#shatterbird

[lizardinkart]

Triptych

A (really belated lol) birthday gift for @mewcoyote based on their Alec/Aisha fic you can read here!

This was really fun to do with a lot of fun lil things I got to put in. I love the genuinely weird but reciprical/oddly stabilizing relationship these two dumb teenagers have, and having the number 1 Alec Vasil stan (imo) to yell about them with. 💕 I just think they’re neat!!!

[goldenmotive]

Deleted Scene: Shatterbird recruits Burnscar to the Slaughterhouse 9

[artbyblastweave]

Shatterbird loop done for @tinkertech's worm idle game project!

[phthalosblues]

slaughterhouse girlies <333

[trans-queen-administrator]

Hey, can I hear about your shatterbird thoughts? She's always been my favourite member of the nine :]

[@faultlinescrew]

Oh I'm about to type for entirely too long.

Alright so a chunk of this is kinda headcanon, but any of that is fully based on canon. I had a giant fanfic planned that was literally an expanded telling of Shatterbird's life from trigger to death, and some plot points there may bleed into this unconsciously.

Number one favorite thing about Shatterbird is that initially, she did nothing wrong. She was unwillingly dosed with a Cauldron vial, and her scream and subsequent exploding of Dubai wasn't her fault. She had no intention to hurt anyone, it was done entirely out of her control as she gained powers and she should not be blamed for her first time destroying a city. The thing is, that doesn't matter in universe. She's still going to be hunted down by countless capes because she killed an untold number of people with that scream. No one's going to just let her go because it wasn't her fault, because she's the only person who can be blamed. People want revenge for their loved ones, and I'm willing to bet that she had a sizable bounty. It's similar to the situation we see with Rachel, where she can't have a normal life because she killed someone in her trigger and her identity is public, but on a much much larger scale.

I think the guilt ate at her so fucking bad at first. She killed her dad, her friends, her sister, her mother, countless others, and as much as it wasn't her fault she's still the one that did it. There's no way she doesn't blame herself for what happened, but when does she even have time to mourn? She's fled to a desert, she's gotta be struggling with food and water, and she's being hounded at every turn by people who want her dead. What's she supposed to do, let them kill her so she can atone for what she did or something?

I just love what a tragic backstory this is. She's one of the most horrible people we meet in canon, and I don't think it's unreasonable to say she has one of the highest body counts on Earth Bet, but she started as someone innocent and desperately trying to survive. And as much as I love this backstory and will defend to the death that she did nothing wrong at this point, it doesn't excuse who she becomes.

Shatterbird laughed.  “There’s only two ways to recover from something of that magnitude, to deal with the fact that you inadvertently killed thousands and thousands of people, and hospitalized twice that many.  You break, or you become it.”

(quote is from the missing interlude)

This is the quote that puts her entire character in a nutshell. The biggest question to me is... when did she become it? She implies in that interlude that it was rather quick, and that she went to Britain so she could hit a big target, but the Tattletale clone calls this out as a lie. She was running, the desert that she'd been in for months was unbearably loud with all that sand, and I think she was sick of living on the run. She wanted society, structure, something to make her feel human. I think she's full of shit saying she went there to destroy it, some accident or desperate confrontation occurred (timeline fits well enough for it to be a result of the Simurgh's attack, but that's just one possibility) and she broke London just as bad as she broke Dubai. What do you even do from there? Any slim hope of clearing her name is gone, she just has to keep running and try to ignore the guilt. And she ran to America, where the Slaughterhouse Nine found her.

The recruiting of people by the Slaughterhouse Nine fascinates me, because most are unwilling to join at first. Unfortunately the alternative is to die. No one in Brockton Bay was jumping to be the lucky winner, and the only people we know nominated themselves are Cherish and I think Siberian. Shatterbird (ever notice how she's the only S9 member with no canon first name? drives me nuts) was dragged into the recruitment process with no say in the matter just like most everyone is. Someone in the Nine found her, thought she would be a good fit because of London and Dubai (and how would that feel, to have someone on the S9 see you as just as bad as them?) and even if she explains that was on accident... what does it matter? It never matters that it was an accident. It never will matter. It's just something that she can tell herself to keep her sane.

So she's doing the fun little tests, I'm actually very curious how she altered herself for Mannequin's since he always does the same test, she's a very vain person, but that's off topic. Atrocities, horrors, being hunted by the Siberian, and suddenly she's at the end. Her and someone else.

“That’s not really a test,” Shatterbird spoke, “There hasn’t been a round of testing since I joined the group where we didn’t whittle it down to one candidate.” “We could forego the final test, pitting them against one another.” Shatterbird turned to him, “Ah.  But, again, the last test where we had to go that far was… mine?”

And she kills them. Dubai, London, those were accidents. This was on purpose, maybe even the first time she's done it on purpose. She could either break and decide she couldn't live with herself as a member of the nine, or she could just as horrible as everyone sees her. All her choices were rigged, there was never much of an opportunity to get better since so many paths closed off to her, but she voluntarily chooses to get worse. What's the point in holding on to the fact that it wasn't her fault at the beginning? She's never escaping what she did, so she'll become the monster everyone sees her as. You break, or you become it.

And there's not much of the more sympathetic side of Shatterbird in canon (partly because her backstory chapter was removed). She's fully embraced herself as a mass murderer. She revels in the attention, the fear. She parrots Jack's philosophy as a way to feel better about what she's doing, and eventually she doesn't need to feel better because she enjoys who she is now.

I don't know, I rambled for a while there but it boils down to me being fascinated by the circumstances of her gaining powers, and the shift from innocent but hated/feared to making damn sure that fear is justified.

Ok, so moving on from the backstory analysis, other miscellaneous details. Fuck it, I'm putting every thought I have on Shatterbird in this post.

She's the Nine's primary recruiter! Woo, good for her. Notably, she recruits Burnscar. Mimi is in a similar position to Shatterbird's past self with the whole involuntary mass destruction, although on a lesser scale (it'll always be on a lesser scale, Shatterbird has the worst trigger event out there in terms of consequences and she didn't even trigger). Mimi was on the streets and trying not to use her power, and Shatterbird scooped her up into the Nine.

“I- before I knew it, the Slaughterhouse Nine had found me.  Shatterbird recruited me.  And now I’m stuck.  I’m trapped.  You know there’s a kill order out on me?  If I try to quit, either the Nine or the cops will off me.  So I keep going, I work for them, and it all just gets worse.”

It's a situation Shatterbird can very likely relate to, but she's perpetuating it and making Mimi suffer like she did. No sympathy, no helping someone get through it and avoid the pitfalls she fell into, she's dragging other people down with her like a crab in a pot. Worth noting that I believe she's still bitter about the hand she was dealt even if she's embraced where it led her to, she remembers how horrible it was to be forced into everything and she does not care if she inflicts it on others.

But if someone else willingly joins the Nine, she takes it personally. Cherie says Shatterbird hates her, and that's because Cherie chooses the life Shatterbird was locked into. She's bitter that she never had that choice, and so she makes sure Cherie understands what it's like by chasing her for days for her test, not allowing any rest or sleep. However, this could also simply because Cherie sucks and is an unpleasant person to talk to, and Shatterbird is stuck-up.

Another thing I like is Shatterbird's appearance of knowledge and elegance. She's trying to appear put together, confident, in-control, and to be fair she does a pretty good job, her costume and theming are great. But under that is someone violent and angry, she's keeping up appearances to everyone else but also to herself. The fact that she's always trying to keep up appearances, even when locked in a room and doomed to die with one Witness (haha get it) she's trying to make it look like she was calm and in control when her body is found, is what 100% convinces me exploding Britain was an accident. The Tattletale clone calls her out, and to me it seems like another attempt to seem in control by framing it as deliberate.

Anyway, my attempts to woobify a mass murderer aside, I also like that she was a spoiled rich kid before all this and her prim asshole attitude points to that. She quotes Edgar Allen Poe, she reads because it makes her feel better than others, she's just so pretentious and unpleasant and to be clear I love this as a character trait, it's fun and leads to her speaking in overdramatic ways.

“Then you should know, nearly-Tattletale, that I’ve spent too long in the company of monsters to be scared by words.”

She thinks she was soooo cool saying that.

I also want to look at the last few weeks of her life. She spends so much effort propping herself up as great and in control, only to be locked in a box and puppeted around against her will. Genuinely I cannot think of anything more humiliating and agonizing for her to endure. She has nothing to do but think as she's used as a marionette.

She had a long time to reflect on her life, to look back at how she got here and what she regrets.

But I think she spent it stewing in her rage, itching and planning to get violent revenge and keep hurting others to be respected. She's unwilling and unable to go back, she'll double down on this forever because this is who she is now. And because 99% of characterization for Shatterbird isn't in Worm anyway, I may as well toss in this minor AU summary by Wildbow. If she escaped, she would have started her own version of the Nine with Damsel of Distress and Trickster. There is nothing left to sympathize with or redeem Shatterbird by the time we see her in canon, she's simply past that point. Side note but Shatterbird + Damsel of Distress + Trickster as a team is perhaps the funniest combo ever and I really wish those 3 fuckers got to interact in canon. Weirdo assholes who dress up fancy and have a taste for theatrics as a murder crew, we were robbed.

I could analyze the Hookwolf interlude but I don't want to. I'm very annoyed that Shatterbird (still no first name) is the only member of the Nine to lose the fight against her recruit instead of appearing terrifying and unstoppable. How come Burnscar can solo Faultline's crew but 3 nazis can take out Shatterbird, who has way more experience? It's pretty uncomfortable to have the only member of the Nine who isn't white be the one that loses to nazis, while one calls her a slur in his internal monologue, in the interludes where everyone else on her team is introduced as a force of nature. I think we should just collectively agree to make this interlude not canon and un-retcon the Witness interlude. While I'm on the topic it's also a bit questionable to have Sophia and Shatterbird (no first name. I am annoyed by this) as the only named capes puppeted by Regent?

But that's not the topic I wanna explore. The topic is that Shatterbird is a great character and I wish that she had depth in the story itself rather than scattered through 20 different sources, because she's legitimately my favorite non-undersider in the story. There is a lot of potential to explore her, one could interpret her backstory in a less charitable way than I did just for an example, and I really think she's neat! She takes hurting someone in an accident and then becoming the monster people see her as, something we see a few times throughout worm, to its ultimate conclusion in terms of scale. That alongside her outer layer of intellectualism and pretentiousness, which I'm a massive sucker for as a trait, and she's just perfect. Did nothing wrong (citation needed). I love her and I do hope that at least some of the stuff written her makes someone appreciate her character more.

Ok! That was... 2.2k words about Shatterbird (no first name). Woo! If some stuff seems inconsistent between paragraphs here, it's probably because I wrote this in chunks over the course of a few weeks and my feelings at the time can influence my interpretation of things and my writing to feel different when read all at once and compared. If you think I'm woobifying her too much, cool. I think it makes her more compelling to examine how much we know was her fault and how much she shouldn't be blamed for, and making her have less agency makes her more tragic which I always like. If you actually read this to the end, thank you! Have a nice day!

[bodegadulac]

[tisinoodle]

The alarm clock was in the midst of tipping over when Shatterbird used her power.

It was as though the glass broke in response to some invisible tidal wave, caught in the nonexistent ‘water’, carried along, shattering on impacts with surfaces, slashing anything that would cut, piercing deep into any surface soft enough. I could feel it roll past me, south to north.

Loud.

The sound seemed to come a second later, like the sonic boom following a jet. I’d halfway expected a boom, but it sounded more like a heavy impact, as loud and powerful as a bullet the size of the moon striking the city, followed by the sound of trillions of glass shards simultaneously falling like rain across the cityscape. There was a cloud to the east, where the beaches were, reaching up to the cloud level, like some pale wall.

- Plague 12.5

[estavionpira]

Jack Slash: It's pride month, Shatterbird, you know what that means.

Shatterbird: Huh. What. Do you want us to kill like... gay orphans?

[cpericardium]

Hello! May I request a Shatterbird drawing?

[riverkingmarley]

We have been cursed to never stop thinking about animated worm adaptation. What would shatterbird’s minor glass control sound like.

[cairavende]

Worm Arc 11 Interludes thoughts:

AAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

Ok. Just in order I think. Sorry for the chaos.

Started off with puppies. I was happy.

Then the puppies started getting a little more violent than needed. I was less happy.

Then Victoria got clowned on a little and I was little bit more happy.

Then the unkillable naked zebra lady showed up everything kinda went downhill. For everyone.

Bitch do not join the supervillain serial killer group, please and thank you.

Seriously though, The Siberian is a bit scary. Just, completely invincible as far as anyone can tell. And super strong.

Theo is having a bad day. And unless someone takes care of Jack Slash for him he's gonna have a bad few years.

Jack Slash is such a poser oh my god. Dude. Come one. You aren't all that.

Also. Jack. Do not toss a loaded baby! That baby had a full diaper. You toss that baby and you are liable to have a containment breach. Speaking from experience, you do not want a containment breach. (Also just don't throw babies of course.)

I hope Theo gets cool powers and is able to become a super amazing hero like he dreams of. On the plus side, probably gonna be lots of opportunities for trigger events coming up. On the minus side, he didn't trigger when Jack Slash was planning on killing him so I don't know if he's gonna be able to.

They were obviously going to go for Labyrinth. She has such amazing powers for mass terror. Though I guess Burnscar never tried to actually recruit her. I assume that was the plan though.

Also Burnscar needs to stop excusing her actions. Just be evil or don't be evil. You don't get to be evil and say it's not your fault (that sure will come up again in these interludes).

I fucking LOVED the description of how Labyrinths powers work. Just the details of everything. So good!

Fucking Colin. Of course they had to go for you. Why can't you just go away and leave my robot daughter alone?

Mannequin is fucking WILD. Like, god damn. Those are sure choices you made. Helps you be creepy as shit though. And get through air vents.

Mannequin writing out "U ME" to Pocketknife Man by laying keyboard keys down on the table one at a time has cursed meet-cute energy.

In the end, Colin survives cause my robot daughter saves him. And I guess she's gonna tell him the truth about being an AI. Fiiiiiiine. I will be polite to Colin if he comes over to dinner. He still needs to apologize to my other daughter though.

Also I'm sure glad the Slaughterhouse Nine won't have any use for the magic pocketknife that can cut through anything that Mannequin took. No worries at all I'm sure. It won't do jack shit for them. Might as well just slash the idea and toss the knife out.

Cool. Some Nazis died. That's great!

Not enough though. Disappointed in Shatterbird.

But if one good thing can come of this whole Slaughterhouse Nine thing, maybe Hookwolf can die. I'm not holding my breath though.

Shatterbird has a very interesting power set. Being specifically glass focused like that. Definitely can see how she would terrorize a city.

Dinah PoV. DINAH POV!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ok well first off, I obviously hated Coil for Dinah already. Enough that I don't really know if the Dinah PoV can technically make me hate him more. But that said, I hate him more. WTF.

The description of her power was so NEAT though! Had a minor moment of "oh hey this paragraph of this precog talking about her power works inside her head is an almost perfect description of how my brain works" which was wild. I don't actually get to see the future though, which is a major difference.

She can actually just full blow see a possible future holy shit! Wow. Like it hurts and she hates it but it's still crazy.

Also I guessed that Crawler was going to come for Traveler in a Vault (that is Noelle's cape name until I am told different) after the Bitch interlude. I was very happy I got that right since I really knew almost nothing about either.

So Crawler just basically can't die and gets stronger every time he gets hurt. I wonder how long it will take him to reach Endbringer level power?

And Traveler in a Vault is just a large monster that is always hungry and can be driven to the point of eating people. That sucks a lot for her.

Also Leviathan came after her too huh? Well that's probably fine and won't matter in the future.

Regent's sister is worse than he is. That's impressive! Like, not good impressive. But impressive.

Getting real close to the "can't exist" physic power set. I guess it's not quite it though.

She should keep a better eye on her phone battery.

AMY DALLON! I knew it would be you.

I knew you were destined to be a tragedy from the moment I met you. You were always going to become a villain. So once I knew the Nine were recruiting it was a guarantee that you'd be recruited.

Specifically, that you'd be recruited by Bonesaw. She is an artist and obviously she is obsessed over the art you could make together.

Holy shit though that chapter.

Lets see. FUCK CAROL. Victoria gets some excuses, she's a kid, she's following her mom's example, etc. But FUCK CAROL. You are partially responsible for what Amy is about to become.

Despite being terrified, Amy seemed to have a dark fascination with everything Bonesaw was doing and saying. Really listened as Bonesaw explained things.

The more detailed view of what Amy's power does is crazy. She really can do just about anything to someone.

“Why not fix your dad?” is where Bonesaw won. It's about 3/5 of the way through the chapter. And she won at that point. That was the killing blow. The rest of the chapter, the remaining 3.5k or so words, is watching Amy bleed out to drive the point home. It is Panacea's death monologue. It is beautiful and tragic and amazing.

All that said, since she is losing anyway, is it bad for me to want more of Bonesaw's notes? SHE HAS LORE! GIVE IT TO ME!

Dad at least seems pretty good. He made the perfect response after getting healed. Unfortunately she was already gone.

AND THERE IT IS. THERE IS THE THAT FINAL STEP. Fucking rewire your adopted sisters mind to have romantic feelings for you. No you don't get to say it was an accident! You chose to do it. Holy shit Amy. You are going to be an amazing (terrifying) villain.

Callback to Burnscar and blaming her power for her actions.

If Worm was a Disney movie Amy would end up with the best song, 100%. Hellfire or similar levels.

[thepariahcontinuum]

A RWBY x Parahumans crossover idea:

Which members of the RWBY cast would each member of the Slaughterhouse 9 try to recruit for their "Try-Outs" the way they did in Brockton Bay?

Hatchet-Face: Honestly, this one's a complete write-off. He died and was turned into Hatchet-Job offscreen so he never got a chance to choose a replacement because he was the one being replaced. Null and Void....But if I had to say anyone, probably Tyrian for matching serial killer vibes and Power/Aura nullification.

Mannequin: By far the easiest one to figure out; he'd pick Ironwood for the same reason he picked Armsmaster in canon.

Crawler: The important thing to remember about Crawler's selections is that he's not really looking for someone to join; he's looking for someone who's gonna be able to put up enough of a fight against him to help him evolve himself further. With that in mind there's only one natural answer and Crawler is actually crazy enough to try it: He'd pick Salem, just to see if he can outlast her.

Bonesaw: Riley's an artist first and foremost....I can imagine her pouting when Crawler picks Salem first because she wanted to pick the lady who makes her own monsters. After that I think her second choice, considering that the Nine do enjoy putting heroes through their try-outs.....Would be Pietro; because she can make zombies, but he amputated part of his soul and made a whole new soul out of it.

Burnscar: Burnscar forewent her chance to nominate someone in order to talk to Labyrinth who she was in the asylum with.....That does give me something to work with. If Burnscar's gonna pick someone, either to nominate or to effectively veto other from nominating it's gonna be someone she feels a connection to or an affinity with and there is a certain fire-breathing orphan with a lot of issues in Remnant isn't there.....I think Burnscar would pick Cinder, if only to stop another member from doing it.

Shatterbird: I feel like Shatterbird would originally be interested in Cinder, glass weapons and a single-minded drive and she's capable; which is what Shatterbird seems to look for, she picked Hookwolf because he's a fighter. Failing that and given that Tyrian being picked by Hatchet-Man is basically a placeholder, I think Shatterbird would kill Tyrian and use that to bring Mercury in.

Siberian: Manton likes outcasts and people who remind him of his daughter....I toyed with the idea of Penny, just because "She came back from the dead" might give Siberian some hope but instead I settled on Nora....Because I kinda see Ren and Nora & Emerald and Mercury as being two sides of the same coin in some ways and having one half of each pair be targeted by the Nine opens up some fun ideas.

Cherish: Okay so Cherish wanted Alec specifically because it was Alec....But, I think she'd go for Whitley. The Schnee family is a mess, there's parallels to be drawn between their family Semblance and the fact that all of Heartbreaker's kids' powers have a theme; so Cherish would go for the Schnee who reminds her the most of Alec, who just so happens to be the one least equipped to defend himself and was also his Daddies' favourite.

Jack Slash: Ruby.....Okay, this sounds like a cop-out because protag Vs villain leader match-up but hear me out. Jack gave up his nomination to make his deal with Golem but before that he went to Oni-Lee first, didn't like what he saw and then went after Purity....He wants powerful people and after moulding Bonesaw into what he wanted her to be I think he'd see Ruby, someone who would be incredibly useful to him on Remnant as a new pet project.

[yathy24]

shatterbird concept

[artbyblastweave]

So after following you for awhile, I finally caved and read Worm, and I wanted to ask; are there any members of the Slaughterhouse 9 that you feel like didn't get explored much in canon that you have deeper thoughts about? I was really captivated by Burnscar's interlude, for example, but basically none of the personality or themes established there showed up on page again, and then she died unceremoniously. Or with Siberian, I really felt like the Manton thing was supposed to be a big impactful reveal just from the name recognition alone, but then there was barely any exploration of who he was or how he got his powers or why he turned out the way he did, and it just kinda fell flat (felt similarly about the Eidolon/Endbringer reveal too). Or Breed, who we know nothing about as a person, but he takes Taylor's issue with being immediately classed as a villain because of the nature of her powers and turns it up to 11!

So yeah, I guess, do you think there was any fertile ground there that went underutilized, and do you have any ideas about what could've been done with it?

Well, yes and no. I think the thing about the Slaughterhouse 9 is that all of them contain incredibly deep unplumbed depths, but that's a consequence of them being significantly deeper than usual for the kinds of villains that they are and the role they play in the story, which is also kind of true of basically every single bit character besides them as well, everybody's got a ton going on and this is already a really, really long book. I think that for the most part these guys are in the book to the exact degree that they ought to be, whatever unplumbed depths are on display I sort of take as an added bonus. With the exception of Shatterbird, who took a really nasty characterization hit from the Witness Interlude being cut. And from being a regent puppet with no input or voice for four arcs and change. Yeah, walking all of this back, give me more Shatterbird

[henghost]

shatterbird is a lesbian, i'm sorry, i don't make the rules. this is science. this is divine truth. for every person she kills she has sex with one woman.

[trans-queen-administrator]

Shatterbird's test for Cherish of forcing her to stay awake for days constantly running away from a slowly approaching glass shard is more than just a test in my opinion. Shatterbird was likely on the run constantly after destroying the United Arab Emirates, unable to rest or stand still without being found by people pursuing her whether it be for revenge or a bounty. I think she saw Cherish, someone who chose the life of killing that she was forced into and willingly joined the nine as an injustice. She was forced into this life, never had a choice but to be a monster or die from the moment she got her powers, and here's some stupid brat who wants to be like this willingly? The shard chased Cherish unceasingly, denying her rest or recuperation, because Shatterbird wanted Cherish to feel what it's like to be forced into that kind of life, to be on the run unable to stop at risk of death, to go through a fraction of what she went through, because even if she's been a monster for a while now she still resents how she was forced into it.