I think you're ignoring the fact that Coil's power came from Cauldron rather than being more natural, as well as overestimating the costs on the shard to use his power.
Coil's power just simulates what would happen if Coil made decision X & Y, for as long as he would choose to keep that decision up in the air. Compare that to Contessa's, which does the same thing but instead of a decision it uses the precog to map out the future to as long as it takes for some condition to be true, and knows this condition will be true by somehow sorting through all possible futures to find the most optimal one that makes the condition true. It does this for any number of conditions simultaneously, constantly recalculating every time someone triggers and disrupts its current plans. Or Dinah, who can give her power a condition and it looks into virtually all futures, looking who knows how long into the future, and then sorts them to find out the ratio of ones that have her condition come true to the ones that do not. There's also the Simurgh, whose power I believe works like Dinah's except it doesn't need a condition to activate and is simply always on, allowing her to look and sort through many possible futures at her leisure and is constantly recalculating. Compared to those I think Coil's power would actually be much more simple to use in many ways.
Secondly, there's the fact that Coil got his power from Cauldron. Which means Eden never had a chance to put limits on it. Contessa's power could look at and predict the Entities fine until she hesitated and Eden manually installed limits on it. Dinah is blocked from seeing certain things, but she's able to work around that somewhat, showing that her shard is predicting them and is simply not telling her what it's found in regards to things it's been programmed to keep quiet on. Coil's power never had the chance to have restrictions put on it, it was part of Eden up until she died and then did nothing until it bonded with him. There's no reason for it to be unable to predict Entities or Endbringers, nor any other Cauldron made precog.
That's neat and all, but your line of reasoning has a key flaw.
Take everything you just said and apply it to Coilx2+. Whatever the cost of Dinah's power is (Assuming it's a simulation), Coil's shard has to shoulder that cost every time it's anticipated that Dinah will use her power. Whatever the cost of PtV (Again, assuming simulation) Coil's shard has to shoulder that cost every time it's anticipated Contessa will use her power. Given Contessa's influence on world events and how "plugged in" coil tries to be in canon, it's not a viable option to simply focus on Coil's immediate environment: his power has to model the entire world perfectly accurately, down to every single individual case of precognition that happens. It will often have to do this twice -once for the fake/simulated timeline and another time for the timeline it ultimately anticipates Coil keeping.
Even the Simurgh's existence represents a passive cost being shouldered twice over by Coil's shard every time he "splits timelines".
So whatever the expense involved in any given piece of precognition, you add all that to Coil's power's cost. Twice, in many cases. Worse, it has to be engaging in a worldwide/cross-dimensional clairvoyance effect, and Scion's interlude gives us an idea of the cost involved for doing so: that a few seconds of running worldwide clairvoyance is 1/10th of a year of Scion's "battery". (Which seems to be predicated on the assumption that a year's worth of charge is estimated based on running around saving puppies and fighting Endbringers, not on "sit around doing nothing") We never get a definitive idea of how much of a "battery" shards are meant to have, but we do know the Entities intended to blow up Earth after about 330 years, and we also know that Taylor burns out Door in the fight against Scion by overrusing his power. I find it extremely unlikely that Coil's shard has enough of a "battery" for his extensive abuse of his power to have not burned it out already, with these kinds of costs attached. Since Door is a Cauldron cape just like Coil, it's not even possible to imagine that Eden's shards are tapping into a collective power source due to being broken, where Scion's shards have separated "batteries", because if that was true then Door's power wouldn't have burned out or all (Well, multiple anyway) Eden-derived capes would have simultaneously lost their powers from Door overruse, not just Door.
Meanwhile, the fact that he's a Cauldron cape is an extremely weak justification for him, and him alone, ignoring Endbringer/Scion precog-immunity. It is explicit canon that Endbringers and Scion foil precognition universally -the Protectorate does not believe this is a common problem, they are convinced it's a universal problem. It is tremendously unlikely that Coil is the only Cauldron cape to have precognition, and if his power is simply not properly bound in this regard it's extremely likely that at least a few other individuals taking the same formula as him also got precognition and also got it without that binding... but no, canon is blunt that no such individual is known to exist. Dinah's ability to work around at the edges of this stuff -pseudo-predicting Leviathan very shortly before he arrives, knowing about the apocalypse but not knowing it's Scion, etc- is the closest thing to an exception canon gives us. The Protectorate would highly value anyone who proved to even partially bypass Endbringer precog-blocking -this isn't something that would fail to crop up over the course of the story because it wasn't important enough for anyone to mention it.
The easiest way to dodge the power supply problems I laid out is to assume that Coil's power can't accurately model other precog powers and so on, but that's incompatible with canon -his abuse of Dinah's power wouldn't work half as reliably if this were so, and worse yet as a Cauldron cape his power would bug out in Contessa's presence, even if he didn't know she has powers. If other precognitive effects aren't adequately accounted for by his power, Coil would know beyond a shadow of a doubt that his power isn't "creating worlds", because his power would bug out on him -he would want to "close a timeline" and have it fail because his power thought he'd close the other one, but precognitive effects interfered with his power's predictions, he'd ask Dinah questions in a "dropped timeline" and they'd be hilariously bad answers, constantly, he'd have a plan go awry thanks to a new trigger his power failed to predict and, again, try to "close the timeline" and have it fail because his power didn't anticipate new triggers because new triggers are immune to precognition to the point that Scion thinks to himself that it's impossible to exactly anticipate them!
In other words, even an "unbound" precognition effect is foiled by trigger events -the Entities aren't telling precog shards "Don't tell your host about upcoming trigger events", the shards are per se failing to anticipate them because trigger events are beyond the ability of Entities to fully anticipate, full stop.
Now, we can politely give this theory the benefit of the doubt and assume that Coil's shard hacks his brain so hard that he fails to notice all the glaring inconsistencies. Why not. (Never mind that there's no conceivable reason for his shard to care about hiding the truth from him, and that's the only sensical motive I can imagine for doing such) Problem: what about his employees? Why don't they notice Coil being weird, unstable, twitchy, unexpectedly incompetent? Why do people treat Coil as weirdly self-assured and knowledgeable, no exceptions, if his power is hacking his brain to hide its failings from him, causing him to periodically be a clueless, bumbling moron who still thinks he's the invincible and brilliant Coil?
There's enormous problems with the "simulated precognition drip-fed to Coil" WOG, and "solutions" to the problems just make things worse and are impossible to reconcile with what was actually written. Coil, in canon, is quite explicit that he doesn't know how his power works and entertains the possibility that it "creates worlds", and is of the conviction that he chooses which thing he keeps. This is impossible to reconcile with the WOG without invoking massive brain hacking, which itself creates all kinds of problems. Coil is not stupid.
It's important to keep in mind Tattletale is cheating/cold reading people: she can gather a little information, make a guess, and be reasonably certain she got it right/is getting warmer. As such, she can appear to pull information from nowhere by saying something and paying attention to the reaction or lack of such: there's maybe three or four possible theories, she picks one at random, if it's right she pretends she knew that when she said it when in actuality she was probing.
It's also easy to assume there's body language that Tattletale is reacting to that Taylor isn't picking up on. The fact that Taylor can't see where Tattletale got the information from isn't the same thing as "Tattletale got it from nowhere". (Which is one of the things that makes it hard to say to what extent Tattletale is functioning as an Author's Mouthpiece in a given scene)
I'm aware that most people are weirdly good at suppressing the squick factor when they personally dislike someone -and Coil is the most universally loathed character in Worm, as far as I can tell- but there's also the implications having the potential to provoke bile. That I wrote the scene says something about me, and what it says isn't Ghoul King is a wonderful person who wants what's best for everyone! Friendship is Magic!
---
I suspect I'll have 1.x up tomorrow, though if things go smoothly it might go up later today.
That is one of the longest non-story posts I've seen by an author. And it's about Coil shenanigans !
Just to throw my 10c in, I'm prettry sure that Wildbow threw in Coil as a timeline-splitter, then WoG'ed it later as a precog power BECAUSE of this "Not enough energy in the entire universe to create another universe" theory. It's a story, and as long as a story doesn't break it's own universe's rules a lot can be hand-waved. Much less a theory how something can work with theoretical real life physics.
You can just as easily say Coil's power works simply by saying this universe/timeline splitting and re-joining is something that happens naturally and Coil's shard just makes him aware of himself in one other time-line. In this theory it is perfectly possible to both take your keys on a walk AND leave them at home. 5 years later when both timelines have re-joined, does it really matter? In 5000 years and all the timelines Coil has been part of has mostly re-merged save for a .00005 percent where his plan succeeded, does it really matter or noticeable to people in that timeline in any meaningful way?
Coil can predict the Endbringers, Eidolong and Zion with his powers. He's the only precog whom can do that with the canon shards. Don't go around finding contrived reasons as to why "it doesn't make sense!" It's honestly not necessary.
I'm aware that most people are weirdly good at suppressing the squick factor when they personally dislike someone -and Coil is the most universally loathed character in Worm, as far as I can tell- but there's also the implications having the potential to provoke bile. That I wrote the scene says something about me, and what it says isn't Ghoul King is a wonderful person who wants what's best for everyone! Friendship is Magic!
it just means your human...as a species we are morally grey. to sound trite we all have that little devil sitting on our shoulder just the same as the angel...and we listen to both. With what happens every day in the news i don't think its much of a stretch to be able to imagine and write about stuff like this. Actually doing it in real life is a different manner altogether and simply because you can write about it doesn't mean your anywhere close to doing so.
also to throw my two cents in about Coils power: i always thought it was a matter of time travel shenanigans, not actually splitting time but perceiving two paths at the same time. then choosing which one to keep. the whole "two paths in a wood" thing but with him able to live both paths at the same time.
I'm aware that most people are weirdly good at suppressing the squick factor when they personally dislike someone -and Coil is the most universally loathed character in Worm, as far as I can tell- but there's also the implications having the potential to provoke bile. That I wrote the scene says something about me, and what it says isn't Ghoul King is a wonderful person who wants what's best for everyone! Friendship is Magic!
That's neat and all, but your line of reasoning has a key flaw.
Take everything you just said and apply it to Coilx2+. Whatever the cost of Dinah's power is (Assuming it's a simulation), Coil's shard has to shoulder that cost every time it's anticipated that Dinah will use her power. Whatever the cost of PtV (Again, assuming simulation) Coil's shard has to shoulder that cost every time it's anticipated Contessa will use her power. Given Contessa's influence on world events and how "plugged in" coil tries to be in canon, it's not a viable option to simply focus on Coil's immediate environment: his power has to model the entire world perfectly accurately, down to every single individual case of precognition that happens. It will often have to do this twice -once for the fake/simulated timeline and another time for the timeline it ultimately anticipates Coil keeping.
It could "cheat" by tweaking one of the timelines to force him to choose the other whenever it runs out of simulation "stack space". Or if it knows Coil is going to discard the timeline where he asks Dinah questions, it could simulate the answers with less accuracy than Dinah's actual power gives.
Just to throw my 10c in, I'm prettry sure that Wildbow threw in Coil as a timeline-splitter, then WoG'ed it later as a precog power BECAUSE of this "Not enough energy in the entire universe to create another universe" theory. It's a story, and as long as a story doesn't break it's own universe's rules a lot can be hand-waved. Much less a theory how something can work with theoretical real life physics.
I'm pretty sure yeah, Wildbow concluded that his original explanation was problematic, but if so he really didn't think through the implications of his new explanation.
Though honestly the "not enough energy in the universe to create another universe" thing is a red herring idea. If Coil's power actually is creating worlds, it only needs enough to reasonably fake the local environment, especially since the Entities deliberately close off various realities as-is. The rest of the universe can suffer for this just fine.
You can just as easily say Coil's power works simply by saying this universe/timeline splitting and re-joining is something that happens naturally and Coil's shard just makes him aware of himself in one other time-line. In this theory it is perfectly possible to both take your keys on a walk AND leave them at home. 5 years later when both timelines have re-joined, does it really matter? In 5000 years and all the timelines Coil has been part of has mostly re-merged save for a .00005 percent where his plan succeeded, does it really matter or noticeable to people in that timeline in any meaningful way?
That's getting into philosophical territory, rather than raw physics/mechanical territory.
But yes, my essential argument is that it's easier to assume timeline stuff happens naturally and the Entities are piggybacking such than it is to posit that his power is precognition-based and faking.
Coil can predict the Endbringers, Eidolong and Zion with his powers. He's the only precog whom can do that with the canon shards. Don't go around finding contrived reasons as to why "it doesn't make sense!" It's honestly not necessary.
My argument is basically "If I give the WOG every benefit of the doubt, even completely unreasonable ones, it still doesn't make sense". That's not looking for a "contrived" reason for why it doesn't make sense -that's looking for ways it can make sense, and failing catastrophically even though I'm rigging the result in favor of the WOG.
It's like having a competition between two teams, rigging things so that Team A will win so long as they show up for the competition, no matter how much better Team B performs, and then Team A fails to show up for the event because they set themselves on fire through sheer incompetence.
it just means your human...as a species we are morally grey. to sound trite we all have that little devil sitting on our shoulder just the same as the angel...and we listen to both. With what happens every day in the news i don't think its much of a stretch to be able to imagine and write about stuff like this. Actually doing it in real life is a different manner altogether and simply because you can write about it doesn't mean your anywhere close to doing so.
What you write does say something about you. Maybe it doesn't indicate I'd do it in a heartbeat in real life (In fact, if I would do it in a heartbeat in real life I'd probably avoid writing such so nobody finds it plausible I'd do such, so arguably it's evidence to the contrary), but it does indicate I don't shy away from the idea. Most people are sufficiently squeamish (Excuse me, "moral") that even in writing they skirt the issue -people mock stuff like comic books never using the word "kill", but I've seen tons of fanfiction/original fiction of the This Is Dark And Serious And Grim type talk about the bad guys "killing" good guys while anytime the good guys kill a bad guy a euphemistic phrase/word gets used, every time, without exception. ("Destroy", "Exterminate", "Dealt with", "Eliminated"...) It's subtle compared to the stuff people mock, but it's still happening. Most people shy away from accepting culpability for the death or torture of a human being, even within a fictional context, with even people inclined to be dark and edgy almost universally de-humanizing the people they imagine having terrible things done to them by our heroes, so that it isn't really killing/torturing a human being, it's torturing/killing a "monster".
(The exceptions instead revel in torture and bloodshed and pretend they're just being more honest/realistic than other people, it's not a commentary on their mental state, honest! They also tend to be pretty blatant fantasies)
The extent to which I "shied away" from the concept was providing a warning that it might squick people. I felt no need, in-story, to frame my actions as morally defensible, and while it hasn't really come up out-of-story as yet (Nobody has gone "Ghoul King, you monster!") I also haven't felt the need to defend it on a moral level on that level, either.
That suggests something about how highly I prioritize appearing to be a moral/decent being. (Hint: not very)
also to throw my two cents in about Coils power: i always thought it was a matter of time travel shenanigans, not actually splitting time but perceiving two paths at the same time. then choosing which one to keep. the whole "two paths in a wood" thing but with him able to live both paths at the same time.
Eh, you're probably not a sociopath, and laughing at Exploding Canon isn't evidence of a complete lack of human empathy. (Most people only turn on their empathy for people they consider to be friends/family/comrades anyway)
I'll admit I still have no idea why people find stuff I write funny, though.
It could "cheat" by tweaking one of the timelines to force him to choose the other whenever it runs out of simulation "stack space". Or if it knows Coil is going to discard the timeline where he asks Dinah questions, it could simulate the answers with less accuracy than Dinah's actual power gives.
The first point is getting back into the "blatant brain hacking" problem if it's still hiding the truth from him, while the latter requires his power always accurately anticipate which timeline he will want to drop... while starting from the premise that it's kind of a shitty precog power.
1.x
Taylor
Dad and I don't usually have the news running in the morning, so the first I know of it is seeing the police cordon and PRT trucks around where school... used to stand.
My first thought is: Emma.
It takes longer for me to unpack the thought. There's worry that the girl who was once my best friend might be dead, tentative relief that the nightmare might be over (Too late, far too late), guilt at the relief and anger at myself that I still care about her, that my first thought is wondering if Emma is okay.
It's only after that I focus on things I should've been focusing on from the beginning. What happened? Why are the police and PRT both involved? (I suppress an irrational fear that they're after me, after Skitter. Even Armsmaster doesn't know who Skitter is, what school she goes to) Why can't I see the school? I don't see rubble, or trees, or anything.
I tentatively tap into bugs in the area, frustrated I can't actually see what they see, trying to block out the murmuring of other people on the bus so I can focus on the bugs. I'm surprised to find almost no bugs where the school should be. Even the usual earthworms are gone. What bugs there are seem to be flying around in an open, empty space. I confirm I can still tell that other bugs in the area are in walls, on walls, running into walls, and so on. Not my power getting glitchy. The school is... missing entirely? And the ground underneath it for... I'm not sure. It takes far too long for flies to touch bottom.
I'm getting impatient with traffic, which is getting slower the closer we get. Finally I signal the bus to stop and get off the instant I can: it's faster to walk, with how bad car traffic is getting. There's too many gawkers, cars not moving or moving too slowly as they look and even take pictures. There's plenty of people trying to get a look on foot, but it's not enough of a crush to stop me, and the bugs give me an idea of where the crowding is worst so I can avoid them entirely.
I'm shocked at how completely Winslow is gone. There's nothing left at all, no building no grounds, just a crater like a giant scooped out the building and enough dirt underneath it to support it and walked off with everything. The crater is bizarrely smooth and spherical, the ground just sort of falling away in a circular shape to form the crater. It's very obviously the product of a parahuman ability: a crater produced by a violent impact, such as a meteor, would be surrounded by a ring of raised dirt and made an enormous mess in general. So an exotic parahuman ability, not simply a blaster like Purity deciding to level the school.
That derails my thought process entirely: why did a parahuman destroy the school?
I have a horrible moment where I'm thinking someone else got shoved into a locker and triggered and did whatever this is to the school, in a blind panic or lashing out, and I somehow failed to notice someone going through the kind of misery that made me trigger. It's actually a small relief when I get an angle on a nearby building spray-painted with a message from the ABB. Threats aimed at the Protectorate, using my school as an example. That's comforting, compared to the alternative.
Even if it does imply the ABB has another incredibly dangerous cape. Lung wasn't enough for them?
I'm close enough now to hear some of what the police are saying. There's a lot of repetition, "stay back, you might hurt yourself", "this is a crime scene, don't interfere with the scene", "we don't know who did this, but we're on the case", mostly variations on these sentiments, but I'm picking out a handful of important things.
They are reasonably sure no one was harmed. The night janitor has been confirmed to be alive. (Which of course makes him a suspect) That tangled knot is back again, tying back to Emma. She's probably not dead or even injured. (Relief? Disappointment? Both?) A nameless dread settles on me when it occurs to me that Sophia is fine too.
This definitely happened sometime last night, currently estimated at sometime between 2 and 4 in the morning.
No witnesses have stepped forward. ("If you saw anything last night, probably somewhere around 3 in the morning, please let us know immediately. Even if you think it was nothing, it might be critical.")
They are not currently assuming the ABB did this: it's unlikely but possible that someone is framing the ABB to take advantage of the loss of their biggest hitter and their leadership in one go. They won't make official statements beyond that on this topic, but I get the distinct impression they think it's the Empire if it's not the ABB.
Winslow High students are all exempt from school for a minimum of two weeks while the situation is being sorted. Students are free to try to enroll in other schools in the meanwhile if they don't want to wait for whatever plan is being developed, but they are also free to wait for said plan to be implemented. Some cops are talking about how Winslow will probably move into a new building, but other cops seem to think that Winslow is probably going to be absorbed into the other schools outright, staff and students alike.
I wince at the thought of Mr. Gladly working at Arcadia.
It takes a minute for it to dawn on me: I'm free.
Temporarily, I immediately amend. Don't get too excited, this isn't a permanent escape, this is just a couple of weeks of safety if I want it. Depending on how the wind blows, maybe a good excuse to try to get into Arcadia? It's supposed to be a good school... though, the Wards are supposed to go there. For all I know one of them might be able to tell I'm Skitter, somehow. Is the supposed quality worth the risk? For that matter, what's Emma going to be doing? If we both get into Arcadia, this might just be a temporary reprieve... and I don't trust myself to actually understand Emma. I really don't know whether she'll push for Arcadia, or try to stay at Winslow if they decide to rebuild it, or go to Immaculata, or... I'm not even sure she wouldn't rather move to another city. The Emma I knew would've wanted to stay, but she would've wanted to stay with her best friend.
I'm literally jostled out of my thoughts by someone else trying to get a better view. Something catches my eye, and I move to get a better angle on it. It takes a minute of pushing through the crowd, it's so much denser this close to the schoo- the crater, but finally I can see most of what caught my eye in the first place: one side of a nearby building has a surprisingly large chunk of it taken up by a message demanding the release of Lung.
My heart speeds up and I discreetly use my eyes and my bugs to check for ABB thugs. I don't find any immediately, but I wasn't expecting to. If they're here, they're going to be low-key. Really, realistically I'm safe. The gangs try to be at least somewhat low-key, they don't attack people in broad daylight in the middle of a crowd, and the unwritten rules should protect me anyway, but I can't quite fight off the sudden fear that the ABB know it wasn't Armsmaster who took down their boss and they want revenge on the teenage girl who did the deed.
They didn't use to vaporize schools, either.
Suddenly my fear doesn't seem so irrational.
I momentarily wish I'd taken one of the burner phones with me. I feel very alone and vulnerable, out of costume, no backup, no place to discreetly gather a swarm close enough to actually reach me in time if things I need them. I didn't bring my costume, either. I have the somewhat absent thought that I don't need to fear the Trio finding my costume for at least two weeks, so I can keep my costume on me more consistently, more safely.
Mostly my focus is on getting away without looking like I'm trying to get away. Nothing to see here, just a teenager who's lost interest and is going home now, pay her no mind, move along.
Do I want to go home? Is that really safer than going to the loft? Do I want to put dad at risk?
That decides me: I'm going to the loft. I'm probably being paranoid, but... if I'm not? No, not worth it, nothing is worth risking dad, and he wouldn't be any help if somebody attacked me, either.
After ten or fifteen minutes of walking, tense and looking everywhere as discreetly as I can the whole way, bugs included, I spot a bus pulling up at a stop just ahead, jog to catch up, and board it. It won't take me directly to the loft, but I'll be a lot closer. I relax, just a little, once I'm aboard. Fewer paths to attack, fewer possible assailants, much harder to ambush me, and the bus itself is armor. Still on edge, though. I don't know of any capes in Brockton Bay who could make a school vanish like that, so there's an unknown cape, a new member of the ABB presumably. Can't plan for the unknown.
Thankfully, nothing really happens while I'm on the bus. There aren't any probable gang members boarding it, nor even rowdy college students being loud. It's a nice, quiet ride. I feel vaguely ridiculous, fearing for my life amid a crowd of normal, calm people, poking at their phones or staring out of the window obviously bored out of their skull. I catch myself wringing my hands, stop it, and take a deep breath. Calm. A semblance of calm, at least. People notice when you're the only one upset, I'm trying to keep attention off me.
When the bus finally gets to stop closest to the loft, I've already had to stop myself bouncing one leg nervously, stop wringing my hands again, stop chewing on my lip, and very carefully made myself not pay attention to how the guy on the other side of the bus is eyeing me oddly. I leave at a fast walk, not quite a run, which turns into a jog once I'm outside and then a full blown run once the bus turns off in a different direction.
I'm not able to get myself under control until I've closed the door behind me. I rest against the door for a moment, bemused to realize I feel safer around Alec and Rachel than I did outside. Bugs forewarned me that they're here, but I'd know even if they hadn't -Alec is loudly playing some kind of wargame upstairs, periodically swearing at it, and I can hear Rachel doing something with her dogs. Training them, I think.
I consider getting into costume, but the only people I can find in my radius are the usual pedestrian traffic and three homeless people tucked out of sight, sleeping. I haven't been trailed by someone, unless a power to hide from me is involved. There's no reason to be prepped for a fight, aside from Rachel, and I don't think she's going to attack me again unless I give her a reason to, stronger than simply being in the loft unexpectedly.
Now I'm tense, and soon to be bored, with no outlet. I could work through my thoughts on the school thing... but really, I want to talk with dad about it first. Focusing on the cause of my stress doesn't seem like a good way to unwind, either. Lisa and Brian aren't here... I consider talking to Rachel. No. Sometimes I feel like talking to her is, itself, provoking her. Navigating the minefield that is conversation with Rachel is not going to relax me, and Alec is the only one around to help if something I say sets her off. I'm not sure I really trust him to leap in if that happens.
Which leaves talking to Alec.
Great.
I call out to let them know I'm here. Rachel grunts irritably, loud enough to hear her from the front door, while Alec doesn't even respond. I sigh a little, and make my way to the 'living room' area, trying to be quiet without being too quiet. As I get closer I start to hear Alec speaking in a more level tone, too quiet to make out initially, still periodically punctuated by shouted invective.
When I get there, Alec is indeed playing a wargame, shooting aliens with guns. He's also wearing a headset with a microphone attached, talking into it. I spend a minute watching before I work out that he's playing the game with other people, and he's coordinating with them, when he's not colorfully insulting their heritage, skill, and appearance. This surprises me a little. I'd gotten the impression he wasn't much of a people-person. Admittedly, I have difficulty imagining friends putting up with his behavior, but I get the impression that he's getting just as much as he's giving. I guess some people think shooting aliens and swearing out your teammates is a good time?
I open my mouth to ask Alec what he's doing, then close it, frowning. Just... watching him play is actually helping me calm down, even with the invective and occasional shouting, and it's not like my curiosity is urgent. It can wait until he's done or something.
Ten minutes of watching him play later, I've worked out some basics -that's total ammo, that's current ammo, that's his health meter, the pistol is completely useless- but the most important one is that the clock ticking down at the top of the screen is how long until the match ends, and it's got less than five minutes left. Another couple of minutes in I've worked out scores -red is his team, blue is the enemy team, his team is currently winning, they get points by holding flagged areas- and started to get an inkling that Alec is actually pretty good at the game.
Finally the match is over and Alec turns to look at me after briefly fiddling with the headphones. I'd thought he didn't know I was here. I blurt out "The ABB destroyed Winslow High." Alec raises one eyebrow. "Really? Awesome." He turns back to the game, while I glower at the back of his head. This is serious. I open my mouth to say so, but Alec pre-empts me with "The school was a hole, nobody you care about died or got hurt, your bullying problem is solved without any chance of it being connected to you, and it's a spontaneous spring break. What's not to like?" I... don't actually have a good argument leaping to mind. I feel very clear that what he's saying is Wrong, but I can't put my finger on why.
I brood on that while he returns to heckling his teammates in a new match.
Eventually I conclude my issue is: Alec isn't concerned about the larger implications... but I can't actually shoot down his point. I have reason to be afraid, but not really any reason to feel guilty. Even if it's my fault the school was destroyed -I took down Lung, so it is in some sense- the actual cost has just been inconvenience to a large number of people, almost all of whom have been a direct part of the bullying, or complicit by pretending they don't see anything. (I think of Greg Veder for a moment. I honestly don't know if he's noticed it or not)
I still want to feel like he's wrong, because it's a strictly selfish viewpoint and so should be wrong, but I can't find a way that it is wrong.
I don't like that.
Feeling like being rude, I ask "Any idea when Lisa and Brian are supposed to show?" Alec sounds bored, and only a little distracted, when he responds with "Fearless Leader is supposed to swing by around three in the afternoon. Smaug-" what? "-is busy with something the mysterious boss wants done, I dunno what, she said she might not show until tomorrow." Oh. Great.
I consider going to talk to Rachel. I'm dissuaded by growling that gets my hackles up, fortunately not nearby and cut off by a sharp word from Rachel. I consider going home, and wince at the idea. I really want to talk to someone who knows how much danger I may or may not be in first (And how much danger I might be bringing home, more importantly), and Alec and Rachel are not my first choices.
My stomach growling distracts me. Alec snorts amusedly right after, and I give the back of his head a suspicious look, but I decide to make myself something to eat.
------
Thirty minutes later, I've eaten, and Alec is trying to walk me through how to play the game. When I try to ask why he's doing this, his response is a short, smirk-y "You're a girl". I spend a minute trying to figure out whether he's just said something I should be offended by. It's Alec, so I'm inclined to assume yes, but I'm just mystified. What's the relevance?
Twenty minutes after that, I've gotten competent enough that Alec feels like now's a good time to unleash me on the wider world of internet gaming, and get an explanation of his original, bizarre answer the first time I speak.
"Dude! There's a girl in the match!" "No there isn't." "It's just some pedo pretending." "No no, I have a cousin of a sister who plays sometimes." "NO GIRLS ON THE INTERNET."
I'm vaguely stunned by the explosion of disbelief, and I catch Alec smirking just out of the corner of one eye.
Still, after the first ten minutes of complete disbelief pass (Punctuated by comments from people who apparently know Alec's screenname. "Dude, you finally got through surgery? Good for you man!" and similar, apparently humorous comments) I'm surprised to find I am having fun.
I'm also surprised to find I keep having to fight an urge to scout the terrain in the game with my bugs. Weird.
--------------
By the time Brian shows up I'm reasonably calm and am actually joking back in the matches. Alec is just watching and listening. I keep expecting him to make a sarcastic remark or something, but it keeps not happening.
With a lot more reluctance than I was expecting, I say goodbye after finishing the last match and get off the machine.
Certainly a much better portrayal of Taylor than I can manage. It's also nice to see that, even though she's got a twisted ball of issues, she's still considerably more sane than your SI gifted with Bakuda's life and powers.
Wow, this had the unintended side-effect of terrifying Taylor and making her glad that Armsmaster took the credit for Lung, didn't it? She's more viable to view him as a reasonable authority figure who know what he's doing despite being gruff about it, when we compare this Taylor to her canon counterpart. Nice work on her characterization, I think you got her as she is at the start of canon pretty well, though it was a bit hard for me personally, to see how... weak...? Not-Skitter she is at this point.
"But not quite as weird as when I tried it and it worked. Apparently games are full of glitches and my power takes the idea of 'bug control' metaphorically..."
I'm looking forward to seeing how Tattletale's power puts together the clues.
~ABB blew up Winslow. ABB have new cape. Why did that cape pick Winslow. Is new cape student or teacher? If not why that school over any other location. Random?
~ Boss didn't get in contact like he said he would. Not answering calls. His people don't know anything either. He's just gone missing. Not part of one of his plans... Dead? Kidnapped? Must be by someone who knows his power and can nope it.
~ ABB just released video, kidnapped Thomas Calvert. Time matches Coil's disappearance. Coil is Calvert.
~Taking Skitter into account, new ABB cape has inadvertently helped the Understiders twice now. Inadvertantly? No, deliberatly. New cape knows who Coil is. Knows what his power is. Did this to help us. Knows us.
Oh, absolutely. Doesn't stop people from either genuinely believing it or saying it just because it's a meme and they think that makes repeating it inherently funny. I leave it to the reader to decide what motivated this particular individual.
Well, it's not paranoia if they really are out to get you... and Taylor's had people out to get her for 8 hours a day, every day, for more than a year.
And now she's graduated to antagonizing the Adult Club, where mutilation and death are options on the table if they hate you enough.
Now, obviously most people would be a calm, normal-seeming citizen of the world, ready to mete out glorious vengeance in a planned, coordinated manner after being subjected to a protracted and horrific bullying campaign, having pissed off one of their personal heroes, possibly pissed off a powerful, vindictive gang backed by superpowers, all while being a teenage girl whose power is to control bugs and whose allies are admitted small-time chump-change thugs of no real power just like her, who she doesn't even want to be associated with anyway. Nothing to get upset about.
... wait, shit, I think I have a flaw in my thought process there.
Wow, this had the unintended side-effect of terrifying Taylor and making her glad that Armsmaster took the credit for Lung, didn't it? She's more viable to view him as a reasonable authority figure who know what he's doing despite being gruff about it, when we compare this Taylor to her canon counterpart. Nice work on her characterization, I think you got her as she is at the start of canon pretty well, though it was a bit hard for me personally, to see how... weak...? Not-Skitter she is at this point.
Ghoul King Bakuda am good at reassuring and nurturing people!
... wait, no I'm not.
/1.x tl;dr
Yeah, the thing that took me the longest was getting into the headspace of "I'm a (helpless) victim". It's usually more subtle in canon than what I wrote here, but canon Taylor doesn't really galvanize herself until she commits to joining the Undersiders to save Dinah. Before then she's... fairly passive and reactionary and fearful. It's easy to forget, because that's less than a third of the way into the story by Arc, and individual chapters got longer and longer and individual arcs got made of more and more chapters, so really she spends... I dunno, a tenth? Less? Of the story as fearful Taylor, and a much larger portion of it as Skitter, the Cape Of Your Nightmares.
My favorite aspect is how it ended up organically producing a foundation for a friendship of some sort with Alec, the one Undersider she never really connects to in canon. (Well, I guess you can count Foil and Parian...) I didn't plan that. Great job SI me, you've totally fucked up your expectations of her timeline. Whatever vague plans you have where Regent is acceptable collateral damage? Hahahahaha. Ha.
Certainly a much better portrayal of Taylor than I can manage. It's also nice to see that, even though she's got a twisted ball of issues, she's still considerably more sane than your SI gifted with Bakuda's life and powers.
Ah, the internet. Where the men are LARGE men, the women are also men, and the children are federal agents. The unifying factor is that they all act like assholes on XBox Live.
Coil's Shard interact with other Shards.
Boom. Suddenly his Shard isn't somekind of amazing superhero that shits and pisses over all others, declaring itself as the King of Prediction!
Suddenly, it's just an ordinary shard that communicate with others.
Elegant solution. No need to go all gung-ho saying 'WILDBOW LIES ARARARE NO SENSE CRAZZY'
Sigh. Pretty good portrayal of Taylor, and I'm again reminded why I've never liked her as a character. Pathetic little worm that she is. Suddenly she gets powers and she's supposed to matter and be special. Ugh.
Sometimes I wish there'd be a Superhero fic where just an non-powered guy saves the da- oh wait, Batman. Batman is the best.
I'm looking forward to seeing how Tattletale's power puts together the clues.
~ABB blew up Winslow. ABB have new cape. Why did that cape pick Winslow. Is new cape student or teacher? If not why that school over any other location. Random?
~ Boss didn't get in contact like he said he would. Not answering calls. His people don't know anything either. He's just gone missing. Not part of one of his plans... Dead? Kidnapped? Must be by someone who knows his power and can nope it.
~ ABB just released video, kidnapped Thomas Calvert. Time matches Coil's disappearance. Coil is Calvert.
~Taking Skitter into account, new ABB cape has inadvertently helped the Understiders twice now. Inadvertantly? No, deliberatly. New cape knows who Coil is. Knows what his power is. Did this to help us. Knows us.
Coil's Shard interact with other Shards.
Boom. Suddenly his Shard isn't somekind of amazing superhero that shits and pisses over all others, declaring itself as the King of Prediction!
Suddenly, it's just an ordinary shard that communicate with others.
Elegant solution. No need to go all gung-ho saying 'WILDBOW LIES ARARARE NO SENSE CRAZZY'
I thought that too, and then I re-read through Scion's interlude, and it's quite blunt that shards can't communicate with each other unless their hosts are physically close to each other. (Even the Communication shard seems to operate on this limit, bafflingly) Which doesn't make any sense, really, but if you accept it as canon (It comes from Scion himself, so you'd think it would be accurate) then that explanation only saves Coil's shard in cases like "Stand next to Dinah, 'split' timelines, ask her questions" where his shard is setting-allowed to talk to her shard. Any other case -such as where it's anticipating that some hours down the line he'll interact with a precog- it doesn't save it.
Given he stays plugged into world news as much as he can, much of which is presumably affected by various precogs... that's not remotely compatible with canon.
Elegant solution=shot down by canon.
If you're going to go through the effort of trying to make me sound like a moron, could you bring your A-game, please?
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