#proto worms

[ironcladfoundry]

For the MynameisByf ultimate lore video, I drew nearly every race from the lore of Destiny. So enjoy some headcanons.

The Precursors

The Lubraeans

The proto worms

The Krill

Kaharn Atol

The Ammonite

The Qugu

The Noesis

The Ahslid

The Ecumine

[thefirstknife]

One more thing. In the cutscene, when Eris starts chanting and "invokes the Worm gods," we hear her say three words:

"Akka... Xita... Sel..."

Obviously Akka and Xita are Worm gods. New Worm god just dropped??? We've never before heard the name "Sel." The only pattern I'm seeing in these being invoked is that Akka and Xita are dead. So maybe Sel is another, some forgotten Worm god that's died a long time ago. Or maybe it's just a word in the incantation, but that's a strange placement for it here with two other Worms.

[cerealxperimentslain]

snake identification is easy in sweden. is it zig zag like an adder? no? then it’s a grass snake or as we like to call them, the snok

ID: a wikipedia information box. it says “Snok” in bold letters above an image of a grass snake in profile, sticking its tongue out in the air. The snake is mostly cream coloured with thick black lines between some of the scales. Between the name of the snake and the image of the snake is text that reads: “Status i världen: Livskraftig (lc)”, which translates to “Status in the world: vigorous (least concern)” End ID.

(yes technically there’s also the smooth snake but you’re not gonna stumble upon a smooth snake & they don’t even live in my area)

[acmeoop]

Sweet Snack “A Tale of Two Kitties” (1942)

[prekladatelsky-orisek]

Great post overall but obligatory reminder that Finnish and Swedish are not related.

I keep being amused by how modern languages that are related to each other have elements that feel "archaic" compared to each other, just by having retained different features of their common ancestors. My psych clinic's coat rack had the sign "we are not responsible of any clothing/valuables left here" in both finnish and swedish, and I chuckled a little since the swedish "vi ansvar inte" is so similar word-for-word to saying "we answer not [for the thing]", like hehehhe medieval-ass phrasing language, before I recalled that hold on, the word for "to be responsible for" is the same damn word as "to answer/to reply" in finnish.

We answer not for your stolen coat or phone.

[ultramantr1gger]

have you played and/or watched someone play the rain world downpour dlc

yeah i pirated downpour SORRY and finished monks campaign but none of the dp scugs campaigns. i did recently buy the base game though im compensating. my favorites to play r probably spearmaster artificer and rivulet for that speedy

[bogleech]

question about the arthropod ancestors, if they didn’t evolve to have the legs at the head yet then what did their mouths look like? do we know?

Yeah! Those basal soft tube proto-bugs include Anomalocaris, Opabinia, various less popular Cambrian sea worms, AND today's fully living observable velvet worms! A typical lobopod mouth is just a fleshy iris, with hardened protrusions inside to function as "teeth" when necessary

Melvyn yeo's velvet worm photos go viral a lot for how adorable they are but they're hiding a facial sphincter with knives in it:

It's the same kind of mouth a lot of other soft-bodied animals evolved, such as polychaete worms and gastropods

When you're mostly meat with no jointed skeletal structure, you can still bite things by evolving a straightforward round hole reinforcing some of the inner tissues until they become a beak or some nice fangs

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

I'm repeating my experiment in the name of Good Science, so I shall include slightly more explanation for each name at the end. But today is the day of the BADGER! Mustelid fun

So! Let's see, notes:

Mochyn bychan. I mean you can see there's a pig theme here. I presume the 'bychan' is therefore because a badger isn't close to Actual Pig Size, which is extremely big.

Mochyn y Coed. Probably self explanatory, they are forest creatures. Although so are wild boar? But there's a different word for those

Broch. Cognate with Irish broc, Gaelic brocc, etc. From proto-Celtic brokkos, meaning grey, after the fur on a badger's back.

Mochyn daear. Named after its habit of digging out and living in setts underground

Mochyn torri. Torri is normally held by linguists to mean 'digging' in this context, so a parallel with mochyn daear; but there's an argument to be made that it has its other meaning of 'cut/tear' after what a badger will do to a dog in a badger-baiting ring

Mochyn gwyllt. Gwyllt in Welsh has connotations of 'wild/dangerous', so this one is fearsome

Pry llwyd. WHAT a curve ball. Don't know what to tell you. Pry is from pryf, and it means insect or worm. I suppose the digging thing again? Or maybe in the vermin sense?

***

As ever, only about two of these are used officially now, and the rest are dialect. EXCEPT FOR ONE. One of these is a filthy lie. An outrageous falsehood. A bare faced delusion. I am shameless. I just went on the internet and lied. Shocking.

But which one...?

[greatwyrmgold]

(raises hand) I think the Terrible Popular Worm Fandom would have a Nazi problem. Sorry if this clashes with the tone of other Terrible Popular Worm Fandom speculation.

Worm was written at a time where white people like me and Wildbow thought of neo-Nazis as Blues Brothers villains; they're bad people who want to commit unspeakable crimes against humanity, but they're too unpopular to be an actual threat. So Wildbow was kinda sloppy with Empire 88; on paper, there are points being made about white supremacy, but most of those were still half-formed when Kaiser got axed and E88's remnants quickly faded from narrative significance.

About nine months after Worm wrapped up, GamerGate knocked over the biggest domino that lead to neo-Nazis becoming an actual political threat, and one of the proto-alt-right's big targets was online fandoms. And the Parahumans fandom already has a notable minority who see Kaiser as a kinder, more honorable villain compared to the savage ABB and fillty Merchants.

If Worm was more popular, there would be more people in its fandom. There would therefore be more Nazi sympathizers and more apolitical teens, both of whom are useful targets for the alt-right. So they'd probably poke their way into /r/parahumans (and possibly other Worm fan communities) and do their radicalization pipeline thing. Make POC and queer people and so on feel unwelcome, spread reactionary rhetoric and memes, etc.

Two specific traits of Wildbow's become relevant at this point. First, he consistently tries to support everyone Nazis hate. He's often hilariously unsuccessful, but he tries. Second, he is perhaps too involved with his fan communities.

So once Wildbow realized his community had a Nazi problem, he would almost certainly try to do something about it. I have absolutely no confidence that it would be effective.

[victoriadallonfan]

VICTORIA NEVER COMPLAINS ABOUT BACK PAIN IN HER INTERNAL MONOLOGUE AND SHE NEVER MENTIONS HAVING A HARD TIME BUYING BRAS AND OTHER FLATTERING CLOTHES

You can tell who’s a fake fan by the fact that Peri forgets that not only does Victoria do exercises to strength her core and back, but Taylor notes personal forcefields are used for chest support!

In fact I have WoG and quotes from Guts and Glory (the proto Worm story that WB claims is canon adjacent) that point to further evidence of Pericardium not just being a fake fan, but not having actually read anything about Victoria at all!

In this thesis I-

[ducktracy]

Do you think the best plot twist from a looney toons cartoons/movies was the ending from "Duck-Amuk", or is there a better plot twist then that?

what i wouldn't GIVE to be able to see Duck Amuck with fresh eyes again!! i love Duck Amuck a lot but it's unfortunately one of those Chuck Jones shorts where i've been exposed to it so much that the twist ending has no real surprise effect on me anymore. it's a great ending though, especially compared to something like Rabbit Rampage (i just forgot the title and sat there for 15 seconds going "what was it?? Rebel Rabbit? no! Rhapsody Rabbit? no!! r.. Redrawn Rabbit???" which probably speaks to.. something) whose ending is just completely illogical and lame. in the words of the immortal proto-Fudd, "I DON'T BELIEVE IT"

BUT! to answer your question. this is probably one i'll come back to because i was kicking myself that i missed. there's a lot of great twist endings out there, but one of my favorites is probably Hare Brush, in that it's revealed that Elmer has been acting like a rabbit through entire cartoon NOT because he's having a psychotic break, like the story establishes it as, but so he can get away with tax evasion. maybe hits harder having seen the entire cartoon but it's great, i love Arthur Q. Bryan's line read here

before i remembered this though i almost answered with the ending to Quentin Quail. it's not so much a twist ending so much as it is a "wtf" ending but there are few things funnier to me on this earth than the Baby Snooks caricature refusing to eat a worm--in which this cartoon is all about her poor father killing himself trying to get said worm for her to eat--because it looks too much like Frank Sinatra. took my breath away the first time i saw it. this is my exact sense of humor and i feel so vindicated that this 78 year old cartoon could jump across generations and appeal so personally to me specifically

[beautiful-basque-country]

Factitive verbs in Basque

The verbs considered old in Basque - those that come directly from proto-Basque - are the ones ended in -i or -n.

These verbs show an easy way to make them factitive, this is, to mean that the action is not done directly but made done. Some easy examples:

eman (to give) - eRAman (to make given = to carry)

ikasi (to learn) - iRAkatsi (to make learnt = to teach)

ikusi (to see) - eRAkutsi (to make seen = to show)

ekarri (to bring) - eRAkarri (to make brought = to attract)

ibili (to function) - eRAbili (to make function = to use)

egin (to do) - eRAgin (to make done = to cause)

izan (to be) - iRAzan (to make been = to create)

esan (to say) - eRAsan (to make say = to worm)

edan (to drink) - eRAdan (to make drunk = to water)

For new verbs - all the rest non-ended in -i or -n - ans even some old ones we need the suffix -arazi to express the same idea:

jakin (to know) - jakinarazi (to make known)

ordaindu (to pay) - ordainarazi (to make paid)

apurtu (to break) - apurtarazi (to make broken)

ulertu (to understand) - ulertarazi (to make understand).

Etc.

[allwormdiet]

Your recent post on Arc 8 have got me wondering if the dice roll was, on a certain level, an artifact of a Worm that never was. Like a lot of web serials, Worm is a giant first draft, so a lot of early ideas and elements that would have been sanded off in later edits remain as discordant notes. @artbyblastweave has described how you can see the traces of a campier Worm with a more conventional kitchen-sink superhero setting in the early arcs. (There's a WoG out there where Wildbow discussed how the decision on whether to include magic or not in the setting was made late in the day, which would have completely altered the entire story.) Anyway, in another WoG WB described that in his initial conception Worm would be more of an ensemble piece. Taylor would have been one of multiple protagonists exploring different aspects of the setting. In that version of Worm, Taylor would have had a smaller part in the story, so she could have been killed off and replaced while the other protagonists continued their stories. However, WB probably realized pretty quickly that he'd hit paydirt with her character, so Worm quickly became the Taylor Hebert Show. While he may have always planned to roll the dice for the Leviathan arc, settling on a single protagonist would have changed what those rolls meant for the story. (I do want to emphasize that I am not making that dumb "Worm was only good by accident!" argument. I think WB just set out wanting to write a superhero story with a bunch of details up in the air, and when he hit on something good he leaned into it. Most stories start out like this; the nature of serialized web fiction just means we're more aware of the sausage-making process than we are for most published fiction that (mostly) tucks it out of sight.)

That's an interesting line of thought, honestly.

As someone who's dabbled in serialized fiction and had not nearly as much success, either in terms of popularity (hah) or in terms of actually finishing the fucking things (hah hah), it's an outrageously difficult format to work with because you set so much of it in stone as you go along and you might not realize until too late that you've changed your mind about something, and that gets a lot harder to work with the more of it is already published.

I know that there were prior versions of Worm where the protagonist was entirely different (iirc the main one of note was centered on Glory Girl and Panacea called Guts and Glory, but I think there was at least one point where Brian was considered for the protagonist), and that even the first version of Taylor's story was scrapped some time before making Worm (Myriad?)

It'd be easy to believe that there's some version of the story very early on where Taylor or a proto-Taylor bites the dust, you get that even with more major productions; Jesse Pinkman from Breaking Bad was gonna die in the first season and they changed that mid-filming. All I can really say is that I'm glad as fucking hell that Wildbow realized that Taylor was a bullseye protag choice.

Now if only he would stop putting her in all of these horrible situations

[mossinformed]

The protonema is an algae-like stage that follows right after the spore germinates. The worm phase if you will. Proto= first, nema=thread

[noosphe-re]

Etymology of 'universe'

1580s, "the whole world, cosmos, the totality of existing things," from Old French univers (12c.), from Latin universum "all things, everybody, all people, the whole world," noun use of neuter of adjective universus "all together, all in one, whole, entire, relating to all," literally "turned into one," from unus "one" (from PIE root *oi-no- "one, unique") + versus, past participle of vertere "to turn, turn back, be turned; convert, transform, translate; be changed" (from PIE root *wer- (2) "to turn, bend"). also from 1580s

*oi-no- Proto-Indo-European root meaning "one, unique." It forms all or part of: a (1) indefinite article; alone; an; Angus; anon; atone; any; eleven; inch (n.1) "linear measure, one-twelfth of a foot;" lone; lonely; non-; none; null; once; one; ounce (n.1) unit of weight; quincunx; triune; unanimous; unary; une; uni-; Uniate; unilateral; uncial; unicorn; union; unique; unison; unite; unity; universal; universe; university; zollverein. It is the hypothetical source of/evidence for its existence is provided by: Greek oinos "ace (on dice);" Latin unus "one;" Old Persian aivam; Old Church Slavonic -inu, ino-; Lithuanian vienas; Old Irish oin; Breton un "one;" Old English an, German ein, Gothic ains "one."

*wer- (2) Proto-Indo-European root forming words meaning "to turn, bend." It forms all or part of: adverse; anniversary; avert; awry; controversy; converge; converse (adj.) "exact opposite;" convert; diverge; divert; evert; extroversion; extrovert; gaiter; introrse; introvert; invert; inward; malversation; obverse; peevish; pervert; prose; raphe; reverberate; revert; rhabdomancy; rhapsody; rhombus; ribald; sinistrorse; stalwart; subvert; tergiversate; transverse; universe; verbena; verge (v.1) "tend, incline;" vermeil; vermicelli; vermicular; vermiform; vermin; versatile; verse (n.) "poetry;" version; verst; versus; vertebra; vertex; vertigo; vervain; vortex; -ward; warp; weird; worm; worry; worth (adj.) "significant, valuable, of value;" worth (v.) "to come to be;" wrangle; wrap; wrath; wreath; wrench; wrest; wrestle; wriggle; wring; wrinkle; wrist; writhe; wrong; wroth; wry. It is the hypothetical source of/evidence for its existence is provided by: Sanskrit vartate "turns round, rolls;" Avestan varet- "to turn;" Hittite hurki- "wheel;" Greek rhatane "stirrer, ladle;" Latin vertere (frequentative versare) "to turn, turn back, be turned; convert, transform, translate; be changed," versus "turned toward or against;" Old Church Slavonic vrŭteti "to turn, roll," Russian vreteno "spindle, distaff;" Lithuanian verčiu, versti "to turn;" German werden, Old English weorðan "to become;" Old English -weard "toward," originally "turned toward," weorthan "to befall," wyrd "fate, destiny," literally "what befalls one;" Welsh gwerthyd "spindle, distaff;" Old Irish frith "against."

—Etymonline.com

[rathayibacter]

RATHGAMES

hey yall! just added community copies for all my games that were falling behind on em, and figured it'd be a good time to go over everything ive released so far!

KATABASIS: after your death, you wash ashore in a sunless, brutalist afterlife. use your emotional baggage from life as weapons and tools as you explore this tangled purgatory and try to find a way to escape.

DISPARATEUM: there are an infinite number of worlds in the Disparateum, and the Named City connects them all. explore a city where museum hallways turn into fractal labyrinths, where outdoor markets are held in dreams, where stories are ruled by a council of dragons, where your internet connection is routed through a giant spider, where mirrors hide cruel secrets.

BXLLET: bullets are precious in the apocalypse, despite everyone's efforts to move on from them. with one bullet, you can decide who lives and who dies. with five, you can unlock strange and alien powers. with twenty, you can rule the world, or wipe it out again.

(ive also got RXLOAD, a love letter to all the fantastic BXLLET supplements written since the game's release, and DXMON, a collaboration with Jon East to adapt BXLLET's mechanics for a Chainsaw Man-inspired setting)

CHARCUTERIE: three zines, each about 40 pages long, each with a heaping handful of small games, writings, doodles, and other projects.

ive also got some smaller projects under the break!

STATIONKEEPING: a small index card game for carrying around in your back pocket. slowly repair a space station as you live your life, and occasionally meet friendly aliens or connect your station to someone else's.

NOT WEAVERDICE: a super small Worm proto-ttrpg. i feel like rigid, strictly-defined point-buy power systems go against the strange, flexible, deeply unfair powersets present in Worm, so i made a short guide to making strange, flexible, deeply unfair powersets fun to play with.

MORTAL POPBAT: a 600-page funko pop wargame. build your army and brutally wipe out your enemy's POP!batants. if you actually play this, let me know so i can point and laugh.

WINTERGREEN: a ttrpg campaign that fits entirely in a mint tin. help a small frigid community in a series of short, interconnected quests.