For this month's informational post, I'll start by addressing the increasingly common complaint that the Protag is staying in Brockton Bay and not going on a journey across America, grabbing every power he can, doing whatever he needs to in order to beat Scion ASAP, because to them that's the only thing that really matters. For those people I have one thing to say: "Welcome to Cauldron!"
To be less snarky, we're going to have to break this into two different aspects of the problem, the character-side of the issue and the author-side of the issue, often called the Watsonian and Doylian aspects after the Sherlock Holmes book series by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, where the character of John Watson was the
actual protagonist. The Doylian aspect of this is the simpler of the two:
Do you realize how much work this is? I post weekly, have a minimum of 3k words per post which I often
double, and am doing so for effectively free. Yes, others regularly post that amount, but
I'm not them, and while this is fun to write, it is still a responsibility (that is self-imposed, but we'll get to that later). Yes, I have some patreon backers, but I'm currently making <$1/hr if you want to make that argument. If the time comes where I have to prioritize AB, the original novel I'm currently working on that makes me enough money to matter, the one time a week I can see my friends, or working to pay my bills, AB is going to go on hiatus. This next Arc (as evidenced by the title), the character will leave Brockton Bay and it's
already taken over a dozen hours to write the first two chapters and
roughly plan the rest, (likely, only 1/3rd in reality) of the worldbuilding done for their first two stops, with a good deal of additional time needed to hash out exactly what
Herb's character is going to do, what's going to happen where, and of course the time needed to put it all to paper (or word document).
According to the ratios given
in story, the numbers of capes vs humans is 1:8000 in cities, and a bit less than a third of that in the country. That means, assuming Brockton Bay is
actually east coast not-Vancouver like it seems, there should be
seventy-five parahumans, given population numbers in 2011. Even BB, which is known for having so many villains (who outnumber heroes 3:1) that it's being considered for
quarantine, doesn't achieve this high standard. For America, if you do a basic bit of math (population in 2011 times 1/26k which is the country ratio of parahumans to normals) that means there should be a
minimum of about twelve
thousand parahumans. This is pretty obviously a manifestation of '
Sci-Fi Authors Have No Sense of Scale' but even then, can you
imagine coming up with dozens upon dozens of heroes that exist in the immediate area, all original, all interestingly limited, and all working within the world? If you think that's easy, go work for Marvel, it's got to be better than what I hear they're putting out now.
So, either I invalidate the numbers given in story, which will provoke cries of ignoring Canon, or I need to make an absolutely
stupid amount of capes wherever Lee goes, but wait, there's another trap there! No matter who I make, if their power is useful, I'll be accused of creating them specifically
so Lee can grab their powers. Now, that's not going to
stop me, but if you're damned if you do while being damned because you haven't
yet, it kinda kills the impetus any complaining about not having already done so might create to go and do a ton more work. Now, that's just
going somewhere. What if Lee, I don't know, looked up the powers of those he might find useful. Now I either need to make close to a
hundred heroes and villains, then look at who Lee would pick, or make up powers that would be useful to use, then add Worm-appropriate restrictions and downsides. If you want a story where someone who can gain powers,
has that kind of situation, and the wherewithal to do so, albeit with a
heavy reliance on canon powers, go read
Skittering Thief. It's good, about 240k words, and completed, albeit without the SI component which, story wise, is a positive, not a negative.
Now, let's view it from a character perspective. Before we go into any of this there's one thing that needs to be re-stated, apparently, so let's do it again:
LEE IS NOT YOU
Lee is does not abandon those he likes or cares about without
immediate cause, Lee does not believe that the ends justify the means, and Lee is not the utilitarian Ubermensch that these posters wish him to be. Now, according to these people the fact that he is not doing everything he can do immediately makes him anything from badly written, to a bad person, to a complete idiot. I have to ask, by this standard, what stories
pass your ludicrously high bar? Harry Potter didn't spend every waking moment training in magical combat, agitating for change to prevent the same socio-political climate as Voldemort's first rise to power, and killing unrepentant death eaters, so obviously he's an idiot. He's just a kid? Okay, Frodo Baggins didn't learn everything Gandalf could tell him about Mordor despite
knowing he was going there, didn't learn to fight, and relied on the rest of the Fellowship to help him destroy the One Ring? Absolute moron! That story is unquestionably horribly written!
Literally anyone remotely good in Game of Thrones! Obviously, Mr. Martin can't write, and is a rank amateur who needs to be shown the error of his ways! Hell,
Worm fails this standard, as two years go by and Taylor does
nothing, knowing that the world is going to end in two years, even if she doesn't know
how, so you lot obviously hated that as well, and wouldn't bother to read something with such idiotic characters. Oh. Wait.
Lee is not doing what you (those complaining about his not rushing into a world he's realized he knows very little about) say you'd do in the same situation because, again
he isn't you. If you think he's an idiot, there is
literally nothing keeping you from writing your own fic where that
exact thing happens. The CYOA is publicly available, and because you obviously have access to the internet there's nothing stopping you from writing that using googledocs. I sure as heck don't own Worm, and if anyone does write up such a story please post a link to it. I'm not promising that I'll read it, but some of the others who seem to want that would likely enjoy it more than they apparently like Abaddon Born(e).
Now Lee has his reasons, even if everyone doesn't agree with them (and I'd be shocked if
everyone agreed with
anyone's reasons for
everything): He's got
two years, which is an exceedingly long time to work in, especially given his lack of sleep and his negentropy enhanced Abaddon Shard. He wants to protect Taylor, and to a lesser degree the Dallon sisters along with Gallant, and thus is trying to make Brockton Bay safe before doing anything else. He's
kinda a control freak, if you haven't noticed, and thus believes that if he were to leave everything would go to hell. Finally, he over-focuses on minor things to the point that many times he loses sight of the big picture, which is why Herb, who does the exact opposite, tended to balance him out before the Dinah Debacle. All of this means that he's leashed himself to Brockton Bay until he thinks those he wishes to protect can take care of themselves, which is a level of preparedness that means that the people who are there can likely repel Slaughterhouse 9 level threats, or at least hold them off without casualty in time for Lee & co. to arrive.
That takes care of why he hasn't gone on a road-trip before and even, at this 'late' stage, he still has
over a week before Leviathan arrives, in which time he's gone from 'kinda buff temperature immune dude who can see powers' to 'Triumvirate+ Tier Threat'. If this kind of thing persists, even at a reduced rate, he'll be able to hold off Behemoth in India and throw down with Scion when each attack on his own, and in both of those battles he
won't be alone.
Now, that brings us to point 2, the problems Lee's been experiencing with Unlimited Shard Works, the power that lets him copy any power he can see the effects of, which itself is affected by how Power Sight works. To start with, if it hasn't been become
incredibly apparent, I'm a Worldbuilding focused writer, as opposed to Wildbow's Character focus or Rowling's Event focused style. If you've ever heard that Carl Sagan quote: "If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe," that's pretty much my approach to writing. It's why my first real novel is in a homebrew Fantasy Tabletop RPG world in which I actually ran games in, and thus had to build aspects of in detail with different groups of players. It's why I'm writing fanfiction, though as the story progresses I'm having to do ever-increasing amounts of worldbuilding to keep the entire thing spinning, to the point that if I didn't have readers I might've said 'screw it' scrapped the entire thing and just repurposed the ideas into an entirely new book series all of its own, since I've already got plots, plans, and worldbuilding for an original superhero series that would be incompatible with what's happened in AB. I have the firm belief that, while people's actions might not make sense on the
surface, there's a reason for everything. It's those hidden factors which affect everything else, which in turn affect other things, and so on, creating a consistent world. What does this all mean for USW & Power Sight?
All of Lee's powers have had their mechanics
completely developed, set, and defined. Their limitations, their probable growth patterns,
everything. It's several pages long, and while the specifics
may change if I realize I've been an idiot and haven't yet set them in stone by posting about them in chapters of AB, so far that hasn't happened. Here's the thing though,
Lee doesn't know what's written there. However, and this is
really freaking important: His Shard Does. Lee
doesn't know why his power pushes Miss Militia's so much. He doesn't know
why he can't turn off his Anti-Time power, or why his USW was even able to copy it in the first place since it
doesn't seem to have a physical effect. He sure as hell has no idea
what the hell happened with Gallant. However, his
Shard does.
Remember, Shards have minds of their own, even if only Æonic can talk to his (and thus assumes that everyone else can), that includes Lee & Herb's. Lee (if he could remember it without smelling chartreuse) gained a little insight into this, specifically the mind-set of 'dead' shards, but there's an entire underlying set of factors at play. Shards don't have enough influence to control people (Barring extreme exceptions like Echidna), but just provide a 'nudge' here or there, be it to watch for danger, to follow one's instincts, or to understand. Now, this is
not a conflict drive; Abaddon Shards don't treat their users as disposable, prioritizing new data over host survivability. It's part of why they cost so damn much. That being said, they're still a factor, but back to PS & USW.
Power Sight doesn't immediately give a full accounting of powers, only a basic overview. More time gives more information, but it's not a linear function and, given the difference between Shard and Human thought processes, information can be unclear.
Yes, this is not technically how the CYOA works, but the characters created with the CYOA just don't fit in with the tone of Worm: they're straightforward, uncomplicated, and lacking in any of the Fridge Horror that is so prevalent throughout the setting. The lack of Trigger Events is partly to blame, but even then powers are lacking in the downsides that make the setting so interesting. You're covered in filth and insects, needing help to escape the toxic hell you've been locked in while others laugh at you? I'll make the insects your friends! Your brother hid his mental problems and committed suicide, and you parents, whom you trust, blame it on you, telling you every day that you should've seen what they themselves missed? Now you'll be able to understand things from very little data! You are being led to your death by Turkish militants who killed your parents, knowing that if you take one more step you'll surely die, but if you stay where you are they'll shoot you? Here, have a gun of your own that never runs out of ammo and can help you aim! Surely all three of these powers won't
constantly remind you of the lowest point in your life and have all sorts of uses that are actively harmful like friendly fire from AoE weapons, dumping your emotions into the Swarm, or convincing you that untrue things are 100% correct just because your power says so despite being
completely wrong.
Functionally, this means that Shards think like Entities. As
completely unhelpful as that statement might seem on the surface, what I mean is that
Shards aren't Scientific. They aren't concerned with limitations, but
abilities, which is why the Cycle is the spaghetti method writ large across an entire race to somehow
reverse entropy. You go "I can make a gun?" and it goes "Yeah!" Then you try to make a Tinkertech rifle and it goes "No, sorry, not that. Have an M-16 instead!" And then you try to make a knife, and it goes, "Oh, sure, that too!" A power created weapon like Brandish's? "Ah, no, but have the real version instead!" A motorcycle? It queries the scan of the world, sees that it's been created already, has been used to kill people, and fulfills its
other requirements and goes "Of course! I'm surprised you've never asked for this kind of weapon before! You're going to be able to kill a
lot of people with this and never be forced to walk over a minefield again!" and then you accuse the suspiciously helpful, powerful, and unknown parahuman you're low-key trying to sound out and possibly recruit of being a Trump, because that's never happened before, so it
must be someone else's power working on you with no visual effects, motions, or really anything other than semi-polite conversation.
What
this means is that Power Sight doesn't give the comprehensive lists of uses, limitations, and technical intricacies that Lee (and a lot of the readers) want, but an Entity focused 'Here's what this does!" description full of general terms (like 'weapon'), the kind that Eidolon gets when he's picking a new power. This is also why Lee can't just glance at a power and get everything, and why he needs to experiment with his powers to try to use it as anything more than a carbon copy of what the original user had. If he wanted to, he could've been a Stormtiger knock-off on day
two. For a lot of other people that would be enough, and for the kind of headlong, grab whatever works, race to the final battle strategy so many suggest, that would be
all you could do. Instead, with a few nights of thought and experimentation, Lee can understand his power better and can use it to make basic constructs, invisibly prime explosions, perform what appears to be basic telekinesis, sense things by the movement of air currents, make a
very sharp (if fragile) sword, and create a physically inescapable prison for most people. This desire to learn and
understand, is a
very non-Entity thought process, and thus something that is counter-intuitive to Shards who just want to halp.
Thing is, while Powersight has a full page detailing its intricacies, USW has
several, almost all of which are so incredibly spoilerrific that I'm
not going to even hint about them. It's the core of Lee's powerset, and is tied into a lot of what's going on with him, but details about his power, how it appears to him, how it seems to work, and so on, are included in the story for a
reason. Lee is getting a user-side view of an unintuitive interface in another language, without a manual, and trying to figure it all out while I'm writing the story with detailed English notes from the devs, who are also partly me. It's an odd mindset to keep going, but it helps me write the characters while keeping the universe consistent.
Finally, there's the issue of why Lee's so freaking cautious about things. I'm pretty sure that I've already stated this in a previous informational post (assuming people read those [they're threadmarked
for a reason]), but if Lee went on a rip-roaring rampage of power gathering, villain stomping, preparing to kill the Endbringers, and then
Scion, there a better than even chance he'd end up in the Birdcage, dead, or kicked into an empty dimension by Cauldron. "How can you know that?", "You're just making excuses!", "That's not how
I'd write it!" are the kind of responses I get for that statement, though possibly not in those words, so I'll explain it
again. I'll also not break this up into Doylian and Watsonian perspectives, as the
entire explanation for this is
entirely Watsonian (character driven), and has informed how I've written the story in its entirety.
*Ahem*
LEE IS PARANOID AS FUCK!
. . .
Let me explain in more detail, though I will warn that this will be somewhat personal (if vague for a number of reasons). If you don't care, the tl;dr is:
if informational posts are not something you enjoy, and aren't required to understand the story, why have you read over 3k words worth of yet another one?
When I was younger, chance often worked against me (and to some extent, does even today). More importantly,
institutions tended to fail me, if not actively work against me. Where there were cracks, I tended to fall through them, and for some reason those who were tasked with preventing the abuse of the system were always looking the other way. Teachers changed assignments to benefit the class after they complained enough, requiring me to redo mine despite having passed them in early. Teachers turned a blind eye to bullying, until I fought back, upon which I was punished because of the 'no tolerance' policy they had despite my tormenters never being punished for attacking me before (though they had been punished for going after
other people).
I've been harassed at my jobs for everything from my race, to my age, to my gender, and my complaints were
always dismissed, only for the harassment to many times intensify. I've had friend after friend just straight up cut off contact with me for no reason (before it become so common nowadays that it's earned its own term: Ghosting). The only time I ever saw a lot of my 'friends' was when I contacted everyone, did all the legwork to figure out schedules, and arranged
everything for them, so all they had to do was show up, and sometimes they didn't even do
that without so much as a 'sorry'.
I've gone to churches to try and find meaning and community, only to be outright ignored, treated as a pariah, or, worst of all, given attention until I 'gave myself to god', only for the support, comfort, and positivity to dry up as I was expected to do an endless amount of free work while being moralized at and expected to help others while receiving nothing in return. It took over three months before I could admit I wasn't just being selfish like I was told I was being, and leave. Yes, I realize that that's not how they're supposed to work, and that many don't, but that had been my experience.
Bureaucrat after bureaucrat haven't done their jobs, only for me to be blamed because I didn't do what I was never given any indication that I was supposed to, because I wasn't given the information I was supposed to receive, which I was supposed to magically know that I wasn't being given when there was no indication that I was missing information, so I was thus
at fault for
two people not doing their jobs, somehow. I've had school administrators try to arrange for me to be expelled from college for
no apparent reason (though a different one advised me I should drop out of the teaching program because I was male, and thus shouldn't be a high school teacher. The fact that the only other guy in the program [of twelve students] was an obviously homosexual Hispanic, and explicitly considered one of the girls by the program coordinator, was coincidental, I'm sure.), only to have to go to their boss's boss's
boss before the situation could be resolved, and I've never had a staff adviser that I didn't have to harass into
doing their jobs.
I've lost count of the number of random police stops I've had, with no reason ever given, and with the officer visibly annoyed that I was squeaky clean (make sure your stickers are up to date, both inspection
and license plate, a lot of people apparently forget the second). I refused to substitute at elementary school despite being a licensed teacher (high school, but that's still more than most subs) after the third time that I was informed by another (always female) teacher that they'd be watching me in hostile fashion in
a week, knowing that all it would take was a single false accusation, and an investigation where the outcome was predetermined due to the characteristics of my birth, to lose my license, which I'm
still in debt from getting, and possibly my freedom.
In one job I worked, I was called in and yelled at for an hour for doing something that I'd seen others doing, that one of said coworkers had filmed
me doing, that wasn't illegal, and that I didn't even realize was wrong because I'd never been given
the second half of my training which I hadn't realized wasn't complete. When my boss's boss smugly tried to bring out the form I'd signed, stating that I'd completed the second half of my training (the first thing I'd signed having not stated that it
was only the first half), she realized they couldn't legally do anything as said paper
didn't exist, and didn't so much as apologize for repeatedly outright calling me a liar. Instead, my hours were reduced to 0 per week on an ongoing basis, where I think I might
technically still be employed, as I was never formally fired, nor did I quit.
What does all this mean? It means that,
especially at the age I was at the start of AB, I expected life to kick me in the teeth given half a chance, that anything that depended on other people was doomed to failure, and that it was going to somehow be
my fault. That I didn't
truly trust
anyone, to do
anything, because more often then not,
they wouldn't, and if I made a big deal out of it, it was always
my fault. I'd, from my teen years, when all this began, on, tried to
understand people, logically, and was only starting to reap benefits from close to a decade of slamming my head into the wall of incomprehensibility that was my life. I'd recently made exactly
one friend who actually contacted me (rarely) to hang out and stated that this was because we were both busy and
he didn't want to bother
me, which if it was true was absolutely
weird.
I've gotten past this point, found several of the hidden factors that kept tripping me up, developed habits that let me see some problems better (For example, I worked a tutoring job, was underpaid by a
lot, was told they'd fix it, was underpaid
again, when I formally complained I was told that my agreed upon wage was never going to happen as "verbal contracts don't mean anything" and that I should've been happy with what I got. Yes, I know that's both stupid
and wrong, but short of suing them there wasn't anything I could do. After that, I made sure to get everything in writing. Also, I learned [after being given 'how could you be so stupid as to not see the red flags!?' speeches from friends, family, and co-workers despite them not saying anything previously when what were apparently red flags were mentioned before] about more things to look out for.) and thus things have gotten somewhat better, but in my early twenties that's about where I was. If I hadn't gotten better then all of my characters would've been as flat and poorly written as my worst detractors accuse them of being, but this is about the character of Lee.
Now, take this person. Give him superpowers. Put him in Worm. He now believes that:
A. He
has to save the world. If he doesn't then at least one person he cares for, in the oddly pure way the truly lonely can come to care for fictional characters, will suffer immeasurably.
B. He has to
save the world. This is a monumental task, and one that can't be approached lightly. He has a timeframe,
knows rushing leads to failure, has gotten so good at making plans (and re-making them on the spot as everyone around him has demanded he change them to suit them) that he no longer does them consciously, and has plotted out dozens of possible paths to kill a
god.
C.
He has to save the world. He's here with his only real friend, who he desperately wants to trust but long experience has shown that to actually
do so would be the height of folly. He can't trust any of the organizations in the world, even
without Cauldron pulling the strings, as he's long since lost any faith in an organization large enough to house corruption,
which is all of them. He leads the Penumbral Defenders, but it's an organization he'd burn to the ground in an instant if he needed to, and he figures that, while it's a matter of time until it grows to the point that it turns against him, it hopefully won't get to that point in the two years before he has to kill The Warrior. He's set on saving Taylor, Amy, Gallant, and anyone else he knows is good who was screwed by factors outside of their control, but they are all treasures to be protected, not any sort of resource upon which he can depend.
D.
His luck has followed him here. Whatever twist of fate that turned the world against him
over and over and over again is likely still at play, since he's still
him. That means that situations that require improvisation are to be
avoided if at
all possible
. In uncertainty, tragedy can strike, some unknown factor can ruin everything that he's tried to accomplish. In its wake everyone will nod their heads and tell him that of
course that happened, how could he
not know such a thing would happen, it's obviously
all his fault for doing something so
stupid. The fact that such a thing was never mentioned before that point, as it never was, is irrelevant, and as
everyone knew it already he needs to take responsibility for a situation which
everyone agrees is unquestionably
his fault. Only this time, instead of losing his friends, or his grades, or his money, or his job, all it takes is one mistake, one misstep off a cliff he didn't realize existed, and
everyone dies, and it's
all his fault. That kind of stress would
break him if he let it, and he has no one he can trust to help him shoulder it, so he lets himself get bogged down with the minutia of power testing, with working to make sure others can take care of themselves to the point that even if they're lying about understanding what he's saying, as so many others have, that they'll still be able to take care of themselves and it won't be
his fault when they die.
Now, this might not seem to square with Lee on the surface, but that's because these are
bone deep beliefs that he
desperately wants to be wrong, but that he can't completely banish from his thoughts. It's that rejection which keeps them from being front and center in his mind, where the reader would see them, and he
definitely doesn't focus on them for fear of not being able to deny it and having to accept it. His friend is with him, which helped, until Dinah. His father is there, but they
aren't close, as should be seen by the fact that his father only seeing him twice in a month goes by without comment or second thought. His brother is there, and while they get along,
Lee doesn't trust him. He wants to help his little brother, and will go out of the way to protect Charlie, but Lee doesn't rely on him, doesn't trust him, and thus makes plans around him. A part of him broke over the Dinah Debacle, and while he's still functioning, he's more self-destructive than when he started, with only the barest hint of healing being done in 10.1.
If you point out that earlier I mentioned that 'Lee doesn't abandon those he cares about without immediate cause', how can that apply if he doesn't trust anyone, I'd point out that while in theoretically
healthy relationships you can't care about someone you can't trust, Lee's learned to do the former without the latter to avoid not caring about
anyone, but having anyone
truly care about or trust
him is a foreign concept, as the behavior of any who claim to do so quickly put lie to their words.
Bringing this
all the way back to the original topic of him not going out and getting power as fast as possible like so many wish; I have to ask: Does this seem like the kind of person that would go out and grab powers from everyone he can? The kind of person that would trust that the various entrenched groups wouldn't do something
suicidally stupid in the face of someone who would be an
Endbringer class threat given several only a
week of rampant power grabbing, if not
less? The kind of person that would believe that things would go
well for him if he tried to wing it? Or does this seem like someone who'd take things slow and steady to try to avoid any mistake. Someone who'd distract himself with small tasks to avoid the dark gulf of loneliness in his soul and the enormity of the task pressing down on his shoulders. Someone who'd view positive attention with disbelief and suspicion, finding
any reason to put it off for later and wait for what's obviously either a charade or someone just being confused to either fall apart or for the person to turn against him without cause respectively, as has happened almost
every time someone has treated him nicely.
Now, people can have more than one reason for doing something, and Lee's more than accomplished in finding
good and
logical reasons for why he does what he does, but in a subconscious undercurrent, below his thoughts, and above his Shard, this thread runs. He knows his experiences aren't normal, that what he's gone through has been the exception, not the rule, but after a certain point where the statistical
norm never appears that reassurance rings hollow.
Sorry if this got a bit depressing, but
that is the
core of the reason why he hasn't gone for the easy win, why he hasn't left the small, known, pond of Brockton Bay despite being the possibly the biggest fish in the lake of America, and why he hasn't grabbed all the best powers to win at everything ever instantly.
He doesn't believe he'll succeed, and if he doesn't, it will be
all his fault.
