dsmpwormblog
dsmpwormblog
Mya
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Hello! This is a new account and I do not know what to write here lol
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dsmpwormblog · 4 years ago
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This is for the worm/dsmp AU written by @ariapmdeol! I’m a big Worm fan, and I’ve watched a decent amount of Dream smp content. I love thinking of powers for the trigger events of non-Worm characters, so I wanted to offer my interpretation of dsmp/worm powers, with more focus on the specific power mechanics and making it lore-accurate to Worm. Of course, I know you’re changing a lot of the deeper level canon stuff so if you don’t want to deep dive into exact power classifications and mechanisms and whatnot, then feel free to disregard this! I hope this doesn’t come off as judgmental or overly critical of anything.
Tubbo is drone tinker. Typically, a parahuman with the ability to summon or create minions in some way is triggering because of loneliness or isolation (not a hard and fast rule but I’m using the general guidelines for how triggers and power classifications usually fit together). Presuming the drones are primarily surveillance drones (I don’t remember if you specified, sorry!) that adds a thinker classification. A tinker classification has to be a crisis that happens over a while, at least a few weeks, and an isolation master trigger means that there is no one else to turn to. That means factoring Tommy out of this equation — if he’s there, then Tubbo has someone to turn to, and doesn’t trigger. It can’t be as simple as Tommy was on a trip or something, there has to be a real reason why Tubbo feels that he cannot approach Tommy about whatever this minimum-of-weeks-long-spanning trauma is during that time. My solution involves changing his trigger event a little. Basically, his new trigger event would be that he overhears Dream blackmailing Schlatt in costume, (though he doesn’t know Schlatt is working for Dream or anything — he just thinks he’s being threatened by the local villains because he’s in the PRT), and over the next few weeks, spirals into extreme anxiety and paranoia — if his uncle’s being threatened, maybe he’ll be next (hell, maybe he even specifically overhears Dream threatening to hurt Schlatt’s “little nephew”). He can’t confide in Tommy because he doesn’t even trust him. Eventually, he triggers with the ability to build up his drones — who he knows he can trust — to spy on Tommy and confirm he isn’t a villain. The staple of Worm powers is their irony, and the irony here is that Tubbo was so terrified and paranoid that someone was watching him or stalking him, and now he’s the one doing both. Eventually, he does go to Tommy and tell him about it, and Tommy encourages him to put on a costume and fight some crime.
Your trigger and power for Tommy already works really well, but for the sake of completion: Tubbo straps knives or bombs or something to his drones and he and Tommy go out to patrol. However, after the first few times, they run into someone tougher. They shouldn’t be powered, since Tommy’s trump power only empowers, implying that during his trigger event, any powers involved were positive associates for him. Maybe they’re much more experienced, maybe they’re armed and willing to kill a couple of teenagers, maybe they even have some low-level tinkertech bought from Sam or something. Either way, Tommy gets beaten, drones get broke, and Tubbo is on the verge of being killed when Tommy triggers. It’s literally a perfect, ironic power: Tommy empowers anyone he cares about that’s nearby him. Tubbo is empowered, and a million new ideas for tinkertech spring to mind. Unfortunately, that doesn’t help, seeing as he’s about to be killed, right now. Obviously, they make it out by the skin of their teeth; maybe them both passing out startled their opponent, maybe they recognized a trigger even and ran just in case, maybe the trigger attracted a hero like Captain Puffy, either way, they escape, and for that extra little bit of power irony, Tommy can’t turn his power off, and so will inevitably end up empowering Wilbur. This is already just spot on.
As for Wilbur himself, I think his power of illusions is cool, but it seems lacking in nuance a bit. I don’t know how much of the power mechanics you’re planning on changing, but presuming you’re keeping the basic idea of “entities give out powers to experiment with them”, illusions alone seems like something they would’ve tried already. Illusions would be a master/stranger power, so a power triggered from isolation or abandonment and a desire not to be noticed. Kinda contradictory? Well I propose we take it a step further and make it a breaker power, which happen through inherent contradiction in the triggeree. I can’t find the post you said this but I do remember you saying it at some point that Wilbur triggered out of frustration some time after Phil’s “funeral”. I think it would make sense if Wilbur, torn between his desire for Phil to return and his anger at Phil and wanting him to stay away to prove he doesn’t need him, triggers with the breaker power to turn into illusions. When he switches into illusion mode, he starts as an illusion of himself, but he can change and grow his illusion form into pretty much anything (although let’s impose a size limit so it’s not to overpowered, as well as some kind of cooldown before shifting back so he can’t just use it as phasing. Or maybe when he shifts back he always reappears where he was when he became an illusion?) This power also has the whole irony thing going: just like what he got mad at Phil for, he’s disappearing.
Onto the Cauldron people! Technoblade, I think, is fine as he is. Since case 53’s originate from shards not understanding how human biology works and just making random edits to it, I might make his mutations a bit more severe, and maybe impose some more debilitation from the voices in his head to balance him a little, but overall, very solid.
Phil’s power has kind of the same problem as Wilbur’s in that it’s kind of simplistic. It’s also odd since flight is a secondary power usually just tacked on to powersets by shards, not given as the only power. What I’d do is emphasize the secondary aspect of sensing air currents and upgrade it to some kind of full-grade air manipulation ability. To decide what kind, we have to picture his mindset just before he chugs the vial. I imagine that he’s feeling guilty. He obviously cared enough about Cauldron research to abandon his family for it, so he doubtless would feel bad about betraying them. But he also feels guilty for helping perpetuate their unwilling human experimentation. Flight works for that, as kind of a “rise above the guilt/disassociation” type thing, but he can’t escape the guilt. In his mind, it’s always dragging behind him, choking him. When Phil flies, he sucks the air out of an area, creating a vacuum in which no one can breathe, no one but himself, because his own case 53 mutations prevent him from needing oxygen. But even though he can survive in his vacuum, there’s no air entering or exiting his body, and he still naturally inhales and exhales, but nothing happens. Essentially, when he flies, it feels as if he’s having a perpetuate panic attack, choking and out of air. When he lands, the vacuum fills back in, but as long as he’s flying, trying to run from the guilt, it chokes him. Very ironic! And of course to add to the irony, he can’t fly with anyone or they’ll asphyxiate, so he couldn’t fly Wilbur or Tommy anywhere now even if he wanted to.
Ranboo’s power has to be teleportation, of course, but, like Phil and Wilbur, it needs to have something more to it. I’m thinking, make his split halves appearance literal — only one half exists in reality at a time. The other half is completely invisible, intangible, undetectable, etc. He can swap which half is “active” at any time, which to others looks like some kind of slow, color-changing teleportation. He has control over both halves always, no matter which half is “active” so he can position his inactive half for strategic teleports. Maybe each half has slightly different powers, too: one half is quick, agile, maneuverable, etc., the other is dense and durable. Some more limitations might need to be set for things like how far the inactive half can go from the active one, what happens when he falls asleep, etc. Also, to make sure his power can’t be used as an easy way to spy, let’s say the perception of the inactive half is completely warped, like a kind of fever dream. Ranboo can tell basically where he needs to appear and who’s nearby, but he can’t eavesdrop or just look at a computer passcodes or whatever. Or who knows? Maybe he can, but the trip back to reality scrambles his memory, so he only has a broken, fractured idea of what he saw while phased, similar to his enderwalk state.
That’s all I’ve got for now! I don’t know the trigger events of any of the others, so I don’t think I could think of a definitive power for them. Thanks for writing this AU, it is really cool, and I’m always glad to see more Worm content out there.
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