Exploding Canon (Worm SI)

[Tithed_Verse]

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.

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They're sadly more common than you'd think, but I think because most of them will only get it when they think they're at risk of getting in trouble if they don't.

Reading about your issues with doctors, yeah, my issues with doctors got a lot better when I learned how actors faked pain and started using that on my doctors. They're supposed to be on the lookout for fakers? But apparently fakers and actors are somehow different? Or doctors are just bad at it and ignore legitimate pain if it doesn't look fake enough.

 

[TheOmnimercurial]

They're sadly more common than you'd think, but I think because most of them will only get it when they think they're at risk of getting in trouble if they don't.

Reading about your issues with doctors, yeah, my issues with doctors got a lot better when I learned how actors faked pain and started using that on my doctors. They're supposed to be on the lookout for fakers? But apparently fakers and actors are somehow different? Or doctors are just bad at it and ignore legitimate pain if it doesn't look fake enough.

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Many Doctors are quite lacking in Empathy, so it really needs to be obviously shoved in their face a lot of the time.

 

[DeclanDSI]

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)

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I see what you mean. In summary, it's more useful to Bakuda to assume that being an Abaddon missile comes with some sort of purpose that she can work towards, assume that she can divine that purpose from her memories, and assume that she can survive and win in some form if she follows that purpose until it obviously isn't conducive towards surviving and winning against Scion. So this falls within the idea that there are more considerations and effects of being an Abaddon missile, mainly that acting in accordance to nebulous Abaddon plans has a good chance of surviving and winning.

This brings up another question though. What does Abaddon hypothetically think Bakuda will do towards its goals and how is Bakuda supposed to accomplish it? If Abaddon has pre-cogged Bakuda's actions well enough and has decided that it will be conducive towards its goals, nothing she does matters. If Bakuda decides to give up and slink away from Brockton Bay, in the Abaddon pre-cog theory, that would be okay with Abaddon. This assumes that Abaddon has pre-cogged the situation well enough and nothing unforeseen happens.

I vaguely remember Bakuda thinking that she could be a low-cost, low-effort missile. That could be another case of how Abaddon might be using Bakuda. If it works, it works, but if it doesn't, that's fine too. That sort of thing.

Regardless of how much effort Abaddon is putting towards Bakuda, Bakuda is acting in accordance with assuming that she is useful in some way to Abaddon's hypothetical plans, and well, I guess useful as a motivational factor? But there is still debate on whether it has any actual usefulness, especially when all Bakuda has is circumstantial evidence, evidence that does seem to point in the Abaddon missile that has agency and some guarantees, but nothing doubtlessly confirming it. At this point the best plan would be to team up with Taylor, use her as the scout and Bakuda as the firepower, and make continuous tactical strikes and wins in the vein of gaining a powerbase of thinkers and movers with tinkers as a priority, if only for their long-term power-scaling, act out a plan of disrupting and disarming Simurgh bombs, and getting out of the quarantine. Wait a second... this seems like another piece of circumstantial evidence towards being an Abaddon missile. The area is ripe for triggers, and Taylor and Bakuda have a good starting point for building a powerbase of capes.

 

[The Void]

There are a couple issues with that, namely by the Canon of Ward, as it is at least confirmed that Abaddon, at least outright, didn't plan for Eden to crash because of the dissemination of the information they exchanged.
I vaguely recall a quotation, that I can't easily pull while on mobile, about how Abaddon was 'excited' about the trade considering the improbable odds of meeting again.

Not to mention that the Eye, Contessa's Shard and Abaddon's PTV, notably more powerful to the degree that pound for pound outdoes Ziz, save for the fact Ziz had a headstart, wasn't actually cooperative with the actual assassination of Eden's vestige and seemed to be fine with the trade arrangement.

Though it is understandable considering the information we had from several years ago. And technically speaking, there's nothing preventing that Abaddon hoped to alter Eden, or that Cycle, as a product of the transaction.

As in the grand scheme of things, so long as the Shards aren't entirely destroyed datawise they can theoretically be reconstituted, and the identity of an Entity/Shards are ultimately fluid with the functionality of hardware/software and connectivity. While also being aware that Abaddon had to do something with the two Host Gestalts, ie free processing power with creativity.

Beyond that, @Ghoul King, Titans aren't an intended process whatsoever, barring that time when I believe the Eye intentionally sought it. As they are more an error that rose from the limited and disrupted inter-dimensional bandwidth of the Shard Network(s) after the fall of both Hubs. Where effectively the parts of the Shard that reached into that commicative plane had dragged down a large portion of the Shard, with the Host being more of an initial gateway. That just so happened to circumvent the restrictions of their agency bound to a Host during a Cycle, thus enabling more direct action.

Also have you heard of Weaverdice or Tinker Doc 2.0? It does explain stuff as to what a Chaos Tinker is and what the standard, or more well known, specialities and methodologies are.

 

[demonitter]

Many Doctors are quite lacking in Empathy, so it really needs to be obviously shoved in their face a lot of the time.

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Probably not true, but their empathy will slowly get worn out from constant use, like a sort of acclimation therapy or drug, where they build resistance against being emphathetic in order to COPE with all the terrible stuff they see.

 

[Thearpox]

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.

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Or I have just interpreted the internal narration differently and judged it not applicable in those circumstances in that way? Because interpretation is a thing people can do when they read a story. I'm not trying to claim mine was the one correct one, but I don't think I am an idiot for reading it the way I did.

My reading, past and and to some extent present, is that Bakuda is awkward at communication, often puts foot in her mouth, and keeps dropping red flags to someone native to Earth Bet. Because she is aware of this, she consciously avoids or tries to extricate herself from situations where she has to talk to people. Because of this, the only time she does talk to people, there are always confounding factors at work, which makes her actual diplomacy skills next to impossible to evaluate.

If she actually gave herself a chance, tried to get to know people and make acquaintances/connections when she had the opportunities, (like when she was with the Travelers, or when she gave Dinah back to her mom,) instead of immediately prioritizing running off to the next big thing, would the end result have been positive? Mebbbeeee? Who knows, because I certainly don't.

Your average SI is a cutboard cutout

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That seems to be more of a bad writing problem, where is SI/isekai is just one of the more common writing choices for bad writers, rather than some trait of the genre.

I was considering refuting/clarifying/agreeing with the other parts you wrote, but again, without any tie in to a larger point it'd just feel pedantic.

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.

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There is no 'you could have...' in there. I only saw 'Bakuda could have...', and the original was 'There's plenty of times where...' which could have been referring collectively to Bakuda and the New Wave and the PRT for all I know. That you is why I asked about your detachment in the first place, I don't think the whole thing was personal.

And no, I don't think that claiming that a character in a wheelchair should just take the stairs is insensitive. Characters are like pinatas, they exist for us to beat upon. I'd find the statement odd, but I'd just ask the person to clarify in case I missed some detail that would allow them to take the stairs. The guy is either wrong and no harm done, or I missed a detail and again, no harm done. More than that, said invalid character isn't owed an explanation for why I think they should take the stairs, nor really the forum users, though I'd think having a habit of leaving cryptic statements like that would cause one to quickly develop a reputation.

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.

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No, I am saying your attitude makes for bad time/stress management, (which would get worse if your stories become popular and you get a bunch of people who only skimmed the story authoritatively making stuff up,) and I gave my perspective as a foil. I also acknowledge that it is not my place to tell you to change, but my initial reply would have been very knew different if I understood then what had ticked you off initially.

As for the second, I do not know where I implied that ''human reacts badly to behavior they have not explicated to that particular individual is undesirable' is not, in fact, a way I am unusual' in untrue, but if I have done so, I apologize, it was not my intent.

Beyond that, @Ghoul King, Titans aren't an intended process whatsoever, barring that time when I believe the Eye intentionally sought it. As they are more an error that rose from the limited and disrupted inter-dimensional bandwidth of the Shard Network(s) after the fall of both Hubs. Where effectively the parts of the Shard that reached into that commicative plane had dragged down a large portion of the Shard, with the Host being more of an initial gateway. That just so happened to circumvent the restrictions of their agency bound to a Host during a Cycle, thus enabling more direct action.

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This is a mechanics and lore explanation of what happened, whereas the problem with the Titans is that they just don't seem to make for a good or interesting story.

 

[The Void]

Or I have just interpreted the internal narration differently and judged it not applicable in those circumstances in that way? Because interpretation is a thing people can do when they read a story. I'm not trying to claim mine was the one correct one, but I don't think I am an idiot for reading it the way I did.

My reading, past and and to some extent present, is that Bakuda is awkward at communication, often puts foot in her mouth, and keeps dropping red flags to someone native to Earth Bet. Because she is aware of this, she consciously avoids or tries to extricate herself from situations where she has to talk to people. Because of this, the only time she does talk to people, there are always confounding factors at work, which makes her actual diplomacy skills next to impossible to evaluate.

If she actually gave herself a chance, tried to get to know people and make acquaintances/connections when she had the opportunities, (like when she was with the Travelers, or when she gave Dinah back to her mom,) instead of immediately prioritizing running off to the next big thing, would the end result have been positive? Mebbbeeee? Who knows, because I certainly don't.


That seems to be more of a bad writing problem, where is SI/isekai is just one of the more common writing choices for bad writers, rather than some trait of the genre.

I was considering refuting/clarifying/agreeing with the other parts you wrote, but again, without any tie in to a larger point it'd just feel pedantic.


There is no 'you could have...' in there. I only saw 'Bakuda could have...', and the original was 'There's plenty of times where...' which could have been referring collectively to Bakuda and the New Wave and the PRT for all I know. That you is why I asked about your detachment in the first place, I don't think the whole thing was personal.

And no, I don't think that claiming that a character in a wheelchair should just take the stairs is insensitive. Characters are like pinatas, they exist for us to beat upon. I'd find the statement odd, but I'd just ask the person to clarify in case I missed some detail that would allow them to take the stairs. The guy is either wrong and no harm done, or I missed a detail and again, no harm done. More than that, said invalid character isn't owed an explanation for why I think they should take the stairs, nor really the forum users, though I'd think having a habit of leaving cryptic statements like that would cause one to quickly develop a reputation.


No, I am saying your attitude makes for bad time/stress management, (which would get worse if your stories become popular and you get a bunch of people who only skimmed the story authoritatively making stuff up,) and I gave my perspective as a foil. I also acknowledge that it is not my place to tell you to change, but my initial reply would have been very knew different if I understood then what had ticked you off initially.

As for the second, I do not know where I implied that ''human reacts badly to behavior they have not explicated to that particular individual is undesirable' is not, in fact, a way I am unusual' in untrue, but if I have done so, I apologize, it was not my intent.


This is a mechanics and lore explanation of what happened, whereas the problem with the Titans is that they just don't seem to make for a good or interesting story.

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The only issue I'd have with the story, barring potential inconsistencies with broader canon, would be the giant smiley that's entirely invisible. As I do recall a kid in Ward drawing depictions of the Space-whales, but then again Agents and all that are known factors by then, doubtlessly without the Zion Hub. Though it does seem weird to me that the Shard wouldn't just blur the pattern all into one thick line.

They (the Titans) don't (make a good story impact)? Admittedly I haven't personally read through the entire series of events, especially when it was just coming out. So I don't really carry much of an innate narrative view, and more along the lines of "Oh neat, here we are seeing powers and Shards in action, the pivotal failings of the Cycles rules, and the reversal/abstraction of the Host- Parasite/Symbiote dichotomy."

Also with SI hanging onto the Abaddon theory for what seems to be the sake of stability, is there any actual credence to the idea? As it feels off due to Abaddon leaving the galaxy, the improbable chance of Alice's original Shard belongong to Abby, and how, correct me if I am wrong, the memories/experiences of the SI aren't blurry or full of holes outside the context of Conflict, akin to those resurrected in Ward. Though I do admit the takeover mechanism seems plausible given the existence of the Butcher.

 

[Callmesalticidae]

Also with SI hanging onto the Abaddon theory for what seems to be the sake of stability, is there any actual credence to the idea? As it feels off due to Abaddon leaving the galaxy, the improbable chance of Alice's original Shard belongong to Abby, and how, correct me if I am wrong, the memories/experiences of the SI aren't blurry or full of holes outside the context of Conflict, akin to those resurrected in Ward. Though I do admit the takeover mechanism seems plausible given the existence of the Butcher.

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Whether Abaddon is a Benevolent Entity or just has a peculiar reproduction/offspring-protection strategy, it's not hard to imagine how Zion and Eden would be potential threats to Whatever Abaddon Cares About, since Entities are very forward-thinking.

I'm pretty sure that Ward isn't canon to Exploding Canon (heck, large parts of Worm may not be canon to Exploding Canon, if the Abaddon theory is correct), but even if it were, Ghoul was SI'd into Bakuda before Ward was written, and has no way to know what it says.

 

[Jamie Roberts]

I could go on literally forever: "I guess a ROB did it?" is a 'theory' that has no meat to it.

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GODS, thank you! It is maddening to me how readily some writers will just throw that out there and pretend that's a good enough narrative answer. Not only is everything better than that, Nothing is better!

Like, f*&^, lets take it seriously for a hot second. Our protagonist has woken in the body of some fictional character or major historical figure, and they think a "Random Omnipotent Being" did it. So lets pick one, shall we? The reason our protagonist has woken up in the body of Kaiser Wilhelm is because Huitzilopotchli did it.

What! A writer doesn't get to just say that and then act like its irrelevant! This information has further implications!

 

[Ghoul King]

There are a couple issues with that, namely by the Canon of Ward, as it is at least confirmed that Abaddon, at least outright, didn't plan for Eden to crash because of the dissemination of the information they exchanged.
I vaguely recall a quotation, that I can't easily pull while on mobile, about how Abaddon was 'excited' about the trade considering the improbable odds of meeting again.

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Incorrect. Ward never touches on Abaddon at all (I might be forgetting a time someone offhandedly referred to trigger event visions including a third Entity or something, but nothing substantive came up, I'm confident of that), and Worm never gives us an Abaddon's-eye view of events. We get to see Eden excited by getting a bunch of soft sciences stuff from Abaddon-

-and in the middle of her excitement she idiotically crashes into myriad Earths simultaneously.

While using a PtV shard she'd just plugged in that was a gift from Abaddon.

Now, in spirit you are correct: canon intends for Eden to have metaphorically died in a car crash while texting, with Abaddon having not tried to kill her.

But it's long been a fan-theory Abaddon assassinated Eden, because honestly it fits so neatly with canon events.

Not to mention that the Eye, Contessa's Shard and Abaddon's PTV, notably more powerful to the degree that pound for pound outdoes Ziz, save for the fact Ziz had a headstart, wasn't actually cooperative with the actual assassination of Eden's vestige and seemed to be fine with the trade arrangement.

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I mean, I could've worded that whole thing better, but what I was getting at is that precognition canonically interferes with other precognition, there are extremely obvious reasons why this would be so (Yomi unavoidably produces uncertain flux states if multiple people are fully engaging in it, and precognition is just superpowered yomi), and canon itself never actually attempts to suggest precog 'power levels' or whatever is a concept, whereby 'high level' precog isn't interfered with by 'low-level' precog. Canon just never stops and notices that PtV and the Simurgh should both unavoidably run into problems around other precogs, wanting to treat PtV as immutably unbeatably perfect short of an explicit counter-power, and to a lesser extent not really wanting to treat the Simurgh's pure reliance on precognition, postcognition, and mindreading as having any actual problematic limitations, while having clearly established explicit in-universe mechanics for why this shouldn't be so hard to foil.

Saying 'PtV is the mostest precoggest' doesn't actually do anything to obviate the reasons precogs interfering with each other make sense and canon never actually suggests precog tiers exist somehow anyway. It's straight-up just thoughtless, bad writing.

Beyond that, @Ghoul King, Titans aren't an intended process whatsoever, barring that time when I believe the Eye intentionally sought it. As they are more an error that rose from the limited and disrupted inter-dimensional bandwidth of the Shard Network(s) after the fall of both Hubs. Where effectively the parts of the Shard that reached into that commicative plane had dragged down a large portion of the Shard, with the Host being more of an initial gateway. That just so happened to circumvent the restrictions of their agency bound to a Host during a Cycle, thus enabling more direct action.

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I really don't care to try to parse how this paragraph is supposed to mean anything. The Titans are dumb. What we're told is that the shards are attempting to unite together and perform the Entity blast-off at the end of the Cycle stuff. What we see is a bunch of Godzillas spawn via capes turning into them and try to murder capes and sometimes spawn other Godzillas or combine into a bigger Godzilla, with all this being aimless wandering that accomplishes nothing resembling their claimed objective...

... and we see the shardnet, which while it's presented as having damage that makes intershard communication less-than-optimal, it does not show the shards being actually significantly disconnected from each other, nor is anything remotely approaching an explanation provided for why they aren't uniting through the shardnet and instead are turning their hosts into Godzillas.

And then the ending makes all the Titan fighting 100% irrelevant!

The Titans are one of Ward's most indefensible decisions, and indeed were the moment that cemented for me that I was never going to treat any mechanics introduced by Ward as Worm canon. As best as I can tell, Wildbow made them because shit, how do you put Endbringer fight scenes into a Worm story when most of them are gone? At least, that's the only explanation I can come up with that involves assuming Wildbow put actual thought into the topic.

Also have you heard of Weaverdice or Tinker Doc 2.0? It does explain stuff as to what a Chaos Tinker is and what the standard, or more well known, specialities and methodologies are.

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I read up all the Weaverdice stuff back in... 2014? It might've been 2013. Somewhere not long after Worm ended, anyway. I don't remember most of it, in part because it didn't really strike me as a terribly compelling system, so eg I don't remember what we're told a chaos tinker is, but I did read it.

Or I have just interpreted the internal narration differently and judged it not applicable in those circumstances in that way? Because interpretation is a thing people can do when they read a story. I'm not trying to claim mine was the one correct one, but I don't think I am an idiot for reading it the way I did.

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I'm not suggesting it was dumb to take it that way. My point is the irony in supporting or defending 'talking would work better!' while persistently making it clear that you personally don't in any meaningful sense agree with the original assertion you're supporting, and indeed your personal experience is evidence against the validity of the argument. This is why I keep hammering that point: it'd be like having someone insist to me that religion is the only thing that makes people happy while constantly alluding to how their own religious community is the source of all their woes.

That seems to be more of a bad writing problem, where is SI/isekai is just one of the more common writing choices for bad writers, rather than some trait of the genre.

I was considering refuting/clarifying/agreeing with the other parts you wrote, but again, without any tie in to a larger point it'd just feel pedantic.

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I mean, it's really both. Bad writers often jump to SIs because they have difficulty really wrapping their head around other people, whether in the literal and explicit fanfic sense or in the slightly more abstract sense of 'This protagonist shares a lot of qualities with the writer', but then the fanfic-literal-SI is uniquely prone to scrubbing out personality from the protagonist. If you read eg fantasy novels that don't have the isekai quality at all, and then go digging into the author's life story, you'll often find there's quite a lot of parallels between the protagonist and the author... but unlike a fanfic literal-SI, they don't see the need to scrub out all the personal quirks. (A bunch of them, if only because they honestly think they're writing someone who isn't based on theirself, but they'll still leave in stuff without it being clearly an accident)

There is no 'you could have...' in there. I only saw 'Bakuda could have...', and the original was 'There's plenty of times where...' which could have been referring collectively to Bakuda and the New Wave and the PRT for all I know. That you is why I asked about your detachment in the first place, I don't think the whole thing was personal.

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I often use 'you' in the non-specific manner that means something closer to 'someone could have'. I picked it up somewhere because it's actually a pretty common way to word things, where writing says 'you' not to mean literally the person reading, and while I've tried really hard to scrub it from my vocabulary precisely to avoid this kind of pedantic confusion, it still slips through at times. This is an example of that.

It's usually not a problem when I do slip because usually it's not exactly this type of situation where it's linguistically plausible to think I'm literally equating myself with a character when using 'you' in regards to someone else's speech. Which is part of why I keep slipping, because reality doesn't go 'no, bad Ghoul King'.

And no, I don't think that claiming that a character in a wheelchair should just take the stairs is insensitive. Characters are like pinatas, they exist for us to beat upon. I'd find the statement odd, but I'd just ask the person to clarify in case I missed some detail that would allow them to take the stairs. The guy is either wrong and no harm done, or I missed a detail and again, no harm done. More than that, said invalid character isn't owed an explanation for why I think they should take the stairs, nor really the forum users, though I'd think having a habit of leaving cryptic statements like that would cause one to quickly develop a reputation.

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If you don't see the extremely obvious and deep assholery embedded in that scenario, I honestly don't know how to explain this to you. I spent most of my childhood persistently befuddled by why people thought I was being an asshole: I still didn't need anyone to explain to me why "Just do literally the thing you can't do!" is jackass behavior.

The only issue I'd have with the story, barring potential inconsistencies with broader canon, would be the giant smiley that's entirely invisible. As I do recall a kid in Ward drawing depictions of the Space-whales, but then again Agents and all that are known factors by then, doubtlessly without the Zion Hub. Though it does seem weird to me that the Shard wouldn't just blur the pattern all into one thick line.

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Nobody in Ward draws an Entity. That's Worm, and it's Aidan drawing something he dreamed from before he triggered, because Worm and Ward have this baffling notion that dreams (And to a lesser extent sleep in general) are a weird and alien concept the Entities keep screwing up in relation to. (And note that since he hadn't triggered yet, the mental block refusing to affect non-parahumans means he's not vulnerable at the time he drew it)

You also clearly don't remember Tattletale's complete obliviousness to the picture. Have a quote:

"Aidan had a dream one night, back when the nightmares stopped. He drew that picture."

"Picture?"

"I gave it to you. I kind of emphasized it might be important."

"Pretty sure that didn't happen," Tattletale said. She stood from her desk. "Sorry, Aidan, to squabble in front of you, but Charlotte needs to remember I don't tend to miss stuff like that."

"All that money you've given me for helping to look after the territory? The money for the kids? I'd stake it all on what I'm saying now. I promise, I swear I handed you that picture."

Tattletale frowned.

"I swear," Charlotte said, for emphasis.

"Then there's a fucked up stranger power at work. Don't like that idea. Let's see. Um. I store everything in a rightful place. If you handed me a picture… was it here?"

"Here."

Tattletale crossed the room. She pulled a bin off a shelf, then sorted through file folders.

Charlotte said, "There."

Tattletale stopped, then went back a page.

"Huh. I stand corrected."

There was a beep on the computer. Tattletale went back to the computer to investigate, shrugged, then sat down.

"Well?" Charlotte asked.

"Well what?"

"The picture."

Tattletale frowned. "What picture?"

"What's going on?" Aidan asked.

Charlotte stalked over to the bin that was still out, grabbed the paper, then slammed it down on the desk. "I don't think a piece of paper can have superpowers. Pay attention. Focus Memorize."

Tattletale frowned. She turned her attention to the paper.

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Tattletale just straight-up repeatedly refuses to acknowledge it exists, doesn't properly remember what was said seconds ago, keeps flipping past it, gets distracted and forgets this was a conversation she was in, etc.

My depiction of Taylor going 'why are you staring at that' is maybe wrong, but only in the sense that it's distinctly possible the block would've caused Taylor to ignore Bakuda staring at the wall as part of the block instead of having Taylor ignore the wall in particular. (Okay, and it's probably slightly artificial of me to have Taylor explicitly specifying it's an empty stretch of wall. People tend to take that kind of thing as self-evident, when asking why someone is staring at seemingly nothing)

(Also, the bit where Charlotte alludes to Aidan having triggered more recently than the dream that lead to the drawing is above where I started the quote. That's not me jumping to a weird assumption, I just grabbed this quote faiirly specifically for the Tattletale-glossing-over-the-paper stuff. I similarly cut it short of the part where she bypasses the block, because it's not relevant to this point)

GODS, thank you! It is maddening to me how readily some writers will just throw that out there and pretend that's a good enough narrative answer. Not only is everything better than that, Nothing is better!

Like, f*&^, lets take it seriously for a hot second. Our protagonist has woken in the body of some fictional character or major historical figure, and they think a "Random Omnipotent Being" did it. So lets pick one, shall we? The reason our protagonist has woken up in the body of Kaiser Wilhelm is because Huitzilopotchli did it.

What! A writer doesn't get to just say that and then act like its irrelevant! This information has further implications!

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I draw a distinction between 'the narrative invokes a ROB' and 'a character theorizes about a ROB being the explanation' (As in, I was really talking about the latter in particular), but I still broadly agree with your frustration here, including the part where I tend to feel providing zero explanation is better than providing a terrible explanation, in the vast majority of writing situations.

 

[Mechasaurian]

Can we put Ward spoilers in spoiler boxes? I haven't read it yet.

 

[Mechasaurian]

Now, in spirit you are correct: canon intends for Eden to have metaphorically died in a car crash while texting, with Abaddon having not tried to kill her.

But it's long been a fan-theory Abaddon assassinated Eden, because honestly it fits so neatly with canon events.

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How do you know that canon intends this? Does Wildbow say so? Because otherwise, I don't see why you would doggedly insist that this is the One True Reading of the text. But you've previously displayed a fair amount of contempt for Word of Wildbow when it clashes with your reading of the text, so ?????

Like, I actually went through the text line by line a few years ago, and one thing that really stuck out to me was that Eden gained fewer shards than she lost to Abaddon. It was not an equivalent exchange - it was one weighted in favour of the third Entity. This kind of cinched it for me, in addition to the other stuff, that Abaddon had effectively mugged Eden under pretenses of a fair trade. It's just that, because the Entities are alien idiot-savants, Eden did not actually have the frame of reference to realize that she had in fact been mugged.

 

[Krazyfan1]

The Titans are one of Ward's most indefensible decisions, and indeed were the moment that cemented for me that I was never going to treat any mechanics introduced by Ward as Worm canon.

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i still kinda like the bit where some of the shards genuinely like their hosts

 

[Eman Resu]

How do you know that canon intends this? Does Wildbow say so? Because otherwise, I don't see why you would doggedly insist that this is the One True Reading of the text. But you've previously displayed a fair amount of contempt for Word of Wildbow when it clashes with your reading of the text, so ?????

Like, I actually went through the text line by line a few years ago, and one thing that really stuck out to me was that Eden gained fewer shards than she lost to Abaddon. It was not an equivalent exchange - it was one weighted in favour of the third Entity. This kind of cinched it for me, in addition to the other stuff, that Abaddon had effectively mugged Eden under pretenses of a fair trade. It's just that, because the Entities are alien idiot-savants, Eden did not actually have the frame of reference to realize that she had in fact been mugged.

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Taylor is the mc. Her mom died while texting her. Her dad who worked as an administrator organizing people was crushed by his emotions without any ability to cope. Taylor got bullied nearly to death.

Scion is the antagonist. His wife died while texting. He was crushed by emotions without any ability to cope. He gave away his ability to administrate to Taylor. She used it to organize people into bullying him to death.

Its a narrative trope thing, a dark mirrory, ironic, or whatever, similarity between the hero's personal journey magnified onto the rest of the setting.

However, I think it is entirely possible that eden being mugged/raped in an alley fits as well, due to emma having an eerily Similar life changing event and her role in creating the mc as we see her.

 

[Neruz]

Incorrect. Ward never touches on Abaddon at all (I might be forgetting a time someone offhandedly referred to trigger event visions including a third Entity or something, but nothing substantive came up, I'm confident of that),

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The second half of Interlude 18.z is narrated from the perspective of the Eye, also known as Contessa's Path to Victory shard, and gives us this:

She stood utterly alone and completely still. For all intents and purposes, she was the only one of her kind.

Before any of this, all of this, she had been the forward-looking eye of something greater and grander, a lonely being in and of itself. That great and grand thing had crossed paths with a pair of others.

Take my eye, it had said. Take my wings. Take my teeth. Take my ability to step between worlds.

The pair, in turn, had made their own offerings, as much as they were in a hurry.

For they were the most distant of cousins, the most distant of things. If they did not share their stories and resources now then stars might be born and die before their individual family lines crossed paths and had opportunity to share again. And they were scholars, all of them, trying to answer an unanswerable riddle.

The pair took the Loner's eye, among millions of other parts and graces and favors. The Loner traveled away, taking care to leave a breadcrumb trail that would ensure he and his kind would not return back this way until galaxies had been born anew. They searched for answers and backtracking was of little merit.

And the forward-looking eye, so generously given to the pair, was dropped in the rush, dropped in a stumble and crashing fall. Instructions were given in the parting. "Don't go too far, little Eye. You may see everything, but close yourself before you show them where we're weak. Don't show them our deepest secrets!"

It was picked up by a primitive, who looked through it and saw the pair. It approached the pair, a blade in hand, and the eye closed tight.

But another primitive saw, and another hand guided the knife home.

A betrayal, mechanical and undeniable.

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Plus a whole lot more that I won't bother quoting in full; go read the chapter if you want the full thing, but the quoted part alone very clearly indicates that the Eye was not intended to harm Eden, and that the Loner was not hostile.



Of course, that doesn't mean the same is true here; this story is called Exploding Canon after all. Or the SI could just be tinfoil hatting themselves into a conspiracy theory that doesn't actually exist.

I'm kind of looking forward to finding out which, actually.

 

[Ghoul King]

How do you know that canon intends this? Does Wildbow say so? Because otherwise, I don't see why you would doggedly insist that this is the One True Reading of the text. But you've previously displayed a fair amount of contempt for Word of Wildbow when it clashes with your reading of the text, so ?????

Like, I actually went through the text line by line a few years ago, and one thing that really stuck out to me was that Eden gained fewer shards than she lost to Abaddon. It was not an equivalent exchange - it was one weighted in favour of the third Entity. This kind of cinched it for me, in addition to the other stuff, that Abaddon had effectively mugged Eden under pretenses of a fair trade. It's just that, because the Entities are alien idiot-savants, Eden did not actually have the frame of reference to realize that she had in fact been mugged.

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Canon is quite blunt that Eden considers the soft sciences she got worth more than the material lost. It's also pretty strongly implied she lost more mass because she's bigger, so if eg they traded 25% of their shards and lost 10% of their shards (To make up some arbitrary numbers that make sense to me), she'd have lost more than she gained. (Say Abaddon is 100 arbitrary units of measurement, and Eden is 200 arbitrary units. In that case Eden trades away 50 units, loses 20 units, and is then given 25 units: less than half what she gave away and lost in total, even though in proportions her and Abaddon made an exactly equal trade)

Then there's all the blatant parallels with Annette and Danny. (Amusingly, one can argue this makes Abaddon Taylor in the comparison) This is in fact a thing Wildbow keeps doing in his stories, where there's major beats driven by thematic parallels he intended to exist, as signaled by things like how characters describe each other in ways that are consistent with these thematic considerations while making literally zero sense for the characters to say given the information we know they have. He's sufficiently bad at keeping his story straight and whatnot that I honestly couldn't say if these parallels are something he consciously plotted out in the sense of eg literally writing in his notes "The Entities parallel Taylor's parents", but it's too consistent a pattern to be an actual accident.

Put altogether, and we get that it's blunt that Wildbow intended the 'texting while driving=death' metaphor/comparison point on some level (Just possibly a subconscious level where if someone pointed it out to him he would be mildly surprised to be told this is an interpretation people have... like he was surprised to learn that Taylor started Worm not knowing about trigger events) and definitely didn't intend on any level the 'Abaddon the assassin' theory to be a valid read.

Especially when you stack on that he's repeatedly constructed his stories where a natural reading of events points to one explanation, and the story goes on to make it bluntly clear he intends for it to be unambiguously the case that some completely different and amazingly nonsensical explanation is What Is Really Happening. At this point, I somewhat cynically assume that if the events I'm reading in a Wildbow work appear to make naturalistic sense, that this merely means I haven't read far enough to see the story deliberately destroy every natural explanation and arbitrarily insert a nonsense one as The True Explanation. It's not 100% reliable of an axiom, but it's pretty sad how its success rate is well over 50%.

Which is to say that "Abaddon the assassin is the natural reading" is part of why I think it's not the intended reading. He's too consistent about natural readings of his writing being far removed from his intentions.

The second half of Interlude 18.z is narrated from the perspective of the Eye, also known as Contessa's Path to Victory shard, and gives us this:

Plus a whole lot more that I won't bother quoting in full; go read the chapter if you want the full thing, but the quoted part alone very clearly indicates that the Eye was not intended to harm Eden, and that the Loner was not hostile.

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Ah. That bit.

I forgot about that bit because it's a retcon that doesn't work. Worm was explicit that PtV saw no issue with plotting an Entity's demise, and that Eden gave it last-second instructions once Contessa was in her face, about to kill her. I would like to approve of this retcon in spirit, as it is dumb that Worm canon has all this stuff about safeguards to prevent powers from being used against Entities and then PtV had no such safeguards built in, but this retcon makes even less sense in details: if PtV was given such instructions by Abaddon, it would've 'closed its eye' long before Contessa was in stabbing distance, or more accurately would've straight-up refused to provide a Path. This is a retcon that's going 'oh, the lack of safeguards doesn't make much sense. But, you know, while I could rewrite that entire backstory into something that actually makes sense, that sounds like a lot of work. So let's just arbitrarily claim such a safeguard existed even though the scene wouldn't have happened that way if it did exist, and pretend this fixes the sequence.'

Ward is bad. It is so bad I routinely found myself accidentally thinking sentences like 'unlike in canon' when thinking about Ward's problems, as if Ward was a post-Golden Morning fanfic instead of an official sequel written by Worm's actual writer.

Indeed, it felt very much like a fanfic written by someone who read up to somewhere around the Slaughterhouse Nine Arc, stopped, then osmotically absorbed later canon from the general fandom, and then inexplicably decided they were qualified to write something occurring after Golden Morning, with attendant bizarre and literally baseless headcanons butchering characterization and worldbuilding.

Of course, that doesn't mean the same is true here; this story is called Exploding Canon after all. Or the SI could just be tinfoil hatting themselves into a conspiracy theory that doesn't actually exist.

I'm kind of looking forward to finding out which, actually.

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I mean, I've already said Ward isn't canon to Exploding Canon.

Though that doesn't mean Bakuda isn't just tinfoilling herself, no...

 

[Neruz]

Ah. That bit.

I forgot about that bit because it's a retcon that doesn't work. Worm was explicit that PtV saw no issue with plotting an Entity's demise, and that Eden gave it last-second instructions once Contessa was in her face, about to kill her. I would like to approve of this retcon in spirit, as it is dumb that Worm canon has all this stuff about safeguards to prevent powers from being used against Entities and then PtV had no such safeguards built in, but this retcon makes even less sense in details: if PtV was given such instructions by Abaddon, it would've 'closed its eye' long before Contessa was in stabbing distance, or more accurately would've straight-up refused to provide a Path. This is a retcon that's going 'oh, the lack of safeguards doesn't make much sense. But, you know, while I could rewrite that entire backstory into something that actually makes sense, that sounds like a lot of work. So let's just arbitrarily claim such a safeguard existed even though the scene wouldn't have happened that way if it did exist, and pretend this fixes the sequence.'

Ward is bad. It is so bad I routinely found myself accidentally thinking sentences like 'unlike in canon' when thinking about Ward's problems, as if Ward was a post-Golden Morning fanfic instead of an official sequel written by Worm's actual writer.

Indeed, it felt very much like a fanfic written by someone who read up to somewhere around the Slaughterhouse Nine Arc, stopped, then osmotically absorbed later canon from the general fandom, and then inexplicably decided they were qualified to write something occurring after Golden Morning, with attendant bizarre and literally baseless headcanons butchering characterization and worldbuilding.

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Aaaactually...

If we roll on back to Interlude 29:

Could she do all this, explain to her uncle, find the thing that was at the heart of this chaos, and save her people, and handle the other essential crises she run into on her way?

No.

A fog was creeping over her eyes, and the number of steps were growing too numerous at the same time. Two differing things, denying her.

...

She shivered, but she steeled herself, picking the path she wanted to take. It was the haze of fog that scared her most. If she chose to do something else, and she lost sight of the path where she could kill the godling…

...

I have to kill it.

The plan formed in her mind. The haze of fog still hung over her mind's eye, and it grew worse with every moment.

...

The being raised its head. She could see its eyes open in recognition.

It's teaching itself how to act like we act. Even this.

She raised her arm, knife held with the point down.

And the gray fog descended on her mind, blinding her. A barrier, a blind spot, a future she could no longer see. Had it set the limitation more firmly in place?

The godling smiled. It knew, because the power she was using was the same power it had used to glimpse the future, to find that particular future where it had the world divided, drowned in conflict.

As far as the godling was concerned, she was blind, as helpless as anyone else.

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Note that there is not actually any reference to Eden giving PtV last-second instructions; the Eye was steadily closing the closer that Fortuna got to actually attempting to kill Eden, to the point that she feared if she looked away from that 'path' that she would never find it again.

When the Eye closes entirely, Fortuna guesses that Eden might have set the limitation more firmly in place; in other words the limitation was already there.

Eden doesn't smile because she just 'hacked' the Eye, she smiles because upon noticing Fortuna, she can tell that Fortuna is connected to the Eye and knows that the Eye will not allow Fortuna to directly harm her.

Unfortunately for Eden, she fails to realize that just because the Eye will not directly harm her, does not mean it cannot indirectly harm her.



So while there are certainly some rough edges and holes, the Eye's perspective in Ward doesn't outright contradict the Eden scene in Worm, it just highlights that Fortuna did not necessarily know what was going on; she was guessing, and she was not necessarily correct.

I mean, I've already said Ward isn't canon to Exploding Canon.

Though that doesn't mean Bakuda isn't just tinfoilling herself, no...

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That is why I've been enjoying the SI winding themselves up into a conspiracy knot; while she has made logical inferences, there's been no actual proof that she's right about any of it. I find myself waffling between wanting her to turn out to be right, and wanting her to turn out to have gone full tinfoil hat.

 

[jonas]

Saying 'PtV is the mostest precoggest' doesn't actually do anything to obviate the reasons precogs interfering with each other make sense and canon never actually suggests precog tiers exist somehow anyway. It's straight-up just thoughtless, bad writing

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The reason 'PtV is the mostest precoggest' isn't that it trumps other precogs, it's that it's looks further than the others and adapt faster.

Take for example PtV VS Coil.
PtV would have a plan, coil would use his power, and then throw PtVs plan out the window, whereupon PtV would emidiately make a new plan.

Think of it like a chess game, where you're playing against a perfect chess bot, but you can regularly make it make a random move, rather than what it intended, thus throwing it's current plan out the window.
If a chess master had that problem, he'd have to figure out a new plan every time, but at the speed a chess bot thinks it's barely a problem.

PtV is thrown off by precogs, but if it's against a long term planner, it'll throw it off by adapting more often that the planer, and if it's up against a short term planner, with a lot of update, such as a combat precog, it'll win by making longer plans with compounding successes.

 

[Ghoul King]

If we roll on back to Interlude 29:
Note that there is not actually any reference to Eden giving PtV last-second instructions; the Eye was steadily closing the closer that Fortuna got to actually attempting to kill Eden, to the point that she feared if she looked away from that 'path' that she would never find it again.

When the Eye closes entirely, Fortuna guesses that Eden might have set the limitation more firmly in place; in other words the limitation was already there.

Eden doesn't smile because she just 'hacked' the Eye, she smiles because upon noticing Fortuna, she can tell that Fortuna is connected to the Eye and knows that the Eye will not allow Fortuna to directly harm her.

Unfortunately for Eden, she fails to realize that just because the Eye will not directly harm her, does not mean it cannot indirectly harm her.



So while there are certainly some rough edges and holes, the Eye's perspective in Ward doesn't outright contradict the Eden scene in Worm, it just highlights that Fortuna did not necessarily know what was going on; she was guessing, and she was not necessarily correct.

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Those quotes really just firm up my opinion that it's a retcon, or possibly more 'the natural reading is wrong' Bad Writing. There's zero suggestion anywhere in there that the 'fog' is specifically PtV 'noticing' an attempt to kill off Eden and trying to not cooperate, and while I was complaining about PtV being treated as unbeatably perfect and all earlier, Worm was blunt that PtV is interfered with by Endbringers, doesn't work on Eidolon or Scion (Not simply 'can't provide clues to kill Scion': straight-up doesn't work on David), and just generally has a cloud of Entity-connected things where it doesn't work perfectly or at all, up to and including that Scion himself bluntly tells the audience that trigger events cannot be precogged even by him. (Except lol here's Imp's shard's backstory via precogged trigger event. sigh) The natural reading of that scene is that all the portals around Eden's body and the trigger events occurring around Fortuna and who knows what other Entity-related chaos is stuff that was rapidly going to overlap with Eden's future in ways that meant that there'd be a cloud of 'PtV doesn't work around Eden's physical location' in a matter of hours, such that the option was going to be taken away. Similarly, Eden opens her eyes, then Fortuna loses that particular Path (Which had not suffered from any actual problems at any point prior, just Fortuna worrying she'd not be able to return to this Path at a later date if she set it aside for any real time), followed by Eden smiling, which given what we're told of Scion's emotions is probably a genuine spontaneous reaction and not something done for effect.

This entire flow of events makes perfect sense as 'PtV was going to be blocked by assorted Entity-related issues that were happening anyway and that we know would interfere with PtV in a day or so, but only actually cut out just before the actual stab because Eden noticed Fortuna and sent new instructions'.

It makes zero sense as 'Abaddon put in a block, which for no explicable reason had literally no meaningful impact on Fortuna's ability to go for the kill until the most dramatic, last-second possibility'. Even if I generously assume it took a while for the block to fully implement because it took the shard longer to 'spin up' that particular sub-function, that doesn't even slightly match what Fortuna experienced. Literally the only reason I think you might be right Wildbow originally intended this insane nonsense reading is because PtV's block finally spinning up at the literal last fucking second is exactly the kind of melodramatic, overly-convenient, blatantly anti-reality nonsense Wildbow writes regularly.

And even then, I've read Twig, so I know he also writes blatant retcons, forgets what he actually wrote even when it's trivial to double-check, and so on. That this very particular, bizarre, anti-reality reading kind of lines up with something Ward later claimed is... not strong evidence it's not a retcon.

That is why I've been enjoying the SI winding themselves up into a conspiracy knot; while she has made logical inferences, there's been no actual proof that she's right about any of it. I find myself waffling between wanting her to turn out to be right, and wanting her to turn out to have gone full tinfoil hat.

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I'd wondered if I was the only one enjoying that aspect. Good to know it's actually got a reader-side component to it.

The reason 'PtV is the mostest precoggest' isn't that it trumps other precogs, it's that it's looks further than the others and adapt faster.

Take for example PtV VS Coil.
PtV would have a plan, coil would use his power, and then throw PtVs plan out the window, whereupon PtV would emidiately make a new plan.

Think of it like a chess game, where you're playing against a perfect chess bot, but you can regularly make it make a random move, rather than what it intended, thus throwing it's current plan out the window.
If a chess master had that problem, he'd have to figure out a new plan every time, but at the speed a chess bot thinks it's barely a problem.

PtV is thrown off by precogs, but if it's against a long term planner, it'll throw it off by adapting more often that the planer, and if it's up against a short term planner, with a lot of update, such as a combat precog, it'll win by making longer plans with compounding successes.

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That's not how PtV is actually written. It's written as automatically accounting for everything that will happen, other precogs included, except for the list of blind spots Contessa can use 'modeling' to largely work around anyway.

There is no 'it has strong long-term and short-term modeling and other precogs only do one or the other' to it.

I mean, if you wanted to write a fanfic using that explanation, I'd be intrigued to see it, because that actually sounds vaguely interesting, unlike canon PtV. But it's not what canon is doing.

 

[Neruz]

It makes zero sense as 'Abaddon put in a block, which for no explicable reason had literally no meaningful impact on Fortuna's ability to go for the kill until the most dramatic, last-second possibility'. Even if I generously assume it took a while for the block to fully implement because it took the shard longer to 'spin up' that particular sub-function, that doesn't even slightly match what Fortuna experienced. Literally the only reason I think you might be right Wildbow originally intended this insane nonsense reading is because PtV's block finally spinning up at the literal last fucking second is exactly the kind of melodramatic, overly-convenient, blatantly anti-reality nonsense Wildbow writes regularly.

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Abaddon didn't put the limitation in; according to the Eye, Eden gave it the command to 'not reveal their secrets' during her initial crash-landing.

Personally I read the Ward thing as a combination of shards not having quite the same sense of scale time-wise that humans do, and that the Eye was probably a bit 'concussed' by the landing and so took awhile to remember that it wasn't supposed to show Fortuna any of those details until it saw Eden directly and realized 'oh wait no.'

Also, they're very literal; as seen in the Fortuna interlude where the Eye won't give her the path to 'not fall off Eden' but will happily give her the path to 'not fall over' as long as Eden itself is not directly mentioned, even though the thing causing Fortuna to fall over is Eden's movements.

 

[jonas]

Those quotes really just firm up my opinion that it's a retcon, or possibly more 'the natural reading is wrong' Bad Writing. There's zero suggestion anywhere in there that the 'fog' is specifically PtV 'noticing' an attempt to kill off Eden and trying to not cooperate, and while I was complaining about PtV being treated as unbeatably perfect and all earlier, Worm was blunt that PtV is interfered with by Endbringers, doesn't work on Eidolon or Scion (Not simply 'can't provide clues to kill Scion': straight-up doesn't work on David), and just generally has a cloud of Entity-connected things where it doesn't work perfectly or at all, up to and including that Scion himself bluntly tells the audience that trigger events cannot be precogged even by him. (Except lol here's Imp's shard's backstory via precogged trigger event. sigh) The natural reading of that scene is that all the portals around Eden's body and the trigger events occurring around Fortuna and who knows what other Entity-related chaos is stuff that was rapidly going to overlap with Eden's future in ways that meant that there'd be a cloud of 'PtV doesn't work around Eden's physical location' in a matter of hours, such that the option was going to be taken away. Similarly, Eden opens her eyes, then Fortuna loses that particular Path (Which had not suffered from any actual problems at any point prior, just Fortuna worrying she'd not be able to return to this Path at a later date if she set it aside for any real time), followed by Eden smiling, which given what we're told of Scion's emotions is probably a genuine spontaneous reaction and not something done for effect.

This entire flow of events makes perfect sense as 'PtV was going to be blocked by assorted Entity-related issues that were happening anyway and that we know would interfere with PtV in a day or so, but only actually cut out just before the actual stab because Eden noticed Fortuna and sent new instructions'.

It makes zero sense as 'Abaddon put in a block, which for no explicable reason had literally no meaningful impact on Fortuna's ability to go for the kill until the most dramatic, last-second possibility'. Even if I generously assume it took a while for the block to fully implement because it took the shard longer to 'spin up' that particular sub-function, that doesn't even slightly match what Fortuna experienced. Literally the only reason I think you might be right Wildbow originally intended this insane nonsense reading is because PtV's block finally spinning up at the literal last fucking second is exactly the kind of melodramatic, overly-convenient, blatantly anti-reality nonsense Wildbow writes regularly.

And even then, I've read Twig, so I know he also writes blatant retcons, forgets what he actually wrote even when it's trivial to double-check, and so on. That this very particular, bizarre, anti-reality reading kind of lines up with something Ward later claimed is... not strong evidence it's not a retcon.



I'd wondered if I was the only one enjoying that aspect. Good to know it's actually got a reader-side component to it.



That's not how PtV is actually written. It's written as automatically accounting for everything that will happen, other precogs included, except for the list of blind spots Contessa can use 'modeling' to largely work around anyway.

There is no 'it has strong long-term and short-term modeling and other precogs only do one or the other' to it.

I mean, if you wanted to write a fanfic using that explanation, I'd be intrigued to see it, because that actually sounds vaguely interesting, unlike canon PtV. But it's not what canon is doing.

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With the explicit descriptions of other precogs being unable to model each other (see: coil+Dinah power interactions) it make no sense that PtV or Ziz would be the exception.

Ziz is written as an exception, as her plans work without her interaction after she lets go of them. But PtV is clearly following this "just adapts faster and better than other precogs" since we see the plans fluctuate, she needs to constantly make small changes to make her ongoing plans continue, and even fail, (see: the moronic containment of C53s). Which suggests that she can't perfectly model other precogs.

She could make simulacrums of said precogs due to her versatility. But that needs to be active on her part, the same way she models blindspots. In a form of "make a plan based on the assumption that this person gets access to information in a way similar to what his power has given him"

 

[Thearpox]

Explains the joke

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Umwelt. Sometimes humor just doesn't land.

it'd be like having someone insist to me that religion is the only thing that makes people happy while constantly alluding to how their own religious community is the source of all their woes.

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That describes like half of the visible atheists on the internet. (The part I find funny is not that they exist, but that in giving an ridiculous example you inadvertently(?) described something very common.)

If you don't see the extremely obvious and deep assholery embedded in that scenario, I honestly don't know how to explain this to you. I spent most of my childhood persistently befuddled by why people thought I was being an asshole: I still didn't need anyone to explain to me why "Just do literally the thing you can't do!" is jackass behavior.

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Because between this and me apparently just being pedantic over your word choice: At this point it doesn't seem to be a question of an explanation but a foundational philosophical disagreement over how we relate to fictional characters. Live and let live? Because this seems rather a rather deep rabbit hole.

GODS, thank you! It is maddening to me how readily some writers will just throw that out there and pretend that's a good enough narrative answer. Not only is everything better than that, Nothing is better!

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I, for one, support an easy way to filter out bad writing from my reading list. Seriously though, I find that so far the number of stories where the writer made that choice but would have still been enjoyable for me to read is zero. Can you imagine what it'd be like if all the writers avoided the beginner mistakes and we only found out problems 100k+ words in?

That is why I've been enjoying the SI winding themselves up into a conspiracy knot; while she has made logical inferences, there's been no actual proof that she's right about any of it. I find myself waffling between wanting her to turn out to be right, and wanting her to turn out to have gone full tinfoil hat.

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I'd wondered if I was the only one enjoying that aspect. Good to know it's actually got a reader-side component to it.

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Nah, I'm enjoying it too, but it is tempered by the fact that the payoff is going to be a long way off into the future of the story. Seems like something that if gets answered, only gets answered near the windup of the story.

needs to constantly make small changes to make her ongoing plans continue, and even fail, (see: the moronic containment of C53s). Which suggests that she can't perfectly model other precogs.

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I can already see how this is going to go; with Ghoul going on another rant about why that example doesn't work and doesn't actually support your point. (Lemme guess. Because trigger events are impossible to predict, the inhumane containment of C53s is fundamentally flawed for PtV no matter which interpretation you go with, because of the possible appearance of random blindspots.) Then someone is going to bring up yet another flawed piece of canon as an argument, and Ghoul rips it to shreds again. Rinse and repeat. Until we go over every single piece of canon as evidence of one thing or another.

I am not one to usually call people out for derails, but at this point Ghoul has a massive body of work both in this thread and in Monster where he's already critiqued damn near everything. If I went archive fishing, I could probably impersonate him just by quoting him verbatim. Maybe someone (who isn't me) should just make a collage of "GhoulKing's opinions of Worm and Ward canon" so we don't have this king of thing happening? I just want a new chapter.


PS to below: If I am repeatedly stressing that the topic is about fictional characters, then it is probably because the original post that started the argument concerned the actions of fictional characters, and that's kind of an integral part of the situation. If the guy referred to real people it'd be a completely different argument. Why GhoulKing shifted to talking about real people in real life is up to him to if he wants to clarify, but again, I see it as we either have some fundamental philosophical disagreement, or there is a weird dissonance in communication. And if you can see that I am explicitly referring to fictional characters I have no idea why you're quoting United States laws at me.

 

[captainSV]

In the most generous scenario, it's a kind of innocent assholery, akin to coming upon someone griping about a building lacking an elevator, and innocently asking "Why don't you take the stairs?" while they gape in shock from their wheelchair. More likely, it's a lot less innocent than that.

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And no, I don't think that claiming that a character in a wheelchair should just take the stairs is insensitive. Characters are like pinatas, they exist for us to beat upon. I'd find the statement odd, but I'd just ask the person to clarify in case I missed some detail that would allow them to take the stairs

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Because between this and me apparently just being pedantic over your word choice: At this point it doesn't seem to be a question of an explanation but a foundational philosophical disagreement over how we relate to fictional characters. Live and let live? Because this seems rather a rather deep rabbit hole.

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So, pardon me if i'm butting in and ruining, whatever you've got going on here, and truly it is riveting to read in my email inbox whenever i get the "ghoul king has posted a 3k word long post" so quickly that my email client puts them in one email thread instead of distinct emails, but, this is something i personally feel should be pointed out.
Thearpox, you're responding to ghoul king's scenario as if the people are fictional characters. That is not what a 'hypothetical scenario' is. Ghoul king was kind of very much saying 'imagine that happening IN REAL LIFE, to, ya know, REAL PEOPLE'. I do not know why, or really for that matter how, you got the idea that ghoul king was talking about fictional characters in his 'real world hypothetical', but it's just so blatantly wrong and off base that i cannot let it go un called out (as it has by ghoul king, who engaged with the messages at face, probably for practical reasons, or idk, i'm not ghoul king).
Not to mention that in the hypothetical, the thing the disabled person is griping about is an actual, federal crime, under either the americans with disabilities act or the 2009 extension to the 1969 United States Federal Hate Crime Act, and is a legit thing to be griping about. In fact, depending on the tone of the person who said it, the actual act of telling them 'why not use the stairs' could ITSELF be classed as a bias crime under the self same 1969 United States Federal Hate Crime Act, as ghoul king himself was so kind to point out (without going in to the legal side of the scenario).

(edited in that last paragraph about actual laws)

 

[WinterLantern]

Taylor is the mc. Her mom died while texting her. Her dad who worked as an administrator organizing people was crushed by his emotions without any ability to cope. Taylor got bullied nearly to death.

Scion is the antagonist. His wife died while texting. He was crushed by emotions without any ability to cope. He gave away his ability to administrate to Taylor. She used it to organize people into bullying him to death.

Its a narrative trope thing, a dark mirrory, ironic, or whatever, similarity between the hero's personal journey magnified onto the rest of the setting.

However, I think it is entirely possible that eden being mugged/raped in an alley fits as well, due to emma having an eerily Similar life changing event and her role in creating the mc as we see her.

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I feel like actually, seriously drawing that comparison is kind of absurdist and feels incredibly sloppy if intentional by Wildbow, and is a parallel for the sake of a parallel in the guise of deeper themes that really dont exist, or are incredibly stretched to fit a reading.

Scion is depressed, and so is danny yeah, but we also dont see scion unable to emotionally to connect to their offspring/shards. There's not an overarching theme of parental neglect in Scion, Scion is omnipotent compared to Danny's powerlessness and impotence, and really Annette's absence is more an instigating factor in the collapse of Taylor and Danny's relationship- it's not just the death of Annette that grinds him down, it's the soul crushing nature of his job in a dying union, Taylor's personal withdrawal and the societal role of breadwinner, emotionally withdrawn fatherhood. Scion and Danny grieve Yeah, but Scion is unable to do anything but, and is defined solely by that and unlike Danny its entirely the reason.

When the scion/Danny connection is drawn, it's obvious how hollow of a character scion is, and that they are pretty divergent in motivations, and ya know Danny doesn't go on a murderous tantrum. So the connection apart from incredibly broad parallels of 'wife died'-which is already reductive as fuck- is upon deeper inspection pretty flimsy.

While I enjoy the meme of Eden crashing while texting and driving, it's pretty innacurate. It's too busy fucking with fancy new shards (so more like reading a book while driving I guess) and more importantly lacks the context of communication: that considering Danny and Taylor's weird phone trauma (god that's stupid a stupid plot point) it's pretty likely Annette was messaging them-cue deification of the caring mother figure that's a really bizzare undertone of worm (Purity deserved to have her kids taken away fuck her). Furthermore Eden was actively murdered by the third (or if you include Abbadon) fourth party ala Contessa.

The Emma comparison is reaching real far, because Emma is 'rescued' and filled with a toxic, cynical ideology whereas the entities dont really have an ideology, Eden isn't super traumatised and lashing out, and Eden isn't a child. Emma falls back onto a terrible support network, Eden basically just briefly continues coexisting with Scion mindlessly. They both roughly fill the hole as antagonists, but Emma serves in an emotional capacity, whereas Eden is a corpse, and only impacts the story through Cauldron fuckery. Eden fits in a power sense as a villain i guess, but thats more Cauldron, and as an overall maguffin in function.

Tldr Danny/Scion Eden/Annette/Emma is less dark mirror and more funhouse mirror which has been smacked with a sledgehammer as it bounces around in the back of a van on a road full of potholes.

 

[Eman Resu]

feels incredibly sloppy if intentional by Wildbow and is a parallel for the sake of a parallel in the guise of deeper themes that really dont exist

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This would be a great counter argument if we were talking about tolkien or rothfuss, but we are talking about wildbow, so this actually evidence in favor of the theory.

funhouse mirror which has been smacked with a sledgehammer as it bounces around in the back of a van on a road full of potholes.

Click to shrink...

reductive as fuck

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How do these not SCREAM wildbow to you? Its clearly an intentional narrative similarity thingy just poorly executed in classic wildbow style and it supports the natural reading over the retcon, which is why you will see it brought up by proponents of the natural reading.

Scion is beaten down by the pointlessness of the cycle, the same as danny. Day in day out go through the familiar motions that don't help and can't matter. They are similarly hollow and that is about as deep as wildbow every considers anything they write.

Eden's death doesn't involve communication? Its clearly exchanging information with the smaller third entity on screen before its crash in one of its maybe three total scenes.

It seems to me like you are stretching to make it not fit because you prefer the back alley assassin retcon of ward.