#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.

[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

[theyonagoda]

Let's give it up for early Cambrian-era proto-fish!!!!

They look like worms on a string.

[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

[professional-jaywalker]

Vermin

a short essay about being bug hearted, and killing bugs.

I think one of the most cruel thing to love might be invertebrates. Insects. Arachnid. Worms. Pest. With any other animal, it is seen as unreasonable to want to eradicate. Some insects do manage to earn human's favors, bees (but only the useful ones), moths and butterflies (but only the cute ones), and if you're facing a true bug lover, beetles and dragonflies and perhaps even spiders and centipedes and scorpions. But not all, and it's still simply reasonable, to hate even seeing them.

I've loved bugs since I was a kid. I think it felt wrong not to, because people didn't like them, and people didn't like me. I don't think I've ever understood what in how they move felt less alive for people than a puppy. Still now I love bugs. I love mosquitos and I love botflies and I love hornets and tiny annoying ants that crawl through the windows and cockroaches and the wasp that stung me on the thumb when I accidentally grabbed a stick she was resting on when I was 9.

You cannot possibly live a human life without killing countless things. It's impossible. The most vegan, most peaceful human, refusing to walk on grass to not harm the grasshopper that didn't jump fast enough, will not be able to live a life without killing an insect even accidentally. It's something I have thought about a lot overall. I'm not vegan. I've thought about it. It would make sense, I don't see a lot of difference between my own flesh and the flesh I eat. But somehow it feels even more insulting, to be something that kills, and to pretend I don't. I eat insects, too. I wouldn't be able to tell you exactly how I feel about it all.

Maybe it makes me an hypocrite, to be so perturbed about the way people treat insects when I still eat meat. But it's, I think, in the end, the fracture between someone seeing a dead cow, and a dead fly. Most people wouldn't have the courage to kill a cow. They would feel guilt. In fact, a lot of people already hide the fact that meat is flesh and is, strictly speaking, part of a cadaver. People who refuse to eat a fish with the head. Pork, not pig. Beef, not cow. I hate that too. But insects ? People kill a fly without even thinking about it. It's annoying, then it's dead. A dead fly doesn't elicit guilt.

People expect me to be the same. Even knowing I love insects, it's seen as amusing that I acknowledge them as more than a mindless automaton, and, if I can, if it costs me nothing, avoid killing them. I have killed countless insects. I've had to, purposefully, many many many times. But it is, in fact, killing. I just want to be allowed to recognize that.

I work in a lab, on ants. We dissected more than a hundred, ovaries, poison gland, brains, understanding how they work, how differentiation happens and how they communicate it. Reconstructing brains to evaluate changes in different structures, measuring how many proto-egg each individual has post-dissection and correlation to dominance, reading articles and articles about theory.

These specific ants like shallow humid grooves for their nest. Today we tested a large foraging arena, brightly lit for the cameras, dry, wide, open, empty. Ants panic after being picked up even with the least harmful tools we have. When in an unfamiliar space, we've had them in the past run until they died of exhaustion, unable to find the entry of the nest to hide. Two of them were placed in the foraging arena to test the cameras, test if we could read the tags they have on their back. Again and again, they like to follow the walls, possibly because it feels less exposed. And again and again, they stop, groom each other, and calm down if they meet, huddled into each other.

I can't claim to know what's going on in ants brain, whether they feel things similarly to us. But it's hard not to project.

Ant tagged 16, and ant tagged 12, close, unmoving.

[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

[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

[aicosu]

Pathologic headcanons? You mentioned having a lot of them

So fucking many I dont know where to start? Maybe with bigger ones? Then character ones?

The Town/Kin

- I actually played much of p2 first before playing 1 and then returning to finish 2. So I have a lot of attachment to the Kin, and Boddho and their pov.

-I think that Boddho is an empty nesting eldritch mother. That she either is like... Illuvatar from Silmarillion (from what my husbands told me) where she came or grew from earth and wanted to make specificslly humans, but made the worms and brides and shabnaks first at her version of the Valor, or their job is to prepare the world for her true children (humans). even as "excess materials" shabnaks excess bones, worms excess muscle, and brides excess blood. But she didnt expect them to grow out of their need for her. Steppe life does eventually evolve towards integrating with the settlement and she resents creations who can create towers to heaven without her. Hence plague. But again, boddho creates creatures who are individually sentient. Even some of the proto kin seem rebellious. So I imagine the plague too, is sentient with its own ideas and goals. Poor boddho seems a bit immature and frustrated that yes. Eventually, even the plague and kin will want to grow and elvove without her.

-or shes already dead. Love the dead boddho theory, thanks andrey stamatin. That maybe everyone who hears boddho is just hearing her talk from centuries ago cause shes to unfathomable and eldritch creature to speak to. Neat! I think it doesnt hold up in 2, since you see her (someones?) Heart beating but cool.

-i do think the proto humans have preferences but dont know what a preference even is. Theres obviously (in p2, i know p1 was more an obvious patriachal straightfoward thing) brides who prefer townsfolk and brides who prefer the steppe. There are worms who like the city people they make friends with, and shabnaks that feel fear but aspire to grow ans meet and learn langauge.

Daniil Dankovsky

-trans daniil just makes so much damn sense to me its stupid like its perfect. At first I thought maybe he was amab and experiencing gender envy at the women in the town, coming to a conclusion he's in denial of why he favors their company or feels a sort of kinship with. To me, women are to Daniil what children are to Artemy. His bound in 1 as the uptopians is eh to me, but yet anytime he is speaking with Lara or Yulia, even Aspity, there is a understanding, condescending, even familial, protective frustration he has thats so complicated.

-to me that works so well as his journey as afab. Only child. Born to a young dead mother and a military man who didnt want much to do with him.

-I imagine him pursuing college and medical school for a year before his father dies and he drops out to transition. Ive seen other fans of transkovsky say he invented hrt himself, but if I think about how medical was approached or even philosphized about in patho or the older days I think he approached it by killing singular nerves and doing invasive surgey. They werent super great at the hormone or brain level and its just more... danils style to think to himself "i will literally kill what i dont need or want" (and then wearing uterus trophies on his neck because he cant brag out loud)

-which leads me to my other headcanon that this secret invasive self experiments and his success at splicing himself gave him a bit of cancer or a debilitating "mystical" disease he refuses as mystical. While i do love daniil being pompous about defeating death just cause hes pompous, I also love the idea that he wants all his cake and flowers. He succeeded in defeating gender, birth, orientation, and now its making him die? How unfair. How horrible. No one will steal his time at finally being himself not even death.

-thanatica I see as a mask over that research, too. Cause he can not come out and show himself off to substantiate his achievements. The medical world would be too distracted by the social ques to care that, hey, I've stopped cell generation. I've propugated cells. I've made parts of a body grow that stopped in the womb. Its a breakthrough he cant discuss so hes hauling in dead bodies and reanimating skin with the same methods or stacing off tuberculosis with the same technique hes using to stave off his death disease and it give him all this internal, unvalidated, seething frustration that he cant just scream what a fucking genuis he is. (He does anyway but without that to back him up)

-I think he joins the military for a year or two and assumes the identity of a dankovsky son. And the military stupidly, weirdly, validates him in his identity but also hardens him the way war does. The way death does when you have soldiers dying on your medical table. Then goes back and finishes his degree before opening thanatica.

-i hc Daniil as a messy bisexual. I think pre transistion he was always attracted to women actually, and that also motivated him to a smaller degree of well, why not get married to a lovely lady. Why not be the head of my household. Why not conquer society and genetics and death and enjoy things I could not myself feel comfortable to portray, but want to covet.

-you know and he gets to busy to actually finally indulge in that and then gets to town on ghorkan and meets artemy burakh and is like, wait, no, stop, this isnt the plan dammit.

-but I do think also that's complicated when it comes to sex and love. I can identify aapects or a gradient of a sexuality to him. Not necessarily demisexual, but his identity and his mind can get in the way of desires or even, that it takes a specific amount of vulnerability that he avoids. So maybe it's trauma or his being on the spectrum. So in his journey of self-discovery, maybe he's been a lot of whatever "labels." I think so much of labels and identity play into his vast acknlowdgement of philosophy too. Why talk about sex at all if we arent also talking about society and death and culture and etc (que daniil stopping his one night stand mid sentence to lecture about the differences of breeding expectations in different economic structures or population.)

-I ship daniil with Burakh mostly, (stamatins and block too at times) but I also ship him with the Marble Nest bride at the stillwater, who I guess is like a projected OC of mine. (Shes a special model, one of the only ones wearing jewelry and also one of the only kin whose sweet to daniil? She also seems critical of her own culture "weddings are a sad thing for us". I have a million headcanons and ideas for them two, who I think he names her Theralydice (thera for theraputrix the assitants to aescluipis or healers, therayl for feral or wild, and dice for custome or law as well as a common form for femininenames) Something heretically latin and inappropriate and artemy shakes him stupid for naming a bride at all- "but how will I refer to the only reasonable one burakh") but I wont bore you with all that crack.

OTHER:

Sorry this has already gotten so long so ill just list random other stuff.

-I think burakh is a man of little words not cause he's shy or reserved but because hes very smart about his town. He knows that information and gossip spread like wildfire. And stating his ideas, thoughts, plans, TO ANYONE so plainly (as dankovsky does) means in another twenty minutes 6 other people might find out and stop him. It's in his best interest to act stupid and complacent. It's the best idea to shrug at young vlad and go "idk maybe" because saying yes or no would maybe mean making an enemy.

-I think there are two eldritch horros now one. Aside from boddho i think the mistresses are hearing something else out there in the ether. Same as those whispers to peter about building the polyhedron. Boddho from this planet or not, something in that void is wanting to come in and use her or the earths power to its own end. Town on Ghorkon seems like an open battery everyone wants to suck dry. And while the kains can talk a big talk about plans for nina or simon, I wouldnt be suprised if someone or something kicked their souls out and took over for itself.

-I 1000 percent think Aspity is the first outbreak in human form if that wasn't already established. But I also dont think clara is. But I do love the idea that it's possible to do. In the same way, maybe annaAngell occupies Willows body? Hmm.

-also all yes to everyone is just actually dolls, but then wheres the fun in hc-ing the world lore???

[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.