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Brockton's Celestial Forge (Worm/Jumpchain)

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Tackyseven said:
Sure but how does March know anything about his new powers without getting the information first she shouldn't be able to counter something when the MC himself is shocked by what happened, her power must have something to go on just like tattletale
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March does not, however her shards (The Three Faces) do. They recognise Joe to be an OCP, thus getting all the info they can from every other shard. Based on that, and factoring that they have pretty good model of Joe's psyche, what's March has shown so far is not really too out there, yet. That part will come later.
 
Tackyseven said:
I'm sorry I call compete BS on how effective Marsh thinker support was during the first fight with Bakuda... why you ask? Because the MC gets power at random that no one can predict. For her power to work she needs to UNDERSTAND and have the right information about powers, every singe time a new power was rolled, especially the multiple times they where directly relevant to the fight should have completly destroyed the timing. Never mind that literally no one except the MC actually understand how his power works so she would have been working on massively faulty information from the start

Other then that I too felt that the fight was too drawn out even if it was written well, but the fact that both tattletale and Marsh doesn't have their canon weaknesses in this story (wrong assumption/input to their thinker power) is pretty annoying. I can't see Marsh losing in this story to anyone but flechete scoring a head shot though... she's to op after chapter 21 you've basically created an unbeatable opponent unless the MC too gets a blank ability every other kind of defeat will look like anauthor fiat and an asspull too me probably

Still great story so far as ch 21 I just wanted to rant

I take it back, I like this explanation
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You're gonna need to be more specific on what you see as BS thinker support. Which specific incident and what aspect of the thinker support/plan. Are you still referring to the Undersider rescue arc or something else?

If you're still talking about the Undersider's rescue. A timing thinker can guess and help a lot by having knowledge of the map, the placement of people, averages on travel time, and time stamps (since she'd have access to the live feed) of incidents. I recommend Ward 12.all to see how BS she is.

Also, March gets wrong info all the time especially from Joe. We just don't see those instances. We see stuff from Joe's perspective. We just see the fallback plans that get through/succeed. WoG is she's doing the thinker thing of acting like things were always the way they planned and pretending she's not flying by the seats of her pants.
 
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Also, March, by Wildbow's design, is effectively Contessa-lite. She's meant to be bullshit, and her Thinker power expresses it.

Quite frankly, fuck March.
 
Essentially regardless of what power Joe get's up till a certain point so long as he was outside of his special dimension curtain Shard's can work around him, he does eventually put things in place to prevent it but until he get's a specific power/perk he can't be too sure that Shard's don't have a work around.

I was careful to try and keep any spoilers out of it.
 
Brainstorm813 said:
March does not, however her shards (The Three Faces) do. They recognise Joe to be an OCP, thus getting all the info they can from every other shard. Based on that, and factoring that they have pretty good model of Joe's psyche, what's March has shown so far is not really too out there, yet. That part will come later.
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How does that work exactly? The details of canon shard mechanics has always been something I've been ill-informed on. Do shards just ping everyone for info or is there some central database or higher tier shard a shard goes to? How are shards networked and do certain shards have restrictions on the level of info they can have/access (as in their request for data get rejected or that they just don't have the connection or even ability to request it) or is the thinker power's knowledge/data limitations entirely artificial.
 
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Tackyseven said:
I'm sorry I call compete BS on how effective Marsh thinker support was during the first fight with Bakuda... why you ask? Because the MC gets power at random that no one can predict. For her power to work she needs to UNDERSTAND and have the right information about powers, every singe time a new power was rolled, especially the multiple times they where directly relevant to the fight should have completly destroyed the timing. Never mind that literally no one except the MC actually understand how his power works so she would have been working on massively faulty information from the start
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March has live-feed from U&L which allows her to adapt plans on the fly. Notice how MC was winning up until Bakuda asked for timings. And even then Joe shattered March's plans, she was aiming to kill him and Undersiders after all. Hell, even keeping Bakuda alive only partially worked, Taylor cutting off tinker's limbs probably wasn't part of the plan.

Tackyseven said:
Other then that I too felt that the fight was too drawn out even if it was written well, but the fact that both tattletale and Marsh doesn't have their canon weaknesses in this story (wrong assumption/input to their thinker power) is pretty annoying. I can't see Marsh losing in this story to anyone but flechete scoring a head shot though... she's to op after chapter 21 you've basically created an unbeatable opponent unless the MC too gets a blank ability every other kind of defeat will look like anauthor fiat and an asspull too me probably
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Uhhh... should I tell you? Hmhmhmhmhmhmmh, yeah, why not. Tats gets garbage data all the time. She just doesnt notice its garbage data. Same with March. Thinkers only pretend that they 4 parallel universes ahead of you while in reality they screaming in their heads and trying to salvage this clusterfuck of a situation.

And yeah March is basically bullshit tier cape on par with the likes of Number Man, Jack, Dragon, Manton, Bonesaw and whatnot. Sole fact that she has "Fuck you in particular in every dimension all at once" in addition to her already bullshit Contessa 0.5 thinker power is by itself tells you enough.
 
OK, so getting back to the "now" of the story, here's a bit of a WoG from the latest chapter:
sonicyoash: So Joe plans to make it look like he helped their victims out of sheer spite? That's so audacious it just might work. Will anyone see through it?

Lord: People will 'see through' the motives behind Apeiron's healing blitz, but probably not to the true reason for his actions. Spite and a slight towards Jack's legacy are both good reasons, but the major powers are going to be focused on how effective Apeiron's healing technology is, how quickly he can mobilize it, and how rappidly he can cover the distance between the cases. It's more likely to be seen as a demonstration of strength than as a purely altruistic act.
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You know, I just thought of something. From the perspective of normal people - healing S9 victims is Apeiron's way of showing dominance over an already defeated enemy. It is his way of teabagging.
 
Cosmic said:
Also, March gets wrong info all the time especially from Joe. We just don't see those instances. We see stuff from Joe's perspective. We just see the fallback plans that get through/succeed. WoG is she's doing the thinker thing of acting like things were always the way they planned and pretending she's not flying by the seats of her pants.
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More precisely, Thinkers run 5 plans in parallel, fail 4 because plans don't survive contact with the enemy, and then pretend the successful one was their intention all along.

Interestingly Joe is the exact contrary. He have no real plan, but instead wing it until he make it (mostly by building whatever he needs on the fly).

Gumiho said:
But this Isnt QQ...
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...she must be interesting in bed, you know, with her timing power.
 
Nimeroni said:
More precisely, Thinkers run 5 plans in parallel, fail 4 because plans don't survive contact with the enemy, and then pretend the successful one was their intention all along.

Interestingly Joe is the exact contrary. He have no real plan, but instead wing it until he make it (mostly by building whatever he needs on the fly).



...she must be interesting in bed, you know, with her timing power.
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I agree, the timing of the door being busted down would be very interesting
 
Knaka said:
OK, this complaint has come up several times and several people have tried to answer it, but I want to see if I can clarify things a bit here.

In a recent WOG, LordR mentioned that he thinks the problem is that Joe is trying to account for actions of other parties and that is usually not accounted for in stories. I think this is the main disconnect. A lot of people are making assumptions that other factions will not react to Joe's actions, or will react in a certain way. Joe seems to be taking a broader outlook than most people are.

Cosmic covered most of these points, but let me see if I can illustrate this with an example. As usual, this is overly simplified, but I hope it gets the point across.

Realistically, Joe has two main options for dealing with the S9. Option one is he can wait for them to come to Brockton and strike them once they arrive, while option two is he could launch a preemptive strike. Lets see what the immediate consequences of these possibilities are.

For option one, the S9 would continue hurting people while approaching the city, then be wiped out by the CF. Let's estimate the effective casualties here between 50 - 100 people dead.

For option two, the S9 would get killed immediately. There would be some collateral damage, but as the strike would likely happen in a low population area it wouldn't be that bad. Let's estimate the effective casualties here between 10 - 30 people dead. There's also a chance of some members of the S9 escaping in this scenario, but for now, let's assume Joe prioritizes Jack and the survivors wouldn't be too much of an issue for the sake of simplicity.

At this point, option two would seem like the preferable option. It is also at this point I suspect that most of the readers stop their analysis. However, we have to remember that everyone in this story is an individual with their own goals, priorities, values, etc. and they all take action in their own interests. Any action taken by Joe will have ripple effects. With that in mind, let's go further into the analysis.

In the option one scenario, Joe's actions would shock most groups, but he could manage the reaction. It would be concerning for every major faction, but with the fact that the S9 had approached the city with the clear intent to launch an attack, Joe could frame his actions as a reaction to the S9's aggression. This fits in with most models of his behavior and while other organizations would be concerned, most would likely believe that as long as they don't provoke a reaction they can continue without Aperion deciding to intervene. Some groups might overreact, but most would simply strive to ensure none of their underlings or agents do anything that could provoke Aperion. Let's estimate the effective causalities as a result of this between 1000 - 3000 people dead.

In the option two scenario, Joe would have attacked the S9 before they approached the city. He could try to claim that the S9 were approaching Brockton, but the earlier he strikes the less plausible that explanation becomes. By taking proactive action, not only would Joe call into question the predictions about him, but many major organizations would realize that they might be his next target and likely panic. Remember that this takes place on Earth Bet, where there is no shortage of powerful, morally questionable (or outright evil) organizations. Most of those organizations would take drastic action to shore up their defenses, regardless of the cost. They would not know the threshold necessary for Joe to take action and many would have reason to assume they could be targeted. Even Joe claiming that the kill orders on the S9 constitute a contract, it won't help as there is nothing stopping Joe from taking another contract to eliminate them. In Brockton itself, the gangs would likely make as big of a mess as they could before fleeing the city, while organizations outside the city would likely do whatever they could to increase their numbers, regardless of the long term consequences. There would be many other ripple effects, but for the sake of simplicity, I'll skip them and estimate the effective casualties from this between 5,000 to 25,000 people dead. (Large range because of the wide impact and I still think I'm significantly understating the numbers.)

Based on this extended analysis, it now becomes clear that option one is the preferable option in terms of potential casualties. Thus, if taken in isolation from the reactions of the rest of the world, option two results in less causalities, but if the reactions of other organizations are taken into account, option one results in less causalities.

Once again, I would like to state that this is an overly simplified explanation with the purpose of explaining the thought process of choosing to wait for the S9. The actual dynamics of the encounter have a lot more variables, but the point of this is to illustrate the basic reasoning behind this choice.

From what I can understand, Joe is trying to take care of as many problems as he can discreetly before other factions catch on. Eventually, he will have to go all out, but he is reasonably trying to put that off for as long as he can so he can take care of issues and mitigate consequences.

(edit: SPAG)
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Excellently put. Thank you.

Again, it's important to remember the scale Joe and his team work under at this point. As things are, people can think of Apeiron as limited to one city as well as there being assurances (such as ones from Thinkers) for him remaining in-check. However, with option two, it opens up the floodgate for it to be a national issue at the very least since his act would be across states. Plus groups like the Fallen (Mathers and Valefor alone are just one branch of them) and the Elite (with Bastard Son's branch compared to the Nine) will take desperate actions. Just the two groups alone I mentioned have more people and would be able to do more damage and on a wider scale with more time on their hands.

Then you add in things becoming international. IMO, likely a result of the added fuel of Apeiron's strong dislike of master effects and mental influences becoming known leading to the Heartbroken, Gesellschaft, the C.U.I/Yangban and others shoring up for conflict. That's not even mentioning groups outside of those named in canon plus the PRT/Protectorate/government along with the factor of quarantine sites as well as again, a Simurgh attack. You're looking at potentially risking and indirectly leading to the ruin or loss of hundred of thousands of lives. With option one, you just have the Nine which is one group that's trying to be inconspicuous with their movements along with there being measures by Joe and the team to limit the number of people affected/encountered. In my opinion, that's dozens affected at most compared to the thousands or hundreds of thousands at least of option two.

With his power and the number of people his actions affect, I personally believe Joe has a moral responsibility as a leader and a person to consider the consequences rather than just what's right and wrong. As much as Joe owes it to the Slaughterhouse Nine victims, he also owes it to the rest of the world to consider the impact of his actions and their consequences.

LordRoustabout said:
Now the situation was a lot broader than that. I had seen, repeatedly and first hand, how my actions resonated and influenced the world around me. For better or worse, there was no getting away from this. Not even with an escape to the Underground.

Fundamentally, it came down to a single question. Does the world end with you, or does it extend further than that?
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Joe didn't become uncaring. He gained a wider perspective. The world doesn't end with him. It extends further. It goes beyond the Celestial Forge. Beyond his feeling of right and wrong. Beyond his guilt.

Additionally, I can understand why people reacted the way they did to Joe's plan (I had the same initial feelings), but I think the important idea of Joe's thoughts were the need to get past that initial feeling and consider the nuances and the wider scale of those involved. I think this scenario can be made into an absurd trolley problem and it'd be an interesting way of framing Joe's dilemma. It also brings up the related psychological/philosophical/ethical topic of consequentialism and deontology. I actually think a lot of people's feelings and opinions on Joe's plan at its core came down to a consequentialist vs deontologist viewpoint.

Finally, while people often jokingly talk about Joe declaring himself Godking and solving all the world's problem, I see a small number of people seriously argue for it in a way that dismisses and disparages the consequences and Joe's circumstances. Remember: "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive."

I apologize if I'm repeating myself or beating a dead horse. I just feel the need to put my argument out there and vent a bit in the process. It's just frustrating especially with how often I see people calling Joe a coward. It becomes increasing aggravating since I have to backup my arguments with lengthy explanations when in my eyes my points boil down to the obvious "it's not so simple" and ''a lot of people will die (collateral)". I also feel like a lot of the lessons and themes (wonderfully) expressed in story fly over some peoples heads or just are forgotten in their frustration especially when it relates to Joe's actions.
 
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Slentoru said:
You know, I just thought of something. From the perspective of normal people - healing S9 victims is Apeiron's way of showing dominance over an already defeated enemy. It is his way of teabagging.
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Isn't that a given if it's (partly) done out of spite? :beardscratch:

What's more interesting is whether Gray Boy's victims are on Joe's list.
Rescuing those would be a hard to ignore flex of his abilities.
 
He has shown off achronal creations before (the whiskey he offered the workers at Somer's Rock was like decades old, made that morning) so technically it fits.
 
Psiidmon said:
He has shown off achronal creations before (the whiskey he offered the workers at Somer's Rock was like decades old, made that morning) so technically it fits.
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You know, I'd imagine in some alternative timeline that whiskey could have been the catalyst that'd caused a bunch of thinkers and analysts to wrongly back/support the theory that Joe has a Hyperbolic Time Chamber or some sort of time manipulation power. That'd be used to explain his build-up speed and growth. Of course, following that chapter, we'd see Joe roll Temporal Controls and Sectional Time.
 
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MDK said:
Isn't that a given if it's (partly) done out of spite? :beardscratch:

What's more interesting is whether Gray Boy's victims are on Joe's list.
Rescuing those would be a hard to ignore flex of his abilities.
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It just hilarious that an act of saving hundreds of lives will be carried out with the same intent and ease as an act of hitting a button a couple of times. At least, that how people will see it.

Anyway, Gray Boy victims would probably be the hardest to help. Getting them out of the time bubbles is easy, Joe has literally infinite ideas to make gadgets for it, the problem lies in mental health of victims. Never-ending torture is not a good way to spend your days, and I have my doubts about therapists abilities to help with an experience like that.

For GB victims and probably some of Riley's works (like Murder Rat), there is not much help that can be administered without a miracle. My bets on Joe breaking out memory tech or Lethe water (he can use Efficiency perk, to not overdo it) to just get rid of traumatic memories. That would create some distance from what happened to them for the tortured, which will help with getting over it.
 
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Slentoru said:
Anyway, Gray Boy victims would probably be the hardest to help. Getting them out of the time bubbles is easy, Joe has literally infinite ideas to make gadgets for it, the problem lies in mental health of victims. Never-ending torture is not a good way to spend your days, and I have my doubts about therapists abilities to help with an experience like that.

For GB victims and probably some of Riley's works (like Murder Rat), there is not much help that can be administered without a miracle. My bets on Joe breaking out memory tech or Lethe water (he can use Efficiency perk, to not overdo it) to just get rid of traumatic memories. That would create some distance from what happened to them for the tortured, which will help with getting over it.
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Honestly older WoG's imply that Joe will be using small doses of memory erasure to help victims deal with trauma. Joe would probably attempt to ask them first if they want the memories gone knowing him however.
 
readerdreamer said:
Honestly older WoG's imply that Joe will be using small doses of memory erasure to help victims deal with trauma. Joe would probably attempt to ask them first if they want the memories gone knowing him however.
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Yeah, remember something about helping Mouse Protector with the experience of dying and becoming a walking corpse stitched together with the woman who ordered your death. I wonder how cognizant she would be of a latter part.

By the by, obviously he will ask for consent, it's Joe and mental alterations we're talking about. It just... not all GB's victims will be lucid enough to answer, that's a problem.
 
Cosmic said:
How does that work exactly? The details of canon shard mechanics has always been something I've been ill-informed on. Do shards just ping everyone for info or is there some central database or higher tier shard a shard goes to? How are shards networked and do certain shards have restrictions on the level of info they can have/access (as in their request for data get rejected or that they just don't have the connection or even ability to request it) or is the thinker power's knowledge/data limitations entirely artificial.
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There has been no mention of a "central" anything, database or otherwise. Zion and Eden are the closest, though.
Shards of course, do have ranks of varying importance, as can be inferred from Ciara's comments. Higher ranked shards will have greater access.
Shards are only loosely 'networked' after deployment. They communicate with each other through high-intensity energy bursts. It has been implied that there are shards that work purely towards info gathering and smooth operation of the shards, without hosts. Then you get to the whole 'Shardsphere' or 'The Firament' business, which I won't dive into considering I have little knowledge of Ward and I plan to keep it that way.
 
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