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Administrative Mishap [Supergirl/Worm]

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Neruz said:
Shards are capable of reaching across intergalactic distances if they are willing to expend the energy required to do so, and it is explicit WoG that 'by and large, powers stop being responsive or start getting fucky at some point between the upper atmosphere and 400k km out' and that broken Shards, or Shards that can draw on energy in some manner (ie; Grue) 'don't care so much' about the distance limitations, indicating that any such limitations are almost definitely artificial in nature and come down entirely to the Shard not feeling like the energy expenditure is worth the data.


The question isn't whether QA is capable of reaching across interplanetary distances and\or affecting entire planetary populations (keep in mind that QA is the Shard that manages\administrates an Entity, she is literally designed to control trillions of Shards forming an Entity large enough to 'dwarf' Earth entirely, her range must be at least large enough to cover an Earth-sized planetary body just for that alone), it is whether she has enough of an energy supply to do so without running out and dying.

And in that respect, she probably doesn't: QA is designed to have access to an entire Entity's worth of energy gathering and storage Shards and her own energy gathering and storage mechanisms were never intended for more than a secondary backup system and the relatively minor energy requirements for a single Cycle.


So if the Daxamite fleet is within lunar orbit (the Moon is ~384,400 km out, Shards normally reach up to 400,000 km out at max during a Cycle, as long as they judge the data to be worth it, which implies that the energy requirements out that far are significant but not impossible) then QA definitely can reach them, but is doing so an efficient use of her available energy? I would assume not.
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We're mixing up Addy's two different ranges here, those were two separate statements and both are correct however you're reading them as one as if I believe Addy has patchy interference over Australia and can't use her powers there and that is stupid.

Administrator has the range that she can project her power from her core to her body interdimensionally.
Do you remember when Addy was explicitly setting up Lunar and Orbital systems to extend her ability to affect those areas?
So that wildbow reddit post may not be canon to this story. Besides he compares 400km and the upper atmosphere as being similar, seems to me like a real case of Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale - TV Tropes .

And then we have the range that she can psychically control things from her body.
This has never been observed to be more than multiple city blocks when controlling insects, for her to control sapients all over the world would increase this observed range from 15 ft(?) to almost 4000 miles, it would literally require an increase in range of more than a 1 million times over.
If this is a pure power problem and we simply need to pump more power into her pyschic ability then this suffers a lot due to fact spheres are cubes so the amount of power increase needed isn't a linear increase it's a cubic one. So in order to achieve this Addy needs to supply 1 x 10^18 times more power than she did during the Golden Morning. Thats a billion billion extra shards worth of power, 1 extra planet will not cut it.
Finally we also need to ask The Presence that can be sensed interplanetary becomes that much larger, how does this start having negative repercussions on people who are close to intense physic whatever at the centre.

Finally Shards are a false comparison because Addy never controlled them as pyschic puppets, she sent them a plan of what to do, and they did it.
 
Neruz said:
Out of curiosity; what makes you think that?
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Because it seems like a more sensible way for a cooperative gestalt to operate?
Because I don't think Scion would have given away her power if it had the ability to make his liver fail.
Because Eidolons copy was never able to use other capes powers, even other cauldron capes.

Do we have evidence the other way or are we both in the realm of "This way makes more sense to me?"
 
Dark as Silver said:
Because it seems like a more sensible way for a cooperative gestalt to operate?
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Why would Shards act sensibly, given that there are multiple canon examples of them not behaving in a sensible manner. (By human standards.)

Dark as Silver said:
Because I don't think Scion would have given away her power if it had the ability to make his liver fail.
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Scion explicitly (and violently, with lasers) crippled QA as part of deploying her specifically because her 'normal' power of controlling Shards was not acceptable as part of a Cycle.

Dark as Silver said:
Because Eidolons copy was never able to use other capes powers, even other cauldron capes.
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The vast majority of power restrictions are artificial, and so mean little for determining what an unrestricted Shard is capable of at full power. (Titans are a much better measurement in that regard.)

Dark as Silver said:
Do we have evidence the other way
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Probably not.
 
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Neruz said:
Why would Shards act sensibly, given that there are multiple canon examples of them not behaving in a sensible manner. (By human standards.)


Scion explicitly (and violently, with lasers) crippled QA as part of deploying her specifically because her 'normal' power of controlling Shards was not acceptable as part of a Cycle.


The vast majority of power restrictions are artificial, and so mean little for determining what an unrestricted Shard is capable of at full power. (Titans are a much better measurement in that regard.)


Probably not.
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I mean define sensible, if we consider shards primarly common sense to be reducing energy consumption during the cycle then yes it would be sensible by their standards because Making QA make them do things is an extra step of inefficiency compared to just doing what QA told you.

Wasn't the whole deal with Cauldron capes that Eden died before being able to set them? Can you prove that this is an artificial restriction rather than a real one?
 
Neruz said:
And for precisely the same reason, you cannot prove that this is true either. 🤷‍♂️
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Sure I can.
It takes energy for QA to exercise Psychic control. It takes energy for a shard to do shit.
Therefore in order for QA to manually make every shard do shit she would have to spend energy on the psychic control while the controlled shard would still have to spend the energy to do shit.
 
Dark as Silver said:
Sure I can.
It takes energy for QA to exercise Psychic control. It takes energy for a shard to do shit.
Therefore in order for QA to manually make every shard do shit she would have to spend energy on the psychic control while the controlled shard would still have to spend the energy to do shit.
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And what makes you think that the Entities would not consider that to be an acceptable cost to guarantee 'perfect' control, given that there are multiple canon examples of Shards going 'rogue' when given the opportunity to do so?
 
Neruz said:
And what makes you think that the Entities would not consider that to be an acceptable cost to guarantee 'perfect' control, given that there are multiple canon examples of Shards going 'rogue' when given the opportunity to do so?
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Multiple canon examples among the trillions of shards you mention?
That isn't even a rounding error.
Killing off a couple of rebel shards and just remaking them would likely be cheaper than spending 1% more energy on everything

Besides QA was one of those rebel shards!!! And Scion was aware of the possibility because he preemptively crippled her. Why give her more power when even she can't be trusted?
 
Dark as Silver said:
Multiple canon examples among the trillions of shards you mention?
That isn't even a rounding error.
Killing off a couple of rebel shards and just remaking them would likely be cheaper than spending 1% more energy on everything

Besides QA was one of those rebel shards!!! And Scion was aware of the possibility because he preemptively crippled her. Why give her more power when even she can't be trusted?
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That she cannot be trusted when deployed does not mean that she cannot be trusted when part of the Entity gestalt, though?
 
Neruz said:
That she cannot be trusted when deployed does not mean that she cannot be trusted when part of the Entity gestalt, though?
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When will she be controlling trillions of shards except as part of the gestalt?

If Shards can be trusted in gestalt, then she does not need absolute control.
If Shards cannot be trusted in gestalt, why would she be different?
 
I fear that the current discussion is beginning to dominate the thread, so some caution may be advisable...
That said, I hate to see starvation, especially when applied to combustion, so for my own part: Addy has, thus far, seemed to exclusively centre her powers on her own person, so doesn't seem to have any direct shard-based interactions.

She also seems to be rather explicitly using power-granting equipment, referred to as "modules" in the following:
OxfordOctopus said:
She had a very crude telekinesis module tucked away somewhere in her storage, for if Danny had reached an emotional extreme when Annette had died, to allow his rats to be pulled together into a floating mass that roughly approximated his dead wife. There was also the biokinetic module, painfully unsophisticated in nature, but largely there for if Taylor had arrived at her own emotional extreme when under physical duress, abuse, or just fell into a situation where the power involved modifying her minions to certain ends.
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I question whether she is even capable of interacting between different sets of spatial dimensions natually, as she presumably could in Worm where everything made sense to her. Thus far she has seemingly relied upon discrete portals, or rely upon a grandfathered-in host-connection to Taylor. I would have thought that in Worm she could move her whole physical presence to another Earth rather innately, and could reach out personally, at least to the extent required to give someone a bonus-brain-bump...

So while she has a great range in terms of maintaining her connections and power-granting to Taylor's body, I suspect that she is currently entirely limited to power-granting and inter-dimensional portal-generators. While she has freedom to grant powers to the limit of her ability, the equipment is specifically designed for limited operation, and as such may break if subject to too much power-flow, and likely requires some form of localised relay.

That said, I do recall her speaking with confidence on the topic of being able to launch mental attacks upon the world even if Taylor's body died, so there may well be something there if anyone cares to dig up some relevant quotes.
 
Dark as Silver said:
When will she be controlling trillions of shards except as part of the gestalt?

If Shards can be trusted in gestalt, then she does not need absolute control.
If Shards cannot be trusted in gestalt, why would she be different?
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And what if absolute control of trillions of Shards is what creates the gestalt?

Keep in mind that Shards are more like computers than they are like humans, and computers need to be 'controlled' in order to function correctly in the first place.
 
Neruz said:
And what if absolute control of trillions of Shards is what creates the gestalt?
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In that case surely QA would be the entity not Scion?
And what do you even mean by computers need to be controlled? I don't manipulate the logic gates with tweezers. If I fire off an API call to a different system asking for a CRUD operation to occur I'm not controlling that machine I'm telling it to do something.
 
Dark as Silver said:
In that case surely QA would be the entity not Scion?
And what do you even mean by computers need to be controlled? I don't manipulate the logic gates with tweezers. If I fire off an API call to a different system asking for a CRUD operation to occur I'm not controlling that machine I'm telling it to do something.
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Ah. I believe we are using a different understanding of what 'control' means, in this instance. Because from where I sit; that is control.
 
Dark as Silver said:
What the hell did you think I meant when I said
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I thought that there was difference between an Expert System that is incapable of doing anything other than what it is programmed to do, and a 'true' intelligence with what we shall call 'free will' for lack of a better terminology.
 
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Neruz said:
I thought that there was difference between an Expert System that is incapable of doing anything other than what it is programmed to do, and a 'true' intelligence with what we shall call 'free will' for lack of a better terminology.
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Shards are demonstrably individually intelligent. QA wouldn't complain as much about Broadcast if his personality didn't grate on hers.
I think shards have the free will to rebel, or so try and send back compromises if something is blocking them from executing the plan or that would make it a bad idea.
However they generally don't rebel and its QA's job to inform other shards of the compromise if necessary.
QA is an administrator, she coordinates and administrates, not Queen Puppet Master.
 
Dark as Silver said:
I think shards have the free will to rebel, or so try and send back compromises if something is blocking them from executing the plan or that would make it a bad idea.
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I disagree; I don't think Shards have any true free will at all, at least not while part of an Entity gestalt.

While deployed is a different matter, as the Shard's relationship to its host and the fact that Shards do keep 'copies' of their hosts opens up the possibility of the host's free will 'infecting' the Shard, so to speak. Which is why Shards must be crippled before being deployed in order to ensure that in the event that they do go off-target due to external influences, they cannot actually threaten the Cycle.

The fact that Ziz, as part of her 'backup' functionality, actively sought to destroy\disable certain specific Shards that either could go or had gone 'rogue' and that Titans were explicitly not something that was ever intended to happen would seem (from my point of view) to support this.
 
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Neruz said:
I disagree; I don't think Shards have any true free will at all, at least not while part of an Entity gestalt.

While deployed is a different matter, as the Shard's relationship to its host and the fact that Shards do keep 'copies' of their hosts opens up the possibility of the host's free will 'infecting' the Shard, so to speak. Which is why Shards must be crippled before being deployed in order to ensure that in the event that they do go off-target due to external influences, they cannot actually threaten the Cycle.

The fact that Ziz, as part of her 'backup' functionality, actively sought to destroy\disable certain specific Shards that either could go or had gone 'rogue' and that Titans were explicitly not something that was ever intended to happen would seem (from my point of view) to support this.
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I think that not cooperating to the best result of the gestalt is a strange form of suicide given that they are relying on working together during interstellar travel.
Therefore they do not need to be crippled during this period as there would be not reason to rebel.
 
Neruz said:
at least not while part of an Entity gestalt.
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I think it was mentioned shards can think while part of the entities in an interlude, but it is not the same as controlling their body.

I am pretty sure for example that QA herself is made of multiple shards, since she is a big and important one, their thoughts are just not relevant to her, and since they don't have human bodies, they don't care about their lack of agency as anything more than parts of Addy.
Dark as Silver said:
I think that not cooperating to the best result of the gestalt is a strange form of suicide given that they are relying on working together during interstellar travel.
Therefore they do not need to be crippled during this period as there would be not reason to rebel.
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If they could, they would have been capable of consuming other shards to become space flight capable.

Scion mentioned most are dormant during transit, as it would be waste to keep them active, so most shards probably don't actually think while in space, and if they could, they don't have enough control over their own thoughts (master's powers applied to shards) to rebel, especially with a full entity backing the restrictions to prevent a shard from being capable of having treasonous thoughts.
 
Roth963 said:
I think it was mentioned shards can think while part of the entities in an interlude, but it is not the same as controlling their body.
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I believe you are correct, which supports my belief that QA is used to just straight up 'hard' control Shards as part of an Entity.

Roth963 said:
I am pretty sure for example that QA herself is made of multiple shards
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Yeah. 'Shard' is an extremely imprecise terminology, as a combination of 'Shards' is itself considered a 'Shard', presumably because Entities aren't very smart and that definition is good enough for them.
 
Neruz said:
Yeah. 'Shard' is an extremely imprecise terminology, as a combination of 'Shards' is itself considered a 'Shard', presumably because Entities aren't very smart and that definition is good enough for them
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Your primitive human language is showing, [WORDS] by entities probably have much more meaning than a human can put, the single sentence thing is just an approximation of the gist of the message.

The entities are extremely intelligent, they just aren't creative.
 
Neruz said:
Int score in the billions.

Wis score of, like, 3 at best.
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Probably side effect of having too much power at early stages of their evolution, similar to how contessa sucked at making her own decisions since she got a magical genie at a young age to solve all problems effortlessly.
 
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