Exploding Canon (Worm SI)

[Dakkaface]

You do realize that they canonically lie their asses off to Legend? Keep him in the dark? Tell him Manton is responsible for Case 53s? Why on earth is Legend relevant to Cauldron, when Cauldron cares so little for his opinion?

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Missing the point. Legend is openly gay. Canonically out, proud, married and part of the reason Bet is pretty friendly to homosexuals in general to the point where the neo-Nazi's are really the only ones who care about it. It's an odd claim to say that trans people are an oppressed class and far more likely to trigger because of opression when gays are generally accepted. One doesn't necessarily follow the other, but they are linked. 'Alexandria quietly retards trans rights to create more triggers' just sounds like general audience pandering to demonize her further, and makes little sense in the context of general queer rights on Bet. Alexandria is a generally disliked character by the fandom and to pull her out for a couple chapters, point out some newly created terrible stuff she does, then zap her to the Phantom Zone for eternal solitary confinement feels like a very unsubtle author 'fuck you' to the character that borders on bashing.

I feel it's shoddy writing and this latest chapter is where this fic jumps the shark for me. Thanks for your time @Ghoul King , but I will no longer be reading.

 

[NemoMarx]

'Alexandria quietly retards trans rights to create more triggers' just sounds like general audience pandering to demonize her further,

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At no point did the chapter indicate that the reason trigger rates are higher for trans people is because they're generally oppressed.

Look, as a trans girl, it's obviously better when people are accepting and you can have relationships and stuff. It's not quite like being gay where when that happens you can pretty much live your life, yes? There's logistical issues, hormones take quite a bit of time, and even having entirely supportive people around it's hard to open up about things sometimes. Dysphoria is listed in the DSM for a reason, and it's heavily correlated with anxiety issues and depression even in the best circumstances.

Given that, I don't think saying "Depressed people are probably more likely to trigger on average than normal" is saying much, and that doesn't require Alexandria sabotaging anything while rubbing her hands gleefully.

 

[Dakkaface]

At no point did the chapter indicate that the reason trigger rates are higher for trans people is because they're generally oppressed.

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It looks to be implied fairly heavily here, given that she outright says 'I promote bigots so they'll got out and be shitty to people and cause triggers.' and then follows it up with 'Sorry, not sorry genderqueers.'

Non-parahumans are another matter entirely. Trans people have a higher trigger rate than a randomly selected person, on average, and more critically they are 2.3 times more likely to significantly deviate from typical patterns. Most cases aren't helpful -a power that heals people with a soothing aura of darkness isn't any kind of relevance against Scion or even just an Endbringer, as atypical, psychologically, as it is- but they still present a higher proportion of the kinds of powers that might "break the rules" and provide a real shot at survival.

So even though she has 3-and-a-half plans for how to potentially stamp out 90~% of all forms of relevant bigotry, she's never bothered to run them past Contessa. The suffering of a small percentage of humanity is worth the potential for all humanity, in all dimensions, to survive. She tolerates bigotry in the ranks, and even slightly encourages it -if she can promote a trooper who "hates faggots" or a trooper of peerless moral character, she'll promote the latter. That way, the bigot will be out there in the world, interacting with people with better odds of triggering, helping make those triggers happen.

She tells herself that when they win, she'll make it up to the trans/genderqueer/etc community. Sometimes she even believes it.

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[KnightofMor]

In canon, Cauldron actually made the world worse in several ways. I will skip over Eidolon creating the Endbringers, because that one isn't intentional.

So let's list some of things that Cauldron did or allowed to happen:

Cauldron created the original Slaughterhouse 9.
King the original leader of the Slaughterhouse was either a Cauldron Cape or worked for them. The purpose of the Slaughterhouse 9 was to cause triggers and be the monsters that the masses would run to the Protectorate for protection.

Allowing the Slaughterhouse 9 to continue living after losing control of it.
When the Protectorate Founders go to put them down. Hero is killed because Contessa's POV deems that the Protectorate needs a martyr to increase recruitment and that Manton's power is more useful than Hero's.

The absolute disaster that is Ellisburg operation.
First is that Nilbog's power is deemed useful so they aren't going to go after him full force. The parahumans and PRT forces that show up to fight are given bad intelligence on the situation. This is deliberately set up to get the PRT wholesale slaughtered to kill off the idea that normal humans stand a chance against parahumans.

They actively turned Brockton Bay into a shitty town for their parahuman feudalism experiment.
Beside everything Coil did to actively undermine everything the BB PRT and Protectorate did to attempt to clean up the town. The Mayor of Brockton Bay sold the city to Cauldron to buy his son a Cauldron Vial who became Triumph.

You know someone needs to create a thread where we can read off a complete list of everything Cauldron did to make the world worse.

 

[Dark Ness]

In canon, Cauldron actually made the world worse in several ways. I will skip over Eidolon creating the Endbringers, because that one isn't intentional.

So let's list some of things that Cauldron did or allowed to happen:

Cauldron created the original Slaughterhouse 9.
King the original leader of the Slaughterhouse was either a Cauldron Cape or worked for them. The purpose of the Slaughterhouse 9 was to cause triggers and be the monsters that the masses would run to the Protectorate for protection.

Allowing the Slaughterhouse 9 to continue living after losing control of it.
When the Protectorate Founders go to put them down. Hero is killed because Contessa's POV deems that the Protectorate needs a martyr to increase recruitment and that Manton's power is more useful than Hero's.

The absolute disaster that is Ellisburg operation.
First is that Nilbog's power is deemed useful so they aren't going to go after him full force. The parahumans and PRT forces that show up to fight are given bad intelligence on the situation. This is deliberately set up to get the PRT wholesale slaughtered to kill off the idea that normal humans stand a chance against parahumans.

They actively turned Brockton Bay into a shitty town for their parahuman feudalism experiment.
Beside everything Coil did to actively undermine everything the BB PRT and Protectorate did to attempt to clean up the town. The Mayor of Brockton Bay sold the city to Cauldron to buy his son a Cauldron Vial who became Triumph.

You know someone needs to create a thread where we can read off a complete list of everything Cauldron did to make the world worse.

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True, they did lots of horrible things that contributed to the general shittiness of the world. But, without them, in twenty years, their wouldn't have been an Earth Bet or Aleph or any of those unnamed. Even if Cauldron had started randomly torturing people, eating babies, and burning people for herany, they would still be a net positive. Why? Because they saved all those other, non-shit hole planets that they had little involvement in, when they set up the circumstances that killed Scion. If everybody on Earth Bet had died, then it still would be a net positive, because they saved some many more. The needs of the many out way the needs of the few, that is the essence of Cauldron. If you look at it from a Utilitarian prospective no matter what they (Or Taylor, for that matter, or anyone) did, as long as it advanced the goal of saving the multimeter, they were in the right. Because there is nothing on Earth Bet's that can out way the lives of all those other planets.

 

[consequences]

The objection many have is that the only way a lot of their actions 'helped' is through poorly conceived, badly justified authorial fiat that fails to account for things that we know can and did happen. In an alternate universe where they couldn't have recruited Bonesaw, Blasto, and Panacea to create an infinite cape army, maybe their overall strategy is defensible.

 

[Fellow Sufferer]

It's an odd claim to say that trans people are an oppressed class and far more likely to trigger because of opression when gays are generally accepted. One doesn't necessarily follow the other, but they are linked.

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If you're saying that acceptance of gays would likely lead to acceptance of trans people, I don't believe it will be necessarily so. There's quite a lot of division in the LGBT+ ranks, division they try to conquer with varying results; they are quite capable of bigotry towards their own. If a Thinker were to play them against each other, I can see the rifts getting even deeper.

 

[Ghoul King]

I don't poke around in LGBT/etc much, but when I do I'm astonished at how internally venomous it can get. I have actually seen cases where one segment was getting some progress and that made multiple other segments super-angry basically because they weren't also seeing progress just yet, and it led to ugly, ugly drama.

I'll also comment as an aside that actually the only strong statement that homosexuals are better accepted in Worm as a result of Legend coming out is Taylor's internal monologue -and this is in the same general portion of canon where she attributes the 90s tech boom directly to the influence of tinkers, even though Earth Bet's overall technological level seems to be essentially the same as our own. (I'm pretty sure this is Wildbow nudge-nudge-wink-winking at the audience: that we'll recognize it's roughly 2011 tech and go "No Taylor, tinkers aren't why") Note that gay rights have been improving in the real world as well. It's easy to attribute credit to a public figure without it being true, and Taylor isn't an informed or objective observer.

I'm honestly terribly amused at losing people over "Cauldron bashing." This is an organization whose deepest members consider themselves heinous monsters deserving of death or worse -in canon, explicitly. That seems a bit like getting creative with heinous Slaughterhouse Nine activities and losing people over "Slaughterhouse Nine bashing".

But okay, if the idea of Cauldron engaging in morally reprehensible behavior for what they believe to be the greater good smacks of "Cauldron bashing" to you, I... well, I'm not sure why you think that (Have you never actually read Worm or something?), but okay, whatever. Can't make you like my story, and honestly, the giggle factor makes it hard to be broken up over losing readers this way.

 

[Terrabrand]

Missing the point. Legend is openly gay. Canonically out, proud, married and part of the reason Bet is pretty friendly to homosexuals in general to the point where the neo-Nazi's are really the only ones who care about it. It's an odd claim to say that trans people are an oppressed class and far more likely to trigger because of opression when gays are generally accepted. One doesn't necessarily follow the other, but they are linked. 'Alexandria quietly retards trans rights to create more triggers' just sounds like general audience pandering to demonize her further, and makes little sense in the context of general queer rights on Bet. Alexandria is a generally disliked character by the fandom and to pull her out for a couple chapters, point out some newly created terrible stuff she does, then zap her to the Phantom Zone for eternal solitary confinement feels like a very unsubtle author 'fuck you' to the character that borders on bashing.

I feel it's shoddy writing and this latest chapter is where this fic jumps the shark for me. Thanks for your time @Ghoul King , but I will no longer be reading.

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I feel it's a bit fallacious to indicate that any degree of 'worse life circumstances', such as what @NemoMarx talked about of logistical issues etc, is implausible just because Legend exists. I mean, in modern America black/African-American/whatever you prefer as your PC term are better off than when they were outright slaves... and then you have, you know, the KKK still (who are as bad or worse as the average person from yonder past about treatment of blacks. Mostly worse). Bigots can exist even in a society that is generally chill with them, and that's aside from any other issues beyond a lack of acceptance per se.

But okay, if the idea of Cauldron engaging in morally reprehensible behavior for what they believe to be the greater good smacks of "Cauldron bashing" to you, I... well, I'm not sure why you think that (Have you never actually read Worm or something?), but okay, whatever. Can't make you like my story, and honestly, the giggle factor makes it hard to be broken up over losing readers this way.

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I honestly don't quite follow why people think it's Cauldron bashing for Cauldron to be morally reprehensible in methods, particularly given how many posters are defending Cauldron on the basis that, in the end, they were a net positive. Which... even if I simply accept, doesn't mean they weren't morally reprehensible in methods? (in fact, it implicitly admits they were, otherwise you don't need that 'in the end' part. You don't say 'that moral paragon saint person was, in the end, a net positive', you talk about how noble and good and kind he was unconditionally.) I mean, maybe there was no better option, but to say you are misrepresenting the group that did horrifying things... By having them do horrifying things... seems almost farcical.

 

[Dark Ness]

Which... even if I simply accept, doesn't mean they weren't morally reprehensible in methods? (in fact, it implicitly admits they were, otherwise you don't need that 'in the end' part. You don't say 'that moral paragon saint person was, in the end, a net positive', you talk about how noble and good and kind he was unconditionally.) I mean, maybe there was no better option, but to say you are misrepresenting the group that did horrifying things... By having them do horrifying things... seems almost farcical.

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Given that I was one of those people, I just want to point out that I never disagreed with this. In fact, I openly stated that Cauldron was horrible. I have no problem with Cauldron doing horrible things as long as they aren't being stupid and it is actually nessacary to achieve their goal.

Although, I didn't find this chapter to contain any Cauldron bashing. A very unfavorable view of Alexandra in particular, sure, maybe boarding on bashing, but certainly nowhere near what I have seen in other, lessor quality works of fanfiction. Heck, some of the thread members have been bashing much worse then the author! But Cauldron in general? I didn't see too much of that, in the story. Outside the story is a whole different thing...

Did this chapter make me feel a bit uncomfortable? Yes. Did I agree with all of it? No. But it is the authors story, and I find nothing wrong with his prose. I will certainly continue reading it.

 

[Terrabrand]

Given that I was one of those people, I just want to point out that I never disagreed with this. In fact, I openly stated that Cauldron was horrible. I have no problem with Cauldron doing horrible things as long as they aren't being stupid and it is actually nessacary to achieve their goal.

Although, I didn't find this chapter to contain any Cauldron bashing. A very unfavorable view of Alexandra in particular, sure, maybe boarding on bashing, but certainly nowhere near what I have seen in other, lessor quality works of fanfiction. Heck, some of the thread members have been bashing much worse then the author! But Cauldron in general? I didn't see too much of that, in the story. Outside the story is a whole different thing...

Did this chapter make me feel a bit uncomfortable? Yes. Did I agree with all of it? No. But it is the authors story, and I find nothing wrong with his writing. I will certainly continue reading it.

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Fair enough. Allow me to clarify my point: those who had any kind of concrete argument in favor of Cauldron, and not simply 'the chapter is Cauldron Bashing, take my word for it' were making that argument. Put another way, there was no good argument in the thread (that I noticed at least) for how it might qualify as Cauldron bashing to indicate that, you know, they do terrible things for their cause.

 

[Dakkaface]

I feel it's a bit fallacious to indicate that any degree of 'worse life circumstances', such as what @NemoMarx talked about of logistical issues etc, is implausible just because Legend exists. I mean, in modern America black/African-American/whatever you prefer as your PC term are better off than when they were outright slaves... and then you have, you know, the KKK still (who are as bad or worse as the average person from yonder past about treatment of blacks. Mostly worse). Bigots can exist even in a society that is generally chill with them, and that's aside from any other issues beyond a lack of acceptance per se.

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You are also missing the point. In canon it's specifically noted that gay rights are advanced because of Legend. I do not take the position that 'nobody can have a worse life circumstances because Legend,' and saying such is an egregious strawman.

The chapter is bashing because it goes out of it's way to throw more shit on an already disliked character and then gives them some 'poetic justice' at the end. Why in god's name is Alexandria pontificating on how she treats trans people and promotes bigots to advance Cauldron's cause in the middle of an Endbringer fight? Alexandria's Thinker power is perfect memory, not faster thinking or parallel processing so it's not as if she can afford to just get lost in thought like that. There is no Watsonian reason for it. Zero. The only reason it is there is for the Doyalist purpose of making us hate the character further, and cheer when 'justice' comes down the pipe later. This is bashing, on a character that doesn't need to be bashed. The fandom already dislikes her. You could remove that whole segment about how horrible she is for genderqueer folks, and the 'justice' at the end would be just as welcomed by the majority of the readers. It's terribly ham-handed.

 

[Terrabrand]

You are also missing the point. In canon it's specifically noted that gay rights are advanced because of Legend. I do not take the position that 'nobody can have a worse life circumstances because Legend,' and saying such is an egregious strawman.

The chapter is bashing because it goes out of it's way to throw more shit on an already disliked character and then gives them some 'poetic justice' at the end. Why in god's name is Alexandria pontificating on how she treats trans people and promotes bigots to advance Cauldron's cause in the middle of an Endbringer fight? Alexandria's Thinker power is perfect memory, not faster thinking or parallel processing so it's not as if she can afford to just get lost in thought like that. There is no Watsonian reason for it. Zero. The only reason it is there is for the Doyalist purpose of making us hate the character further, and cheer when 'justice' comes down the pipe later. This is bashing, on a character that doesn't need to be bashed. The fandom already dislikes her. You could remove that whole segment about how horrible she is for genderqueer folks, and the 'justice' at the end would be just as welcomed by the majority of the readers. It's terribly ham-handed.

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No. She's thinking on how she treats trans people because she has encountered a person who appears to match the wrong gender to her Thinker power. If you think she shouldn't be having such thoughts, fine, you can make an argument about that, but it's not some random, baseless thing, it's in response to circumstance, explicitly. And as Ghoul King already commented here...

I'll also comment as an aside that actually the only strong statement that homosexuals are better accepted in Worm as a result of Legend coming out is Taylor's internal monologue -and this is in the same general portion of canon where she attributes the 90s tech boom directly to the influence of tinkers, even though Earth Bet's overall technological level seems to be essentially the same as our own. (I'm pretty sure this is Wildbow nudge-nudge-wink-winking at the audience: that we'll recognize it's roughly 2011 tech and go "No Taylor, tinkers aren't why") Note that gay rights have been improving in the real world as well. It's easy to attribute credit to a public figure without it being true, and Taylor isn't an informed or objective observer.

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It is all too plausible that the idea that things are better for Gays because Legend is attributing something to Legend that has little-to-nothing to do with him because he's a visible symbol.

In particular...

You are also missing the point. In canon it's specifically noted that gay rights are advanced because of Legend. I do not take the position that 'nobody can have a worse life circumstances because Legend,' and saying such is an egregious strawman.

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I intended no Strawmaning. What, exactly, am I supposed to assume? That you meant the increased rate (reduced hardship and bigotry is not no hardship or bigotry) is bashing? That promoting them triggering, as they are a type of unusual power prone group is bashing, when she's explicitly hoping for a Scion Killer?(Like Cauldron wants, canonically?)

And if you did not mean the extreme case that Legend removed such issues outright, realize that Legend is explicitly kept in the dark on several things Cauldron thinks he would not approve of- If it was Legend thinking about promoting Trans people triggering intentionally, you'd have a point. As is?

His hand shook as he reached for the mouse. He clicked the button once more, hoping there would be something he could use to convince himself that this was a mistake. A false positive, a clue that Cauldron was really a force for good after all. Hadn't Armsmaster said that his lie detection system was imperfect? Or maybe Kid Win had generated errors in the code. The alterations had been minor but comprehensive: Legend hadn't wanted to be informed in real-time about the lies, lest he give something away.
"And you don't know anything about how William Manton is connected to all this?"
"I'm as mystified as you are."
LIE.
He knew what came next, with the conversation fresh in his memory. He didn't want to press the button again, but there was little choice.
"I've trained myself in kinesics. I can look at a person's face and body language and know if they're lying. And I can tell you the Doctor is telling the truth."
The red text popped up as the last four and a half words appeared. LIE.
Alexandria knew. Of course she had. Her ability to read people, her vast troves of knowledge, her ability to see patterns. And she was the most willing of their group to take the hard, ugly road. Had been since Siberian had hospitalized her.
Click.
His own voice. "I'm sorry to accuse you."

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Alexandria absolutely does things Legend wouldn't approve of and lies to him about it.

Also?

Alexandria's Thinker power is perfect memory, not faster thinking or parallel processing so it's not as if she can afford to just get lost in thought like that.

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False. Have a quote...

Rebecca allowed herself a smile, letting go of the girl's hand. She could stand under her own power. Everything around her appeared sharp. She hadn't realized how bad her vision had become.
Even her mind seemed to be operating like a well oiled machine. Had the drugs and poison made her stupid?
No. She'd never been like this. It was like her brain had been a bicycle and now it was a Ferarri. Even as her eyes flicked over the interior of the warehouse, she could tell she was processing faster, taking in details and sorting them better, as if her thoughts were no longer limited to the confines of her skull.
"What can I do?"

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Thinking faster, etc. She explicitly has this as a power benefit.

 

[Dark Ness]

The part I have the most problem with is this, because it just doesn't make sense.

She tolerates bigotry in the ranks, and even slightly encourages it -if she can promote a trooper who "hates faggots" or a trooper of peerless moral character, she'll promote the latter. That way, the bigot will be out there in the world, interacting with people with better odds of triggering, helping make those triggers happen.

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She encourages bigotry, yet she doesn't promote bigots? How is she encouraging it then? And bigot in a position of power is going to be worse, thus more likely to create triggers. Because, a powerful bigot can spread his bigotry around, institionalize it, but if he is sitting on the straight corner, you can just run away. If he is the guy arresting you, what can you do?

On top of that, not promoting bigots is the good, acceptable thing to do. That is what you are supposed to do. So why is the idea so bad?

 

[Quantumsheep]

I mean, maybe there was no better option, but to say you are misrepresenting the group that did horrifying things... By having them do horrifying things... seems almost farcical.

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There's a degree to which I can't blame them. How a story handles Cauldron is one of the biggest and most obvious expressions of the... quality? of an author's perspective on canon, and for a story to introduce them only to immediately devolve into moral soapboxing and character bashing is depressingly common. I feel like I know Ghoul King well enough by this point to say with confidence that this isn't that, but there are a number of superficial similarities, and it can be hard to distinguish between "This character is eeeeeee-villll, hate them hate them hate them!" and "This is my take on this character's canonical awfulness, make of it what you will," especially when it's a character like Alexandria who feels like she's bashed far more often than not.

I mean, there is an argument to made that the trans-bigotry invention is overdoing it a bit. It's not like Alexandria was short on canonical sins, so inventing an almost comically awful new one is fairly easily misinterpreted.

She encourages bigotry, yet she doesn't promote bigots?

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That honestly reads like a typo to me, though I could be wrong about that.

 

[outwrangle]

Yes obviously Cauldron are going to hold back Transgender rights to promote more triggers except oh wait FUCKING LEGEND is a part of the Triumvirate and LGBT rights except the damn neo bazis care.

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I'd like to point out that there is actually a lot of friction within the LGBT community over trans rights and the treatment of gender minorities (especially those that don't fit into neat gender molds). That may seem unintuitive, but when you're involved in trans activism it's something you tend to see a lot; abusive partners that put pressure on their SO to not transition, lesbians harassing trans women for going to gay bars or women's only events, trans pride events struggling to get support from larger LGBT organizations, and loads and loads of harassment within online LGBT communities. We aren't one big happy queer family.

Legend might be part of the Triumvirate, but Circus is a petty thief. I don't think Wildbard was intentionally implying that institutionalized bigotry against trans folk exists within the Protectorate, but when the only named gender minority in the story is on the wrong side of the law there are unfortunate implications.

 

[Ghoul King]

You are also missing the point. In canon it's specifically noted that gay rights are advanced because of Legend. I do not take the position that 'nobody can have a worse life circumstances because Legend,' and saying such is an egregious strawman.

The chapter is bashing because it goes out of it's way to throw more shit on an already disliked character and then gives them some 'poetic justice' at the end. Why in god's name is Alexandria pontificating on how she treats trans people and promotes bigots to advance Cauldron's cause in the middle of an Endbringer fight? Alexandria's Thinker power is perfect memory, not faster thinking or parallel processing so it's not as if she can afford to just get lost in thought like that. There is no Watsonian reason for it. Zero. The only reason it is there is for the Doyalist purpose of making us hate the character further, and cheer when 'justice' comes down the pipe later. This is bashing, on a character that doesn't need to be bashed. The fandom already dislikes her. You could remove that whole segment about how horrible she is for genderqueer folks, and the 'justice' at the end would be just as welcomed by the majority of the readers. It's terribly ham-handed.

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So... letting the audience have insight into what Alexandria is thinking regarding trans people when interacting with someone she interprets as trans... can't possibly serve any purpose except to make us dislike her, couldn't possibly contextualize her course of action being depicted?

The twisting labyrinth of your mind baffles and confuses me, even aside from the claims you're making here that are flat-out wrong. (eg "Alexandria doesn't have accelerated thinking", which I remembered and a big part of what delayed this chapter and Interlude was that writing Alexandria required me to cram a ridiculous amount of thinking into a small amount of action -I ended up somewhat overusing timeskips as-is because I was getting burned out)

The part I have the most problem with is this, because it just doesn't make sense.

She encourages bigotry, yet she doesn't promote bigots? How is she encouraging it then? And bigot in a position of power is going to be worse, thus more likely to create triggers. Because, a powerful bigot can spread his bigotry around, institionalize it, but if he is sitting on the straight corner, you can just run away. If he is the guy arresting you, what can you do?

On top of that, not promoting bigots is the good, acceptable thing to do. That is what you are supposed to do. So why is the idea so bad?

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You're kind of conflating two kinds of bigotry.

Spoiler: bigotry

See, most people who are bigots are... let's call them "reflexive" bigots. You put X in front of them, and their skin crawls and they lash out. If they never meet X, they might not even realize they have a strong negative opinion about X, and even when they do meet X they will very often rationalize their being upset. So someone uncomfortable with gay people will find fault with every gay person they interact with -their ordinary everyday assholery will stick out where someone they aren't bigoted against will be given a pass like "They must've had a bad day"- but won't necessarily be inclined to advance bigoted causes. Not everyone who's racist against blacks is going to be inclined to join an organization like Empire Eighty Eight -most such racists just have a collection of negative interpretations they don't even really think about, which can be completely overlooked if they're not interacting with whoever they're bigoted against. (My maternal grandfather cracked racist jokes a lot, historically -I only know about this because of my mother relating the story of my father getting him to stop. I had no idea he had a racist bone in his body prior to hearing about this)

When you promote people like that, you isolate them. A trooper out in the field, interacting with the entire diversity of the world, their prejudices are made to come to the fore by interacting with what they're prejudiced against. A Director, meanwhile, may simply never interact with any obviously trans/gay/black/whatever people 99% of the time, and not particularly effect policy changes that are biased, because they don't have a political agenda to stamp out the people that make their skin crawl -they just find interacting with those people makes their skin crawl.

The second category of bigot (For the purposes of this conversation) are the people who explicitly think about it and have an entire narratives spun in their head to justify their view. These are the people who found or join organizations like Empire Eighty Eight -and often times these people are actually fully aware their view is not commonly accepted and will hide it from other people. These people? Yeah, promoting them is going to produce biased policies. Make Max Anders (Not that it's entirely clear whether he buys the rhetoric or not...) PRT Director of Brockton Bay, and he'll hide his racism in everyday interaction and angle for policy changes that happen to be biased against non-whites and have completely defensible logic for why he keeps happening to pick/push such policies and keeps happening to promote white troopers and not non-white troopers.

Alexandria doesn't want to promote either of these categories. The second because she wants control over the outcomes (I take the view that a big part of Alexandria's character is that she simply does not trust the rest of the world to make good decisions without her direct oversight) while the first because isolating them from the people she wants triggering is contrary to promoting deviant triggers.

Make more sense?

There's a degree to which I can't blame them. How a story handles Cauldron is one of the biggest and most obvious expressions of the... quality? of an author's perspective on canon, and for a story to introduce them only to immediately devolve into moral soapboxing and character bashing is depressingly common. I feel like I know Ghoul King well enough by this point to say with confidence that this isn't that, but there are a number of superficial similarities, and it can be hard to distinguish between "This character is eeeeeee-villll, hate them hate them hate them!" and "This is my take on this character's canonical awfulness, make of it what you will," especially when it's a character like Alexandria who feels like she's bashed far more often than not.

I mean, there is an argument to made that the trans-bigotry invention is overdoing it a bit. It's not like Alexandria was short on canonical sins, so inventing an almost comically awful new one is fairly easily misinterpreted.

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Honestly, I don't really consider it Cauldron bashing unless a story does one of two things.

1: Have Cauldron do bad things for literally no reason. (This is thankfully rare, but I have seen it) Just LOL EVUL.

2: Go to great pains to convince the audience that Cauldron is stupid, incompetent, and their sins are all functionally eviltardness because they're too stupid to possibly be doing real good and they should've recognized they're too stupid and given up ages ago. (Depressingly common)

But just having Cauldron doing not-explicitly-canonical Bad Things For The Greater Good... it's canon they feel the fate of all worlds hangs in the balance such that literally anything is better than failing, no matter how monstrous it demands they be. It's not Cauldron bashing to run with that. It's just pulling straight from the source material. I made my comparison to the Slaughterhouse Nine for a reason -nobody complains that it's Slaughterhouse Nine bashing to have them do Slaughterhouse Nine-type things, said things being morally reprehensible of course. It's canon, unarguably.

The only thing I'm substantially unhappy with in the chapter is that I couldn't get Alexandria's final line to have the right tone -the current line involves her explicitly thinking of herself as a terrible person deserving a terrible fate, whereas my actual read on the character is that she ultimately committed suicide-by-Skitter because even though her mind insisted she was in the right her heart disagreed and so she couldn't consciously choose to commit suicide or whatever but could subconsciously put herself into a position to, whoops, accidentally die.

(A contributing factor to my interpretation is that Pretender is grabbed by Cauldron to keep tapping her body -as such, her dying isn't even morally irresponsible because it doesn't deny the world the resource of her superpowers, except for her super-intelligence, and she's no longer in a position to leverage that for shaping society anyway. It's a little too neat, given that she does have super-intelligence, to just be a coincidence that her death has little practical impact on the rest of the world)

But I couldn't pin down a framing that subtly got in the "I actually feel I deserve this" notion. Which is frustrating, but I really was quite burned out on the chapter.

 

[Enderverse87]

But just having Cauldron doing not-explicitly-canonical Bad Things For The Greater Good... it's canon they feel the fate of all worlds hangs in the balance such that literally anything is better than failing, no matter how monstrous it demands they be. It's not Cauldron bashing to run with that. It's just pulling straight from the source

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If they had a button in front of them that said "push this button to blow up Scion, yourselves, and 1000 out of the millions of Earths"

They wouldn't hesitate for a second if they believed it would really work.

 

[Waruiko]

*explanation*

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I think the issue here is that haters are known to hate under normal conditions let alone socially charged like are being brought up. I don't think anyone that hasn't been swayed by you by now will be any time soon, and so long as you keep fighting over it here you're damaging the thread. If its just one or two people I would recommend a group PM, and if its enough to warrant a full thread then it might be worth starting a full thread elsewhere. I'd rather this not get bad enough for mods to start rampaging.

 

[milletian]

*looks at the previous stuff*

Soooooooooooooooo I wonder if the Endbringer fight is over? I think it is, but, eh, Ziz.

And I wonder how things will turn out. I mean, Alexandria is gone, and thus the head of the PRT is gone. Bakuda's bomb was used, so regardless of the fact she wasn't involved, people might blame our poor poor protagonist. Shits been getting crazier and crazier.

Oh! And let's not forget Ziz'd Oni Lee and whatever the fuck happened to Lung.

 

[1986ctcel]

In canon, Cauldron actually made the world worse in several ways. I will skip over Eidolon creating the Endbringers, because that one isn't intentional.

So let's list some of things that Cauldron did or allowed to happen:

Cauldron created the original Slaughterhouse 9.
King the original leader of the Slaughterhouse was either a Cauldron Cape or worked for them. The purpose of the Slaughterhouse 9 was to cause triggers and be the monsters that the masses would run to the Protectorate for protection.

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No they WEREN'T! The Original S9 were a BRUTE SQUAD (I.E Mercenaries) they didn't work for Cauldron at all and they're no more responsible for them than King's parents are.

Allowing the Slaughterhouse 9 to continue living after losing control of it.
When the Protectorate Founders go to put them down. Hero is killed because Contessa's POV deems that the Protectorate needs a martyr to increase recruitment and that Manton's power is more useful than Hero's.

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Ahahahaha NO! Hero dying wasn't intended or premeditated at all, it was an accident because Siberian was incredibly powerful and it was only AFTERWARDS that Doctor Mother (not Contessa) mused about maybe they should leave him be since people will be flocking to join the protectorate afterwards likely due to fear and because they want revenge for Hero. Alexandria certainly wanted Revenge for Hero's death

September 16th, 2000
Alexandria sat in the hospital. Eidolon's healing had only been able to do so much. She held a glass eye in one hand, the remains of her other eye in the other.
She looked up at the Doctor. "William Manton?"
The Doctor nodded.
"How? Why?"
"I don't know what predicated it. His daughter's in our custody. One of our failures."
"He gave his daughter the formula? Without the usual preparations and procedures?"
"I suppose he thought he was qualified to oversee all that. Despite my strict instructions that staff weren't to partake. Or he had other motivations. It could have been a gift from a father trying to buy his daughter's affections."
"Or her forgiveness," Alexandria looked down at the glass eye, then back up to the Doctor.
The Doctor's eyebrows were raised in uncharacteristic surprise. "Did you see anything suspect?"
"No. I only met his daughter twice, and it was brief, her father wasn't around. But I know the divorce between Professor Manton and his wife was pretty bad, as those things go. He was angry, maybe did some things he regretted?"
The Doctor sighed.
"So that was him?"
"Almost certainly. He gave his daughter one of our higher quality formulas, and she couldn't handle it. When he realized what he'd done, realized that he couldn't hide it from us, he took one formula for himself and fled. I didn't know what it had done for him until tonight. The resemblance between Siberian and Manton's daughter is subtle, but it's there, and the footage from Hero's helmet-camera has been run through every facial recognition program I could find."
"What did Legend, Eidolon and…" Alexandria stopped when she realized that she'd been about to say Hero. "What did they say? About Manton?"
"They don't know. I suppose we should tell Eidolon. He reacted badly when his powers informed him of our other plans and projects."
Alexandria hung her head. "How do we stop him? Manton? If he's transformed into that…"
"The sample he took, F-one-six-one-one, it tends to give projection powers. I suspect his real body is unchanged. But I'm wondering if we shouldn't leave him be."
Alexandria stared at the doctor, wide-eyed. "Why?"
"So long as he's active, people will be flocking to join the Protectorate-"
Alexandria slammed her hand on the stainless steel table beside her cot.
Silence rang between them in the wake of the destruction.
"I will not condone the loss of life for your ulterior motives. I will not let monsters walk free, to profit from the fear they spread."
"You're right," the Doctor said. "I… must be more shaken by Manton's betrayal than I'd thought. Forget I said anything."
If Alexandria saw a hint of falsehood in the Doctor's body language, she convinced herself it was the strain of one eye compensating for the job she'd used to perform with two.
"You realize what this means, don't you?" The Doctor asked.
"That we're no longer doing more good than evil?" Alexandria replied, bitter.
"No. I still feel we're working for the forces of good. Manton was a selfish man, unhinged. The exception to the rule."
Alexandria couldn't quite bring her to believe it.
"No, this means we simply need to step up our plans. If we're going to go forward with the Terminus project, we need to advance the overall efforts with Cauldron. And we need the Protectorate effort to succeed on every count."
"Or we need your project to work out," Alexandria replied.
The Doctor frowned. "Or that. We still have to find the right individual. Or make him."

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That's also leaving aside the fact that A. they create more triggers than capes they kill, B. they only attack places already fucked over by either Endringers/powerful capes or natural disasters and C. Cauldron only cared about Shatterbird and Siberian everyone ELSE in the Nine were expendible.

Plus the fact that members of the Nine tend to last only days at the most and Jack only survives due to using his teammates (and civilians) as human shields while doing fighting like an insurgent.

I
The absolute disaster that is Ellisburg operation.
First is that Nilbog's power is deemed useful so they aren't going to go after him full force. The parahumans and PRT forces that show up to fight are given bad intelligence on the situation. This is deliberately set up to get the PRT wholesale slaughtered to kill off the idea that normal humans stand a chance against parahumans.

They actively turned Brockton Bay into a shitty town for their parahuman feudalism experiment.
Beside everything Coil did to actively undermine everything the BB PRT and Protectorate did to attempt to clean up the town. The Mayor of Brockton Bay sold the city to Cauldron to buy his son a Cauldron Vial who became Triumph.

You know someone needs to create a thread where we can read off a complete list of everything Cauldron did to make the world worse.

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STOP MAKING SHIT UP! None of that is stated anywhere in canon it's fanon plain and simple. The whole point of the fucking Feudalism experiment is that A. It was one of MANY plans and B. if Coil couldn't take over and rule a modern US city by himself then that's that and they'd go with one of the other plans. Brockton Bay is a shithole because it IS one not because Cauldron made it that way. They want society to continue on afterwards not devolve into anarchy

From 29.4 (AFTER they had decided based on their information available that Parahuman feudalism was pretty much the only viable option left)

I paged through the booklets. The cover of the first read: 'ASDEC01 Employee responsibilities, contingency C-2-6'. The second was 'ASDEC01 Employee responsibilities, contingency F-4-7'. Both, at a glance, very similar inside.
I looked at the inside cover. Contingency C-2-6. Transmigration.
Then page upon page of jargon. References to other files, to organizations and places I had no concept of, and things I knew of, but not in this context. Overseers, terminus, and again, the word transmigration.
It lacked flow, as the writing went. More of a technical manual, in the end. I could tell from the structure that things had been done by computer, so that information specific to the employee and the employee's role could be injected at the appropriate spots.
I flipped through the book, continuing to scout with my bugs and use them to check our surroundings for possible danger. Only endless hallways.
"You reading over my shoulder, Tattletale?" I asked. I had the camera on my mask.
"I am."
"Thinking what I'm thinking?"
"Accord was two-timing us," Tattletale said. "Doubling up so he had enough of a power base to enact his plans, whatever happened."
"Except for, you know, the whole dying thing," Imp added.
"Are you getting the gist of this, Tattletale?" I asked.
"Picking up pieces of it. I'd ask you to scan the thing and let me have access to all of it, but that's not exactly reasonable, is it?"
"Just give me the byline."
"A plan for if the Endbringers win. A plan for if Scion wins. A plan if we come out ahead and beat both of them. Recurring themes in all of the plans."
"No plan survives contact with the enemy," Lung rumbled. "Foolish."
"Accord makes pretty fucking good plans," Tattletale said.
"I do not know this Accord, and I only trust what I experience myself, so this is only prattle to me."
"How does this turn out?" I asked. "Cauldron ruling the world?"
"Honestly? I don't think so. Cauldron's primary interest seems to be humanity. Keeping us going, minimizing chances of war and conflict. All of this seems to be geared around that. Setting things up so we aren't fucked, however things go down."
"Right," I said. "Where do the powers come in?"
"I think… well, I don't have enough to say anything for sure. But the underlying assumption seems to be that parahumans are going to take charge, one way or the other, so they wanted to set things up so that happened naturally. They've been vetting clients, finding the ones who'd work best. They don't identify them by anything except number, but… I think Coil was a test case."
I nodded.
"So were we."
"We had an idea," I said.
"Yeah. But there's more… I don't know how much more. Yet. Can you flip ahead? Maybe about three quarters of the way through, there should be a bit about the Overseers and the Terminus. Flip through… slower… show more of the pages… I'll go back through the video feed to view each page on my own and figure the rest out myself."
***************************************************************
The hallway reached a t-junction at the end, with a path going off to the left, and a stairwell to the right that led down, deeper into the building. I could sense just how thick the floor was. Most buildings had only a few feet separating each story, but here, there was solid matter nearly as thick as the open spaces.
A fortress? A fortress has soldiers.
A shelter? It doesn't make sense that they'd try to take shelter in a place like this.
It also made the descent to the next floor down take just long enough that it felt like something was wrong. Winding our way down.
"There are backup plans if the whole parahumans-as-leaders thing didn't work out. Brainwashing leaders like they brainwashed the case fifty-threes. So the leaders were absolute and could be trusted. Um. Distribution and organization for getting things going again, depending on how many threats remain after we make it through this. They didn't know what the end would be like, what we'd be up against, so they could only ballpark here. The reason for these offices? Cauldron's going to staff this place. It's going to be a hub, police, a whole lot more, up until humanity's got the ball rolling again."

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The only thing I'm substantially unhappy with in the chapter is that I couldn't get Alexandria's final line to have the right tone -the current line involves her explicitly thinking of herself as a terrible person deserving a terrible fate, whereas my actual read on the character is that she ultimately committed suicide-by-Skitter because even though her mind insisted she was in the right her heart disagreed and so she couldn't consciously choose to commit suicide or whatever but could subconsciously put herself into a position to, whoops, accidentally die.

(A contributing factor to my interpretation is that Pretender is grabbed by Cauldron to keep tapping her body -as such, her dying isn't even morally irresponsible because it doesn't deny the world the resource of her superpowers, except for her super-intelligence, and she's no longer in a position to leverage that for shaping society anyway. It's a little too neat, given that she does have super-intelligence, to just be a coincidence that her death has little practical impact on the rest of the world)

But I couldn't pin down a framing that subtly got in the "I actually feel I deserve this" notion. Which is frustrating, but I really was quite burned out on the chapter.

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nope

<Wildbow> Alexandria set up a perfectly arranged situation, aimed at cornering Taylor and effectively gaining control over her as a playing piece. It had nothing to do with moral event horizons. Her psychoanalysis and read of Taylor was perfect, but she wasn't dealing with just Taylor.
<Wildbow> This is explicitly stated in story.
<Logos01> I... can't agree with that tbqh.
<Wildbow> This is explicitly stated in story.
<chc4> Are you talking about the bug emotion offloading, or just not being able to anticipate her reaction to her friends "death"?
<Logos01> I get that, and I recall reading it.
<Logos01> But it doesn't *fit*.
<Wildbow> Taylor defies being read, and actively fools powers and senses, because of the way her mind works.
<Logos01> It's not about being *Read*.
<Logos01> I'm talking about profiling. In the forensics sense.
<Wildbow> It fits fine, Log. Had it not been for this, Alexandria would have won with her approach.
<Wildbow> 100%.
<Wildbow> Nah. See, look at it from Alexandria's perspective. She wants to provoke a reaction, push Taylor to the state she was in pre-undersider, where Taylor is withdrawn, beaten down, and desperate. She wants a degree of lashing out, but in the ineffectual 'Carrie school shooting' sense that Taylor was approaching in chapter one. Alexandria and the tools were in place to deal with that.
<Wildbow> Had taylor broken, raged out, in the sense of chapter one, they would have had a scapegoat for everything that happened in Brockton Bay. She could have tapped Cauldron resources and been on the alert. But Taylor offloaded all cues to her shard. She appeared far calmer and more subdued than she was, Alexandria calibrated her approach with this in mind, and things tilted off differently.
<Wildbow> Taylor was absolutely not a killer at that stage, unless she had a reasonable target, and Alexandria presented herself as that target. Alexandria looked at Taylor, talked to her, and saw someone different. All of the profiling and information worked -against- her.
<Wildbow> Much like Contessa stumbling when her path to victory fails her.
<Marcy> basically although alexandria is a powerful thinker, she wasn't the right thinker for the job
<Wildbow> Well, she was, but leaning too heavily on a thinker power can screw one up when the thinker power isn't equipped to analyze a problem.
<Wildbow> (See basically every thinker in story)
<Wildbow> By presenting herself as a target, knowing who Taylor was [note: broken knowledge], gauging Taylor's state [note: broken gauge] and being able to anticipate the attack as it came [note; broken thinker power/read, again] she would have turned the situation around into a massive victory.
<Wildbow> There was no Imp-like read on Taylor where "The bugs act funny around you while your emotions are riled up" came up and the PRT took particular note of it and put it in the files.
<Marcy> yeah it's pretty subtle
<chc4> So if Taylor actually had a swarm with her in the room, Alexandria wouldn't have died. That's...ironic
<Marcy> i think tattletale might have commented on it once but otherwise people didn't notice it
<Wildbow> Anyway, I'm not saying I wrote that part perfectly, but it's the furthest thing from the idiot ball. You aren't carrying the idiot ball if you do everything right and then the unanticipatable happens.
<chlorinecrown> wait, so in the other universe where alexandria, idk, has a tinker tech bug zapper on hand to prepare for the attack, what happens?
<chlorinecrown> the attempted murder charge is really easy to prosecute, she goes to the bird cage, undersiders discredited?
<Wildbow> Evacuate the area, Taylor focuses on Alexandria, so it should be doable. Disable security cameras remotely, "Door." Nullify powers & bugs without room for counter-tactics. Taylor sentenced to the Birdcage. Alexandria reinforced in status, people reminded that the PRT is in power and has control, villainous takeovers elsewhere are discouraged, Taylor sentenced to the Birdcage. She...
<Wildbow> ...doesn't actually arrive, and gets brought on board with Cauldron, who tell her the ruse, that it was a setup to achieve certain ends and a plausible finish, and so long as she cooperates, the Undersiders are left alone.
<Wildbow> They then have a resourceful parahuman for one of their squads dealing with alt!earth scenarios and issues.
<Wildbow> Not the first, second, or even third priority, but better to make use of her than to just Birdcage her.
<Teller> Would Taylor "escape" during transportation? Or would they just pretend they caged her?
<Wildbow> The latter, most likely.
<Teller> I wonder how Dragon feels about all this. Probably cranky.
<Wildbow> Probably.

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The objection many have is that the only way a lot of their actions 'helped' is through poorly conceived, badly justified authorial fiat that fails to account for things that we know can and did happen. In an alternate universe where they couldn't have recruited Bonesaw, Blasto, and Panacea to create an infinite cape army, maybe their overall strategy is defensible.

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"Cauldron are stupid evil morons because they didn't think to think to do a crazy plan like that"

They were already on "path to building an army" so if it had said to do that they would have and they DID wind up getting them a clone army in the end, leaving aside that they were explicitly WINNING on the macro level until about 5 years before canon and everything started going wrong.

 

[Ghoul King]

Wildbow quote

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Good god. That... I can see why Wildbow thinks that makes sense, but it really, really doesn't. On so many levels. Christ.

And goddamn if that's what Wildbow was intending then Intended!Alexandria is way more heinous than I imagine her as being. Or indeed than how most fanfics write her as being, even while bashing her.

That's kind of depressing, really.

 

[NemoMarx]

<Wildbow> They then have a resourceful parahuman for one of their squads dealing with alt!earth scenarios and issues.

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Wait, there's squads on alt earths? Did we just like, never see them for some reason?

 

[Terrabrand]

Wait, there's squads on alt earths? Did we just like, never see them for some reason?

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GDI Wildbow, consistency is not that hard. Cauldron pin-pongs waaaay too much in nature throughout the story/WOGs, in terms of whether it's a sprawling organization with a great many parahumans in active use or a tiny private club manipulating things with nearly no active membership.

 

[Dark Ness]

nope

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I believe the author said he was ignoring WoG before.

Good god. That... I can see why Wildbow thinks that makes sense, but it really, really doesn't. On so many levels. Christ.

And goddamn if that's what Wildbow was intending then Intended!Alexandria is way more heinous than I imagine her as being. Or indeed than how most fanfics write her as being, even while bashing her.

That's kind of depressing, really.

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Really? With that interpretation, I don't find her any worse. Just less depressed and guilty.

The problem I have with most (honestly, all) Alexandria bash-fics, is that they do so not just by make her eviler, they usually do so in away that is opposite to her motivation, while adding a (usually sizable) dose of stupid. They make her more like a carton villian, when really, the natural progression of a darker, colder, Alexandria is more utilitarian, not randomly torturing people or such.