I'm going to try to address these as well as I can.
So, other than the jump rope and heavy bag, both of which are fairly cheap and easy to set up, what does he get out of going to this gym? It seems he could do this workout in his tiny apartment, or in his magic entrance hall. I get that this was to get some back-story on him, figure out that he's the one who made Parian switch to women, etc., but the fact that he doesn't really use anything that really feels like gym-specific makes me wonder why he's there at all.
They gym provides both a point of social contact that is not overwhelming and a way to get some actual combat experience. Neither of those could be accomplished alone in his workshop. He was there to practice boxing form in preparation for his next lesson, which is why he stuck with punching bags, also something he doesn't have in the workshop. Constant isolation is not good for anyone, and particularly bad for Joe.
Doesn't really seem to give a lot of choice. Why not just say "opens to reveal a gateway into your Reality in the Entrance Hall"? Saying "predetermined location" implies that he gets to determine that location.
This is criticism of the phrasing of the Jumpchain perks. I did not write these, I'm just using them for the story, and I'm not going to override the work other people put into their documents.
The Rig doesn't hover. It's literally an oil rig in the Bay with a force field around it. It's still anchored to the bottom of the Bay.
There are no oil rigs installed within a few hundred yards of the New Hampshire coast. The nearest wells are over two hundred miles away. Whatever rig was repurposed for the PHQ was obviously moved there and outfitted with extensive tinker tech. This is a natural extension of that, and also an incredibly minor point of the story.
That's actually pretty bad. The human body has better resistance to heat than steel does. Steel has pretty high thermal conductivity.
I don't understand what you're saying about steel. The power gives the 'defensive properties' of the item, and gives it to his body as well as clothing. It doesn't matter how well steel conducts heat, only how it's structure responds to heat. In fact, this is an asset since it would let him heat his body up to extreme temperatures and use that offensively. I'm going to have to remember that for later.
That's... a bit cheesy? I mean, not as cheesy as a full-on SI with metaknowledge, but it really shortcuts a lot of learning needed from canon.
Yes. That's the point. Its crap level meta-knowledge. Just enough for engagement without being able to be fully leveraged. There's enough distance to the information being presented to cause confusion and conflicts. It's an element of the story, the jumpchain, and how the character functions.
I don't think that Gallant is a Cauldron cape. I'm not 100% sure about that, but I thought it was only Battery and Triumph on the "Good Guys" side.
Gallant had been word-of-god confirmed as a Cauldron cape.
How does he know that? His power didn't tell him, and it's not well known. That was actually one of her canonical problems: she was basically doing the same stuff that she did while working for Kaiser, so people all assumed she was just doing solo missions for Kaiser.
is in Boston. She's not even in the Bay right now, nor is Fog. They get brought in to help with Bakuda.
And that brings up another issue: PHO is NOT a good source to learn about cape powers. Capes actively try to hide a lot of their powers because if an enemy knows all that they can do, it's easier to counter it. Capes like Purity and Lung are pretty well known, but even so not a lot of people knew that Lung's hearing improved as he ramped up or that Purity's powers would run out if she didn't get sunlight. So how does he know just what powers Othala can give someone, or the extent of everyone else's abilities?
There is a level of rumor, analysis, and uncertainty surrounding capes. The PHO wiki might be a weak source, but hundreds of people analyzing every appearance and report has its own value. Compare celebrity obsession in the real world. There is undoubtedly a comprehensive list of every confirmed and suspected power that can be granted by Othala. Also, passenger based meta knowledge is assisting him.
Thank you, I had missed that typo. Corrected.
... you'd be an utter moron.
At this point the MC is bullet proof and has one of the strongest blasting powers in the city. He also has a serious array of buffs and can heal himself. That is a better level of preparation than what a foot patrol would require in anyone's (in-universe) assessment.
SO DON'T! The biggest problem I have with Tinker fics is that the MC always wants to go out as soon as they have a toy or two, when it makes no sense. In the case where it's their power forcing conflict, it's forgivable, but in his case it's explicitly not. Build up. Don't be an idiot.
It's an interesting start. I took a quick look through the source material and it seems like it's totally broken, but then again Tinkers take FOREVER to really get going and he's only a week in. This will either require a lot of time-skips (which might be a problem given how close to canon it is), or he'll go into combat as well prepared as Theo before he triggers.
Also at this point there was nothing to build up. He has no technology base to work from, only automotive knowledge. There isn't a project being delayed by this and he's been putting things off for a week already, which involved cramming in petty projects and training around a soul destroying job. A delay would not be productive or yield any serious benefits beyond hoping to get more useful powers quickly. Powers came faster when he started prepping for cape work, and that drove him into cape work.
Really? Why? Just buy it at the local CVS or Walgreens. You can get 70% purity easily as a disinfectant. That's way better than anything in liquor except for Mad Dog 151. Getting industrial quality of 96-99% would be tougher.
Again, why? Buy it from a firearms dealer along with some shotgun shells and tell them you're packing your own ammo.
You don't think bees are non-lethal? What kind of bees do you have where you live?!
Caution and ignorance is the answer to most of the questions about reagents. Also, the bees are not non-lethal. They are one of the stronger attack formulas. That's made clear when they show up in the story.
*sigh* A lot of my interest in this fic just evaporated. Characters who are intentionally stupid or suicidal for purposes of plot piss me off like nothing else. There's literally no reason for him to go out now except that you're bored of writing him ramping up. I had high hopes for this fic because the MC seemed to have a brain, but I guess I was wrong.
The character is bored and wants to start using his powers, which is a natural reaction. Given how durable he was and the range of options available to him a foot patrol wasn't unreasonable. He wasn't out trying to hunt down the Empire or anything like that. Also, as
@Alsor Daechir and
@deadlyham stated, isolation is not healthy, in particular for someone with Joe's issues. Those issues affect his decisions. He makes decisions that are not the optimal from an external viewpoint but make sense from his own perception, and that perception becomes clearer as the story progresses.
That's not how Oni Lee's power works. He can't look one way and teleport the other. He's a LINE-OF-SIGHT teleporter who leaves behind a temporary duplicate as a side effect.
Oni Lee's power has been word-of-goded into being line of site. I mean, in the canon story no one ever used disruption of line of site to counter him even though that would have been an obvious measure right from the start. Hell, Aegis would have defeated him in a matter of seconds with a flashbang and a blindfold. Still, that's the word of god. And my word is he saw a reflection and used that, because it makes as much sense. Also he has tiny mirrors in his mask. And later on 'line of site' will be defined as extending through surveillance devices as well.
What I'm saying is I'm not totally onboard with that word-of-god ruling and will be bending it like spaghetti.
And thus the MC proves himself to be an idiot rather than a hero. Even he knows that Oni Lee is:
who is currently trying to murder him, and yet in self-defense he refuses to kill him at the risk of his own life. There goes the rest of my interest in the story. This guy's just dumb. He's dumb in a way that fits really well with Worm, Superfriends, and other superhero settings that are more silly than reasonable/realistic. But still dumb.
"Fits in with Worm" is the point. He's not a SI. He grew up in this universe. Protectorate capes do not kill. Lethal force in cape fights is serious. There is a culture about avoiding deaths and maiming even in villain battles. No one handed him a pamphlet saying 'these conventions don't apply to these capes'. 'Don't kill' is part of the unwritten rules, and breaking those often enough can bring down a kill order. Showing up with Oni Lee's corpse wouldn't get him a pat on the back from the authorities, it would get him press ganged into the Protectorate with heavy restrictions and probably sent to another city where there wouldn't be a gang out for revenge.
That's not the same at all as going out to beat face before he's ready. He could go to a salsa class or a book club for that.
The character took a walk in costume while bullet proof with enough firepower to level a city block. He might not have a conflict drive, but getting ready to be a cape got him five times as many powers as a week of his job and petty projects. That's pretty big incentive to keep moving forward.
And that's the reason it wasn't done in this fic. It would be boring to write and to read. But that's a Doylist reason, not a Watsonian reason. It's the writer making his character do stuff that character wouldn't do just because he doesn't want to write what that character would realistically do.
Let's look at Taylor in canon Worm. There's a reason that the story did NOT start right after she triggered. That reason: it would be boring as shit. She spent MONTHS experimenting with her power, ramping up her physical condition, making her costume. We still saw that, but only in paragraph-sized exposition mixed in with everything else. We didn't see it day by day because it would be boring.
This is also the problem with most Tinker fics. They almost always tend to start right after the trigger, and since writers don't want to spend too long on the ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY Tinker Ramping Cycle they skip ahead to the face beating. It's bad writing, and it's painful to read. Just once I'd like to see a Tinker fic that starts out 4-6 months AFTER the trigger where the Tinker in question was not a moron. This... is not that fic. Fucking LEET canonically meets this bar, but almost no fanon Tinker can manage it.
Show-don't-tell is important, but that refers to showing the important parts, not every moment. This could have started out months after his trigger, explained the power and which add-ons he got in what order and how they affected his state. All in between him actually doing something with his by-now useful power and in-shape body. It would have fitted BETTER with canon Worm rather than worse, because that's exactly what Worm did. The idea for the story is really cool, but as with almost all Tinker fics I've read, it isn't implemented very well.
This is not a traditional tinker fic. The way the powers are granted means there is no starting tech base to buckled down and work with. Engagement is needed to get powers for tinkering, and that requires becoming active. Time skips from the point of trigger would mean nothing in this fic since that would just be more time with the starting workshop. The main character is regarded as a tinker but is really something else entirely.
None of these suggestions work with the structure of how the story is written. They only make sense with a static power that can be developed, not a situation where new abilities are gained erratically. That is what this story is, and I get that it's not for everyone. Thank you for the feedback and for giving the fic a chance.
You know there was a tinker fic I read once where the MC played it safe and tinkered in their home with no desire to go out. They were kidnapped by Coil. Turns out it's easier to disappear a tinker if no one knows about them.
For this fiction, Joe is incapable of isolation. Well, he can isolate himself and tinker, but isolation was a big part of his trigger event. Like his therapist recommends, he needs to go out of his comfort zone and do things and meet people. It's why he goes to the gym too, because it's one of the few social interactions he has.
Joe tinkering and isolating himself for weeks would push him back into depression. It would also be boring as shit. Although seeing a manic tinker come out of his isolation depressed and insane would be interesting.
I don't see it as much anymore, but Sufficient Velocity and Space Battles still have posters that expect hyper competency from characters that is competely unrealistic. Expectations that ignores characters in context knowledge, feelings, and motivations. It's also boring as shit. Maybe I'll write a fanfic where a poster is dropped into Worm but then fucks up because they are still the same flawed person as they are in real life. That's basically a Greg Veder fic.
Unfortunately for Joe, that
ship has sailed.
I couldn't resist.
Now that the fight is finally over, I'm kind of ok with the length. I think it's just harder to wait for the end of a fight when it takes a month. If I was binge reading those chapters, it would have been fine.
Lord roustabout, now that the story is posted to Sufficient Velocity, I can start making some omakes. Someone already posted an omake in this thread. I'll post one too. Just need to figure out what it will be. See, on SV you get terrible posters but some good posters and fan omakes to balance it out.
Thanks. Regarding the length of the Bakuda fight I think having the chapters spread over a month was a big part of the problem. I'm feeling better about it now that it's complete.
I'm looking forward to seeing any omakes that you or anyone else wants to write. It's fascinating to see new perspectives on this work and great to know people are enjoying it enough to make their own content.
....
