It is literally a spoiler, seeing as it was ambiguous. I got the sense she died. Your experience is not universal.
It literally had to get confirmed via wog ffs
Yeah, no. Get off your high horse and read the damn chapter. I didn't look at any comments before writing my response. It's all there either plainly stated or via context when he mentions that the blow wasn't immediately fatal to March. And they spoke just last chapter about how Bakuda patched herself up. So the current count is one hopefully atomized dragon man, two maimings, and a no show as per how the chapter was written.
Everyone is talking about how the PRT is gonna recruit joe now. The problem is that despite not having much of a problem with non local PRT they quite literally have nothing to offer him, at best he'll be an ally.
He's really only had a positive interaction with one member, Weld. Everybody else affiliated has a negative view of him. So him getting recruited is unlikely.
Am I the only one coming into this not wanting March to die? I mean why do people want her dead so much? This was her first time fighting joe. The only thing March has accomplished prior to this is making money and directing Leet in the previous fight. I was expecting Bakuda + lee to be captured or killed leaving March and lung who he has not had any Significant encounters with. And to be honest I am really tired of Bakuda and her deadman's switch. I really hope the proctorate deals with her in the future and not apeiron.
...He did make the motoroid. Just because it was made from parts of a motorcycle does not mean joe didn't make it.
You might be thinking of the Gundams/Veritech he purchased, but that is separate.
Am I the only one coming into this not wanting March to die? I mean why do people want her dead so much? This was her first time fighting joe. The only thing March has accomplished prior to this is making money and directing Leet in the previous fight.
Honestly, I wanted to see more interactions between Apeiron & March. Not necessarily combat, but at least more social encounters. They could have even been between Joe & March's civilian identity.
Am I the only one coming into this not wanting March to die? I mean why do people want her dead so much? This was her first time fighting joe. The only thing March has accomplished prior to this is making money and directing Leet in the previous fight. I was expecting Bakuda + lee to be captured or killed leaving March and lung who he has not had any Significant encounters with. And to be honest I am really tired of Bakuda and her deadman's switch. I really hope the proctorate deals with her in the future and not apeiron.
It's not that everyone wants March dead just because they don't like her or want her in the story anymore. She's been pretty instrumental toward actually giving Joe conflicts he couldn't immediately steamroll right out the gate. But that's the problem. Joe hasn't directly fought her before this point because if he did she would lose. Hell, after this encounter I have a feeling Survey would connect her civilian and cape identities right away with how many scanners he carries around with him everywhere he goes. So the only way she can really show her strengths is through traps and proxies, and we've seen a huge amount of both with her as the origin. She's been leveraging Bakuda, Leet, and Oni Lee as tools, not characters in their own right, so every time we see one of them we're really just seeing Joe face off against March one more time without actually doing anything to resolve the core conflict.
Which is where this chapter comes in. Action starts, things explode, plots are revealed, countered, and shown to be misdirections. Events start speeding up, Joe's finally facing serious danger, he could die. Things come to a head, and after a tense climax with a lead up consisting of many, many, many thousands of words, Joe finally meets the squishy mastermind behind it all.
And then he cripples her and leaves.
All that build up, all the tension, it's like taking in a huge breath of air. And this chapter held the expectation that we'd finally get to exhale. But instead it got delayed.
March is fine, as a character. What people are complaining about is the lack of a satisfying resolution.
It's not that everyone wants March dead just because they don't like her or want her in the story anymore. She's been pretty instrumental toward actually giving Joe conflicts he couldn't immediately steamroll right out the gate. But that's the problem. Joe hasn't directly fought her before this point because if he did she would lose. Hell, after this encounter I have a feeling Survey would connect her civilian and cape identities right away with how many scanners he carries around with him everywhere he goes. So the only way she can really show her strengths is through traps and proxies, and we've seen a huge amount of both with her as the origin. She's been leveraging Bakuda, Leet, and Oni Lee as tools, not characters in their own right, so every time we see one of them we're really just seeing Joe face off against March one more time without actually doing anything to resolve the core conflict.
Which is where this chapter comes in. Action starts, things explode, plots are revealed, countered, and shown to be misdirections. Events start speeding up, Joe's finally facing serious danger, he could die. Things come to a head, and after a tense climax with a lead up consisting of many, many, many thousands of words, Joe finally meets the squishy mastermind behind it all.
And then he cripples her and leaves.
All that build up, all the tension, it's like taking in a huge breath of air. And this chapter held the expectation that we'd finally get to exhale. But instead it got delayed.
March is fine, as a character. What people are complaining about is the lack of a satisfying resolution.
Ah i see so it's not a case of that she survived but how she survived. I felt somewhat similar because I thought she should have been pasted.
What I was mostly talking about were some of the comments about how they were already sick of March. Also I will have to disagree with you on how Joe was fighting March through Bakuda and Uber+Leet. It was stated in the storage yard chapter that Bakuda stoped listening to March; and really only told leet wheat when to swap gear. While we don't really know how much she helped in the Uber Leet mécha fight it seemed much to fast paced to be of MUCH help maybe with the rockets but everything else seemed like Uber and Leet
Edit: also I'm pretty sure joe scanners are broken by the time they meet in person
Sting is grade A bullshit. "Pack more energy that there is in one universe" level of bullshit. It's the weapon Entities use to kill other Entities.
It's extremely unlikely Joe can reverse engineer that one, it's out of his league. In fact, since Joe's passenger his pessimistic for a battle between Joe and an Entity (Scion), it might stay out of his league even with the whole Forge unlocked. That's how bullshit Sting is.
So I could get into the exact technique Oni Lee was using to teleport, or the distinction between reaction speed and movement speed under life fibers, or how the aftermath of the attack affected Joe's mind and ability to function, but addressing those points here wouldn't fix the fact that I wasn't able to bring them across in the story.
So, usually I don't really get involved with the discussions after a chapter is release beyond a silly comment or two, and to be upfront, I haven't caught up with the thread beyond reading the above comment from Lord. But, here, I was compelled strongly enough, by this quote in particular, that I wanted to weight in, for what it's worth.
In my opinion, Lord, you did just fine on the setup in-story. In between the shards giving their hosts a power boost when they face off against Joe, Joe being high off his horse from the pain, the potions and the nanobots plus the rage from seeing the state Garment was in, reinforced by the feedback loop between Tetra and him AND the life fiber energy was enough, way more than enough reason for Joe's critical thinking abilities to suffer a little bit of a concussion and so for March to slink off, barely alive. Right, I forgot the Dust that got embedded into his body, but let's fold that into the pain category.
I think what broke the suspension of disbelief was the fact that a lot of people don't like March, at all. To be fair, I don't either. People are less forgiving and less willing to let things slide when it concerns something that impacts them negatively. Namely here, a result they didn't like. Unfortunately, this is nothing new and not likely to go away anytime soon.
I guess what I meant to say, is that just because a lot of people are saying something, doesn't mean necessarily that it's true. You've done an incredible job so far, far better than anything anyone should expect to get for free, and I think I'm not the only one that awaits impatiently the next update (and stays up way too late to read it). You did especially well, considering you had a set of powers to work with that outgrew, or will outgrow, Worm's setting very fast. I hope this doesn't get you down and I figured it'd show some support instead of lurking for once.
I blame 2am thinking for that, by the way. It's close enough to 3am thinking that I think I can get away with it.
Anyway, sorry if this is just a rehash of what's already been said in thread, but well.
P.S: I'm still gonna be pissed if Fleet doesn't have a british accent in his chauffeur persona, tho. Just saying.
Am I the only one coming into this not wanting March to die? I mean why do people want her dead so much? This was her first time fighting joe. The only thing March has accomplished prior to this is making money and directing Leet in the previous fight. I was expecting Bakuda + lee to be captured or killed leaving March and lung who he has not had any Significant encounters with. And to be honest I am really tired of Bakuda and her deadman's switch. I really hope the proctorate deals with her in the future and not apeiron.
It's such a catch 22, I hate March because we don't really get any build up from her, just all according to keikaku. (TL: keikaku means plan), but we need her asspulls because Joe has become way too powerful
It's such a catch 22, I hate March because we don't really get any build up from her, just all according to keikaku. (TL: keikaku means plan), but we need her asspulls because Joe has become way too powerful
I don't wish to step into any sort of crusade against "authors making decisions I don't like" or anything, but I would like to offer a counterpoint to your last point.
March is in no way necessary to provide Joe with appropriate threats to face. As Lord mentioned in the non-spoilered parts of his message, everything that happens in a story happens because the author decides it should happen. The idea that March has to be used because she is the only "realistic" threat Joe could face is more simulationist in nature than it is narrativistic, and it's one I don't really subscribe to. Based on Lord's comments I would assume he doesn't hold to it either.
Whether any alternate threats Joe ends up facing don't break suspension of disbelief and serve as narratively satisfying story elements all depends on the ability of the author, not on some strict adherence to an "objective" perspective on the setting.
Other capes can come from around the world, known within the original canon or not, attracted by Joe in some fashion. Shards can give boosts to their capes when interacting with Joe as a means to encourage conflict in order to gather data on phenomena they've never encountered before; something I imagine must be rare in the quantities Joe provides and so early on in the cycle. Eldritch forces capable of more direct action still loom in the background, and on a more human level Joe's attempts to navigate society appropriately as a being of such incredible power are surely likely to be troubled. And this is all just possibilities the story has already touched on in some way, not every option available to keep the narrative interesting. I personally feel confident the intent is to actually explore them as opposed to using them as shallow props to hold up weaker aspects of the narrative.
And yes, there are certainly weaker aspects of this story than others. But to assume that a March that perpetually remains the primary antagonist out of a faulty sense of narrative necessity will be one of these weak aspects seems at odds with the writing philosophy Lord has presented to us.
If March lives here I can only assume it is because she has some different narrative role to play later on, rather than repeating her role in this arc endlessly from here on out. Really, if that were the case, she would just fall apart as an antagonist entirely the second Joe was both immune to precog and producing directed anti-precog tech, and it's obvious to anybody that that's an unsatisfying conclusion to a main villain's narrative.
Ah, this may have gotten somewhat away from the post I was replying to, but I hope my point remained coherent.
Am I the only one coming into this not wanting March to die? I mean why do people want her dead so much? This was her first time fighting joe. The only thing March has accomplished prior to this is making money and directing Leet in the previous fight. I was expecting Bakuda + lee to be captured or killed leaving March and lung who he has not had any Significant encounters with. And to be honest I am really tired of Bakuda and her deadman's switch. I really hope the proctorate deals with her in the future and not apeiron.
I think the issue I have specifically with this is that even though March hasn't really interacted much with Joe face to face, she's been extremely prominent narratively. Not a chapter goes by where she isn't mentioned, or that her plots don't have some effect on the story, or that Joe ruminates on how all his tech is basically useless against her striker power. She's been directing the ABB since technically chapter 20, where Joe leaves therapy to try rescuing the Undersiders. That's 28+ chapters and 560k words all basically leading up to this confrontation. For all that I don't like some of the choices made in that section of the fight, I still think it's compelling to see Joe finally face the unseen threat that he's been maneuvering against for most of the story thus far.
It's been stressed repeatedly by Joe himself and his passenger that she is extremely dangerous, and to her credit she has been! I think what a lot of us are disappointed in is that her exit from the chapter was anticlimactic, but not in a way that felt at all satisfying. We didn't see Joe come through the worst Bakuda, Oni Lee, and March could throw at him to finally achieve a victory over March, the ultimate mastermind behind all this, even if it was such a close shave that his cheeks are more blood than skin to claim an almost pyrrhic victory. Instead he gets up, hits March once without really paying any particular attention to it, Oni Lee has a dramatic spray of blood without Joe or the audience finding out what happened to him, and Bakuda is wisely nowhere the action. Then he fixates on Lung, who unlike the rest of the ABB cast, has barely any narrative links to Joe, besides one instance that Joe still doesn't know about and the chapter continues from there.
I'm not saying I disliked the fight against Lung by the way, imo he gets rolled way too easy way too often in fanfic, and fighting a metal dragon with a Gundam is some top tier kaiju fodder. I'm just saying that there's no narrative satisfaction there for me, because Lung has barely even been a bit player in Joe's conflict against the ABB. He also posed the least danger to Joe, even in his weakened state. That was my biggest issue with the chapter, that the narrative focus on Lung really detracted from what initially seemed like a climax to the March story arc, which is instead likely to continue. There are plenty of foils and antagonists for Joe to go up against, like Dragon, Coil, the PRT, and even his family. I would rather see those more character centric arcs continue instead of the March arc which is more about finding a magic bullet to beat her power, and less about a personal rivalry or enmity.
So yeah, wrong on it reappearing in the workshop. The Undersider's knives didn't go back to Joe either, so no precedent or anything either.
I'll agree fleet will probably be restored, due to all the upgrades with fleet still in the system, but depending on the nature of containment, it may be a struggle to escape. We also can't be assured that the truncated copy of Fleet that appears will be the latest one, fiat says "original condition" so it may revert him back to the last upgrade.
It is not as clean-cut as you make it out to be. There are honestly multiple "what if"s to consider.
The Undersiders knives did go back to the Undersiders, specifically Grue's knife, which had been broken by Browbeat.
It gets mentioned in Chapter 15...
EDIT: The broken half still in Grue's possession repaired itself, and the other half disappeared from a secure container on the Rig.
A lot of the complaints made? Arn't actually accurate. I mean the big one everyone keeps repeating 'kinda' is, but if you actually go over the thing in detail and process things and not just go over everything in an adrenaline fueled haze?
To start with Joe is not as fast as many people (including myself) originally thought. It's one of the first things he actually notes coming in tot he first part of the Lee fight, that most of his speed is akin to a psudo-teleportation effect, this actual reaction and physical movement of his limbs is much slower, and notably, that his Motoroid expressly can't keep up with both in terms of overland speed and tracking, hinting at the problem it'll have with Lee.
Secondly, Lee for the most part kept out of view entirely until the big ambush. Which only happened when the big sky distortion effect that killed the Motoroid had already happened. Moreover Lee in that instance was teleporting at speed extreme even for his upgraded normal, in what Joe observes has to be something they planned and maybe practiced in advance, something so fast it was nigh instantaneous.
So... The whole Lee keeping up thing? That actually makes sense. It's also worth noting that Lee still got hit once the planned ambush was over and he no longer was attacking purely from out of sight cover, so while Lee is faster with his new teleport technique, he's not that much faster. Or at least it's within my reach of disbelief.
Next big thing is the big thing and that is Marche surviving. Thing is... she didn't Joe hit her hard enough to kill her, he knew he hit her hard enough to kill her. The only thing she managed was to turn instant lethality into 'your going to die in a minute or three' lethality, which considering how many utterly insane things people have lived through (being cut in half is one of the tamer ones), is again something I'll by.
It's also worth noting he comments how he knows full well that the 'smart' thing to do is to finish her off anyway, but at this point he's in such pain, overloaded by an external source of rage, and also high on a set of primordial predatory instincts, he just has to go for the big immediate threat (Lung) anyway, because fuck it, something needs to hurt, and a rival predator is threatening him. It isn't until well into the fight, when he's unlocked a new mental stabilizing power that he actually starts getting back to full rationality.
So... yeah seriously if your angry at the set up, reread the thing. I mean I get why so many people missed these things they're small details, often only mentioned once or twice, in an utterly huge update, which is so fast paced it's practically begs you to switch to speed reaching techniques to see 'what happens next'. But clear explanations for everything that happen are right there in the story.
Wrong! Grue didn't lose his knife, it was just damaged by browbeat. In Chapter 8:
He pulled out his karambit. There was a fracture that snapped off the blade right at the point where it curved. "Faced down against Browbeat. Lisa said his biomancy would stand up to normal blows but the knife would be enough to cause him some trouble without killing him." His face turned grim. "You were right about them not being good against force fields. He was able to catch the knife and break it."
I haven't had time to skim through the thread, but I, for one, loved the OVER 40,000 WORD UPDATE!!!!! (*squee*)
Also, can we all agree that the world's gonna think Aperion's a Thread-Puppet/Werewolf Case 53 who tinkered himself into having a fake, humanoid body? I mean, Weld and many other Case 53s seem to think that. Dragon herself thought that it was an improbable (but possible) possibility --given how Joe's armor has always had full body coverage.
And given Joe's comment about having "five different types of healing tech" that could, potentially, bring Weld to a closer semblance of humanity, the PRT are likely going to draw the conclusion that Aperion was trying to develop a healing/biomancy/wet-tinkering tech that would work on himself.
Edit after the fact: sorry if someone's already brought this up. Real life is shit right now and I haven't had the time/energy to read through the thread.
I really hope that Joe can finally strike a decisive blow against the ABB's parahumans this time. They function as a good way for him to have fights that are actually a challenge but they're honestly infuriating how they keep getting away from him and the consequences of their atrocities. Ward canon proved that March isn't as unstoppable as Joe's power seems to think she is, and I want to see the look of despair on her face when she faces justice.
That being said, I can't wait until Joe can combine the tech from Gundam, Big O, and Robotech to form his own custom machine. I've always held Gundam as my favorite mecha series, so I hope his mech takes that as his primary inspiration with the other series added on. Can't wait for the next update!
Typos/Suggestions:
ragnite based - ragnite-based
you shield, - your shield,
rapid fire - rapid-fire
all together. - altogether.
super metals - super-metals
speed aura - speed that aura
laser focused - laser-focused
Its apparently - It's apparently
projectile hurled - projectile was hurled
first hand - first-hand
free form - free-form
post sparring - post-sparring
skulls separation - skulls' separation
speed enhancing - speed-enhancing
precedents the - precedents that the
more yet digging. - yet more digging.
dissembly, - disassembly,
so merely - so he merely
size of fast - size of a fast
its running - it's running
star struck. - starstruck.
out of the hospital. - out of the hospital."
sign ups - signups
duration that risk - duration than risk
double checked, - double-checked,
baren space - barren space
muscle reducing - muscle-reducing
form fitting. - form-fitting.
world class - world-class
cyberpunk level - cyberpunk-level
Behemoth grade - Behemoth-grade
one then the - one than the
space capable - space-capable
water themed - water-themed
this take." - this take?"
partially completed - partially-completed
Tones of - Tons of
hand made - handmade
does it work." - does it work?"
power alone. - power alone."
duplicates 20% - duplicates' 20%
over prepared - over-prepared
full load out, - full loadout,
roof tops - rooftops
fiber enhanced - fiber-enhanced
Chapter 40:
sausage like - sausage-like
surface level - surface-level
red skinned - red-skinned
wide eyed - wide-eyed
auto graph - autograph
head shots - headshots
attention grabbing - attention-grabbing
awkward sounding - awkward-sounding
personal stuff. - personal stuff."
Lords Port - Lord's Port
spill over, - spillover,
second guessing - second-guessing
counter measure - countermeasure
full scale - full-scale
near indestructible - near-indestructible
material based - material-based
fusion powered - fusion-powered (2 changes)
back burner - backburner
Endbringer sized - Endbringer-sized
neck deep - neck-deep
near mythical - near-mythical
high tier - high-tier
free for all - free-for-all
March directed - March-directed
highly damaging - highly-damaging
god I should've gone to sleep 3 hours ago. Very hype chapter, did enjoy, though the random interjection of perks did once again get somewhat grating.
Anyways, before I move on to the long list of edits, I have a question regarding dialogue tags for Lord, whenever they see this. Namely, the whole vs thing. Afaik, the comma is the correct one, but it is not the one that you've been writing. So my question is, do you have a consistent choice between this which I can look for inconsistencies with (i.e. dialogue ends with periods, and tags begin capitalized)? Let me know.
Edits:
need a quote before this
I'd replace 'his' with 'Chen's' to clarify whose eyes.
this is what I was talking about above, since this is 'closer' to being traditionally correct, yet is not the way you generally write dialogue. Just thought I'd draw attention to it.
'the' Boat Graveyard
'left an open' I think is you want here.
I just don't understand this sentence. Also, 'entire sections of the year'???
lowercase 'a'
spelled 'aerial'
capitalize 'Docks', I think. That seems more consistent with the rest of the chapter, so...
hyphenate 'omni-dimensional' to maintain consistency with the rest of the chapter.
I think you want 'shifting' instead of 'sifting' here.
'saw'
I'd change 'was making' to 'made' to keep in tense a bit better.
With regards to the comma vs period dialogue, the way I learned it was to use a comma if you're interrupting a statement (Your first example) and a period if the first statement is complete (Second example, basically two sentences of dialogue). No idea how right this is, but that's what I've been using.
All these comments and no one pointed out one crucial detail
Joe really loves his peaches of mind:
Edit. Also is March alive?
I did not seen any confirmations of her survival in this chapter, even after re-reading the moment of joe's "revival" a couple of times(Gods, someone who looks like the dead man walking just come close and personal to you and the next thing you know is PAIN. That some Dead Space shit. LOVE IT.). But i saw a lot of complaints about her survival, soooo... I confused. Again.
The story of me being in this thread becomes the story of constant confusion.
plates
sighted
spatial
sight
penchant
gaped
shifted
and hidden
converge
aerial
ache
finger
her
visor
shifting
his head
neck
His right forearm
of
them
them en
but
raking
Lung's
peace
slammed
cracked
Siphoned
breakwater
I believe most if not all the typos would be easy enough to spot with the small sectioning but if not feel free to point me to which quotes you can't see the typos in and I'll take another look that said I've been reading this post for about a full day (interspersed with real life stuff getting in the way of course) and I'm tired and going to get some sleep now good night all
I realize that writing a distracted, unstable, or otherwise incoherent mind-set is difficult to do while still being understandable, even more so when the pov isn't entirely first person. But there needs to be something beyond telling the readers that Joe was completely fucked up, as most of us skipped right by that. There needed to be a bit more show to go along with descriptions and statements. Even transformed, bloody, roaring Joe just seemed kinda...stated. Like Apeiron on patrol, or Joe tinkering. It's just there. I realize this isn't the clearest advice, and I'm lacking the jargon to convey precisely what I mean. But while there were plenty of direct and indirect statements about how Joe was not in any position to be thinking clearly (description of injuries, description of Tetra urges, pain, description of roaring, commenting that fighting Lung was a bad idea and then doing it anyway repeatedly, etc.)...the overwhelming majority of people commenting on how Joe shouldn't have acted the way that he did, or that there was plot armor being handed out shows that us readers either didn't catch the intended meaning, or we didn't believe it. And that's going to be problematic since one of the characters major elements is not being a perfectly composed or experienced cape, but rather a genius introvert that keeps wading deeper into the deep end once he figures how to stay afloat.
Thank you for your comments @Nalanaya. I wanted to specifically address this, because it was something I had intended to do. I wanted to do another pass of the chapter to try to change the tone of Joe's perspective at varying points to try to better convey the effect on his mind. Unfortunately, developing distinct writing styles for when he was pain addled and incapacitated, then overwhelmed by alien mental influence, then drowning in primal instincts, and then granted sudden Zen like clarity was something I didn't have time to complete.
The fights in this chapter were actually quite complicated to manage and took a lot of my time. When I finally had a chance to start going over the story I was within a couple of hours of my posting time, and decided to devote what time I could to polishing the preamble and doing what proofreading I could. I wanted to introduce different tones to the perspective of the fight, but I also wanted the Chen preamble to be about twice the length with more of a look at the ABB's operations before and after March and Bakuda joined. I wanted to add an addendum covering the public and hero's reaction to the fight, and go into more details of the future of the city. This is nothing new. Last chapter I had wanted to do the emergency alert as a PHO thread, but just didn't have enough time.
The fact is you aren't getting the best possible version of this story. You're getting the best version that can be written in seven days around the restrictions commitments of a full time job and other personal obligations. I am devoting most of my free time to writing, but that varies from week to week and sometimes I can't get as much polish on a chapter as I would like. I'm not using that as an excuse, bad writing is bad no matter the reason for it, but there are some limits that I can't always get around.
Committing to a weekly schedule has helped keep this story going, but it does mean compromises in other areas. It's not a schedule I want to let slip beyond scheduled breaks or emergencies because I'm afraid if I start taking extra time that will never end. I can't count the number of writing projects I've sat on indefinitely just because they weren't perfect. I want to do the best job I can with this story, but most of all I want the story to keep going. As such I've committed to doing the best I can with the time I can spare for this work.
Thank you.
Also, I've seen some reactions to the spoilers I released in my last post and want to add some clarifications. Given that some readers were on the fence about continuing with the story I think it's only fair to be open with them about what's coming up in the future. I appreciate their commitment to this work, and would prefer to give them the opportunity to make an informed decision regarding whether they want to continue following the story rather than be disappointed in the future.
Lung is dead. The comment about him being captured by Cauldron was not intended to be ambiguity on my part, merely and explanation of the only way he could have survived. Also a touch of dark humor, given that being held like that would be a fate worse than death, both in general and for him in particular. The ambiguity about Lung's death is going to be a significant point in the story, but for anyone who wants a final ruling, dead. If I ever go back on this you can consider it a retcon with all the vitriol such an act deserves.
I was ambiguous with exactly what happened to March, so anyone who wants a detailed explanation of what will be the result of her actions can find out here.
The people who guessed 'zombie March' were closest to the truth. March uses her explosion version of sting on a call gem, which is 25 times larger than a call bead and exponentially more powerful. Call gems are significant links to shard space, and sting excels in punching through dimension. Combined they can create a temporary portal from the physical world to shard space. One of the canon features of shard space, or the Firmament, is that it can restore injured parahumans instantly from the data stored in their shards. In addition to numerous other problems that are caused when a portal to shard space opens, it created enough of a link to somewhat restore March's body. The problem being that the restoration is being done at a distance through a improvised portal. So not only is the healing wrong, but you have problems with the connection. So you have 'zombie March' being remote piloted through the mind stored in her shard with a bad connection. To all the world this is basically severe brain damage and a body that been 'healed' to a passenger's rough guess of what a human should be.
There's a element of monkey paw wishes here, with March getting her shard space 'access', but with serious consequences to her functionality. She still has powers and would be something of a threat in person (though probably not to Joe), but she's not going to be coordinating anyone. Too removed from humanity to relate properly. Even if the ABB still had a slave army she wouldn't be able to do anything with them, and any manipulation of other capes is pretty much off the table.
I have to say, the comments about this being a return to the status quo or an excuse for never-ending fights against the ABB were particularly mystifying to me considering this entire arc was about the ABB falling as an organization. Joe has released the key to track all the bombs that have been implanted in members of the ABB, both conscripts and career members. They are still on the dead man's switch, but they cannot be used for any ABB operations. The PRT will have the thankless task of managing the situation, which will mostly involve isolating them and trying to figure out how to remove the bombs (Clockblocker and Browbeat might have a very busy week).
Oni Lee is incapacitated and thus incapable of acting as a force multiplier. He also took a serious hit to his remaining mental functions pushing his power like he did. March is not able to function on her previous scale, meaning no March directed coordination spread over the city. This also means her thinker spoofing will be limited in range. Tattletale and Dinah's powers will start working normally in most situations. The remaining functional members will have to lean on existing contacts (i.e. Uber and Leet) or any deals that were set up before this mess. There is some irony in the fact that the ABB has been knocked down to around the usual level of Uber and Leet
The immediate future of the story will be more about dealing with the aftermath of the current situation than any conflicts with the ABB. You have the impact of a major incident with lingering effects and an uncertain future. Everyone will be scrambling to get the best position they can, hero and villain alike (Also rogues and independents). You had a week of hell culminating in a devastating attack that was capped with a massive display of power and persistent consequences for a significant portion of the city.
The North Docks in particular saw coordinated bombings, gang fights on the outlying areas, the spread from the Dust explosion, the highest concentration of Minovsky Particles, and the presence of a temporary shard space rupture all within a single encounter. The only thing they managed to avoid was the wave, and anyone in the North Docks will probably have limited sympathy for people who complain about their favorite coffee shop getting flooded.
Once again, please use spoiler tags when discussing any of these details in the thread.
