Reblogging A Part 3 Here Now That I've Had Some Time To Think About Jack Slash.

Reblogging a part 3 here now that I've had some time to think about Jack Slash.

The thing about Jack Slash is that his goal is very poorly defined (or maybe I'm stupid). In my reading of canon (and I'd very much appreciate messages or replies to this post discussing Jack's motives and goals) he seems to want to be at the forefront of the public discourse on capes. He wants to be the Boogeyman that everyone worries about and thinks about. He wants every Cape out there, villain or hero, to feel the threat of his hand on their shoulder. He wants to take the Slaughterhouse 9 from being King's personal goon squad, or harem of murderers, and turn them into a cultural impact that will last for generations. I struggled with this as a reading for a while, and I often thought I just didn't get it.

Except, what if the point is that he's already done it?

The Slaughterhouse 9 are collectively a S-Class threat. Automatic kill orders for any member who joins up, like Burnscar (who is actually a fairly standard cape, all things considered). The willing members, like Crawler, Mannequin, Shatterbird and Cherish, are all unable to engage with cape culture as it exists in the cops and robbers dynamic. Bonesaw was converted, we don't know enough about Hatchet Face, except a pathological hatred of capes (no wonder, considering his power) and The Siberian who was probably invited personally by Jack, no trials needed. All of them exist in defiance of the clean idea of cartoon violence that the parahuman community engages in to keep the status quo somewhat stable.

So long as the S9 exist, there's a very real sense that your peaceful American suburbia or quiet rural town could suddenly be painted in gore.

But here's the kick, if Jack Slash wanted the S9 to be infamous, it's already done. Jack will live in the North American consciousness and in the parahuman community long, long after he is dead. So why is he Slaanesh's champion?

Because he's getting older.

Because it's the same old thing over and over.

Once the mystery of the Siberian was resolved, she stopped being interesting. I suspect Broadcast kept Jack from looking too closely at Manton precisely because if Jack knew about Manton, he'd rank Manton's safety lower, and the Siberian would eventually be caught out, die, and Jack (and Broadcast) would lose access to her invulnerability. Subconsciously, even without Broadcast, Jack knows he personally can't swing with the heavy hitters. Deep down he knows he shouldn't be getting away with any of this. But he's getting older. Bonesaw can't keep him young forever. Eventually she's going to grow up too, and the fairy tale will eventually end.

But Jack doesn't want anything to end. He wants to stay on top forever. There's a clear comparison to be made between King and Jack. Jack eventually comes to mirror him in every aspect. I feel that, by becoming Slaanesh's unwitting champion (which is very true to his character, the idea that something much larger than him is going to be his sugar daddy) he starts to get anything and everything he's ever wanted.

He gets younger, spry, sexy. He starts to indulge. I'll avoid listing his specific crimes, because that would be less effective than the imagination and I'd really rather not discuss things that require content warnings, except that he starts to emulate King more and more. There suddenly becomes no limit to his depravity. People, and parahumans, stop being puzzles and riddles for Jack, and they simply become things he can enjoy himself with.

I'd say he starts losing control over the Nine. Shatterbird starts to see how little he cares for the 'traditions' they established, and soon enough she's splintering off to make her own brand of the S9 and probably drags Burnscar into her camp. They're never as successful as the S9 were, without Jack and Broadcast, but they're still considered S-Class material. Hatchet Face might see everything he hates in capes suddenly come to the front with Jack. Maybe he tries to kill him, and loses, and that becomes the first in a line of betrayals and abandonment that leads to the S9 splintering. Crawler and Mannequin could both leave once it becomes clear that Jack isn't going to pursue their own specific interests.

I can't see Bonesaw and the Siberian separating, but I can't see Jack letting Bonesaw go with his newfound appreciation for 'art'. It becomes like the initial days with Bonesaw. Her anxiety and fear ramping back up, because he's pushing her more and more for new and exciting things. He's refusing to use her pain blockers now. Her mood spirals downwards because she's no longer doing enough to keep him entertained. The Siberian and Jack are sharing meals now, but Manton is increasingly being forced forward as the horrors kick him back into his own mind. He needs to get Bonesaw out of there. And Cherish gets one whiff of this gang and decides she can go to Mexico and learn Spanish (her power makes that easier!) instead of trying to join up since it's brewing into a Heartbreaker situation on steroids.

Maybe they don't all get away before he starts going off the deep end, but eventually his new version of the S9 would be populated by OCs that fit the new theme. It becomes more like a meatgrinder, chewing up recruits. He starts to have daemons joining in. I imagine a lot of similarities between Jack and Sigvald, his new warband growing with all kinds of fans and villains. He becomes a combination of pop idol and serial killer. I might have to think about this a bit more, but I feel like you're all getting what I'm trying to put down here. He follows in King's ideological footsteps in canon, so with Slaanesh we just keep going along that track, only faster and harder than King ever could accomplish.

This analysis might be weaker than the others, but nobody else really springs to mind in Worm who could be Slaanesh's champion.

Stay tuned for part 4, Taylor and her wacky adventures with Tzeentch.

So, warhammer fantasy? Plus Worm. Lets brainstorm a bit. A non-exhaustive list of who would become champions of chaos, or be chosen by the chaos gods to become their heralds, in no particular chronological order.

Khorne: The Butcher XIV aka Quarrel.

I can see The Butcher turning rabid one awful night. Howling about an infinite ocean of blood. Slaughtering the unpowered members of the Teeth. Killing those who try to reason with her. Infecting others with her madness somehow. Most of the Teeth capes flee north to Boston and Spree's clique when they're told to run by those Teeth that were there for the slaughter. Of those that were present, maybe half maybe more, flee to the New York Protectorate, begging refuge, begging Legend to kill The Butcher before she breaks free, something like that. Incoherent babbling about how she's slathered herself in blood and is killing indiscriminately - Villains, Heroes and civilians alike - piling the skulls of those she beheads in one spot and sits upon it like a gory throne. The Teeth are reforged in The Butcher's charnel house, quenched in blood. The World Eaters. She aspires to wash the entire east coast in blood, a massive sacrifice that will bring daemons through in their millions, and she'll begin in the largest city in north america.

Nurgle: Nilbog aka The Goblin King aka James Rinke.

A particularly terrible winter's night, cold and frigid in Ellisburg, NY, James is holding one of his favourite creations, Polka III, as she dies from disease. He's trying to tell a bedtime story to the rest of the creatures, all sharing their body warmth as best they can, but the cold is making his puppet shiver and he's constantly interupted by a cough that rattles his ribs and won't go away no matter how much he clears his throat. He's in tears over the sorry state of his garden. A like-minded figure sympathizes with his plight. He begs the empty air for something to save them. Something comes. The acrid, infertile land around Ellisburg, stripped of nutrients to create his fantasy creatures suddenly begins to spring to life all around him. Strange and fantastic new fruits and berries curl out of the ground. Caramel-sweet rivers start to form. Everything is verdant and green and hot wherever he walks. His cough doesn't seem to go away, but it doesn't bother him much anymore. Polka III is alive and well. And he's suddenly struck by so many new and wonderful ideas. He goes to the carcass pits and begins to create and create and create. And his Grandfather looks on with paternal joy.

Slaanesh: Jack Slash aka Jacob Black, the Slaughterhouse 9.

This might not click for some people. Personally, I think a man for whom every new terrible torment needs to be more thrilling, more horrible, more impactful than the last fits perfectly here. I'm not entirely sure how to write his first moments though. Broadcast nudges him one way, Slaanesh nudges him another. He starts to indulge more and more. A little less careful. Broadcast's balancing act starts to slip as Slaanesh's prodding throws the relationships of the Slaughterhouse 9 into new dynamics. I might have to come back to this one, but it was one of the first I thought of.

Tzeentch: Taylor Hebert

Now who else would like to see Skitter but with birds? Fucked up mutated birds. Introducing the Raven God and his new magical apprentice. I feel myself running dry here, but I think as our nominated protagonist, Tzeentch is able to lend quite a bit of weight to Taylor's character, and her eagerness to grab onto an escape from her wretched life with both hands and take it to its extremes. Though one thing I will mention is that one of Tzeentch's aspects is as a God of Hope, and that'd be fun to play with I think. Though that's an aspect of his Fantasy version, and I tend to think of the Fantasy versions of the Chaos Gods as more interesting tbh.

CW: canon compliant gore, sexual assault.

Disclaimer: I do not condone violence, sexual or otherwise.

A little bit irrelevant to my review on Severed but has anyone else realized that if Skitter was ever inducted into the Slaughterhouse 9 and actually got over the hump of trying to mitigate her violent actions, and fit in with the group, she'd actually be the worst member of them all? Like "Oh thank god it's Bonesaw. Skitter's not around is she? Yeah great turn my insides into eels I've wondered what that's like just don't let her near me."

I applaud all writers who understand perfectly that Jack Slash is rapidly out of his depth when Skitter joins the team and eventually takes over because Queen Administrator insists to Broadcast.

They'll be doing their usual schtik of threatening/laying out the trials and then Skitter just pipes up, "I'm going to castrate you." and the rest of the S9 are really uncomfortable with it because, like America, their violence isn't sexual. Maybe that's just Wildbow being unwilling to poke that particular topic (more than in passing or flashback) but in my opinion, a group that usually sets up in a city and uses their abilities to guarantee that their power is overwhelming seems to only use their power over people for violent ends. This is America, we can kill our victims with increasingly violent and gory methods but we can't fuck them. Maybe the Siberian, but that's still a projection of a daughter piloted by her father and is still more motivated by violence than sexuality, irrespective of her nudity.

It's really up to the writers if they want to say that, yeah, the S9 also rape sometimes. That's the benefit of fanfiction, one doesn't have to answer to editors.

But I can't help but be amused by the idea that in an effort to lash out on some innocent cape, Skitter threatens "to cut off your cock and feed it to the Siberian." and William Manton is just standing there in his daughter's skin, looking to Jack and shaking her head fervently, silently screaming 'I don't want to taste cock please.' While Jack tries to contrive a way to let people get away from the S9 for a change since dick-spiders georg is discovering what kind of serial killer she is.

Putting the disclaimer at the top and bottom: I don't condone violence, sexual or otherwise.

jesse pinkman genuinely suffered more than jesus

YOOO good find. So maybe we got a democrat after President Griffin, a fairly extreme thing in US politics, as I mentioned before, with a 3rd term with a democrat president. It'd be even rarer for both democrats to win back to back and serve sixteen years. If that's the case, I'd probably chalk it up to a Contessa plot. I'd be interested about President Gillan then, who might've been a republican. It'd certainly fit in with James Tagg's harsher measures, and the activation of whatever "D.I.D.D." that Myrddin was vehemently arguing about with Chevalier in the Travellers interlude. Another thing that the Travellers bring up is no 9/11. Likely, without either Bushes or Clinton, there likely was never a war on terror. I'd be curious also to know if the broader things in Russia weren't sent hurtling off track with Parahumans; iirc the Red Gauntlet take over Soviet Russia, so maybe no soviets in Afghanistan.

There's a lot of laws regarding campaign donations in America, and I think a fair few of them exist despite the best efforts to curtail bribery (it is simply called lobbying instead, or money is put into a PAC), but I could see this failing in Earth Bet for two reasons;

Parahuman anonymity, and the subsequent obsession of criminal mastermind types to control everything they can, could lead to donations being bundled under corporate cape teams. Who's to say that the superhero Moneybags isn't a real person who donates to the GOP and is merely expressing their constitutionally guaranteed freedom of association? Capes are human(-adjacent) beings who (currently) possess the right to vote too!

The second is Numberman. Cauldron by large, but mostly through Numberman. Suddenly all of Cauldron's most important political pawns are flush with funding from a functionally untraceable stream of shells and fronts.

Mayor "I bought my lovely dearest boy superpowers only for him to get bugs in his urethra :(" Christner does indeed smell like a republican, and it's very likely that one of the only functional corporate entities in Brockton Bay being Medhall would be one of his biggest donors.

This does mean that Leviathan is a supporter of direct action.

I wonder which way Brian and Lisa voted in the 2012 election. Pretty sure they both would've been old enough at that point, and neither of them were convicted felons, so...

depends on the candidates I guess? and who's to say they even bothered voting? but speculative alternate history is one of my hobbies so lets dive in.

Scion is credited as 'the first parahuman' and was discovered floating above the atlantic on the 20th of May, 1982. Earth Bet 'begins' a little earlier at 1978, during Jimmy Carter's term, but it isn't until Scion that Parahumans start showing up with regularity, since everyone thinks he's the first. So our point of divergence is about halfway through Ronald Reagan's first term. I'm australian, so you'll have to bear with me here on the details, but I'm fairly certain Ronald Reagan was one of the more goofy presidents. Something about star wars, and a psychic wife? He might be all about the comic book superheroes coming to life. Also he's apparently halfway through implementing 'Reaganomics' (again the details are unclear to me) which wikipedia describes as 'economic deregulation' and cuts to both taxes and government spending. I imagine this could be what eventually creates that NEPEA-5 bill that freezes rogues out of the economy and further criminalizes non-hero parahuman activity in north america, likely as a response to those same rogues/the elite taking advantage of Reagan's deregulations?

On the 18th of January, 1993, the Protectorate (the team consisting of Alexandria, Hero, Eidolon and Legend) are sworn in under President James D. Griffin (who was the Mayor of Buffalo, NY from 1973-93, but lets assume he left that position before 1993 to become President). Now this one's a little interesting because the earliest a President can start actually running the country would be the 20th if I'm not mistaken? So either President James Griffin was elected after Reagan (assuming Reagan served his second term, which is rather likely) and one of his last acts before the President-Elect is sworn in is to swear in the Protectorate, or, and correct me if I'm wrong here and you just don't do that in the USA, but instead President-Elect James Griffin is asked to fulfill his duties here two days early. I don't think that's usually done, but it might be possible. (Addendum here because I realized a bit late, but James could've been going on his second term here instead. It's possible.)

This means no George Bush Senior (and likely no Junior either without his dad to pull the strings) in the former case, and no Bill Clinton in the latter case.

There's maybe some interesting political science to go through here. President James Griffin is most likely a democrat as he was in OTL, and if he was a democrat, he'd fit right into the spot Bill Clinton would be occupying following twelve years of the republican party under Reagan and Bush Sr. If instead the former, we've got a democrat shake-up after Reagan. George Bush Sr was Vice-President with Reagan going through both terms, which probably had a factor in his popularity going into the 1988 elections. Lets look how OTL voted, and we'll see that Bush wins with 53.4% of the popular vote with 426 to 111 in the electoral collage.

That's a daunting place for a democrat to win in Worm's timeline. I think the easiest explanation is the existence of parahumans. Comparatively, Clinton's 1992 election will show 370-168 in his favor. I suppose that George Bush Senior's popularity might have taken a credible dive during his presidency, with the growth of the parahuman crisis and the Slaughterhouse Nine growing into an S-Class threat after Jack killed King in 1987. What really nails this home, though, is Vikare's death in 1989 during the stadium riot. Wildbow wrote that this is would be considered the end of the 'Golden Age', which suits Ronald Reagan's delusional political period perfectly.

So, operating off that, lets say that James Griffin replaces Bush, and one of his last actions is to swear in the Protectorate and form the PRT as we know it.

Wildbow mentions a President Bradley and his/hers? preservation act in response to the Endbringers and he guesses 8-9 attacks in America in 20 years. Okay lets figure this out a little. Behemoth, 19th December 1992. 3rd appearance, attacks New York 26th March 1994. The Preservation Act is passed likely to give international victims a helping hand. I remember reading, but can't find a link for it, that the USA initially had big hopes when they rebuilt New York, but that as time goes on and the Endbringers become more numerous and more frequent in their attacks, less cities in the USA can be rebuilt like Manhattan was. So now we have President Bradley, who might have been elected in 1992 following James Griffin, unless Griffin secured his second term. If President Griffin managed to win his second term, then President Bradley is likely to have won the 1996 election as a Republican, since political data shows that democrats rarely get more than 8 years, and almost never get more than 12, with the last example of that being JFK and LBJ, and JFK got shot.

According to Migration 17.3, there's a President Gillen in 2009. Assuming President Bradley won the 1996 election and replaced Bill Clinton and then won his second term to the 2000s election, I reckon President Gillen is our George Bush Junior stand-in. In the context to which he's revealed, the Travellers and Madison and a cut-off newspaper headline, I reckon he's getting his version of 9/11 here in 2009 after also winning his second term, with this being the first time the Simurgh has attacked in the USA. It's taking place in December, so he might be getting ready to pass over to the President-Elect, and it might explain why he's willing to order the extreme measures we see in the Traveller's interlude; it's his second term, he's handing the reins over to the next President, he can afford to take a hit here to ensure a massive national security threat is handled. If President Bradley is a republican, President Gillen might be a democrat. Bill Clinton and George Bush junior both got their second terms, I could see it happening here too.

So now that we've got a loose idea of who's whom, we come to the final question: Who is President in 2011 and what party are they from? If we're following the pattern, then instead of Obama's 'Change' campaign with the Democrats, we've got a Republican President in 2009, who will probably be running for re-election in the 2012 election. Considering that the world, and North America, is in a considerable state of turmoil in recent years; the second-latest Endbringer attack hit Brockton Bay, Cauldron outed and the PRT is being purged, Alexandria's death, I'd say that this republican president is unlikely to be able to win his second term. So Democrats get to see the USA through Gold Morning.

Phew... oh, what was the main conceit for this post? OH! Right. As for who votes for whom; Brian who is the world's youngest 40 year old man is very proud of going to the voting booth this year. He will be voting Democrat because Brockton Bay's local politics have been saturated with Neo-Nazis over the last couple decades and the death of the E88 has resulted in a sudden lack of funding for much of the republican nominees across New England. He's eager to do his part.

Lisa is voting Democrat because she's the one who set her local Senator up in the first place, after the Mayoral election went back on schedule after Coil's death. The Undersiders are a considerable influence on the state's senators, owing to their relevance around inter-reality trade.

I wonder which way Brian and Lisa voted in the 2012 election. Pretty sure they both would've been old enough at that point, and neither of them were convicted felons, so...

what wildbow wants you to think about tattletale’s asexuality

how i, an ace person, interpret tattletale’s ace spectrum stuff