You know what, that is fair, I thought you were going for something different when those things happened, so I had a different take. Please do note that I had read the story before the current argument, so I wasn't connecting the dots to your rant. I'll present my thought process for posterity's sake.
I'm just going to note that, yes, there's confounding factors at work, but you're still fundamentally telling me you developed a theory of what was happening that ignored the internal narration, when the original context was an attempt to support or defend an assertion that Bakuda could've resolved problems if only she used words at them more.
There's a reason I keep emphasizing the irony here.
I do not equate unusual with authorial insert, but yes, Exploding Canon has a large amount of reminiscing and comparing and contrasting. I was thinking that we as the readers are conditioned to view the stories a certain way via repetition, and some are just slow to adjust. Or the SI could be taken as an OC with issues. That said, whole thing's kind of moot and on reread didn't contribute to my original point. I should've cut that paragraph.
Your average 'I'm totally generic and normal, guys! Please buy that this cardboard cutout is a fully realistic rendition of my flesh-and-blood self!' form of SI is deliberately skimpy on many,
many personal details, well beyond what falls under banners like 'the actual author has reasons for not wanting to share their real name, such as not wanting people they know in person to happen to read the story and realize it's them', in a manner that is very noticeable. They rarely express opinions or preferences, or allude to hobbies except
maybe the self-evident one of writing fanfic and any sub-examples of obviousness. ("This SI into a video game-only setting is a person who plays video games." I would never have guessed, SI) They don't have nervous ticks, unusual things that piss them off, atypical personal rituals, or otherwise have qualities real people have. They will accidentally let slip
some info, by virtue of genuinely thinking that eg All Adults Drink and not realizing that this isn't actually universal and even if it were they personally still drink noticeably more than most. But it's almost always pretty obviously an accident, where it got through because they think of it as
so normal that it's on the order of admitting you have hair or wear clothes: certainly, there are nudists and people who shave themselves bald and all, but most people take 'has hair and wears clothes' as a given.
Exploding Canon is
pretty far removed from that space.
Ok, I can see the problem. You hate people being lazy. And you also hate people leaving flippant comments. Seems... not worth the hackles raised, honestly.
Personally, I just cannot view something like that as assholery. The forums are a place for people to express themselves. For some, like yourself, it means long throughout arguments. For others, it's a five minute break and a yell out to the seven winds. It's not personal, and often aimless. Doesn't make sense to me to treat others by the standards they have neither agreed to, nor even aware of, unless you've made a heavily segregated chatroom.
I'm fine with flippancy.
I'm flippant. (You did read the story, right? I'd think I wouldn't need to say this) Laziness doesn't bother me either.
My issue is that 'you could have done better very easily by making different decisions' when the individual saying such
does not actually have thought put behind what those different decisions would entail is
ludicrously assholeish. Among other ways in which it's a bad thing I can't believe people actually do. There's a reason I made the wheelchair comparison, or more accurately two reasons since the other reason is that most people will recognize without explanation that "Why don't you just take the stairs?" is a
horrendously insensitive thing to say to someone in a wheelchair.
The rest of your sentiment here is... laughable on multiple levels. In the first place, we have the issue that this is my thread: I post the story. I participate heavily. I shape discussion on an ongoing basis. You're saying "I don't think your attitude makes sense except in contexts exactly like the one you're applying it in." In the second place, 'human reacts badly to behavior they have not explicated to that particular individual is undesirable' is not, in fact, a way I am unusual. This is the
default, everywhere I'm aware of. My childhood would have been considerably less aggravating if this wasn't so. If this is somehow news to you, boy are you in for a surprise when you interact with some
other human beings. I at least make an effort to say
why I'm not happy with behavior. Plenty of folks are perfectly happy to expect you to psychically know exactly what set them off, not to mention psychically ascertain that there you
did meaningfully commit a faux paus rather than happening to be mildly irritating when they were already under tremendous stress, and double-down on being mad at you when you don't immediately recognize what precisely they're mad about.
But that's not ALL she does. She actually has lines where she isn't being deceitful, oh wonder of wonders.
Does she? I'm not so convinced of that, especially given the superbrain and juggling multiple objectives and all.
Though at least unlike Doctor Mother we actually know she contributes in a more physical sense, I'll give you that much.
On the subject of Bakuda thinking she might or not might be an Abaddon missile, unless she finds a way to mine meaningful data from any of the entities and shards, it is a moot point, akin to wondering whether there is an invisible dragon that is impossible to touch or see or sense in any way.
Unless of course being an Abaddon missile ostensibly brings with it other circumstances than just being an Abaddon missile. Would being a missile somehow affect Scion's reaction to Bakuda? It depends on whether her shard has been subverted from the Scion network, in which case Jack Slash is dead if she can suprise attack him, maybe pre-cogging and power manipulation dependant on other shards, and in another case, if Scion notices the subversion, he may change course in some manner.
If her shard hasn't been subverted, and she was planted into Bakuda by Abaddon in some sort of xanatos gambit, the only remaining effects would be the same as her being Bakuda by ROB or cosmic coincidence - mainly affecting short term pre-cogs at the least in the local area and long term pre-cogs in a minor or major manner worldwide, unless pre-cogs can in some arcane manner predict out of context problems. I actually wonder whether Coil had his simulation affected when Bakuda was being replaced with the SI. If he hasn't been affected, we can assume A: she is a stealth missile of some sort, probably from Abaddon, or B: Pre-cogs can predict out of context problems which presents its own problems on the fundamental nature of the multiverse/universe within the setting, mainly it having to be a simulation if the multiverse/universe follows the conventional rules we humans assume to be true, or the multiverse/universe merely being the surface of a much stranger reality, where things like spacetime are the tips of the iceberg within weirdness. AKA, simulation or it's nonsense and the surface merely presents a facade of order.
If Coil had his simulation affected by the self inserting, that presents support for the idea that Bakuda is not an Abaddon missile, or at the very least not a stealth(y) one. This of course assumes Abaddon isn't insane and is making decisions to actually achieve an objective. At this point, if there are no other considerations for being a missile, this loops back to my earliest point, that it's a moot point that serves no purpose other than to provide easy distraction. So unless I missed anything else, it's ultimately not that important to Bakuda in the utilitarian sense.
I mean, right out the gate you're accepting WoG and later-canon bits that I don't because they're irreconcilable with what was actually written/what came before that was better-written in general: the 'Coil is performing precognitive simulations as his actual power' explanation is unbearably stupid, utterly impossible to fit together with things like Coil unambiguously getting actual benefit from combining his power with Dinah's. We're straight-up told precogs interfere with each other, and the only semi-exception we're given is the never-actually-meaningfully-acknowledged nonsense where PtV and the Simurgh are both treated as not being fouled up by 'lesser' precogs, which itself is pretty bluntly just thoughtless, bad writing, not any kind of
intentional mechanical distinction.
Anyway, as far as theorizing goes, comparing it to a ROB/cosmic coincidence is...
really bizarre to be doing. A character saying "I guess a ROB did it" is (In the absence of something like the ROB straight-up claiming credit) really just an arbitrarily specific rendition of the character admitting that, okay, the thing
did happen so obviously there does have to be an explanation, but they have zero idea what that explanation might be. It's just throwing one's hands in the air and giving up on understanding what happened and why.
Which can be justified, mind, but my point is "A bunch of stuff sure would make a lot of sense if this is Abaddon's fault" is, setting aside the question of whether it's a
correct theory (That's an entirely different consideration), actually a
useful theory. It has a bunch of unknowns and uncertainties, of course, but it provides a model that can be compared against reality to check if there's any obvious inconsistencies, and if it seems to check out it can meaningfully guide decision-making, as it actually has with Bakuda deciding to search for Taylor because this theory suggests Taylor is probably not just appealing-to-Bakuda and so on but actually
important.
"I dunno maybe a ROB did it?" doesn't provide any guideposts for determining whether the explanation is possible, and is even
less helpful for determining what to
do. Like okay, you commit to believing an arbitrary ROB dumped you in Worm as Bakuda: since your theory is literally 'Random Omnipotent Being did this', you have zero guesses on the ROB's personality, intentions, limitations, and so on. If indeed the ROB exists, it might've done this on a lark, and then completely forgot the SI exists because of a divine drinking binge. Or maybe the ROB set up an unwinnable situation to delight in the suffering of the stupid mortal struggling in vain. Or maybe the ROB made a bet with another ROB about how
this human would react to being dumped in a flipped-gender body on a hellhole of a setting. (And maybe said ROB lost the bet already and has lost interest, or maybe it's still watching and is willing to fudge results if it thinks the other ROB won't notice)
I could go on literally forever: "I guess a ROB did it?" is a 'theory' that has no meat to it. (Unless the ROB actually talked to you or something, but of course that doesn't apply in this case)
This isn't even getting into more emotional or psychological appeal. If you're in a death world doomed to be destroyed by the most powerful being in the world, it sure is comforting to believe that another being that
probably knows what it's doing assigned you the task of killing this ungodly powerful being, as it suggests your task is actually
possible, and not a hopeless endeavor from the start. (I've actually had moments where I had Bakuda making video game comparisons, and then cut them because I couldn't get the wording right: "I'm an Abaddon missile" is comparable to the given assumption that a video game is
designed to be beatable, in the sense that one might persist in trying to solve the seemingly-unsolvable in a game because of
course the game intends for this puzzle or boss fight or whatever to be possible to get past, it can't
actually be unsolvable)
There's always something to be said about the ability to advocate for oneself in healthcare, but I'd suspect some of the same issues you've mentioned may interfere with doctors taking your opinion seriously - the deli incident you described comes to mind. Which is double obnoxious cause it's their job to listen to patients and finding a doctor that actually does that is way too hard sometimes.
This has been an issue for me when it comes to the medical care system, yes, though I dunno if the ASD aspect was specifically pertinent. As a concrete, clear example, I've told multiple dentists painkillers don't work on me and would really prefer they didn't bother, because I hate having to suffer through what effects they
do have. Not a single dentist has believed me, and it apparently never registered on them that when drilling into my teeth or whatever I was still reacting with pain in spite of them having injected painkillers, not even when I was a child and the default assumption would be this is an honest and unfiltered reaction. One of them used
stronger painkillers, so hey, he at least didn't
completely blow me off... but he still didn't believe me when I informed him afterward that, nope, I still felt the entire operation.
This has only gotten 'better' as I've read up on teeth and learned that they're actually very sensitive in general and use non-standard systems to detect pressure on the outer layer and whatnot, contrary to the continuous assertions from my childhood that teeth can't feel anything in the first place. And also learned that redheads are known to often have non-standard pain responses... and my beard, if I grow it out, makes me look literally like a leprechaun. HMMMM.
The final result is that I've always found fiction defaulting to characterizing medical professionals as
especially empathic and so on to be unbelievable. I've lived all over the US and even spent some time in Germany:
nowhere was this stereotype accurate!
I find myself grateful that I only have a touch of the asperger issues, myself. Difficulty looking at eyes, because it's emotionally intense, but not impossible.
Oh. That might be part of why I don't like it. As a very small child I
hated emotionally intense experiences, to the point I would get incredibly mad, then get still madder over being so mad, unable to calm myself down. I eventually threw a tantrum so hard over this my nose started spontaneously bleeding, stopping me dead. I didn't really think to connect that to other experiences.
Well, if you didn't have a diagnosis, they would be quite free to discriminate against you, as at the time you wouldn't have been a member of that protected class.
No? If they're able to understand one can have legitimate issues that aren't immediately visible and actually believe that I have the issues I claim -and I'll reiterate people have always found it
really obvious that I'm weird, so it's rarely hard for me to convince people who know me at
all- then just telling them is adequate to get them trying to accommodate.
Conversely, if they're
committed to refusing to accommodate my issues because they don't believe them or whatever, they're quite likely to do their best to keep on discriminating even if I slap down a doctor's note saying I have these issues and all.
There's actually a pretty narrow range of personality profile/motives/etc where they'll Not Get It without an Official Confirmation and then Get It once they have that official confirmation.
