#and a lot of them are just like MINDLESS ANIMALISTIC KILLING MACHINE and that just. idk it feels weird

[wereh0gz]

Thinking about Archie comic's werehog

[shekorla]

Linked Universe and Magnus Archives

So, I really love Linked Universe, and I also really love the podcast Magnus Archives. I decided to try and see which fears fit each link. I tried to see which fear would haunt them, not which one they would be an avatar for, might do that later. In other words which of the fears would be the one that keeps them up at night and sneaks in to eat at the edges of their mind. If you are seeing this because you love Magnus, check out linked universe here, it’s a cool Legend of Zelda AU with all the links traveling together. If you are seeing this because of LU check out the Magnus Archives here (or literally any place you can get podcasts), its an awesome horror podcast made by rusty quill gaming. If horror isn’t your cup of tea check out their other stuff too, they've got a lot of cool stuff. The list ended up being pretty long, so I’ll put it under the cut.

·       Time-The Web. The web is the fear of being controlled, it’s the fear of being trapped with no escaped. I chose the web for time because I saw a connection to The Mother of Puppets. With his masks particularly the fierce deity mask and the possible loss of control and insanity that comes with the power that it gives. He saw what the power of Majora’s mask did to skull kid and fears that the same will happen to him. Not only that but Majora set up a lot of tricks for him and more or less used him as a plaything. After being used and thrown away by Hyrule when they needed a hero, not great. He tried his best and went through hell to live up to destiny and follow the path set for him by fate and by the sword and then he was told to forget anything ever happened and go back to being a kid. So, I think that the fear that would fit him best would be the web, particularly The Mother of Puppets side of it. I think that the fear of not being in control of anything in his life or losing control to some force out there would be something big for him.

·       Four- The Lonely. The lonely is the fear of being alone. It is the fear that you are alone, no one cares for you, and you will always be alone. This one isn’t as deep as some of the others, I think four’s biggest fear is being alone. He has lost Ezlo, then he lost shadow, and in a way lost his four parts. I think he is afraid that one day he will be all alone without his parts, or any of his friends.

·       Twilight- The Hunt. The hunt is the fear of being hunted, it is about the thrill of the chase, violence, and the victory of the final kill. I think that twilight fears that when he turns into a wolf he will lose himself. He’s never had that problem before, but that doesn’t mean it’s not possible. I think twilight is afraid of losing himself to the thrill of the hunt and end up hurting someone he cares about. On the other side of the coin, he has also been hunted. When he was first turned into a wolf he was chased out of his village by people he considered family. To top it off questing to save Hyrule and being hunted by monsters is never good for one’s sanity.

·       Wild-The End. This one may seem weird because the end is the fear of death and wild is an adrenaline junky who can literally come back from the dead. but I think that his death and failure to save Hyrule the first time around haunts him. I think that some part of him deep down is afraid of dying, and what his death will mean for Hyrule. I don’t think he is afraid of the pain of dying, but the end of life, does something come after, if so what, what will happen to Hyrule without its hero. I think that there may also be a part of him that fears that he can’t die, whether that means that the world won’t let him die, or that he physically cannot die no matter what. What if he is forced to live on and watch as everything he worked for crumbles before him.

·       Legend-The Web. So, Legend was really hard to pick just one fear for Legend, there were multiple that could have worked. I almost chose the spiral, which is the fear of madness and nothing being real, because of his experience on Koholint, and the thought that maybe nothing is real and it’s all just a dream. In the end, I decided on the web because the kid has been on something like 6 quests and it probably seems that he will never get to rest. Not only that but with traveling with the other links he must have learned from Hyrule that all his work was for nothing, in the end Ganon came back. So, I think the web is the fear that haunts him, the fear that no matter what he is trapped by destiny to fight, loose people, and do it all over again until he dies. And it will all be for nothing.

·       Warrior-The Slaughter. The slaughter is the fear of war, violence, and killing. It’s not about the chase like The Hunt is, and it is very much about human death, unlike The Flesh which is very animalistic. I picked the slaughter for Warrior because you don’t just walk off leading an army through a war, and having to kill your own men when they turn traitorous without some kind of permanent backlash. I think that sometimes he is afraid that he is nothing but a mindless killing machine lost in the violence of war. I mean in the games you kill about 1,000 enemies a level, most of the time more, that’s probably more then you might kill in the entirety of some of the other games. I think the mindless brutality of war haunts him.

·       Wind-The Eye. The eye is the fear of being watched, it is the fear that someone out there knows all of the secrets you would rather hide. I don’t think Wind has a lot of secrets to hide, he’s pretty open, and freely tells stories about most things. But I don’t think he likes being watched. In his first quest he was being watched and judged by the gods, to see if he was worthy of the title of hero. Then when battling the phantoms even the smallest millisecond of being spotted could mean death. He has a lot to live up to with the eyes of everyone in the past looking at him. I think that keeps him up at night, trying to live up to everyone’s expectations and fill the shoes of the mythical Hero of Time.

·       Sky-The Spiral. I don’t think the madness aspect of the spiral would really get to Sky, he seems to be pretty grounded, but the corridors are an entity of the spiral. I don’t remember if that is what it is called, but whatever Michael is. The endless hallways full of doors that trap people. I think this works for Sky because I think that he fears being endlessly trapped chasing something. He spent a lot of time chasing Zelda, and I think that he blames himself for not catching up with her and helping her sooner. His low stamina doesn’t help. He was also too slow to stop demise, which lead to all of the others being cursed. So, I picked the spiral for him because I think he has nightmares of running and running and never quite being able to catch whatever it is, no matter how far he travels.

·       Hyrule-The Flesh. I had the opposite problem with Hyrule that I had with Legend. To me, he seems like a guy that doesn’t let anything hold him back and doesn’t hold on to trauma. The flesh is usually a fear only associated with animals and has to do with slaughter and butchery. This may seem a bit out of place for Hyrule, but if you think about the events of Zelda 2 he spends the entire game being hunted like an animal for his blood. I almost used the hunt for this, but they are specifically after his blood which I feel plays into the animalistic nature of the flesh very well. I considered giving him the lonely, but then I realized I don’t think he fears being alone. For him being alone is the norm, maybe after spending time with the other links and going back home the pain of being alone may hit him, but I think for the most part he doesn’t fear being alone because he doesn’t realize he is alone. he doesn’t realize that most people spend most of their day surrounded by others.

These are just my thoughts feel free to share yours if you think I got one of them wrong, let me know. I’m always open to constructive criticism or just to hear your thoughts. I might make some art for these later, or make a list of the avatars that they would each be. I don’t know stay tuned.

[mittensmorgul]

Hello. This might be a stupid one but; why didn't Michael showed himself to humanity? (Meaning mass revelation biblical style). He doesn't want an apocalyptic earth he already had that. So why take it by force? If he is not afraid of a god intervention, most of the people want peace not freedom and he is a bridge between 3 major monotheist beliefs.(did I missed something?) Thank you

Hi there! First of all, sorry this took so long to answer. And I’m gonna take a line here to apologize to everyone who’s asked me stuff that I haven’t replied to. Sometimes I just don’t know how to reply, sometimes I hold on to stuff to see it in my inbox (like nice things people say), and sometimes I save stuff for when I have the brain power to reply and then maybe never do actually come by that brain power… whoopsie… I am doing my best. :P

That said, let’s tackle Michael.

*waits for someone to take him out with a strong hit*

*still waiting*

Well fine. I’ll do this.

I think you may be misunderstanding exactly what Michael wants here. Michael doesn’t give a flying heck about people. If he wanted to be worshiped like a god, he probably could’ve had the whole planet on their knees in a matter of days, you know? Pull a Godstiel, but with a lot less murder and mayhem, perform a few miracles on international television, and bam. He could’ve had the whole population bowing to him.

But I reiterate, he does not care about PEOPLE.

I mean, we got the best look into Michael’s point of view in his conversation with Jack in 14.09:

Alternate Michael: Oh, but, Jack, we’re family. You know, in fact, we’re the only kin each other has left in this world.Jack: My uncle’s in the Cage. And you – you’re not family.Alternate Michael: Well, not literally, no. Our connection, our relation is more a matter of scale of power. Haven’t you learned yet? In this reality, monsters, humans, even angels – they are insects, atoms compared to us. But you [chuckles] – you’re just a child, a mere infant. For you, the past two years – the entirety of your existence – feel like eons. You don’t even know what time is. But you will. Real time, the time that makes mountains, that wipes out species. You’ll see it all with me.Jack: No.Alternate Michael: Year by year, century by century, and as your power returns and grows, we’ll only become more alike. Oh, I know. Your loyalty to Castiel, the Winchesters, the rest of humanity? It will fade. And so will the minor differences – angel armies versus monster armies, this Kansas City or that Kansas City, one world from another – they’ll fade, too. 

He doesn’t even consider other ANGELS as anything significant or noteworthy, you know? He’s essentially been driven demented by just having existed for so long, and watched so many other things rise and fall, evolve and go extinct. Everything else holds no real meaning to him. Things are born, things exist for a while, and then they disappear forever. Why bother forming any sort of attachment to anything?

It’s a horrific prospect, honestly. Jack is horrified by it. *WE* are supposed to be horrified by it.

Immortality… is not a gift… it’s a curse. And Michael proves that. He loves nothing but himself, because everything else will die.

His goal is not to amass a hoard of loving, devoted followers. His goal is to wreak as much havoc as possible in the process of reforming the world to whatever he thinks would be most interesting to him right now. We have no idea what that would look like, because I don’t even think Michael knows. He’s like a scientist just throwing random stuff into a vat to see what happens. Oh, that combination of things exploded! This other combination made poison gas! Moving on to the next thing… just leave those other experiments there smoldering in ruin. It just breaks up the boredom for him, and then he’s on to the next thing. Because nothing at all really matters to him.

So the question for Michael is… why not take it by force? He’d done it once with angels, and this go-around he’s decided to try the same thing with monsters. But they’re all monsters who are explicitly under his control via his grace making them essentially his puppets. They’re not even operating of their own free will, technically. They’re just extensions of Michael’s will at this point. He’s not looking to make them all into his devotees, or remaking the world for them to enjoy. Because again, they’re only temporary fixtures in the universe, from Michael’s perspective. He doesn’t care about them or what they want, despite that having been his question to everyone at the beginning of the season.

I suppose I should address that here, for the purposes of understanding how I’ve been looking at him. Yes, his question was “what do you want?” But he didn’t really care what anyone wanted, beyond attempting to discover which group (humans, demons, angels, monsters) was both honest about what they wanted, and simplistic in their desires. Because strangely enough, that’s what Michael needed in the group he chose for his army. He needed a group with simple goals that he could use for his own purposes.

Humans are too messy and complicated. Even ensnaring the entire population in a Divine Revelation sort of way wouldn’t guarantee complete submission, you know? Not to mention the fact that Michael and Lucifer both (and even Raphael) have never, ever, thought that humans deserved that place of love God had ordered the angels revere humanity with. I think Michael resents humanity just as much as Lucifer and Raphael ever did.

There just weren’t enough angels to make a functional army for him, and Heaven is in shambles. He’d already failed to eradicate humanity and wrest control of the world with a full angel army in his own universe, so he wasn’t even really interested in trying to recruit the few angels who are left here.

We know he approached demons, and talked to at least Kip from 14.01. But as we know of demons, they have their own wants. They’re conniving, cunning, and tricksy. I mean, look at Kip’s answer to Michael from 14.01:

Kip: You see, recently, I had a revelation. You know, somebody asked me what it was that I wanted. And I realized that after 600 years as a demon walking the planet, destroying, drinking, defiling – you know, the Three D’s – I didn’t know. So, I sat back, and I gave it a good think, and I realized exactly what I wanted.Castiel: And what is it?Kip: Everything.

So he wanted EVERYTHING? Well, funny enough, that’s kinda the opposite of what Michael wanted in an army, you know? Michael wanted mindless, ravenous soldiers he could control completely. Whose desires were uncomplicated enough that he wouldn’t have to care about keeping them content beyond the very basic.

That left him with monsters. And yes, not all monsters are mindless killing machines.

I mean, think of the vampires from Michael’s AU. They WERE reduced to animalistic eating machines, nearly starving to death because there just weren’t any more people to feed on, and they were beneath Michael’s notice, just like mosquitoes or mud. I mean, why would he care what they wanted?

Because what they wanted was to be able to feed without persecution. Also from 14.01:

Michael: Now, you – you know exactly what you want. You don’t pretend to want to help people… or save the world. Your want is pure and simple… and clean. And that’s why you are worth saving. That’s why we are going to work so well together. Because you – you just want to eat.

Not because Michael admired this quality, or thought it was “worth saving” in its own right, but because it made them useful to him for his purposes. He’s essentially using them to hoover up all the other intelligent life on the planet. What would happen, theoretically, when all the people were gone? When all their food dried up? Michael said he intended to have all the monsters turn all the humans in Kansas City. Well, what THEN? What would all those monsters eat once the entire population of the world were monsters?

It would be chaos, is what. It would likely provide a few years or even decades of entertainment for Michael to watch unfold before he’d have to find something else to amuse himself with. But again, he just does not care. Which makes him possibly the most dangerous villain the show has ever seen.

Even Amara cared about something, you know? Even the Leviathan intended to just take over the planet and create a never-ending perfect human food supply for themselves.

But this is even worse than Raphael restarting the Apocalypse out of ennui. Michael’s a nihilist. He doesn’t want to be loved or worshiped. He doesn’t want to convert the world to bow to him. He does not care.

[zak-helling]

Big Hero 6 Theory: Liv’s Next Mutation

Even though it’s not the main focus of my blog, it’s no secret that I love Big Hero 6: the series. I love the characters, I love the animation, I love the stories, and I, of course, love the mysteries. The show keeps you guessing as to what’s going to happen next, but the tragic thing is that, despite being popular enough to warrant a renewal for a third season before season 2 premiered, there doesn’t seem to be much of a fan community online. Unless you tag your fan art, theories, quotes, etc. it’s unlikely a piece of fan art will drift across your dash like it does for shows like Steven Universe, Star vs. The Forces of Evil, She-Ra, etc. I’m hoping that changes soon, but I digress.

Also, this theory is going to contain spoilers for season 2, so I’ll go ahead and tuck it under “Read More”.

Getting back on topic, one of the biggest mysteries thus far in season 2 is the monsters and who is making them. We know Liv Amara is the culprit, but as of episode 10, “Lie Detector,” it becomes less clear what’s going on. Who’s the real Liv Amara? Why is one Liv in what appears to be cryosleep? Why is the other Liv making these monsters? How long has this apparent clone been running amok? Have we only known this clone the entire time? Does the sleeping Liv know what’s going on? There are so many questions, but not a whole lot of answers. Seeing as it’s been a few weeks since the last new episode, we might not know for some time. All we know is that the active Liv Amara is turning old villains into monsters for some kind of fee and, at the moment, no known benefit for the villains. Well, yeah, the villains become stronger, faster, and meaner, but as we saw with High Voltage, the process kind of interferes with living their best lives. We don’t know why they want this or why Liv is doing it. All we really know is that Liv is turning humans into monsters and turning them loose in the streets, sometimes being the one to take them down and look like a hero, other times letting Big Hero 6 do the dirty work.

So now let’s take a look at what we know about Liv’s monsters. I’ll bold the important stuff, as most of this will just be recap:

The first one, introduced in season 1 although we don’t know the full story yet, is Orso Knox, the Shakespeare fan turned whale mixed with a dinosaur and some hair, put into a blender, frozen, and then partially thawed. He spends the episode rampaging through the streets of San Fransokyo, attending his meetings, destroying offices, and speaking cryptically. We later learn that he wasn’t trying to hurt anyone, but is more beast than man, and was only trying to get help the best he could. Had it not been for Karmi reversing his mutation in the episode “Prey Date,” Liv probably would have kept Knox as a monster for even longer, potentially pulling him further and further from his humanity.

The second one is Momakase, who can be best described as turning into a werewolf from Skyrim (although her appearance is likely based on Lady Deathstrike, another Marvel villain). Momakase has always been strong, but she is heightened way beyond her normal abilities. Her nails are deadly claws that can cut through anything, she can escape the trap Big Hero 6 creates her and escape into the night, and has so far not been seen again since the episode “The Seventh Wheel.”

Third and fourth is the mother-daughter duo High Voltage. When they make their season 2 debut in “Something’s Fishy,” they discuss wanting to go straight with Liv, telling her that their crime days are over and even trying to lead normal lives after doing Liv’s dirty work. Unfortunately, once they mutate, those dreams are crushed, and they end up being kept in a tank until Liv needs them again in the episode “Lie Detector.” Barb and Juniper even end up turning back over their new leaf after an entire song and dance number about wanting to be normal, which, suggests to me at least, that Liv’s mutation process also messes with free will. Is it possible the two really did just learn they love crime that much? Sure, but I’m not convinced.

The fifth, arguably, is Nega-Globby, a destructive blob made from Globby’s already mutated DNA, introduced in the episode “Nega-Globby”. Side note, I love this episode. Globby makes such a sacrifice in the name of goodness and, I’d say, has been pretty thoroughly redeemed. While our Globby is victorious by the end of the episode, Nega-Globby is still part of him, suggesting that it’s not easy to undo one of Liv’s mutations.

The sixth is the Hibagon in the episode “Muira-Horror!”, the mutated Ned Ludd, back again for more action. Unlike all the other mutations before, Ned’s mutation leaves him a mindless killing machine, further supporting the idea that Liv has the power to interrupt or even override free will. Even Orso Knox had the ability to quote The Tempest, but Ned doesn’t say a word. He comes out of his mutation dazed and confused, with no recollection of what happened.

Mutant number seven is Mr. Sparkles, who is made into a fluffy green monster in the aptly titled episode, “Something Fluffy.” Also introduced in this episode are the Mayoi, adorable, fluffy fungus creatures created by Liv that grow into towering kaijus that can be controlled by Mr. Sparkles. Basically, Liv can create hive minds, or at the very least can put one mind in charge of many. She’s the one to save the day at the end of the episode, boosting her appearance and making Big Hero 6 look inept. After Hiro learns the police already don’t much care for the superhero team in the episode “Something’s Fishy”, this event creates more tension between them and the people they protect, possibly setting up the conflict for the rest of the season, or maybe even the main conflict of season 3.

Finally, we have the big Bessie Bear from the latest episode, “Lie Detector.” This mutation shows us that Liv can essentially give life to inanimate objects, as all she needed was a lock of grizzly bear hair to create the technology cancelling beast. This shows that all Liv needs to make a monster is the tiniest amount of DNA.

So now we know/remember what Liv can do with her technology. We know she poses a threat to Big Hero 6. Seeing as she has only done experiments on past antagonists (as well as Orso Knox and, as is implied, her Chris-sistant, although we don’t know enough about him for him to make the recap), why would she experiment on Big Hero 6? In my mind, the answer is simple: to break them apart. If she mutates one of the characters, crime fighting will be a lot harder. Public perception of the team will plummet. And, if she works her magic with tampering with free will, she can even have another henchman on her side. In short, there’s no way Liv loses in this scenario. Now that we know her motivation, who’s on the chopping block?

The first person who comes to mind isn’t a person at all. We know that Liv can make monsters with a frame and just a bit of DNA, so in theory, she could mutate Baymax. This doesn’t seem likely though, as it would be much easier to just unplug him. Plus, he was part of a super villain grand scheme last season, so it might be repetitive. It could be Hiro. He’s the main character, and having him mutated would force him to hide more things from Aunt Cass, force him to go to Karmi for help, and would give us more insight into the lives of the mutated villains. Although, because he’s the main character, I can’t see him switching sides. Fred is already pretty animalistic, as reflected in his costumes and behaviors while wearing them. But, I don’t know how much mileage we can get considering how Fred is still very much a comic relief character. Wasabi is probably the least developed character on the team, so a mutation could push things for him in a new direction, but that would probably come at the show’s detriment. Honey Lemon’s chem purse already puts her in harm’s way of suffering the same mutation as Globby, making her an easy target, but that would just be repetitive at this point. And so, we are left with one person, the character who I think this is most likely to happen to:

Go Go Tomago.

In a way, season 2 has been Go Go’s season. She’s had more development than the rest of the cast, maybe even more than Hiro. “The Fate of the Roommates” shows her emotionally vulnerable and opening up about her feelings for the first time, developing her as a character and her relationship with Honey Lemon. The very next episode, “Muira-Horror!” shows her learning to let go of some of her stubbornness to trust in Krei’s judgement. The episode “Supersonic Sue” shows her crisis as she fails to prevent an old criminal fresh out of retirement from escaping a crime scene, an old criminal who, as it turns out, was inspired by Go Go to go back to crime. Basically, Go Go has been on an emotional roller coaster this season. We see her get angry, we see her get sad, we see her challenged in ways we hadn’t before. These episodes gave her highs, but they also gave her lows. In fact, “Supersonic Sue” didn’t even give her time to get over what happened, nor does she get a chance to redeem herself from her failure. Right now, Go Go has the most to lose and would likely be the hardest to fall. If anyone on the team is going to get mutated, I’m betting it’s her.

As of right now, we don’t know if the show is going in this direction. For all we know, the mutations stopped at Bessie and the rest of the season will be rounding up the mutants and returning them to normal. But the season is only half-over. I feel like we have plenty of time to play around with the status quo and shake things up a bit. If they do go this route, I doubt it will be permanent, but it could be fun and heart-wrenching at the same time. We’ll see, when Disney finally airs those new episodes.

[howtohero]

#216 Swarms and Hive Minds

It’s been said that there is strength in numbers. Many of our readers will surely be surprised to learn that that saying was not actually coined as a response to the emergence of several ridiculously strong anthropomorphic numbers in South America. (I was today years old when I learned that.) It actually used to be a pretty famous turn of phrase referring to the phenomena that a group of beings acting towards a shared goal is often stronger/more effective than the sum of its parts. It has nothing to do with that insanely ripped number 7 I’m telling you. Supervillains recognize this phenomena (though I promise, many of them are not aware of the phrase’s age) and that’s why they’ve been known to employ or create large swarms of unthinking creatures or animals to do their bidding. 

Swarms are great for committing large scale chaos because, unlike henchmen, swarms are just mindless hordes that will just go out and wreck stuff. They don’t have the same sense of self-preservation as your average punchclock henchman who is only in this for the money that he hopes to live to be able to spend. They also don’t have the same risk of developing a conscious. Yet, at the same time, their mindless, animalistic tendencies make swarms bad for any type of precision crimes. A cloud of killer bees can’t pull off a casino heist or surgically implant a nuclear bomb into the heart of the mayor. (Please don’t send us any emails. We know about the time the cloud of killer bees did surgically implant a nuclear bomb into the heart of a mayor, but after consulting with several apiologists we have determined that was both a fluke and an accident.) But they can provide the perfect distraction for a supervillain with some finesse to pull off those crimes. Think of it like this, a swarm is like a can of spray paint as opposed to the supervillain’s fountain pen. Point them right, and they’ll get the job done, but if you want something more delicate, a bad guy’s gonna go somewhere else.

But you’re a superhero, you don’t need to get bogged down in all the finer details of when and when not a supervillain is going to unleash a swarm of mindless, malicious, evil-beasts. You just need to know how to combat them when they do. One of the things that makes swarms so appealing to supervillains, their lack of any real higher functions, can also serve as a great weakness to them. If suitably confused, or even just cut off from their assigned task, a swarm will often lose a lot of its potency. They don’t have any personal stakes in, well, anything. So they’re unlikely to go to absurdly great lengths to achieve their goal of being a large nuisance to the populace if you make it hard enough. 

One tried and true method of swarm-stopping. Get a giant box and lure the entire swarm inside of it. Obviously the size of your containment unit and your method of luring the swarm will depend mostly on what exactly this swarm is made up of. If it’s zombies, some artificial brains and an abandoned shipping crate will do the trick. If it’s giant metal-eating termites obviously you’ll be using that giant shipping crate as bait and then sucking them all up into a giant, plastic, vacuum cleaner. If its brainless cyborgs, obviously you’ll be using those giant metal-eating termites we just captured to chase them into a stanky dungeon where they can’t draw power from anything. If your goal is to destroy the swarm as opposed to just capturing it, then the best way to do that is to force the entire swarm through a small opening where you can fight them as they enter, or set up automatic weapons to blast them as they pour through. To do this you need to box the swarm in, perhaps by using one of the techniques outlined above, and then you need to create a small opening for the swarm to escape through. Size is key here. If the opening is too big you’re going to be very quickly overwhelmed. But if the opening is too small, nothing will be able to get through and the swarm will begin attacking all of the walls of the containment unit and, if they’re successful, they might escape for any direction and quickly overwhelm you. 

All of this means that you need to be able to determine what exactly this swarm is made of. Oftentimes swarms are entirely engineered by supervillains or the mad scientists in their employ. Which might make it tricky to determine what kind of base instincts they have at a glance. So you and your team are going to need to extract one member of the swarm for studying. Depending on the ferociousness and density of the swarm this can be very tricky. If the swarm is spread out over a large area, for example if an animal-themed supervillain is using a swarm of beasts to terrorize a small country that they’d like to conquer, or if a bad guy just dreamed to big and the swarm they brought is way too small to fully saturate the territory they want to terrorize, then it’ll be easy to corner one of the swarm-members by itself and detain it for observation. If you have to dive headlong into a wall of creepy alien parasitic bats from hell, then things might get more complicated. In order to protect yourself from the swarm you should make sure that none of your skin is exposed. Swarms mostly do harm through biting, scratching or otherwise puncturing the skin of their victims. You’re not going to find a pack of evil wolves that are toting guns or using explosives. They’re inherently close-range fighters so if you armor up and take steps to protect yourself from acid or venom spitting you’ll be a lot safer. Depending on the size of the swarm you also may be at risk of being trampled. Many a good hero has been lost to an evil wildebeest stampede and that’s just evil wildebeest, a good deal more have been killed by just regular wildebeest stampedes while trying to reenact the Lion King. (Though, to be fair, being killed by the wildebeest stampede is the only to reenact the movie correctly.) To avoid being trampled in a stampede, make sure not to actually land on the ground unless it’s absolutely necessary. If the swarm is made up entirely of land-based animals or monstrosities, you’d do well to just hover above them and toss a net down to capture one of them for science. 

Then there are swarms that have some sort of intelligence. Generally these swarms exhibit a hive mind meaning that the entire unit has one mind controlling all of them. Each individual in the swarm is like a limb of a larger organism, a simple cog in a larger machine. These kinds of swarms are usually much more difficult to fight. Because they’ve got a brain. It’s always harder to fight someone with a brain. Jot that down somewhere. Having a brain means that this swarm can be creative in how it fights you. It means that it can take things personally. It means that they’ve got some sort of plan, and that plan is usually to assimilate other organisms into the hive mind. Yikes. We don’t want that. to fight the hive mind you need to identify whether or not there is “queen” of the hive. If one of the members of the swarm is the dominant party that the other members are an extension of. If you can identify the queen, that’s who you need to focus your firepower on. If you knock out the queen they’ll either lose their grip on the other members of the hive making them easy pickings for you and your team, or the resulting mental feedback will knock the rest of the swarm out. If, however, there is no queen and the consciousness of the hive is spread out over all of its members, things get a bit more tricky. You’re left with two options. You can either take the time to fight every single member of the hive and make sure each of them are knocked out or captured (if you leave even one member active then the villainous hive is still a threat and can be rebuilt) or you can just carpet bomb the entire location and pray that you got everything. 

To avoid being assimilated into the swarm I recommend developing a very strong sense of self. Before going to fight the swarm, take stock of all of your accomplishments and laud yourself for each and every one of them, no matter how small. With your inflated ego, there’s no chance you’re going to let some weird bug alien take over your mind and turn you into a mindless drone. You once won a swimming competition, and you’re not even an aquatic superhero! You’ve done incredible things. You swam so many laps. You beat King Water Breather! Turns out that dude isn’t even that great of a swimmer (his royal garb probably slows him down too) he’s just good at breathing underwater. Ha! Eat my dust King Water Breather! With pride like that you’ll never allow some weird brain collective to infiltrate your mind and use your body as a puppet. Get lost hive! Nobody even likes you!

And of course, strength in numbers goes two ways. (Just like that bus that the grotesquely muscular number 2 ripped in half that one time.) So if you’re feeling overwhelmed by an evil swarm you shouldn’t hesitate to call in some superhero friends.