being informed about about each other and they just stare at each other lost to the world until someone knocks them out of it by distracting them.

This could lead to amusing situations where various people are designated to knock them out of it whenever they happen to see each other. This seems to happen about once or twice a week after the Bank Robbery due to Coil trying to push the Undersider's into being a bigger name, but that's not the case according to the rumor mill of course.

Alas, their love can never bloom due to various factors keeping them apart. How tragic.

 

Amy Dallon isn't at the bank when the Undersiders rob it, because she was being kidnapped at the time. While the Undersiders are fleeing the scene of the robbery, Amy is trying to escape from her captor, and the Undersiders accidentally help her. Amy does not realize that it was really an accident, and Tattletale wisely chooses to contribute to her misconception.

Thus, the Undersiders gain a reputation as capable-but-noble thieves, which plays well with the public. Coil decides 'Eh, sure, let's run with that,' since he plans to use the Undersiders to help run the city, and that sort of reputation could be useful. This does change what jobs he uses them for, though.

 

Perhaps an examination of the Black Widows used in the robbery shows that it was all a bluff and that Taylor had made the spiders used on the 'hostages' empty their venom sacks as a precaution. That does seem like something early-canon Taylor would do if she had thought of it.

Of course the rescue might not be an accident. Early Taylor would definitely go out of her way to save Panacea if she was able to and didn't have the problems the bank robbery caused between them.

 

I could see that.

There is that, yes. The fact that they took a route that would give Taylor the opportunity to do more than drive-by stinging of bad guys is what's accidental - that, and the path Amy lead the kidnappers on being in the way, so the other Undersiders also act.


Had a separate 'Undersiders interrupt kidnapping of Panacea' idea, this one with a named villain: Bakuda decides that the ABB need their own healer, and decides to bring in Panacea for a little bomb implantation. This would be after the bank job, clearly, when Bakuda was doing this to lots of people. Bakuda was not expecting the Undersiders. She wasn't expecting Glory Girl, either, but she did have some back-up plan for her. The one she tries doesn't go well for her, partly due to the blast zone being bigger than predicted, and partly because Skitter: she had a bomb which was designed to swap people's powers around, if they have them, but it ran into BEES!! and went off in the wrong place, and with too many people in the blast zone. So, instead of a carefully selected ABB thug getting GG's power (while GG gets the thug's lack of power or dormant power), the chosen thug is outside the zone, and eight capes, including Bakuda, are inside. Instead of powers simply being swapped with the nearest person, they're scrambled around. Here's one arrangement that occurred to me, partly for plot reasons, and partly for humour value:

Panacea - Inference Engine

Glory Girl - Bug Administration

Skitter - Biomanipulation

Tattletail - Tinker, Failure Modes

Grue - Nerve Control

Regent - Aura of Glory

Bitch - Shadows

Bakuda - Dog Enhancement

Note that canonically, Bitch needs to train her dogs, so yes, Bakuda really got screwed on this deal. Also, I don't recall where, but I've seen comments that Bakuda's power is 'Failure Modes' rather than bombs, so that's what I've listed. The various powers might be applied differently by different users, so Amy can keep her ability to do brains a secret ('My version of the power is more limited') - or, maybe they aren't any different, and people start bugging her about it. I had this idea of Tt getting a compound bow and putting all her gadgets in arrowheads, except for the big ones she makes for the PRT to throw at Endbringers.

Since two of the Undersiders have the powers of two members of New Wave, and a third has the power that made the bomb in the first place, NW is going to want to keep them available and friendly, which could make for interesting politics. Likewise, if Lisa talks to the PRT about Endbringer bombs, and is willing to leave the bombs in a PRT lab as long as she can both come and go as she pleases, and use that lab, they would probably be more inclined to allow it than they would want to appear (it's easier to just get someone to cooperate in the first place, than it is to force cooperation after pissing someone off).

GG got bug powers for reasons of humour, but there's a plot reason for either GG or Amy to have the Inference Engine, as that forces them to get to know the Undersiders. One aspect of that is that this version of Lisa genuinely regrets what she said to Amy, because is worried about how much more depressed Amy has gotten, fearing that Amy might commit suicide (Inference Engine reading: brother committed suicide, triggered from trying to understand reasons, also worried that Skitter might commit suicide...).

 

Poor Bitch. Without her power, she can't heal the dogs in her shelter anymore, though I guess Skitter might be willing to do it.