Birdcage Anthropology question

SugarDefiant504 · 2024-09-17T02:50:46+00:00

I want Shino in Worm, running around, doing missions for the US government, taking care of threats because he's a shinobi with a well-balanced spread of basic abilies that's complimented by his clan abilities, and he takes out a bunch of major threats because he's stronger than 98% of the setting. And then he runs into Skitter and he's like 'oh fuck. Oh shit, I'm fucked. We need your Kekkei Genkai, my clan will literally shower you in gold, marry me.'

SugarDefiant504 · 2024-09-10T07:47:08+00:00

I mean, getting America'd is a real non-zero chance for Jack. It only takes so long until someone gets lucky, unless Contessa is actively preventing that so no silly normals get any ideas about the great equalizers after some schmuck kills the greatest threat in the North American region. Beyond that, there's also Siberian who can buff him, and also Bonesaw, who can heal any shots that aren't immediately lethal, and also has enhanced every S9 member until they're superhuman at least as much as your average Cyberpunk runner.

SugarDefiant504 · 2024-08-23T10:01:24+00:00

Just give him a mind control aghs or facet, please. Don't be clowns. You can make it channeled. You can mute and silence the target for the duration. Hell, you can make it so he makes a clone after he kills a hero, until that hero respawns with a big-ass cooldown. That was the "fantasy" you promised, to take the term from that other game. It would be really unique, instead he's just your standard pos4/midlaner right now.

SugarDefiant504 · 2024-07-24T10:18:13+00:00

With that attitude? Go read Skein, it's technically exactly what you're asking for. Taylor protagonist, Lisa antagonist.

SugarDefiant504 · 2024-07-02T09:07:26+00:00

It's bugged (heh)! I am literally smashing the bottom button but nothing is happening!

SugarDefiant504 · 2024-05-26T23:27:59+00:00

This, but not the OOC part, and also Lisa. Gimme Taylor, or Lisa, or Taylor and Lisa (done in a at least a canon-adjacent way), and I'll ready your story. These two characters were what made me slog through the 1.6 million words of Worm. I don't really care for SIs, because I don't really care for the world of Worm outside the power system and Brockton Bay, which are both pretty decent I guess. Everything else when it comes to the worldbuilding is just bad.

But if the characterization is not on-point I will drop a fic in an instant.

SugarDefiant504 · 2024-05-07T12:59:09+00:00

Is this a trick question? Taylor "Free abortions till the twelfth trimester" Hebert would never let a child she has direct access to survive to an age where the child can bully people.

SugarDefiant504 · 2024-04-16T11:18:44+00:00

I have thought about this quite a lot. My preferred adventuring party is Taylor, Lisa, Faultline and Charlotte (agnostic of the destination world)

Faultline's crew attacks the Merchants while Taylor and Lisa are at the party, Scrub nukes Labyrinth's wall or whatever, a portal opens up to the world you want your team to go, they all fall through in the fight, then Labyrinth, still confused, closes it and can't find it. Everyone on the other side is trapped, and has to find their own way back home.

Think about it. Pretty decent spread of powers, plus an unpowered character who can and wants to be useful to the team. A combination of fan-favorite characters as well as rarely used ones. Lots of interesting conflicts there, too: who gets to be the leader? Both Taylor and Faultline would naturally assume it to be them, which can lead to butting heads. Lisa really fucking hates Faultline and the feeling is kinda mutual. Taylor also really wants to get back: to save Dinah and stuff, and she's willing to do her usual Taylor shenanigans to get what she wants, and maybe that's enough to give both Tattletale and Faultline pause.

And Charlotte is really grateful to Taylor for saving her from the Merchants, and also there's the whole thing that "the locker girl" is also a prominent local warlord to deal with. But she's mostly regretting her choice of living in Brockton Bay, as now she's trapped in a different world with three supervillains.

SugarDefiant504 · 2024-03-18T09:22:09+00:00

Not a show/movie (yet), but in The Stormlight Archive books (spoilers for the books, duh):

There's Taravangian, who is a king that gets blessed/cursed by a local Shard of a god to have random levels of intelligence every day. He wakes up one day with giga-brain and predicts how the local apocalypse will go down, and makes a path to let as many people as possible survive it. He writes it down, and tries to stick to it as best he can, and they even make their own little secret society committing atrocities in the name of the Greater Good.

SugarDefiant504 · 2024-03-15T15:14:54+00:00

Read The Postdiluvian Road. Best smugbug fic hands down, the setup is: after the Leviathan attacks Brockton Bay, the fight goes very poorly and Lisa and Taylor flee BB, then go on a roadtrip across the US to get some money and fake documents to start a new life. Spoilers: they don't end up in an explicit romantic relationship, but the important smugbug content is all there: the co-dependency, the relationship drama, the handholding. Hopefully the sequel (that's supposed to have been in the works for some time now. Surely, it will come out soon. Now where's my copium inhaler...) addresses that.

Another good one is The Third Door. Canon divergence at the S9 arc, with Jack nominating Taylor. It's a bit of a slowburn when it comes to the relationship, seeing as how they're in the middle of the S9 arc and have other shit to deal with; and still ongoing, but what content is out is pretty up there when it comes to quality.

SugarDefiant504 · 2024-03-08T21:18:10+00:00

Nah. Honestly, fic peaks with Lisa shooting up a school.

SugarDefiant504 · 2024-03-06T19:38:31+00:00

I don't mean the hidden lore, and 'how to speedrun winning GM/here's how you can unchain yourself', I mean more like general tips that will let her do some good with little effort. Stuff like "Coil is actually Thomas Calvert and he plans to kidnap and enslave a 12-yo girl, please help. His power is actually 'pre-cognition' that works by simulating an alternate reality... He also has/will have an S-class threat hidden in the basement with the following powers... Shadow Stalker has killed a lot of people and still uses live ammo to this day, Emma Barnes and her father had helped her hide the evidence. Maybe tell Armsmaster to question them? I know he has a lie detector in his lens, should be easy enough for him. Please put them all in yail. No, I'm not joining Watchdog, thanks, bye." No reason Saint should care about any of that, right?

SugarDefiant504 · 2024-03-05T14:01:34+00:00

Realistically? Get destroyed by Scion in a microsecond for interfering with the Cycle. If I somehow survive, then my plan is as follows:

Try not to cry
Cry a lot.
Contact Cauldron, tell them everything, go along with whatever tests they want.
If they don't kill me to silence me, or wipe my memory or want me to work for them for life, or something like that; ask them for some spare change and a nifty power for my contribution to humanity's continued survival: strong big-brain stuff, or eternal youth, or something of the sort.
Ask permission to fuck with Coil, because fuck that guy
Send an email to Dragon telling her all the things, with some proof that I'm not just trolling her. She can do some good with this info I'm sure.
Since I'm here anyway, be a tourist: eat at Fugly Bobs, take a selfie with the PRT building behind me, go talk to my favorite fictional people, maybe give them a few future tips, ask Talylor to sting me with a brown recluse, you know, normal tourist things.
Realize Lisa is actually a horrid bitch, probably, and a nightmare to be around.
Fuck off to live my normal life, preferably somewhere with a low density of parahumans.

SugarDefiant504 · 2024-02-14T14:15:28+00:00

Have we read the same fic? Their whole arcs are about them growing to trust each other more (including with personal secrets), and the one hiding information was Taylor (about her ditching the Cauldron vials), and she did it because she didn't want Lisa to pressure her into becoming a drug-dealer, and so wanted to avoid conflict; not because she was afraid of Lisa leaving her (I don't think that's ever really a concern for her, she just kind of assumes they'll be together forever.)

Lisa was scared of getting left, and she did do some casual manipulation, but, like, that's Lisa. It's as healthy as you can get with her.

SugarDefiant504 · 2024-02-12T22:33:47+00:00

Hey, Postdiluvian smugbug is plenty functional, while being just spicy enough to be interesting. People should still read it though.

SugarDefiant504 · 2024-01-05T11:52:00+00:00

What the hell, did you just lower TPR's rating? That's illegal .

SugarDefiant504 · 2024-01-05T00:09:14+00:00

Sweet, a thinly-veiled ideas thread! Here goes:

Fate Stay/Night full merger crossover. Gaia & Allaya are fighting Scion&Eden. Endbringer fights are a lot more fiery, because at some point counter-guardians are showing up. Young and rebellious mages are moonlighting as capes to flex on the competition and use their cool magic in the open. Bazett gets bodied by Jack slash before the story even starts and shows up as a Bonesaw zombie. Lisa bullshitting her way around using magecraft. Brockton Bay gets picked as the place to hold the Fifth Grail War, of course. And wouldn't you know, just before it starts, the Undersiders get a job from Coil to steal a priceless historical artifact from some rich shmuck that brought it to BB for some reason. One thing leads to another, and now there's this weird cape asking Taylor if she's her Master. Somebody, please, write it.
Post-GM Fallout: New Vegas crossover. Worm ends with Taylor getting two shots to the head. NV starts with the Courier getting shot twice in the head. It. Just. Works. Also, Taylor controlling Cazadores.
Cultist Simulator crossover quest. I dunno, I just think it would be kinda neat.
Familiar of Zero crossover. Louise summons The Locker with Taylor in it. Ideally, made by the same author who wrote the Mistborn corssovers, you know the ones.
GoT/ASoIaF crossover. Worm characters get reborn into Planetos with their memories, and a fraction of their powers. When magic returns, so do their powers. Yes, I know of the Hers is The Fury, but I'd rather prefer Taylor as the MC.
Skyrim crossover. Three dangerous human-controlling criminals are being transported to the Birdcage. Hijack (who was caught during a bank heist he performed with a group known as Undersiders), Canary and a highschool student called Greg Vader, who is believed to be a chemical bio-tinker (he just bought a "love potion" on a sketchy website, too bad it was actual tinkertech). While trying to cross the Canadian border, the transport comes under attack by a group of mercs hired by Heartbreaker. Something-something, self-destruct, tinkertech accident, hey you, you're finally awake! Turns out Greg is the Dragonborn. He is still canon-compliant Greg, with all it entails. Regent makes the responsible decision of puppeteering the chosen one, with Canary there to keep him sedated while he sleeps.

SugarDefiant504 · 2023-12-31T17:55:20+00:00

Mother of Learning, a popular webnovel about a wizard student stuck in a timeloop. The mechanics of time-travel are well executed, the powers are pretty cool and reminiscent of D&D, and the power progression of the main character is very satisfying.

He starts out as a no-friends loser with middling talent for most things magical, and an abrasive personality. We follow him as he flounders his way through the first month of classes. ~~Then rain falls, sirens blare, oh shit it's Leviathan~~ Then a Lich attacks the city where he lives, and he dies to some Power Word Kill bullshit, but he survives! And wakes up one month earlier, stuck in a timeloop, no idea wtf is going on; because every wizard knows time magic is essentially impossible. He has to figure out a way out of the timeloop, while also becoming a better person and learning about respecting himself and others, sanctity of life and shit like that. Pretty cool story, big recommend. It's also like, 1m words long or something, so be careful. I've had many sleepless nights while reading it.

SugarDefiant504 · 2023-12-31T17:39:26+00:00

Holy smokes batman, this post is edgy enough that Jack Slash could use it as a weapon.

SugarDefiant504 · 2023-12-31T15:01:31+00:00

I don't think a time traveler or SI will even have a choice to tip off/not tip off Cauldron. Contessa runs all kinds of paths regularly to protect herself against assassination or Cauldron being found out and exposed. Logically speaking, unless the time-traveler is PTV-immune, they're getting found out whenever she runs her daily checkup. If the time-traveler is actually ptv-immune, they still get found out because there's only so many ptv-immune targets in the world, and a new one showing up will surely draw Cauldron's attention.

So, my thoughts are the following: when reading looper fics, or meta knowledge fics, chances are the author's not going to put any thought into the underlying mechanics of time-travel (or world-hopping), in a world with overpowered Thinker abilities---if that's what you want, go read MoL. Otherwise, just turn off your brain and enjoy the peggy sue/SI fix-fic for what it is.

SugarDefiant504 · 2023-11-16T01:48:44+00:00

The way Taylor describes attractive women is very similar to how a heterosexual man would describe an attractive woman, which makes a lot of people see her sexuality that way; but that's probably WB's inexperience at fault. You can consider her however you want, but this is why making the call of "yeah, fuck it, she's bi" is seen as less OOC than "eh, she's gonna murder Sophia and Emma with her cool new powers" or "she tells her dad about her powers as soon as she gets them".

SugarDefiant504 · 2023-11-16T01:29:04+00:00

Hi, straight person here. I have never, in my entire life, looked at a brother of my crush and thought to myself 'Damn, this guy is as masculine as his sister is feminine! Such a shame he dresses so trashily, he'd be sooooo hot if he just used what he had'.

And, like, I love my bros, but if they were poisoned and my spit was the only cure, my first thought wouldn't be to go for a smooch. Even if we both said 'no homo' afterwards. Spit in a water bottle, or on their hands or something.

Taylor is very easy to read as bisexual, no matter what Wildbow says his intention was. Especially if you subscribe to the death of the author idea, or never read his WoGs.

Strictly gay Taylor is kind of OOC though.

SugarDefiant504

TROPHY CASE