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[wormconsumer]

miles my brain is too small to understand your post but it looks super smart and you should explain to me and kir on the phone later

Ok!!!

[wormconsumer]

Based off a post I saw with the idea that Robert Smirke had fourteen friends, each falling too/representing a different entity, with Smirke himself being the Extinction.

To get the obvious ones out of the way: Jonah Magnus as the Eye, Mordechai Lukas as the Lonely, Maxwell Rayner as the Dark, and George Gilbert Scott as the Buried; these ones are all canon. Not directly canon but a pretty reasonable assumption is Simon Fairchild as the Vast; we know Simon had Maxwell Rayner help him with his Awful Deep ritual in 1853, which was only a few years before Smirke died, and Smirke hung out with Rayner a ton, so it makes sense for Simon to be part of the group (though by a different name; he only started going by “Simon Fairchild” in the 1930s). Another fairly reasonable assumption, in my opinion, is John Franklin for the Hunt. Franklin is canonically a Hunt avatar in The Magnus Archives, his real-life timeline overlaps with Smirke and the rest, and Rayner was canonically interested in his expedition, which was probably because he wanted to use Franklin’s knowledge of arctic exploration for his ritual, but could also imply they knew each other, and therefore, Smirke’s gang.

For the Corruption, my first thought was John Amherst, but he only became an avatar during the Second Boer War, which was about half a century after Smirke’s time. Instead, John Snow is a better fit. He was an English physician who lived during the same time as Smirke, and he had something going on; his descendant Neil Thompson has a syringe that belonged to Snow that had Corruption properties, so Snow fits. For the Slaughter, we could go with Charles Fleming. We know he was in China from at least the beginning of the First Opium War in 1839, and Smirke and Jonah and the rest were up and active on their supernatural studies since at least the 1810s, so it’s theoretical Fleming could have hung out with them, even though he didn’t become touched by the Slaughter until he went to China. Maybe he came back later, though he was in China at least until 1862. Alternatively, William Hall, the actual captain of the Nemesis, could be an option, his lifetime overlaps pretty well with Smirke’s, though there is no evidence he interacted with the Slaughter besides his interactions with Fleming and the Nemesis. Still, he was probably a bit more high-society that Fleming, so I kind of prefer him. Finally, for the more reasonable ones, we have Joey Grimaldi for the Stranger. Grimaldi’s timeline overlaps with Smirke’s, and we know he was affected by the Stranger even before he was turned into Nikola Orsinov. The reason I’m choosing Grimaldi instead of Gregor Orsinov or Nikolai Denikin is that we know for sure he was in England while Smirke was, unlike the other two.

Now for the more out-there guesses. For the Flesh, there are a few options. One is Eustace Wick, the Lutheran priest-turned-cannibal, who did live at the same time as Smirke, but he became an avatar in 1832, died in 1845, and has no evidence that he’d even been to England, considering he’s American. The other options would be Benjamin Carlisle, Benjamin’s unnamed wife, or possibly some other relative or descendant of theirs. I find this one the more likely choice, because Jonathan Sims specifically wonders how Benjamin Carlisle’s wife was able to give her statement to the Magnus Institute, considering she starved to death in a cave on the Oregon Trail in 1845, as well as the fact that an apparent descendant of her, Toby Carlisle, is living in England by the 21st Century and has enough of a connection with the Flesh to be pretty severely affected by the failure of the Last Feast ritual. The unnamed Mrs. Carlisle being the Flesh representative does mean she presumably gave in and cannibalized her husband, and the timeline only gives her about a decade to have hung out with the rest before Smirke’s death, but I think that fits, considering what Smirke said about just coming up with theories about the Flesh in his statement.

The Spiral has similarly not a lot to go on. I would just say the Distortion, seeing as it’s an immortal manifestation of the Spiral itself. We know that Ivo Lenshik’s father was tormented by the Distortion in a human form, and apparently Lenshik’s great-uncle did too, implying that the Distortion did assume a humanoid form sometimes, before it was forced to by the failure of the Great Twisting ritual. Plus, Jonah Magnus clearly knows who the Distortion is, which yes, he could have learned at literally any point from the past two hundred years, but seeing as we’ve got nothing else, I’ll choose to believe. For the Web, the only older avatars of the Web we’re aware of would be the historical owners of the house at Hill Top Road. We don’t know who owned it during Smirke’s time; the closest we have are the unnamed blackmailer who died during the English Civil War in the mid-1600s, and Walter Fielding, who died in 1923. Walter’s son and grandson both owned the house for about thirty years before dying, so with the same amount of time applied, Walter couldn’t be our Web avatar. Honestly, the answer might just have to be “whichever Web avatar was owning the house at Hill Top Road during the first half of the 19th Century.”

For the Desolation, we have even less. Diego Molina founded the Cult of the Lightless Flame at some point prior to World War II, but we have no idea when, and it couldn’t have been that long, considering what Eugene Vanderstock says about the immortality of Desolation avatars having some kind of limit. The same is true of the End. The only known End avatar who was alive during Smirke’s time was Nathaniel Thorp, who was a Death at the time, and didn’t become human again until 1970. It’s unlikely that Deaths got breaks to socialize.

So, in summary, we know for sure about:

* Jonah Magnus — The Eye

* Mordechai Lukas — The Lonely

* Maxwell Rayner — The Dark

* George Gilbert Scott — The Buried

We can make some reasonable assumptions about:

* Simon Fairchild — The Vast

* John Franklin — The Hunt

We can make educated guesses about:

* John Snow — The Corruption

* William Hall — The Slaughter

* Joey Grimaldi — The Stranger

We can make complete guesses about:

* Mrs. Carlisle — The Flesh

* The Distortion — The Spiral

* Owner of the house at Hill Top Road — The Web

And we have nothing for:

* The Desolation

* The End

If anyone has ideas or things I missed, let me know.

[wormconsumer]

miles..............

Tis I jasperdragon116

[wormconsumer]

The Magnus Archives entities as kinks/fetishes (TMA spoilers at the bottom!)

No I will not be taking criticism

The Desolation — waxplay

The Web — bondage

The Eye — voyeurism / exhibitionism

The Spiral — wired sex

The Corruption — bugchasing

The Stranger — roleplay

The Dark — blindfolding

The Buried — breathplay

The Vast — orgies

The Slaughter — bloodplay / knifeplay

The Hunt — petplay

The Flesh — biting

The End — necrophilia

The Lonely — masturbation

Bonus (TMA SPOILERS!!!):

The Extinction — AI-generated porn

[wormconsumer]

Miles follow back or I'm really gonna do it

I do follow you mr tubes

[wormconsumer]

No fucking way literally me

[wormconsumer]

What about if the villains’ powers are removed or suppressed a la Avatar or Deadpool 2? Then you don’t need ridiculously in humane jails, they’re just normal people now.

Something of an unsolved problem for superhero/urban fantasy/horror fiction is that in its pursuit of setpiece fights and sufficiently terrifying antagonists it creates a universe in which one of the Big Lies of the carceral justice system becomes absolutely true- now there really is a class of innately and disproportionally dangerous criminals whom can only really be checked  through draconian or worse measures. 

Even if you have strong channels for rehabilitation (and I’m focusing more on superhero settings here, many of which explicitly do have those channels due to more socially conscious writers heading the books) you’d still need an pretty militarized police force and prison system involved to get the super criminals to comply, to keep them at the table, and to keep them from walking through the wall of the therapists office when they get bored. That’s not a thing in real life; real life criminals sort of have a one-size-fits-all approach in terms of what constitutes reasonable force, for arrest and for self-defense. You can keep the worst criminals of our generation (cough Anders Brevik cough) in reasonably livable accommodations with very little risk of a security breach, and the fact that we don’t do this even though we clearly can is a major societal issue. You can’t do the same for Cletus Kassidy. Giving that guy air holes constitutes a security breach.

Most superhero works and writers aren’t equipped to tackle that tension and I don’t think it’s fair to expect them to try- sometimes you’re just there to watch idiots in tights punch each other. But there are also a lot of works that are really, violently egregious in saying that it’s fine to disregard the rights of the sufficiently dangerous (Looking at the first couple seasons of The Flash here.) Even works that expressly address the ethical conundrums of trying to contain innately dangerous persons (I.E. Worm and the Birdcage, which introduces the superhuman carceral system of that world by making us watch an unjustly sentenced woman be fed through it) often don’t have an actual answer as to what you should do instead- it’s more like they’re presenting one more unsolvable point of dysfunction that introducing superpowers to society would cause. Which is fair! But not great if you don’t want to write a superhero thing about the gradual disintegration of society.

I think that, Ironically, the MCU clears this bar most easily; not because they’re particularly socially conscious or well written, but because the constant return to the same plot beats means that most of the antagonists are either killed in self-defense during the climax, are warlords or invaders to whom criminal justice doesn’t apply the same way, or they don’t actually have superpowers and are once more regular joes when separated from their equipment. Furthermore, there aren’t that many of them to begin with; Maybe 30 over twenty movies and ten years, they aren’t something widespread enough that a progressive justice system would have to work out new protocols for them to remain functional.

[wormconsumer]

Ward villains don’t get enough love

Cradle

[wormconsumer]

It is his birthday, he has responded to happy birthday messages on this day in previous years.

i have no way to confirm if today's really Wildbow's birthday. But the way i see it, it doesn't hurt to head over the parahumans subreddit and send him some love

[wormconsumer]

It’s confirmed canon in Ward that Abaddon did not mean for Eden to fuck up and drop the Eye like that, it was legitimately trying to make a trade.

Yall ever just think about which shards caused the failure.

I think Eden lost her QA and that's why she lost her PTV and therefore failed

[wormconsumer]

In fact, doesn’t Calvin say at one point that his grandmother told him his mom used to be like him?

my favorite calvin and hobbes comic is the one where his dad just rolls up and casually destroys his entire night by pointing out some neat trivia about record players

[wormconsumer]

I’ve heard the theory that Miss Militia’s shard makes her the perfect soldier, as she’s always armed and never needs to rest. As for Doormaker... possibly a side effect of his shard kind of consuming his mind?

Broke: wanting to be a cape to get cool powers

Woke: wanting to be a cape on the off chance you don't have to sleep anymore

[wormconsumer]

Practioner ideas, day 1:

According to the official pactdice documents, blood mages don’t actually need to use blood to make/empower their magic weapons, they just need to sacrifice something and blood is the most common thing. However, one other option on the document is to use sex to make enchanted stuff. Therefore, I propose a himbo blood mage who enhanced his magical item arsenal by fucking 24/7.

[wormconsumer]

Which member of the Toronto Council you’d have sex with, and what it reveals about you:

— The Eye: You want to get stepped on.

— Isadora: You want to get stomped on.

— Conquest: You want to get leapt up and down on top of.

— The Shepherd: You’re that guy from that Reddit post who was still in love with your dead wife, but you can’t have sex with her, so you do the next best thing and fuck the death wizard.

— The Sisters: You want to be the protagonist of a harem anime.

— Jeremy: You are nonexistent, dangerously intoxicated, or both.

— Diana: You are sane.