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FaerieKnight79 said:
Just from what is shown in canon RBC really does believe that anything Cauldron does regardless of how morally or ethically dubious is justified because they are working to save "all of humanity, everywhere". She run on the twin ideas of "hard people making hard decisions because they are hard" and "The ends justify the means". Moral, ethical, and even legal boundaries don't matter to her.
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Which is a major reason why "hard man making hard decisions" is a really bad idea; that's exactly the attitude it produces. Even if a person starts out genuinely meaning well, they will become warped by it.

Once she started doing all those horrible but "necessary" things, it became emotionally necessary that those things be necessary. Because if they weren't, she's done all those awful things for no good reason at all. And once she started thinking like that it was inevitable that she'd talk herself in doing awful things that weren't even necessary by her original standards, and down the rabbit hole she goes until you have her canon version.

It's literally something used by cults, extremist groups and the like as a form of psychological manipulation; people become very emotionally invested in the cause once they've been pushed into committing atrocities for it. She just did it to herself, instead of somebody doing it to her (except possibly Contessa).
 
FaerieKnight79 said:
What made Costa-Brown and Tagg's ploy even stupider was that Skitter had turned herself in. Yet both of them thought it was a Good Idea to push this horrifically dangerous cape until they felt they had no other options but to retaliate. Presumably Costa-Brown was trying to discredit Taylor by making her appear psychotically unstable. But that doesn't make it any better. Costa-Brown was more focused on making the PRT appear to be effective then actually reforming things so it would be effective. In her defense, there might not have been time since Zion got set off by Jack Slash only a few months to a couple years later. Funny thing, that could have been avoided if Cauldron had let Jack Slash and his band of murder hobos get taken out at any point before that point. But no, Manton might be useful so they got protected.
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And then there's that part Cauldron somehow knew, that if Scion won't get triggered in two years, he will rampage anyways in fifteen, and at that time, they'll have even less meatshields against him.
 
FaerieKnight79 said:
What made Costa-Brown and Tagg's ploy even stupider was that Skitter had turned herself in. Yet both of them thought it was a Good Idea to push this horrifically dangerous cape until they felt they had no other options but to retaliate. Presumably Costa-Brown was trying to discredit Taylor by making her appear psychotically unstable. But that doesn't make it any better. Costa-Brown was more focused on making the PRT appear to be effective then actually reforming things so it would be effective. In her defense, there might not have been time since Zion got set off by Jack Slash only a few months to a couple years later. Funny thing, that could have been avoided if Cauldron had let Jack Slash and his band of murder hobos get taken out at any point before that point. But no, Manton might be useful so they got protected.
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There's a couple of issues here.

Firstly, they wanted Jack Slash to set Scion off. This wasn't an "oops, we ran out of time", this was "how do we get Scion to go on a rampage so we can organise every living cape against him". They wanted it to happen ASAP, so that they had as many powerful capes as they could get, as much infrastructure and as many organisations still functional, and have the best chance of humanity surviving the ensuing clusterfuck. They were actively working to keep Jack alive after getting confirmation that he set off the end of the world. They weren't doing this for Manton at all, and the long-term effectiveness of the PRT doesn't matter, because the PRT has a very limited shelf-life - They don't need it to last more than a couple of years.

Secondly, their plan with Skitter was that they wanted to recruit her. IIRC, Alexandria's plan was to push her to her breaking point, anticipate and survive the attack and then send Skitter to the Birdcage. She disappears en route, and Cauldron get a new, super-scary operative going off and doing their wetwork for them, in exchange for leaving the Undersiders alone. Because Taylor in the Wards is no good to anyone (other than, maybe, her mental health), whereas Taylor off the leash with Cauldron support is going to solve a lot of Cauldron's problems across multiple Earths. Just think how nasty Doormaker and Skitter are together - Any bug she needs, anywhere on Earths.

It just went wrong because Alexandria's Thinker power suffers from GIGO, and Skitter's ability to push her emotions into her swarm means that Alexandria's just getting bad data.
 
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mp3.1415player said:
She clearly believed that she would always come out on top and whatever she did to that end was justified and right.
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tfesmo said:
My assumption is that Cauldron always felt that they had a Contessa safety belt in most scenarios and therefore lost all sense of caution.
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Essentially I see it as:

Alex has the starting assumption of: If Cauldron takes no action, literally everyone everywhere dies. Nobody else can take useful action to change that.

Therefore, anything and everything Cauldron does can be no worse than the natural state.

Alex ALSO starts off as: I am personally invincible. I have one weakness, but my flight and superstrength means only Endbringers, GU, nullifiers, and Manton can hurt me, and with Doormaker+Clairvoyant, only Endbringers matter. And Contessa wouldn't let those few hurt me, because I am personally a necessary part of Cauldron (see above assumptions).

Note that I believe Doormaker+Clairvoyant are really the source of Cauldron's power. Take those two away, and even Contessa is a tiny, tiny fraction as useful as she was before. Cauldron as a whole? Hah.

plus

I am politically invincible - even aside from all my blackmail and cheating with my power, the Number Man and Contessa make me even more so.

--

In this fic, however, Alex is no longer invincible to the weapons Taylor can bring to bear - super-gravity can pin her down and prevent her from getting more air, at a bare simplistic minimum.

Her cape powers aren't enough to get in the first strike, either, since Taylor has equipment that can detect her from well outside her range, which can pierce dimensions. And, very likely, jam her power/cut the connection (not shown on screen). And Taylor definitely has computational tech capable of detecting/neutralizing/defending against powers faster than the shards can 'manually' counter, much less human thought speed.

And her political power? Is as nothing compared to what Taylor is providing humanity.
 
Nicholai said:
Didn't Wildbow say, repeatedly, that he was basically trying to write himself into corners intentionally to force himself to figure out ways to get Taylor out of them?

We can make up all kinds of rationales for why Alexandria pulled her Epic Stupid Maneuver in Worm.. but frankly it always smacked of just terrible writing to enforce conflict to me.
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No, he said repeatedly that he would roll dice to determine who lives and dies during major events, then had to figure out how the hell Tay was suppose to survive each time the dice said she did while more powerful characters died.
 
FaerieKnight79 said:
No, he said repeatedly that he would roll dice to determine who lives and dies during major events, then had to figure out how the hell Tay was suppose to survive each time the dice said she did while more powerful characters died.
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I'm pretty sure that's not true. The only dice rolls I've ever seen referenced are Leviathan, and he's been open that if he didn't like the outcome, he wouldn't use it
 
Tarion said:
There's a couple of issues here.

Firstly, they wanted Jack Slash to set Scion off. This wasn't an "oops, we ran out of time", this was "how do we get Scion to go on a rampage so we can organise every living cape against him". They wanted it to happen ASAP, so that they had as many powerful capes as they could get, as much infrastructure and as many organisations still functional, and have the best chance of humanity surviving the ensuing clusterfuck. They were actively working to keep Jack alive after getting confirmation that he set off the end of the world. They weren't doing this for Manton at all, and the long-term effectiveness of the PRT doesn't matter, because the PRT has a very limited shelf-life - They don't need it to last more than a couple of years.

Secondly, their plan with Skitter was that they wanted to recruit her. IIRC, Alexandria's plan was to push her to her breaking point, anticipate and survive the attack and then send Skitter to the Birdcage. She disappears en route, and Cauldron get a new, super-scary operative going off and doing their wetwork for them, in exchange for leaving the Undersiders alone. Because Taylor in the Wards is no good to anyone (other than, maybe, her mental health), whereas Taylor off the leash with Cauldron support is going to solve a lot of Cauldron's problems across multiple Earths. Just think how nasty Doormaker and Skitter are together - Any bug she needs, anywhere on Earths.

It just went wrong because Alexandria's Thinker power suffers from GIGO, and Skitter's ability to push her emotions into her swarm means that Alexandria's just getting bad data.
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Wildbow himself is the one who claimed they were actively protecting the S9 for years because they thought Manton's power might be useful against Zion. As for what the actual plan with Skitter was, we don't actually know. It never got mentioned in-story. And I'm not sure if Wildbow ever mentioned it in a WoG announcement. People assume that was the intent. But all evidence shows that it was just an attempt to get a flashy "win" to prop up the PRT's image without having to reform things. Remember also that all of Cauldron's plans failed. Nothing they did was in any way helpful. In fact, their actions made it less likely that Zion could be stopped because their "army" was unwilling to work with them or each other. I think it's canon that it's Ziz's manipulations that actually lead to Skitter becoming Kephri and taking out Zion.

But none of that is gonna happen in this story. The threat of Zion is already on the way to being dealt with. The global catastrophy caused by Cauldron (the Endbringers) has been neutralized without the world being aware of that fact. And the other destabilizing factor, the 'conflict drive' was disabled. Cauldron are a 5th wheel, and Costa-Brown is finding that she doesn't have the power and influence she thought she does. Which is driving her up the wall.
 
FaerieKnight79 said:
But none of that is gonna happen in this story. The threat of Zion is already on the way to being dealt with. The global catastrophy caused by Cauldron (the Endbringers) has been neutralized without the world being aware of that fact. And the other destabilizing factor, the 'conflict drive' was disabled. Cauldron are a 5th wheel, and Costa-Brown is finding that she doesn't have the power and influence she thought she does. Which is driving her up the wall.
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She is essentially coming to the realisation that she built her castle on a swamp, I wonder how long till it catches on fire and sinks into the swamp. I mean with the way a lot of threats seem to be getting neutralised right now a lot of civil servants in the USA and other agencies must be questioning why the PRT seems to get the lions share of the budget.
 
ah question: are you guys and gals trying to summon the mods? cause it seems like this chatter about canon worm and what if's should be taken elsewhere {i think there's a sub forum for this stuff} as i'm not really seeing much if any talk about the fic itself lol, so please either take the cauldron/canon worm discussion elsewhere or steer the convo/thread back onto talking about the fic/the fics latest chapter/side story update
 
Hikari Nova said:
ah question: are you guys and gals trying to summon the mods? cause it seems like this chatter about canon worm and what if's should be taken elsewhere {i think there's a sub forum for this stuff} as i'm not really seeing much if any talk about the fic itself lol, so please either take the cauldron/canon worm discussion elsewhere or steer the convo/thread back onto talking about the fic/the fics latest chapter/side story update
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My understanding is that this story is based on canon Worm, the AU bit being super-scientist Taylor. The discussion is about the character of RBC and how she is behaving in 'Distance Learning', which is this story. The whole business of Gravtech is from DL.

Yes, I agree with you that just discussing canon Worm would be Off Topic for this thread.
 
FaerieKnight79 said:
What made Costa-Brown and Tagg's ploy even stupider was that Skitter had turned herself in. Yet both of them thought it was a Good Idea to push this horrifically dangerous cape until they felt they had no other options but to retaliate.
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Tagg: "It's just Skitter. We can take her. What's a few bug bites here and there?"
Alexandria: "Yeah, it's just bugs. Not like drowning us in bugs is going to kill us."
Skitter: casts Creeping Doom
 
Alexandria relied heavily on her ability to read body language and that was something Skitter offloaded to her swarms, which Alexandria *did not know.*
 
Nicholai said:
Didn't Wildbow say, repeatedly, that he was basically trying to write himself into corners intentionally to force himself to figure out ways to get Taylor out of them?

We can make up all kinds of rationales for why Alexandria pulled her Epic Stupid Maneuver in Worm.. but frankly it always smacked of just terrible writing to enforce conflict to me.
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Didn't Wildbow keep trying to get Taylor killed but kept getting thwarted by Dice Gods (Hence her debut against Lung) and finally settled for fucking her over in every way possible outside battles?

It wouldn't be that much of a stretch for Taylor to remind him of someone who fucked him over really good in High School or whatever. I can sadly even understand this, despite thinking it rather juvenile and thus not worth implementing (although I probably would anyway given an actual opportunity).

I'm hardly the only ostracized loner type to ever be fucked over as an extended project by the Queen Bee of the local Plastics Chapter....

Firehawk242 said:
To make matters worse, their win state involves going to trial at which point any half-competent lawyer demands the recording of the interview and promptly gets the whole case, confession included, thrown out due to durress. This leads into the PRT answering some very pointed questions from Congress and the Supreme Court about the fifth amendment, and serves as the follow up knockout punch to their PR in the wake of the whole Echidna mess.

In short, they did everything to ensure they lost, to the point where even if they got what they were after, they STILL lose.
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A.) Buy / otherwise control all lawyers allowed anywhere near the case.
B.) Make her look as dangerous / rabid as they did Canary, and established precedent means they don't even have to pretend they aren't railroading her through a Star Chamber.

Firehawk242 said:
Doesn't matter, they still lose. Taylor doesn't need to be exonerated to make them lose, she just has to reveal that the Constitution means nothing to them. They can send her to the Birdcage all they want. Doesn't stop the public outcry or the villains deciding that if they're going to be denied a fair trial, why play nice?
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How did that work out for Canary, again?
 
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FaerieKnight79 said:
What made Costa-Brown and Tagg's ploy even stupider was that Skitter had turned herself in. Yet both of them thought it was a Good Idea to push this horrifically dangerous cape until they felt they had no other options but to retaliate. Presumably Costa-Brown was trying to discredit Taylor by making her appear psychotically unstable. But that doesn't make it any better. Costa-Brown was more focused on making the PRT appear to be effective then actually reforming things so it would be effective. In her defense, there might not have been time since Zion got set off by Jack Slash only a few months to a couple years later. Funny thing, that could have been avoided if Cauldron had let Jack Slash and his band of murder hobos get taken out at any point before that point. But no, Manton might be useful so they got protected.
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To make matters worse, their win state involves going to trial at which point any half-competent lawyer demands the recording of the interview and promptly gets the whole case, confession included, thrown out due to duress. This leads into the PRT answering some very pointed questions from Congress and the Supreme Court about the fifth amendment, and serves as the follow up knockout punch to their PR in the wake of the whole Echidna mess.

In short, they did everything to ensure they lost, to the point where even if they got what they were after, they STILL lose.
 
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FaerieKnight79 said:
Wildbow himself is the one who claimed they were actively protecting the S9 for years because they thought Manton's power might be useful against Zion. As for what the actual plan with Skitter was, we don't actually know. It never got mentioned in-story. And I'm not sure if Wildbow ever mentioned it in a WoG announcement. People assume that was the intent. But all evidence shows that it was just an attempt to get a flashy "win" to prop up the PRT's image without having to reform things. Remember also that all of Cauldron's plans failed. Nothing they did was in any way helpful. In fact, their actions made it less likely that Zion could be stopped because their "army" was unwilling to work with them or each other. I think it's canon that it's Ziz's manipulations that actually lead to Skitter becoming Kephri and taking out Zion.

But none of that is gonna happen in this story. The threat of Zion is already on the way to being dealt with. The global catastrophy caused by Cauldron (the Endbringers) has been neutralized without the world being aware of that fact. And the other destabilizing factor, the 'conflict drive' was disabled. Cauldron are a 5th wheel, and Costa-Brown is finding that she doesn't have the power and influence she thought she does. Which is driving her up the wall.
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Cauldron had shifted the Brockton Bay experiment from Coil to the Undersiders and Skitter. Alexandria very much wanted Skitter to go back to doing the warlord thing. She was actively pushing Skitter to go back to villainy. She WANTED Skitter to snap, and have no choice but to retreat back to the undersiders. Alexandria didn't think Skitter had the power to kill her. That was her key miscalculation.
 
HideboundJedi096 said:
A.) Buy / otherwise control all lawyers allowed anywhere near the case.
B.) Make her look as dangerous / rabid as they did Canary, and established precedent means they don't even have to pretend they aren't railroading her through a Star Chamber.
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Doesn't matter, they still lose. Taylor doesn't need to be exonerated to make them lose, she just has to reveal that the Constitution means nothing to them. They can send her to the Birdcage all they want. Doesn't stop the public outcry or the villains deciding that if they're going to be denied a fair trial, why play nice?
 
HideboundJedi096 said:
A.) Buy / otherwise control all lawyers allowed anywhere near the case.
B.) Make her look as dangerous / rabid as they did Canary, and established precedent means they don't even have to pretend they aren't railroading her through a Star Chamber.
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It's incredibly rude to edit someone's quote into a post that took place before the post you quoted, as well as really, really dumb. The person you're quoting has probably already read through the thread to the point where he or she posted, so why do you think that person is going to see your quote? So you're not only not getting any possibility of a response, but you're making yourself look stupid by doing so.
 
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