#chapter 8.8

Oh, never mind. It’s just too long for one side.

Smackdown / Jennie Ryan Snowflake / Charlotte Tom Strider / Craig McNish Uglymug / Velocity / Robin Swoyer Vitiator / WCM / Zigzag / Bennie Debold and Geoff Schearn

But they did catch themselves.

Also, interesting that Zigzag is given as two people. Were they a duo and the people in charge of this decided that since both of them died, they might as well just put the duo’s name rather than their individual ones? Or did they maybe not have individual cape names in the first place?

It was shorter than the other lists, the last list of names, so there was space at the bottom.  Someone had used the empty space to etch words into the marble.

This could go different ways, primarily along the axis of respectfulness.

Also, I only now looked back and noted Taylor walking around the monument with each portion of the list. The division makes more sense now.

It was crude work, with scuff marks around each notch where the tool had been off target.  The letters were all in capital letters, all straight lines – the ‘o’s were squares, the ‘B’s two triangles joined at one corner.

...

Yeah, either Wildbow’s pulling a bait-and-switch or it’s pretty clear where this falls on the respectfulness axis.

KOOROW   BULLIT

Bait-and-switch it is, whether intentional or not. :P

MILK                   STUMPY BROOTUS  JOODUS AXIL         GINGIR

Curious names, these. Civilians with nicknames, I guess--- wait shit

RACHEL

That’s all very accurate to the Leviathan in Worm... I’m kind of surprised to see that even the water echo reflects something from the original description.

HelloooooooooooOOOOOooooOOOooOOooooOo

It’s tiwe to liveblog some wore Morw!

Last tiwe mas awazing. Me learned that Tattletale is alive and Arwwaster mas even wore of a dick than me thought, as revealed by Tattletale mhile she mas being fucking amesowe.

And then shit ment south for Taylor as Arwwaster, in a last ditch effort to discredit Taylor, revealed to the Undersiders, everyone present and the viemers of Trickster’s video/streaw the true nature of Taylor’s first fem meeks as an Undersider.

Nom she’s leaving the hospital, mith nomhere to go. This chapter... pretty wuch anthyding could hadplen, but I’w thinking we might go looking for Danny and/or his house.

IIRC the plan was actually for Taylor to die and Aegis to be the new protagonist. Whoops!

To add on the "death by dice roll" reveal... characters actually had modifiers on it depending on their place in the fight and their powers. Taylor had very low odds. Wildbow expected her to die. He had the story planned for her dying. And then she didn't. Near-Invincible Alexandria almost died. No-weakpoint Aegis died. Squishy bug girl survived.

Ahaha! That’s RNG for ya!

I was rather surprised when Aegis died, but man, I can’t help but imagine Wildbow’s reaction. Especially if he rolled Aegis before Taylor and had to worry about both of them dying. Though given what I’ve been told before about Wildbow going through several protagonists before settling on Taylor, I’m sure he’d think of something.

I suppose this means that Wildbow had to go through a similar process as the one Taylor did in 8.8. “Well then, Taylor survived and Aegis didn’t. What do I do with her character now?”

...hm, I wonder, would following Aegis mean leaving the wreck of Brockton Bay behind? I mean, would they still go through with the rearrangements of the Wards in the wake of an Endbringer attack?

If so, it seems like Wildbow intended to get rid of both the current protag and the specific setting, and got stuck with both... for now, at least. Not gonna lie, I hope it stays that way, especially now that Taylor seems to have come up with a long-term objective.

When 7.9 (the beginning of the Night/Fog fight) was originally published, Wildbow received negative feedback, agreed with it, and rewrote the chapter with substantial changes, taking down the old version after a few hours (essentially the only time he did that). He said in the comments after the update that "The previous chapter is canon in many respects." In the comments of 8.8, Wildbow announced that the original 7.9 is, canonically, the alternate reality that Coil eventually scrapped.

Interesting backstory regarding Coil's use of his power in Arc 7: There were two times during the writing of Worm where Wildbow was so unhappy how a chapter turned out that he deleted it a few hours after posting and re-wrote it from scratch. The first one of these was 7.9. At the time, Wildbow made some cryptic comment that the original version was still "canon in many respects." 8.8 makes it clear what he meant by that.

“What if you could choose both?  Choose both A and B, so your A self knows what your B self knows and vice versa.

Intriguing... go on...

When you know path B is the right choice, you can make it so.  The world where you chose to go down path A is gone, vanished, so when you comes to the next choice, you can do it again.”

This sounds a lot like how future vision works in Steven Universe.

“Sounds pretty useful.”

“Trick being that you can only have two realities running in parallel at a time, and the only differences between those realities hinge on the choices and calls you make.

Hm.

Is she describing Coil’s power here? Because this sounds a lot like Coil’s power, except with more of a bent towards knowledge.

The choices in question here wouldn’t affect the flip of a coin, though, unless you’re parahumanly good at physics.

So you delegate.  You find people who will follow orders.  Sometimes you send them out to do something in only one world, so that if things don’t go the way you want, you can default to the reality where you didn’t send them.

Okay yeah, this is absolutely sounding like Coil now.

What does he have to do with any of this, though?

Or, in simpler terms, in one world, you flip a coin.  In the other, you hold on a second, delay, say something.”

...the character I was talking about in the previous post also does a thing involving a coin flip and parallel timelines.

“Until every coin you’re flipping gives you a heads.  You’re talking about Coil,” I realized.

I see... so that’s how it works. Thank you! I’ve been really wanting to know the particulars of his power.

“That’s everyone’s situation, day-to-day, making choices.  Through resourcefulness, like using a cell phone to call for directions in our hypothetical situation, or talent, like me using my power, we can make it more likely we find the right paths, but we inevitably come to a choice between A or B at some time, right?”

This is making me think of Homestuck. Homestuck spoilers ahead:

There’s a character whose thing is the impact of people’s perceptions of reality and the choices they make, and predicting the consequences of those choices. Tattletale is currently reminding me of that character.

I may have mentioned previously that I thought Tattle might be a hero of Light in Homestuck terms, possibly a Thief of Light or Rogue of Light, but based on the elaboration we’ve seen in this Arc on how exactly Tattle’s power works and what we’re seeing right here, as well as her proficiency in mind games, I’m inclined to say she’s a hero of Mind instead.

I’m not quite settled on a class yet, though. Mage, perhaps? Classpect speculation is varied, but I’d define a Mage of Mind as someone who understands/knows the mind and choices, or understands/knows through the mind and choices, and (unlike a Seer of Mind) uses this understanding/knowledge herself rather than spreading it to the team.

The ultimate seat-of-your-pants writing technique - making it random. Even for the focus character! Damn, Taylor dying would’ve been quite the development. As if it wasn’t already unclear where the story’s going from here.