Exploding Canon (Worm SI)

[The Void]

Ah, well at least I know when that scene occurs now and I do thank you for that.

Otherwise it seems apparent that I can't convince or alter your notion about the Titans, especially considering background wise the Systems that Shards should be using (to unite) aren't available and how it has only been a scant few years compared to a species that takes hundreds for a Cycle.

Beyond that, I recall hearing the suggestion of why Dreams of Humans (emphasis here on Human) are so hard for the Entities.
Is because (firstly) humans have the capacity to be conscious during a Dream, (secondly) that Human brain structure has a distinction between the conscious and unconscious, (thirdly) the possibility of the Entities knowing the sum of a Dream (Computer) but not the underlying principles (ie hard/software), (fourthly) that Shards have a similar storage system to Humanity, in that they store memories by context, concept, and emotions.
Though the second reason feels the weakest to me, if we assume that every other Species that the Cycle targets has the same sort of distinction, but at the same time it is an assumption not definite proof.

 

[WinterLantern]

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.





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.

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Nah chief I ain't read no ward, so I ain't stretching for no back alley assassin/rape thing. So chill with the accusation/assumption please merci.

I mean overall the whole entity/human comparison is just kind of shit, lacks any depth and actual parallels are flimsy as fuck/ have so many wildly varying factors that any point made is stretched to breaking point. Also the emphasis on the alien nature of entities and there general sittyness makes the Danny comparison just feels unwarrantly harsh.

Also as a point in regard to communication, Abaddon is even less of a character than Eden, and to Eden is a stranger. Puzzling over an info exchange with a stranger kind of carries a lot less narrative weight than Annette crashing whilst texting family. Its like crashing while on the phone to a telemarketer.

(Also yeah Danny has the big parental neglect thing that's probs more important to his character, or at least a major facet, Scion just be grieving their entity life mate, and only that. Danny may be shallow be woot Scion is dew on concrete compared to Danny bois inch deep puddle)

 

[Ghoul King]

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.

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Okay, double-checking that quote, I can see how 'instructions were given during the parting' could be intended to mean 'Eden gave instructions when she dropped PtV', and not 'Abaddon gave instructions to PtV when he was giving it away'. That is a depressingly bad way to construct these sentences even given Entity-speak and all is supposed to be weird, but I can see how someone could even realistically arrive at the correct interpretation off of the text, as far as that goes, simply by parsing sentences differently from how I tend to.

That said, it doesn't actually fundamentally change what I said: which Entity provided the instruction isn't important. All the issues with 'the ~fog~ doesn't actually matter until the literal last second' are still there, and pointing out Entity literalness doesn't help, as what we see for every forbidden topic except 'murder Eden how do' is that PtV just straight-up stops giving any answers, not 'PtV is perfectly happy to provide a Path until literally the last second of execution'. If Ward's signaling isn't an ill-considered retcon, then Wildbow originally wrote out utter nonsense of the most contrived, melodramatic sort, and saw nothing wrong with 'PtV works one way in all cases, except on this one topic where it instead works a different way that conveniently produces maximum emotional drama'.

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"

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I mean, a fanfic is free to go the sane route and assume PtV's fluctuations are driven in part by precogs interfering, but canon blames it on all the blind spots having knock-off effects PtV can't predict but can adjust for once they've happened. Regular precogs are treated as beneath Contessa, zero threat.

As for the Simurgh, she's actually written as more fallible than PtV, with it being pretty heavily implied she releases a lot of Rube Goldberg Machine plots and quite a lot of them don't really work out as intended, and it's just humanity can't readily see that a plot was attempted and got foiled without anyone even actually trying. It's part of why I'm baffled canon simultaneously heavily implied regular precogs can be pretty reliably worked around by her. I'm willing to accept she has a significant advantage in a precog-off simply because she has Endbringer-immunity and so in some sense human precogs lose by default, but the ways in which precognition interactions are depicted -and the ways they ought to logically work out- really means precogs should either be fairly close to invisible to the Simurgh's precognition or produce a wide amount of physical space in which the Simurgh is borderline-blind to the future. And canon never invokes 'modeling' or similar non-explanations to explain why the Simurgh doesn't care.

(To be fair, I can use the Scream and her postcognition to provide workable models for how she's hard to surprise once you've entered her range, wherein she's basically studying your prior actions and current brain chemistry to make strongly-informed guesses about your personality, the mechanics of your power, and how you'd be likely to react to any given piece of information your power might provide. But she should still struggle more than canon implies with capes who can't be Screamed and can't be precogged, like Eidolon {there's a reason I had Eidolon in particular not get somehow blocked by her in Exploding Canon}, as well as be more easily thrown off by precogs influencing the battle from outside her range -postcognition and mental scanning doesn't help if a bunch of precogs are feeding the Endbringer response forces info from a location outside her range)

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.)

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I picked it because I had quite a few experiences in my younger years of people trying to earnestly argue that humans can't be happy without religion, which I found obviously false on its own merits but was always baffled by the fact that if they dropped a bunch of hints about their own life in literally every single case it became clear religion was the number one thing fucking up their life. It was bizarre, and it's been a tremendous relief to stop running into it constantly for whatever reason.

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.

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I mean, for one thing you're the one that originally raised the point of the ambiguity of whether my reaction was because I'm viewing Bakuda as an extension of myself. You pushed the conversation toward conflating fictional characters and real people. Not other people.

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.

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I mean, that pretty well describes what Wildbow regularly does. He seems to have this notion he should insert themes into his works, without really understanding what a theme actually is and how one would incorporate such. (I'll note as an aside here that I don't really 'get' themes myself, but on the other hand I don't try to insert them in spite of said lack of understanding) Twig, for example, had the endgame suddenly involve all this jabber about how the Lambs have Grown Up and so on while revisiting their home city, and in this post he talks pretty explicitly that Twig was always intended to be a coming-of-age story, but there was literally no buildup to this idea. It wasn't fundamentally embedded into the story, it's just something he knew he intended so when the story is wrapping up we get all the We've Grown Up So Much tropes even though they're wildly out of place.

And while he recognizes he did a bad job in relation to that particular topic, he puts the focus on the idea that he failed to communicate this clearly, that people were going in expecting his usual epic fantasy stuff and he didn't clearly signal that Twig wasn't meant to be such... never mind that no, he actually wrote his usual epic fantasy stuff from the word go, and the fact that the protagonists were technically children was primarily relevant to the story by virtue of constantly creating problems for it (eg Wildbow completely failed to write any of these ostensible-children as behaving like any manner of child) rather than being in any way integral to events.

I take this particular Worm "theme" semi-seriously, but only really via the attendant 'Taylor metaphorically kills her father' element segueing very naturally into how little Taylor wants to actually do with her actual father, and only because this particular element is exactly the kind of thing I really doubt WIldbow even noticed he was doing. (More precisely, that it resembles the kind of oblivious writing I've seen from other people, where they're putting their very literal thoughts about their life to metaphorical paper, but dressed up as fiction, where they honestly seem to think they're writing fiction and not writing something basically autobiographical, with the fantastical elements there to be blunt and explicit about things that would otherwise be less obvious. Especially in conjunction with Wildbow having dropped hints to his own childhood family situation being pretty shitty)

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.

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Yyyyyeeeeep.

Otherwise it seems apparent that I can't convince or alter your notion about the Titans, especially considering background wise the Systems that Shards should be using (to unite) aren't available and how it has only been a scant few years compared to a species that takes hundreds for a Cycle.

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You could, but it's pretty unlikely simply because there are too many problems on too many layers, and I have meta-reasons for thinking the whole thing is bullshit that you're not going to be able to meaningfully change. (eg the Titan fights is where Victoria's Plot Armor goes from 'fairly obvious, but technically possible to pretend doesn't exist' to 'impossible to ignore'. It's technically possible for Wildbow to have flagrantly stopped even trying to write something slightly sensical on only one element of the story while the entire rest of the immediately-surrounding writing is thoughtful, but that's not usually how these things work)

There's things in Worm where my current working theory can be summarized as 'Wildbow engaged in bad worldbuilding/writing and that's why this scene came out this way', but where there's sufficiently few problems I would only be moderately surprised if a discussion with someone changed a given such view. If they were able to link to an old comment (Ideally from the same timeframe the chunk of story was written) from Wildbow that supported their interpretation, I would even be pretty likely in such a case to decide that okay, yeah, Wildbow probably did intend Some Sensible Explanation That Never Occurred To Me Personally, and it was just communicated poorly, or it happens to fall inside one of my mental blindspots, or whatever.

The Titans could be pretty easily less completely nonsensical than I think, but being completely sensical is... quite unlikely, given the sheer depth and breadth of the problems they look to have.

Beyond that, I recall hearing the suggestion of why Dreams of Humans (emphasis here on Human) are so hard for the Entities.
Is because (firstly) humans have the capacity to be conscious during a Dream, (secondly) that Human brain structure has a distinction between the conscious and unconscious, (thirdly) the possibility of the Entities knowing the sum of a Dream (Computer) but not the underlying principles (ie hard/software), (fourthly) that Shards have a similar storage system to Humanity, in that they store memories by context, concept, and emotions.
Though the second reason feels the weakest to me, if we assume that every other Species that the Cycle targets has the same sort of distinction, but at the same time it is an assumption not definite proof.

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I'm pretty sure Wildbow's Literal Actual Thought Process is that Entities don't sleep, and don't have imagination, and therefore sleep and dreams are alien concepts to them where they struggle to understand what the hell they're seeing.

It's another one of those things where the basic idea is plausible enough, in terms of 'humanity meets an alien species that doesn't sleep and doesn't dream and the aliens struggle really hard to understand when humans describe dreams to them', but where I have trouble buying it in practice. Yes, the Entities are idiot-savants, but we're bluntly shown they understand and in fact employ basically every relevant concept, in terms of things like using internal modeling of external events to practice ideas, predict future events, review past events, and so on. So it's pretty unbelievable how eg Rain's cluster straight-up has physical copies of themselves in shardspace that their minds puppet when they're asleep. I could buy that from a different story with a god-like power, where said godlike power was shown 'modeling' things by literally making exact duplicates in another dimension and then speeding up time to functionally predict the future (or whatever) because symbolic and simplified representations are a completely alien concept to them and totally unnecessary when you're basically omnipotent, but with everything we're shown of Entities it falls pretty flat.

It also doesn't help that it implicitly hits one of those dumb scifi Humans Are Special tropes, in that for the Entities to be as weirded out by dreams and sleep as the narrative wants us to think, their eons-long Cycle must have never met and used as a host a species that sleeps and dreams. I've always found that an eyebrow-raising concept, and it's only gotten worse as scientific digging has shown that eg even animals people normally think of as not having a conscious intelligence still sleep, and people keep finding ways to check inside more sleeping brains and find that yet more animals are almost certainly dreaming while they sleep. Sleep and dreams aren't weird evolutionary byproducts of a species evolving sentience or some such, they're apparently pretty basic, essential functions.

So I didn't like Worm's handful of suggestions Entities find all this new and alien, and I really don't like Ward wanting to make it a major plotpoint that Entities don't understand this stuff, because canon has done a really bad job of supporting it as a believable possibility.

 

[The Void]

So it is more of a meta thing that makes the Titan unsatisfying than say the actual lore and mechanics behind it? @Ghoul King

Also considering the sheer size and scope of an Entity working, hard to imagine what their rest periods even are, seeing that they are burrowing through reality, tracking the trajectories of multiple interdimensional masses around, constantly shifting through data (like the Internet, Host Thought Patterns, and so on) from the origins their kind, and then the unknown number of simulations prepping for the next Cycle. The closest I could imagine is where they contract themselves into as few realities as possible, cull the fidelity of simulations of ultra-realism plus plus, and power down as many non-vital Shards as possible, leaving mainly enough sensory information to detect oncoming objects, gravitational phenomena, and major steller events like supernovas or gamma-ray bursts.

And I think it's less than the Entities haven't encountered sleep and dreams, given that in WeaverDice there is an entire Tinker Speciality called "Dreams", and that I believe that there is WOG out there that states that Telepathy is considered an unuseful power. Ah found it right here, I'll put in a Spoil Box.

Spoiler: WOG

Yeah. In truth, it's more that shards don't have the exact right templates to draw on in past experience to regularly model a human brain and decrypt the mess of firing neurons. Those shards that can do such decryptions are combined with or supporting other shards that need to model humans (such as shards that simulate or certain thinker shards that aren't mind-reading.

Which isn't to say Telepaths don't exist - they're just not very rare and not highly valued by the shards, who are content to gather information on human brains from the latent black box storage of the tens of thousands of people with powers out there, and explore that in future cycles.

So it seems that it is more of an issue that Shards, as a whole, don't have enough information on the Dreams and Brains of Humanity to reconcile with whatever information of Dreams and Sleep with past cycles. Which combined with the fact that without the Hub Network of at least Zion, and the irregular landscape of Shardspace with unknown status beyond 'working at the least' in Ward, means that Shards can't compile all the needed data and information to understand dreaming with the weird intersection of human awareness of those dreams.

Beyond that, went to go look into the Tinker 2.0 Doc, recalled seeing a WOG saying Bakuda 'as she was' were akin to a field test tinker, not exactly but 'somewhere in line within field test'. But in all honestly, the power itself could change as it gets used to the obviously mentally different Host, doubly so with the high amount of conflict it has gotten, and the methodology example of a Tinker is an example not what every Tinker has to be.

Spoiler: Tinker's 2.0 Snipet

The Field Test Tinker (Chaos x Chaos) chooses one part of any item but doesn't get to know the remainder. Each item has one free augment [tacked on upgrades and special features], the housing [Bombs for example], the pattern [the driving tech or power of a device], and a possible special feature, with one of these things decided in the build process, the others (which one is determined at random) discovered in the immediate aftermath of building, and the remainder must be discovered in the midst of a crisis situation.

 

[Roadie]

It also doesn't help that it implicitly hits one of those dumb scifi Humans Are Special tropes, in that for the Entities to be as weirded out by dreams and sleep as the narrative wants us to think, their eons-long Cycle must have never met and used as a host a species that sleeps and dreams. I've always found that an eyebrow-raising concept, and it's only gotten worse as scientific digging has shown that eg even animals people normally think of as not having a conscious intelligence still sleep, and people keep finding ways to check inside more sleeping brains and find that yet more animals are almost certainly dreaming while they sleep. Sleep and dreams aren't weird evolutionary byproducts of a species evolving sentience or some such, they're apparently pretty basic, essential functions.

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To extend on this, there are actually some pretty strong indications that sleep is actually the default state of multicellular life (see: the metabolisms of plants and sessile animals), and that 'being awake' is actually an incomplete adaptation evolved on top of that.

 

[Callmesalticidae]

This feels

To extend on this, there are actually some pretty strong indications that sleep is actually the default state of multicellular life (see: the metabolisms of plants and sessile animals), and that 'being awake' is actually an incomplete adaptation evolved on top of that.

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Oh, now that is interesting. Do you recall any links to articles or papers about that, offhand?

 

[Infinite Eyes]

and that I believe that there is WOG out there that states that Telepathy is considered an unuseful power.

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That's one of the more blatant things without a functional in story explanation. The only reason why there aren't telepathic parahumans is because Wildbow didn't want to write about telepathy.

Given that the entities keep everything and the kitchen sink in the Cycle, including lots of things they have no reason to believe will be helpful to their goals, avoiding telepathy powers makes little sense.

The explanation of "all the telepathy shards are busy helping other shards that basically need telepathy to work but don't produce telepathy powers for their hosts" is kinda silly.

 

[The Void]

That's one of the more blatant things without a functional in story explanation. The only reason why there aren't telepathic parahumans is because Wildbow didn't want to write about telepathy.

Given that the entities keep everything and the kitchen sink in the Cycle, including lots of things they have no reason to believe will be helpful to their goals, avoiding telepathy powers makes little sense.

The explanation of "all the telepathy shards are busy helping other shards that basically need telepathy to work but don't produce telepathy powers for their hosts" is kinda silly.

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To be fair, where those Shards, or the parts of those Shards, are going to other Shards that are still going to be actively collecting data on Humans. As the main methodology of the Cycle and the thought processes of Entities (barring maybe Abaddon's Strain) are all based on Conflict, both in the abstract sense of competing Ideas and Theories, and the concrete tooth and nail way. And given the lifespan of a Pair Strain is almost always infinite, given they exist throughout all Shards until it explodes into many many Selfs, with memory dating all the way back to their start, they have all the time in the world to look back and process that information when needed.

So I think it is more about how A, telepathy doesn't add as much to the Cycle itself via Parahumans, given how much more variance and add-ons they could use the parts for, and B, normally they don't have to worry about looking at the data now, rather preferring to look at it a later cycle or the near end transition period of the current one.

 

[Ghoul King]

So it is more of a meta thing that makes the Titan unsatisfying than say the actual lore and mechanics behind it? @Ghoul King

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Um, no. The meta stuff is why, if you successfully convince me Titans are possible to make sense, I will still default to assuming what we got was not by virtue of Wildbow applying critical thought to a major story element.

The lore and mechanics also do not make sense to me on their own merits, on so many layers I doubt someone will successfully persuade me that my view is false, and this would be so even if stuff like Victoria's Secret Plot Armor coming to the fore wasn't present.

Also considering the sheer size and scope of an Entity working, hard to imagine what their rest periods even are, seeing that they are burrowing through reality, tracking the trajectories of multiple interdimensional masses around, constantly shifting through data (like the Internet, Host Thought Patterns, and so on) from the origins their kind, and then the unknown number of simulations prepping for the next Cycle. The closest I could imagine is where they contract themselves into as few realities as possible, cull the fidelity of simulations of ultra-realism plus plus, and power down as many non-vital Shards as possible, leaving mainly enough sensory information to detect oncoming objects, gravitational phenomena, and major steller events like supernovas or gamma-ray bursts.

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I don't really mind Entities being sleepless. About the only thing I actually kind of like about this mess is the notion that Entities keep incidentally passing out 'doesn't need to sleep' because for them it's a default, where I can totally buy they honestly don't even think of 'doesn't need to sleep' as a superpower, same as eg fantasy fiction uses humans as a base when deciding how orcs or elves or whoever are different, ignorant of how eg the hunting strategy of 'walk after them until they drop of exhaustion' is actually a pretty unusual strategy to even have available in the animal kingdom. (Which is to say humans actually have weirdly high long-term stamina -there are plenty of animals that are faster in bursts, but as far as I've read no land animal can match us for walking without rest. And then fantasy fiction does stuff like give dwarves super-stamina, unaware human stamina is already practically a superpower)

The issue is that the degree to which sleep and dreams are apparently unprecedented in hosts where the Entities are kludging ludicrously bad solutions off of a horribly wrong understanding, as if they've never had a prior host species sleep or dream.

And I think it's less than the Entities haven't encountered sleep and dreams, given that in WeaverDice there is an entire Tinker Speciality called "Dreams", and that I believe that there is WOG out there that states that Telepathy is considered an unuseful power. Ah found it right here, I'll put in a Spoil Box.

Spoiler: WOG

Yeah. In truth, it's more that shards don't have the exact right templates to draw on in past experience to regularly model a human brain and decrypt the mess of firing neurons. Those shards that can do such decryptions are combined with or supporting other shards that need to model humans (such as shards that simulate or certain thinker shards that aren't mind-reading.

Which isn't to say Telepaths don't exist - they're just not very rare and not highly valued by the shards, who are content to gather information on human brains from the latent black box storage of the tens of thousands of people with powers out there, and explore that in future cycles.

So it seems that it is more of an issue that Shards, as a whole, don't have enough information on the Dreams and Brains of Humanity to reconcile with whatever information of Dreams and Sleep with past cycles. Which combined with the fact that without the Hub Network of at least Zion, and the irregular landscape of Shardspace with unknown status beyond 'working at the least' in Ward, means that Shards can't compile all the needed data and information to understand dreaming with the weird intersection of human awareness of those dreams.

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I mean, that is literally an anti-canon WoG that is difficult to reconcile with obvious points like how so many powers trivially predict humans on a constant basis. It's also one of those weird refuse-to-admit-a-mistake things Wildbow is so prone to doing, where early Worm flatly tells us telepaths don't exist but also has Armsmaster have a telepath-proof helmet and Wildbow keeps throwing out WoGs to justify a dubious statement his actual writing contradicts, instead of admitting he screwed up and saying the rewrite will pick a single scenario and commit to it.

Beyond that, went to go look into the Tinker 2.0 Doc, recalled seeing a WOG saying Bakuda 'as she was' were akin to a field test tinker, not exactly but 'somewhere in line within field test'. But in all honestly, the power itself could change as it gets used to the obviously mentally different Host, doubly so with the high amount of conflict it has gotten, and the methodology example of a Tinker is an example not what every Tinker has to be.

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Well, that's a lot like how I've been writing Bakuda in Exploding Canon... I honestly don't know if I started out using that as inspiration or it's a bit of a coincidence or what.

That's one of the more blatant things without a functional in story explanation. The only reason why there aren't telepathic parahumans is because Wildbow didn't want to write about telepathy.

Given that the entities keep everything and the kitchen sink in the Cycle, including lots of things they have no reason to believe will be helpful to their goals, avoiding telepathy powers makes little sense.

The explanation of "all the telepathy shards are busy helping other shards that basically need telepathy to work but don't produce telepathy powers for their hosts" is kinda silly.

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It gets better, since Armsmaster has a telepathy-proof helmet, and Ward straight-up has Thinker-based mindreader powers. Explicitly. Yep, no telepathy here, move along citizen, these aren't the droids you're looking for...

There's a reason I largely stick to Author Is Dead approaches and still get headaches trying to think through how things can hold together without flagrantly discarding major canon scenes. My earliest fanfic ideas were actually pretty Stations Of Canon-y, and have largely fallen to the wayside or gotten reworked because 'staying true to canon' and 'writing a coherent and sensible story' are goals that are frequently at odds with each other!

 

[The Void]

I don't really mind Entities being sleepless. About the only thing I actually kind of like about this mess is the notion that Entities keep incidentally passing out 'doesn't need to sleep' because for them it's a default, where I can totally buy they honestly don't even think of 'doesn't need to sleep' as a superpower, same as eg fantasy fiction uses humans as a base when deciding how orcs or elves or whoever are different, ignorant of how eg the hunting strategy of 'walk after them until they drop of exhaustion' is actually a pretty unusual strategy to even have available in the animal kingdom. (Which is to say humans actually have weirdly high long-term stamina -there are plenty of animals that are faster in bursts, but as far as I've read no land animal can match us for walking without rest. And then fantasy fiction does stuff like give dwarves super-stamina, unaware human stamina is already practically a superpower)

The issue is that the degree to which sleep and dreams are apparently unprecedented in hosts where the Entities are kludging ludicrously bad solutions off of a horribly wrong understanding, as if they've never had a prior host species sleep or dream.



I mean, that is literally an anti-canon WoG that is difficult to reconcile with obvious points like how so many powers trivially predict humans on a constant basis. It's also one of those weird refuse-to-admit-a-mistake things Wildbow is so prone to doing, where early Worm flatly tells us telepaths don't exist but also has Armsmaster have a telepath-proof helmet and Wildbow keeps throwing out WoGs to justify a dubious statement his actual writing contradicts, instead of admitting he screwed up and saying the rewrite will pick a single scenario and commit to it.



Well, that's a lot like how I've been writing Bakuda in Exploding Canon... I honestly don't know if I started out using that as inspiration or it's a bit of a coincidence or what.



It gets better, since Armsmaster has a telepathy-proof helmet, and Ward straight-up has Thinker-based mindreader powers. Explicitly. Yep, no telepathy here, move along citizen, these aren't the droids you're looking for...

There's a reason I largely stick to Author Is Dead approaches and still get headaches trying to think through how things can hold together without flagrantly discarding major canon scenes. My earliest fanfic ideas were actually pretty Stations Of Canon-y, and have largely fallen to the wayside or gotten reworked because 'staying true to canon' and 'writing a coherent and sensible story' are goals that are frequently at odds with each other!

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Not having to sleep seems to be treated akin to how many times flight (which is mostly leftovers from how many times a Shard has needed to fly) is just slapped onto a power granted by the Shard, but Humans still need a period to sort all those memories out, if I recall the wiki it was something akin to a trance. While Human Dreams are just something they haven't fully figured out yet and had planned to do so before another Cycle.

And not really, if anything, considering the innumerable Shards there could be, this just tells you where those Shards landed up, or if over the generations of Capes some Shard have managed to make sufficient models of Humans, or it might be that those Shards that on the network just pinged for an effective enough algorithm, or approximation, it could support. Also, the WOG statement doesn't say they don't exist, they are plain rarer to find in a pure form considering how many of them they have, and I'd assume the 'telepath-proof helmet' is more of an anti-master or stranger measure overall, considering that is a vector.

The WOG itself outright states that they may, though not always, be split apart into multiple Powers, for multiple Capes, that need them because they need to understand how humans work. This isn't really a retcon of any kind and is more establishing why the possible Thinkers, and who knows how many other Capes, can do what they do in regards to humans. And even the Shards that are stated to not be able to perfectly capture a human likeness, to the highest degree, it is not unreasonable to think that the Cape can highlight some of the information itself, or if the Shard wanted to it could just limit the scope of what the Thinker power can grant.

To give an analogy, this details where such powers and capability come from, just as the information about the Space-Whales had. Albeit not right from the original text itself, being the only thing to really 'damm' it. Otherwise, Weaverdice is overall a decent system to look over for getting ideas or details and incorporating those concepts.

 

[Terrabrand]

and I'd assume the 'telepath-proof helmet' is more of an anti-master or stranger measure overall, considering that is a vector.

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you'd assume counter textually. Tattletale convinces him she is a literal telepath, so he makes a literal anti telepath hat and is put out when it doesn't work on her.

EDIT: To be a bit more precise, Tattletale claims to be a telepath in the bank arc, and then we get;

"What do you hope to accomplish? I admit, it was clever to control the battlefield, to dictate each engagement so it occurred on your terms, and to use our own weapons against us… but those weapons no longer work. None of your weapons work," Armsmaster turned his head to look at where Miss Militia had Regent at gunpoint. "Which means you can stop trying to use your power on me, Regent. I've got a little blinking light in the corner of my H.U.D. telling me you're trying something. I've set up psychic and empathic shielding, to protect myself from you and Tattletale."

I glanced at Tattletale. He was psychically shielded against her? How did that work?

Then I remembered. When we'd gone up against Glory Girl and Panacea, hadn't Tattletale said she read minds? And now Armsmaster had bad info and was figuring he was immune.

"I don't need to read you," she told him, "You're the only one with shields, so your teammates and the PRT staff don't have any psychic shields up, and I can read them to get anything I need. You're not the best inventor, but like most tinkers, you've got a knack. Yours just happens to be condensing and integrating technology. Only works in your immediate presence, but still, you can stick way more technology in a space than has a right to be there… like your Halberd."

Armsmaster frowned. "You're lying."

Damn it. I wish I could've told her he had a lie detector built into his helm. But I couldn't without explaining that I knew him.

Tattletale took it in stride, grinning, "Sure, fibbed about the reading minds bit. Not about your weapon and power. Let's see… to deal with my buddy Grue, you've made that thing a fancy tuning stick. Sensing vibrations in the air, translating them into images with that fancy helm of yours?"

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now, he does expect it to work against Regent's Master power, but he explicitly calls it psychic and empathic shielding and expects it to work on what he has been led to belive is mind reading as literally half its job.

 

[Ghoul King]

While Human Dreams are just something they haven't fully figured out yet and had planned to do so before another Cycle.

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I've already detailed why I find that unbelievable. I'm not sure why you're saying this.

Also, the WOG statement doesn't say they don't exist, they are plain rarer to find in a pure form considering how many of them they have, and I'd assume the 'telepath-proof helmet' is more of an anti-master or stranger measure overall, considering that is a vector.

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Yes, and 'telepathy is rare' isn't some canon-compliant observation, it's Wildbow trying to avoid admitting his writing has obvious inconsistencies. We see a lot of telepathy, starting from the fact that the main character's power is pretty hard to argue as 'not telepathy'. 'Precogs are rare' is a canon-compliant observation I would buy being employed by WoG if eg Wildbow wanted to justify why they don't crop up as interfering with Contessa, even though Dinah is a major character and a precog. 'Telepathy is rare' is Wildbow refusing to admit to an honestly pretty unimportant mistake.

And even the Shards are stated to not be able to perfectly capture a human likeness, to the highest degree, it is not unreasonable to think that the Cape can highlight some of the information itself, or if the Shard wanted to it could just limit the scope of what the Thinker power can grant.

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I'm going to note here you keep coming back to 'things are said' when attempting to explain canon, and the fundamental thrust of my argument is 'these statements fail to match what was actually written'. 'Shards are stated to not be able to perfectly capture a human likeness' being a great example, since far too many powers require shards are able to make eerily accurate duplicates for what we saw in actual canon to have happened (Hey, remember Noelle's clones? Remember how the clones were immediately recognizable as the person they were a clone of? You know, Noelle, the parahuman who ate two Arcs of Worm?), and thus any WoG or in-story statements claiming this as a limitation make zero sense to acknowledge as a truthful observation.

This type of issue is at the core of many of my issues with Wildbow's writing: that there is a substantial disconnect between what he writes happening and what he wants you to think is happening, and he's bizarrely oblivious to this disconnect.

 

[Thearpox]

'Shards are stated to not be able to perfectly capture a human likeness' being a great example, since far too many powers require shards are able to make eerily accurate duplicates for what we saw in actual canon to have happened

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Didn't the canon have the shards store a copy of the parahumans brain, or is that not a thing then? Because I didn't think that Alexandria, SIBakuda, (The Butchers ghosts!) being run on the shardware giving them immunity to Masters was your invention. I may just be mixing things up.

 

[The Void]

you'd assume counter textually. Tattletale convinces him she is a literal telepath, so he makes a literal anti telepath hat and is put out when it doesn't work on her.

EDIT: To be a bit more precise, Tattletale claims to be a telepath in the bank arc, and then we get;



now, he does expect it to work against Regent's Master power, but he explicitly calls it psychic and empathic shielding and expects it to work on what he has been led to belive is mind reading as literally half its job.

Click to shrink...

Telepathy is just using thoughts or the mind itself as a vector, and just because he thinks that is what the helmet does, doesn't necessarily mean that is what the Shard in question did. As giving false positives on how or what the tech does, while still doing the intent, is arguably something that Shards do completely. For TT she doesn't go into the Brain, she looks outside of the Brain to get an idea of what they want/intend/have.

Just like how in an earlier chapter the SI commented on how 'gold not working that way' to paraphrase.

I've already detailed why I find that unbelievable. I'm not sure why you're saying this.



Yes, and 'telepathy is rare' isn't some canon-compliant observation, it's Wildbow trying to avoid admitting his writing has obvious inconsistencies. We see a lot of telepathy, starting from the fact that the main character's power is pretty hard to argue as 'not telepathy'. 'Precogs are rare' is a canon-compliant observation I would buy being employed by WoG if eg Wildbow wanted to justify why they don't crop up as interfering with Contessa, even though Dinah is a major character and a precog. 'Telepathy is rare' is Wildbow refusing to admit to an honestly pretty unimportant mistake.



I'm going to note here you keep coming back to 'things are said' when attempting to explain canon, and the fundamental thrust of my argument is 'these statements fail to match what was actually written'. 'Shards are stated to not be able to perfectly capture a human likeness' being a great example, since far too many powers require shards are able to make eerily accurate duplicates for what we saw in actual canon to have happened (Hey, remember Noelle's clones? Remember how the clones were immediately recognizable as the person they were a clone of? You know, Noelle, the parahuman who ate two Arcs of Worm?), and thus any WoG or in-story statements claiming this as a limitation make zero sense to acknowledge as a truthful observation.

This type of issue is at the core of many of my issues with Wildbow's writing: that there is a substantial disconnect between what he writes happening and what he wants you to think is happening, and he's bizarrely oblivious to this disconnect.

Click to shrink...

I'm trying to get across that it isn't the capacity to Dream itself that boggles the Shards, given at least by the existence of the Tinker Spec with the same name that focuses on the unconscious, and how Breakers often arise from such disconnects of reality. The point I'm trying to raise here is that it is the human side of things that makes things difficult for them. As it is not unprecedented based on how many powers can quite obviously understand the underlying triggers and trama of a given Host, they know what, why, and how things have to sleep because it is likely for convergent evolution to do this, and what I am saying is that the only thing unprecedented are how humans do and interact with dreams.

What the WOG is saying that because of how much telepathy they have, which is commonly used to decode how other beings operate on a neuron level, they are either split up and spread among, or support other Shards to enable them. Nothing in the WOG itself is going against canon, with the only possible question being s why don't see a Cape that can communicate only mentally.

Also what is our sample size of known Precog Capes, let us see, we Tess, Dinah, Roulette, Crystalclear, Ziz*, Zion*, Eden*, Hunch, and Spur, with an unknown number in Watchdog? So that is it the very very least amount of Precogs that we can outright say that are in North America alone. So just because that there is at least one major character that happens to be a Precog does not mean that they aren't rare all of a sudden.

Not to mention that there is a huge difference between making a Clone using organic DNA that quite obviously have artificial personalities that are likely somewhat pulled in by the Host Shards, and understanding the totality of Human conciseness. Also just because they don't understand every nook and cranny doesn't mean they can't make use of it. After all, you aren't going to learn every part of your Computer in order to know enough to use it? And it isn't unlikely that the Clones will just fabricate memories on the fly to fill in the gaps, just like how a normal human brain does.

Didn't the canon have the shards store a copy of the parahumans brain, or is that not a thing then? Because I didn't think that Alexandria, SIBakuda, (The Butchers ghosts!) being run on the shardware giving them immunity to Masters was your invention. I may just be mixing things up.

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Yeah, that's a normal thing they do, the only somewhat comparatively abnormal part is running them on the Shard itself. For example, the recent WOG I pulled, described how Parahumans are "black box storages" on information about the human brain. Not to mention all the evidence in Ward popping up.

Also, it is suspected but not yet confirmed that the SI is running on a Shard, because of the micro-Entity drawing. So it may be weirdness, or it might be a flaw in the design, considering I don't expect them to already account for a Host to already know some of the underlying details.

 

[Terrabrand]

Telepathy is just using thoughts or the mind itself as a vector, and just because he thinks that is what the helmet does, doesn't necessarily mean that is what the Shard in question did. As giving false positives on how or what the tech does, while still doing the intent, is arguably something that Shards do completely. For TT she doesn't go into the Brain, she looks outside of the Brain to get an idea of what they want/intend/have.

Just like how in an earlier chapter the SI commented on how 'gold not working that way' to paraphrase.

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Let's not get confused about claims, you were responding to this statement by Ghoul King;

I mean, that is literally an anti-canon WoG that is difficult to reconcile with obvious points like how so many powers trivially predict humans on a constant basis. It's also one of those weird refuse-to-admit-a-mistake things Wildbow is so prone to doing, where early Worm flatly tells us telepaths don't exist but also has Armsmaster have a telepath-proof helmet and Wildbow keeps throwing out WoGs to justify a dubious statement his actual writing contradicts, instead of admitting he screwed up and saying the rewrite will pick a single scenario and commit to it.

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By claiming that the anti telepathy helmet could be a 'anti master and stranger' effect.

But massively experienced Tinker Armsmaster literally went 'yo power my dawg give me an anti mind reading hat' and then was told it had, and it even worked for blocking regent.

Worm canon at multiple points (eg in the bank scene when Tattletale claims to be a telepath) claims there Are No Telepath Capes Except Simurgh.

If the shard is simply lying to Armsmaster, why is it claiming to have given him a counter power exactly and exclusively to the Simurgh?

The reasonable answer is early installment weirdness, where you just assume that scene kinda didn't actually happen.

Your answer is his shard lied to him and said 'look! counter power to simurgh and only simurgh' and this experienced Tinker who literally has to file paperwork so his work can be reviewed and declared safe for use went 'sounds legit bro' as did everyone reviewing his work and nobody went 'shit pass that out for simurgh fights stat'.

This is an obviously bad excuse. It makes canon make fractallly less sense to assume. It is 'I think Wildow is a super idiot' levels of bad assumption, it can't defend canon because accepting it as true is accepting multiple canon contradicting premises including 'the literal entire Protectorate is exclusively made of morons who do not go "you wot mate" when told a tinker has accidently made a counter power to an Endbringer who are supposed to be invariably impossible to counter power'.

To accept your argument for how that could be canon compliant is a harsher condemnation of Worm than Ghoul King has ever given.

 

[The Void]

Let's not get confused about claims, you were responding to this statement by Ghoul King;


By claiming that the anti telepathy helmet could be a 'anti master and stranger' effect.

But massively experienced Tinker Armsmaster literally went 'yo power my dawg give me an anti mind reading hat' and then was told it had, and it even worked for blocking regent.

Worm canon at multiple points (eg in the bank scene when Tattletale claims to be a telepath) claims there Are No Telepath Capes Except Simurgh.

If the shard is simply lying to Armsmaster, why is it claiming to have given him a counter power exactly and exclusively to the Simurgh?

The reasonable answer is early installment weirdness, where you just assume that scene kinda didn't actually happen.

Your answer is his shard lied to him and said 'look! counter power to simurgh and only simurgh' and this experienced Tinker who literally has to file paperwork so his work can be reviewed and declared safe for use went 'sounds legit bro' as did everyone reviewing his work and nobody went 'shit pass that out for simurgh fights stat'.

This is an obviously bad excuse. It makes canon make fractallly less sense to assume. It is 'I think Wildow is a super idiot' levels of bad assumption, it can't defend canon because accepting it as true is accepting multiple canon contradicting premises including 'the literal entire Protectorate is exclusively made of morons who do not go "you wot mate" when told a tinker has accidently made a counter power to an Endbringer who are supposed to be invariably impossible to counter power'.

To accept your argument for how that could be canon compliant is a harsher condemnation of Worm than Ghoul King has ever given.

Click to shrink...

Regent targets the nervous system, Tatts does not have all the information about the setting, doubly so when her power actively lets her build upon false information, and the lying was about the mechanisms of what Arms thought it was, not the effect the device had itself. Empathic just meaning empathy, presuming to mean some effect that makes him aligning with a Villan, and Psychic really could mean a lot of things, but most of it time it means mind. Which as already established is decently common among Shards though part of a different arguement, gets hard to tell after a certain point. Also, it wasn't a definite Shard was lying, it was more maybe his Shard lied to him.

Ziz to my understanding makes use of telekinesis and actively setting up the battlefield to alter both the brain and the perceptions the person has within the ongoing environment, either messing with the brain itself, or setting things up in such a way that XYZ structure reminds you of past traumas or triggers. So if the device is able to block active manipulation of the neurons then yeah that tracks.

Also again I was referring to the fact that Shards make devices do things then what the parts would normally let them do, hence the reference to the gold the SI talked about. And the lie was about why such and such material would make it work, as the response was "What the helmet does, doesn't necessarily mean that is what the Shard in question did". In that, while the Tinker may think that a device works via such and such processes, the Shard actually makes it work via X principle.

 

[Neruz]

Ziz to my understanding makes use of telekinesis and actively setting up the battlefield to alter both the brain and the perceptions the person has within the ongoing environment, either messing with the brain itself, or setting things up in such a way that XYZ structure reminds you of past traumas or triggers.

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Actually according to canon\WoG, Ziz only does the latter.

She does not actually directly manipulate anyone's brains, literally all she does is super-advanced weaponized psychology plus precognition to figure out which mental triggers she needs to 'push' to get a person to do what she wants, when she wants. It could be something as simple as subliminal messages in her 'scream' to something as complicated as the particular motion of some shattered glass reminding you of something, which then reminds you of something else, which then chains off a piece of broken concrete that is shaped to remind you of a third thing in light of the first two, etc.

This is... somewhat implausible as a concept, but with a good enough precognition and a good enough understanding of How Humans Work it could hypothetically be done, maybe.

(It is more scientifically plausible than the whole 'multiple parallel dimensions' thing, at any rate.)

 

[Terrabrand]

Also again I was referring to the fact that Shards make devices do things then what the parts would normally let them do, hence the reference to the gold the SI talked about. And the lie was about why such and such material would make it work, as the response was "What the helmet does, doesn't necessarily mean that is what the Shard in question did". In that, while the Tinker may think that a device works via such and such processes, the Shard actually makes it work via X principle.

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'The shard may have told Armsmaster he has an anti simurgh device and the entire Protectorate was too stupid to try to use this' remains an incredibly shitty defense as I already laid out.

You're quibbling about how it technically might not work as Armsmaster thinks when that's not the problem.

The crushing problem for the Anti Psychic And Empathic Systems is that an experienced tinker who must allow his work to be reviewed made a helmet he thinks would counter what they think an Endbringer does, and nobody questioned this or tried to use it.

Quibbling about 'BUT THEY MIGHT BE WRONG' misses that the problem is that given what they explicitly believe, this should seem notable to them.

Again, the generous interpretation, the perfectly reasonable generous interpretation, is this is early installment weirdness; Wildbow hadn't yet pinned down how common people think Psychic Stuff is, so he wrote this and didn't see a problem because he hadn't committed to that yet.

Your arguments fail to actually address the problem, because the problem lies not in whether they are correct about how these powers work, but rather what they should be doing given what they have as goals and believe these powers do.

 

[Ghoul King]

Didn't the canon have the shards store a copy of the parahumans brain, or is that not a thing then? Because I didn't think that Alexandria, SIBakuda, (The Butchers ghosts!) being run on the shardware giving them immunity to Masters was your invention. I may just be mixing things up.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, there are several capes whose minds are partially or completely offloaded onto shards in canon, and in Alexandria's case it's heavily implied this is why she's safe from the Simurgh's manipulations (Which, if @Neruz is right the Simurgh isn't supposed to be doing direct brainhacking, would have problems, but while I know she can manipulate in other ways, I don't recall anything about her not doing direct brainhacking. Of course, I may have missed a WoG, given it's been literally years since I bothered to pay attention to them), and it certainly seems reasonable to guess several powers wouldn't get to interact with the Butcher's 'ghosts'.

There's other, more ambiguous cases, like with Taylor herself: the most reasonable model of her 'infinite multitasking' is that Queen Administrator is just fabbing up Taylor simulations on the fly whenever it needs to consult Taylor on more things than her actual brain can keep up with, but I'd be quite surprised if that was canon's intended explanation. My impression is Wildbow has never really had a coherent explanation in mind for this particular detail, in terms of 'what is Queen Administrator actually doing to let Taylor scale like this'.

But yes, there are multiple cases of direct copies and whatnot, where canon feels no need to suggest a loss of fidelity or similar. (We never have someone reacting like a copy is subtly wrong, unavoidably, for example) Ward eventually tries to tell us that every cape has shardnet-embedded copies and tries to also claim that the shards' focii distorted these archived versions, where fabbing up a body produces an unnervingly off version of them that mostly is accurate to the more cape-related stuff and not so much their personal life and all, but I've already been over how I don't treat Ward as canon, precisely because beats like this directly contradict things Worm was 100% consistent on. (And aren't even handled in a coherent way even into Ward, with these 'revived' capes tending to not properly remember people they had personal relationships with... even though this keeps being shown by them struggling to remember cape associates. What, are the shards zealously deleting emotional content, even if it directly pertains to power usage?)

I'm trying to get across that it isn't the capacity to Dream itself that boggles the Shards, given at least by the existence of the Tinker Spec with the same name that focuses on the unconscious, and how Breakers often arise from such disconnects of reality. The point I'm trying to raise here is that it is the human side of things that makes things difficult for them. As it is not unprecedented based on how many powers can quite obviously understand the underlying triggers and trama of a given Host, they know what, why, and how things have to sleep because it is likely for convergent evolution to do this, and what I am saying is that the only thing unprecedented are how humans do and interact with dreams.

Click to shrink...

I mean, if that's what you're trying to argue, that's less incoherent than what it's sounded like you're arguing, but I don't really see how it fundamentally changes anything. Shards get humans just fine. They get everything a dream is just fine. Why am I supposed to think these two facts somehow fall apart once it's specifically a human having a dream?

I could squint and try to connect this whole thing to how Scion had an emotional emulation program but didn't Get It, but this is starting to bring up issues regarding things like Heartbreaker's crew being so focused on power-based interaction with feelings. Like yes Scion doesn't know how to cope with having human emotions, but the shards don't struggle with modeling or manipulating them, so at most this is an avenue for suggesting that if Scion had ever tried sleeping seriously weird shit would've happened. And it's not clear if Scion's failure to emotionally cope is really down to feelings being foreign, or just a product of everything going horribly wrong in an utterly unprecedented way.

Also what is our sample size of known Precog Capes, let us see, we Tess, Dinah, Roulette, Crystalclear, Ziz*, Zion*, Eden*, Hunch, and Spur, with an unknown number in Watchdog? So that is it the very very least amount of Precogs that we can outright say that are in North America alone. So just because that there is at least one major character that happens to be a Precog does not mean that they aren't rare all of a sudden.

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I don't even know what you're trying to argue here. Like, I literally don't know how to respond to this, because I can't make sense of this in isolation or in the context of the broader conversation.

Not to mention that there is a huge difference between making a Clone using organic DNA that quite obviously have artificial personalities that are likely somewhat pulled in by the Host Shards, and understanding the totality of Human conciseness. Also just because they don't understand every nook and cranny doesn't mean they can't make use of it. After all, you aren't going to learn every part of your Computer in order to know enough to use it? And it isn't unlikely that the Clones will just fabricate memories on the fly to fill in the gaps, just like how a normal human brain does.

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Alright. "There's a big difference between making an exact duplicate other than the tailor-made alterations" sure does make sense as a statement alongside "Shards can't make completely accurate copies of humans".

Your computer comparison is ludicrously bizarre. In this scenario, you're saying I know how to assemble a custom computer with precisely the specs I desire using hand-machined parts that professional computer people wouldn't see a difference between this custom computer and a professionally-assembled computer, but I'm somehow incapable of... making a replica of a generic professionally-made-and-assembled computer because?... no seriously, what is the logic here?

Regent targets the nervous system,

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I don't see why you're drawing this distinction as 'not telepathy', especially not when Armsmaster made an anti-telepathy helmet and it works on Regent. Like, what is even your argument here? "It's not telepathy because it doesn't specifically target the brain"? Then why did a helmet block it?

 

[Neruz]

I believe the thing from the shard mental copies in Ward is because the shards don't always copy their host's entire ego; often they just copy the host's knowledge. So when they try and 'recreate' the host they're having to rebuild the ego from the ground up based on their data, rather than just downloading a stored ego. Hence they only get the recreation mostly right, because shards are good but not perfect, which causes the resulting copy to fall into the uncanny valley effect.

Some do keep full ego copies though, or retain parts of the host's ego when becoming a Titan, this is... never really explained, like most of Ward.

 

[Thearpox]

the most reasonable model of her 'infinite multitasking' is that Queen Administrator is just fabbing up Taylor simulations on the fly whenever it needs to consult Taylor on more things than her actual brain can keep up with, but I'd be quite surprised if that was canon's intended explanation.

Click to shrink...

I'd question what other sensible explanation is possible, but I've seen pretzels before, so I won't. Thanks for answering my question.

 

[Khellendrosiic]

I think I'm enjoying these side discussions even more than the actual story. As someone who avoids engaging with fanbases as a general policy all this stuff has been new and fascinating to me.

 

[Callmesalticidae]

I think I'm enjoying these side discussions even more than the actual story. As someone who avoids engaging with fanbases as a general policy all this stuff has been new and fascinating to me.

Click to shrink...

You should check out the thread for Monster too, then.

 

[Ghoul King]

5.6

Okay, power, this would be a really good time to actually cooperate.

I start out uncertain how to go about this, then decide to get a little organized, grabbing one of my many pens and some paper and writing down...

Taylor health?
Shield?
Speed?
Drones?

… as the order I want to go through this. Taylor first because health is a priority on multiple levels. Then shield guy because he's the one I'm most concerned will, like, block literally my entire current arsenal because fuck you, and Taylor went into enough detail if any inspiration will strike off detail level, it'll be for him. Then speedster lady because she seems like the only one maybe more directly dangerous than just their gun-carrying minions. Drone guy last because tinkers are adaptive: if I come up with a broad counter to his shit first, then they attack and we drive 'em off but don't deal with him in a permanent way (Killing. I'm talking about his death), I have this distressing suspicion his next wave of tech will be hardened against that answer, whereas I'm reasonably confident the other capes won't do anything equivalent.

… hopefully.

Once the list is written, it also crystalizes in my head that I should be able to come up with at least a partial fix for Taylor relatively readily, given it's, like, bacterial infections and I've already built a broad answer to that type of issue. A variation on that should be comparatively easy, I'd think. So that's another reason to prioritize Taylor first, especially if tinker creativity is at all like regular creativity.

… actually, I've made multiple variations now that I think about it. There was that... uuuhh... well, I didn't want to use it because it did tissue damage, at least according to my power, and who knows where that grenade ended up in all this chaos... point is, I've made more than one anti-bacterial grenade. Promising for the potential for one better-suited to this situation? Maybe? Or maybe not. I've made a lot of distinct tinkertech devices, but looking back, variation on individual ideas is something I've consistently struggled with. I didn't really question it with stuff like the time stop grenades, because time stopping isn't something that lends itself to fine gradation, but like I've got the one 'frost bomb' concept. Like yeah I can load it into claymores, mines, bouncing betties, grenades, and other delivery mechanisms, but it's really just the one device drawing arctic ice from other dimensions as far as the, uh, 'exotic' component. I've not fiddled with it to try to draw, I dunno, black ice? Frozen juice? Really, you'd think 'portal in a specific class of object' would be pretty easy to tune to different ideas.

Hmmm.

In fact, thinking back: why the fuck did this attempt at a medical scanner with a screen and all work out? Back when I made the tinkertech earring I couldn't get my power to cooperate on making anything more medically useful! I... don't think I got inspiration from another tinker or power since then... if I did, I didn't notice...

… but tinker fugues. Fuck, maybe I did?

I'm also dimly remembering WoGs talking about Worm capes having shades of level-up mechanics to them, where tinkers would be rewarded with more designs for getting into conflict and whatnot. I tend to forget about it because canon didn't allude to such, even when we had parahuman science sorts doing infodumps about parahuman mechanics, but I also know that people noticed that in canon Taylor overall improved over the course of the story in ways that couldn't be explained by skill improvements. More range, that was the big one. I think some people blamed some of her later bug feats on that, too, though I always assumed that was just the author screwing up. So. Maybe my shard didn't give me it before because I hadn't gotten into enough fights and all? That was before I participated in anything overtly cape-y...

Also occurring to me is that... I was thinking just minutes ago about how later canon was increasingly bad about tinkers just getting able to fab up the right answer when they needed it. That... might actually be a tinker shard truism. Especially given how fanfic was really prone to it. "Nah, Bakuda," my shard was saying before. "You don't actually need a medical scanner for helping other people, so you're not getting one." And now I actually do need one to diagnose Taylor, so suddenly I can make one.

Even if it's not a general shard truism, it sure as hell fits with the rest of my Abaddon missile theory, because in that theory Taylor is somehow Mission Critical, and my shard is liable to contrive ways to keep her alive.

So: great! I have a minimum of three theories for why I suddenly can build this thing, with no obvious way to eliminate any particular explanation! Great fucking think!

At least I wasn't physically idle while burning brain time on this unhelpful thought process. Busily organizing parts and stuff.

… come to think, I haven't eaten yet. I really should. Okay, fine, food first, what cookable meal do I have in the fridge or freezer-

...

I slam the freezer door shut, and turn around and go to my snack pile instead.

Okay, so, finding a smiley face giving a thumbs-up, drawn on the back of the inside of the freezer in that same hide-it-from-capes effect is incredibly creepy. Especially since it reminds me of that one emoticon where I was never sure if the thumbs-up was meant to be sincere or sarcastic.

On the other hand, it's... good news? Maybe? It certainly seems to suggest Cauldron isn't going to just drop support for me because Taylor's around, and more precisely that they're making an effort to keep having that support be invisible to Taylor. I... guess Doormaker opened a portal inside the freezer, and then somebody drew the image through the portal... and that would keep it out of Taylor's awareness even with all the bugs, since a freezer is too cold for most bugs to be at all comfortable heading inside. I know from experience that even the most aggressive of roaches are extremely reluctant to enter a freezer, even if there's an open container of food inside that's starting to go bad, and other bugs are even less eager to brave the cold. Doesn't really solve the part where I need supplies, not unless I... I dunno, claim the freezer is tinkertech that pulls shit from another dimension semi-randomly? But I've already worked out that this can't be canon Cauldron, so I really shouldn't be continuing to expect stupidity from them, either.

I'm not sure why I find the image of Contessa drawing through the portal so adorable. Not that I have any unambiguous evidence it was her, but it leaped to mind...

Regardless, I settle for having some soda and a decent amount of snacks, idly noting that some of the snacks vanished while others went untouched. Not sure how much general significance to attribute to what I'm seeing, given Taylor's infection. She's almost certainly unconsciously self-medicating, so a whole box of cinnamon pop-tarts vanishing could be extremely far outside her usual diet. And given how that stuff works, if I asked her, she'd probably rationalize it as 'they were closest' or 'I haven't had pop-tarts in weeks and didn't care about what kind they were' or some other explanation.

Once I'm done eating, I take a brief peek outside, not really expecting to see anything given nothing has exploded and Taylor hasn't tried to get my attention. I don't notice anything, but it was a casual inspection.

Then I finally try to focus on doing something for Taylor's health. Preferably in pill form... though I wouldn't say no to a magic wand I can wave over her side to clear away the infection. Hint-hint, power.

Unfortunately, my power is... uncooperative. I'm remembering stuff like the acid bouncing betty, this vague notion lurking that I could use that to melt away the area, but, uh, no. And no, my power isn't proffering ideas of how to keep Taylor alive after melting away a sizable fraction of her torso. Not that I would go for 'melt away a chunk of Taylor, then replace it with cybernetics', but come on power you're not even trying to sell me on this 'use flesh-eating acid on Taylor' idea.

Trying to think from different angles is less helpful than I'd prefer. Trying to mentally frame it as a trap to improve Taylor's health conjures the amusing mental image of doing the supervillain trap door thing, "You have failed me for the last time!" and my poor minion going shrieking to their apparent doom, only to be confused when actually it fixes up their injuries somehow... but it doesn't get my power to offer up any devices.

Eventually I give up with an aggrieved sigh. Fine, conventional attempts to treat her it is. At least for the moment.

Okay, sticky note says next I try to... right, see if my power offers ideas for countering clingwrap shield guy. I did at least see his shield in action, so that's something, hopefully.

Actually, 'countering' is maybe the wrong word for what I want. I want ideas that I think have good odds of bypassing the shield with low odds of some kind of backfire. Like, in pop culture shields tend to be depicted as just stopping or absorbing projectiles, but sometimes they bounce off like the shield is the equivalent of sloped armor on a tank, only omnidirectional and working on way more kinds of projectiles. Taylor didn't provide a clear description of the kinetics of the shield, may well have had no opportunity to test the kinetics given the tools at her disposal, and I didn't get a chance to really observe his shield myself in our one encounter: it would be really bad if I used, like, a relatively conventional shrapnel bomb only for it to bounce off the shield and shred me. Especially since I still haven't properly made up an armored costume for myself like I keep thinking I should do. If I had, I could at least try the X-COM Pistol-and-Power-Armor strategy, of restricting myself to gear I'm confident won't hurt me...

... though actually, given powers, I'm suddenly not so sure that would be safe. If his power did something like make deflections somehow more dangerous, that could go badly.

...

So basically I don't actually have adequate info on his power to be sure much of anything would be safe to try on him. Wow. I had never actually considered how frustrating a barely-understood defensive power could be. With someone who only seems to have an offensive power, I can at least be pretty confident that 'surprise explosion' is a good and safe plan. Well. As safe as any explosive-based plan ever is, I guess.

My power doesn't really throw up ideas in an inspirational way, either. I'm pretty sure remembering I had some Khonsu bombs at the start of this whole 'being Bakuda' thing is just regular memory stuff, not my power subtly suggesting it would very definitely be a safe solution to this particular problem.

I spend a bit tinkering up some more of the random-teleport mines grenades just because their mechanics seem reasonably unlikely to do anything backfire-y in the face of a shield -among other points, my power is extremely insistent teleported stuff will not intersect with solid objects, which I've previously considered a flaw but means that if eg the shield bounces the effect back at me I won't end up killed by that. Nor in the sky, or underground. It could dump me on unstable ground, among other hazardous possibilities, so it's not completely safe, but it's annoyingly safe.

I also find it likely that they'll be useful enough against the other two. And any normal human assistants.

... actually, maybe I should make a lot more of them, put like that. I keep struggling with non-lethals, and there's defensive utility there. Though I'm also running low on the cadmium that it needs, and I'm a bit reluctant to go scavenging more computers under these conditions.

Hmmm.

Before I can commit to any particular plan, I startle violently in response to a horrendous noise. I'm vaguely reminded of some of the more unpleasant sounds I've heard cats make, including a time I might actually have heard a cat dying outside. It does not stop, whatever it is, and I start making my way toward the window the sound seems to be coming through, alarmed and upset and wanting to know what the hell I'm hearing.

I'm almost to the window when a blobby mass of bugs in the general size and shape of a small cat or dog or the like goes lurching past, the noise quite obviously coming from it. I stare in shock and confusion as it stumbles, crashes to the ground with the shriek turning into a pitiful meow, and... goes silent and immobile, aside the many, many bugs swarming over it.

"What the fuck," I say aloud because seriously, what? After a second my brain more properly recalls the context, and I amend it to a louder, "What the fuck, roomie?" So sue me. I don't know if she doesn't want me calling her Taylor where others might hear, and I... probably?... shouldn't know her cape name is Skitter.

After a second, bugs spell out, on the ground -wow, is she accounting for parallax or whatever the term is? That actually looks like real words from this angle, wow- tinker still spies with animals

I blink at that. I don't- she didn't say that was a thing? Or. Not explicitly, I guess? Like okay yeah she mentioned he started with animals and also mentioned being linked to his drones more recently... I guess that is a logical scenario to guess, but... "Okay, that's a sound theory, but you just murdered a- a whatever that is, off a plausible theory?"

can smell drugs

I... well, maybe? I know you get a certain amount of stuff with bugs avoiding or pursuing based in part by target diet where their antennae pick up on chemicals (ie smell), so that's certainly possible, but I'm still a bit-

That's when the bug mass partially clears up, revealing amid the gore I'm catching glimpses of a red (Possibly from the blood...) metallic sphere with pipe-y bits sticking out asymmetrically in four directions. I gawk at that as the bugs do some maneuvering to shove it away from the animal corpse, with it ultimately rolling a couple feet toward the window, orange goo blorping out of two of the tubes three times each as it rolls.

... okay. "Never mind my doubts."

Then I rush out to grab the thing and haul it into my workshop so I can study it, furtively looking around for any other signs these assholes are actively scoping us out. Fuck, am I gonna need to re-tune my claymores or something? Taylor has to sleep, and while her bugs were later indicated to do a certain amount of stuff even while she was sleeping, that was both later and was never really presented as the kind of thing that lent itself to 24/7 patrolling.

I don't spot anything before slamming the door shut behind me, heart beating like crazy.

Alright, let's look at this drone...

----------------------------------------------------------------------​

An hour or whatever later, I've got three of these things to study, because Taylor's bugs stung a pigeon to death (Well, two of them actually, but only one had a device in it) and dragged the (tiny) tinkertech to my workshop and murdered another quadruped I suspect was a stray dog this time outside my workshop.

I'm really, really glad I'm not the sort to have nightmares in response to this kind of shit. This is unpleasant enough without dreading revisiting it in my dreams later. I don't even like dogs or cats, but the sounds of them dying horribly are not exactly fun.

Through some combination of possibly-actual-intuition and power-assisted intuition, I've worked out some actually-useful bits, not just 'oh look these all look similar and have orange goo in them'. A lot of it doesn't really surprise me, like that the tubes are designed to hook into blood vessels and integrate as part of the bloodstream, with two of them being for the blood going in and two for the blood going out. The metal, similarly, is some tinkertech... alloy? That sounds wrong to me, but my power is pretty insistent it can be assembled from copper and aluminum using some phase-shift nonsense, so whatever, fine, it's an alloy and this somehow prevents tissues from rejecting it, metal poisoning of any kind, etc.

I had to take one of them apart to get into the whole 'how do the drugs work' part. I went with the biggest one, which by a small margin was the first one. I initially thought I'd need to figure out, like, a blowtorch or how to get my power to bullshit up whatever I do when I really ought to require a blowtorch but don't actually use anything like that, but this tinkertech material is... a bit like plastic, I guess? It's not actually that mechanically tough in terms of being difficult to cut or the like, but wouldn't break readily in field usage because it deforms and then bounces back to its original shape when hit with pressure.

I did need to heat it up some to make it easier to cut into, but that was literally just going into the kitchen and setting it on the stove for a bit.

Anyway, I'm... not entirely sure how the drug process works. I have a microscope I found ages ago so I got to compare scraped-off, partially hardened blood from the entry ports against orange goo scraped off the exit ports, and I'm pretty confident this is chemical and not nanites or parasitic organisms or similar, but I'm not entirely sure what everything I saw means. It's been way too long since I used a microscope, and my power isn't doing any garbage with feeding me terms and occasionally meaning of said terms. Still. I think the red blood cells are all being converted or replaced, with white blood cells and other stuff in the blood untouched, in addition to the chemical thing I'm seeing in the exit port samples.

The inside of the widget, meanwhile, is less opaque to me. There's multiple chips on the inside sealed away under glass (Is that safe?), most of which are on a central bit that's a sphere-ish thing normally held in place by electromagnets and covered in a lot of... tubes? Entry or exit points, is the point, with the chips in gaps. My power insists those chips are for managing the drug conversion system, which makes sense to me. I'm not sure if it's purely me or partly my power that I suspect the chips could change the nature of the output.

Two of the chips are on the inside of the outer layer, with miniature... ffff.... 'subspace' transmitters... seriously, what the fuck does subspace even mean? Forget it, whatever, it's some kind of super-high-tech radio equivalent is the point, able to work in conditions radio wouldn't. (Possibly due to pure shard fuckery, but shhh) Some of the transmitters are for transmitting to the chips on the inner orb, while others are for more external transmissions. Probably how the tinker is 'linked'... wait. How was he controlling these animals?

"Taylor," I say aloud to the room. "I don't suppose you've noticed any metal or plastic or other foreign bits in the brains of these animals? I could really use any chips or the like that might be in them."

If there's not chips in their brains or on their spines or something, I'm unsure how the control would work.

Regardless, while I'm waiting for a response I cut open the inner orb, and it promptly deflates like a dead jellyfish, some honeycomb patern visible to me. The hell? How was it- it didn't release fluids or anything! Why did it fall apart then?

I have to get some tableware from the kitchen to carefully peel it apart, carefully washing them first, because if it's that sensitive I'm half-expecting touching it with my bare -well, gloved- hands to be bad somehow or another. I'm... pretty sure after a couple minutes that it's some kind of hexagonal grid thing, only somehow in 3D? There's also a lot of subtle variation, probably. I think this is some kind of... bizarre protein-folding mechanism, or something not far removed? Like I can see the chambers have the ability to open or close their assorted sides via some kinda artificial muscle system, and I'm pretty sure these muscles are controlled by the chips. Similarly, the insides of different chambers have these nearly-invisible corrugations on the inside of their muscle-things and the more solid frames that I'm pretty sure vary between chambers. I have difficulty seeing how this would work in reality-as-I-knew-it, but I can sort of imagine that each chamber is designed to manipulate cells going through them, where different arrangements of chambers would essentially be different folding instructions.

That's pretty cool, and aside my skepticism of it being able to work without shard shenanigans I find it essentially believable as some kind of futuristic, multi-functional device? I could imagine reading Popular Science and having them describe something not-entirely-dissimilar from this as a Coming Soon Medical Device.

Then Taylor beans me on the head with a beetle again.

"Goddammit, stop that!" Fuck, I hate being startled by bugs, forget being smacked with them.

As I look around, I see bugs have spelled out, here you go as well as care to share? and as I'm looking around bugs add you were ignoring me. The first sentence causes me to notice that, yes, there's a neat series of nine chips that weren't there earlier laid out in a row nearby, with bugs spelling out bird, dog, and cat 'above' each set of three from my perspective. Huh. Three chips per? I was expecting one, maybe two, like one in the brain and one in the spine.

Then a beetle buzzing ominously at head height reminds me to answer Taylor. "Okay, like, first of all, thanks, that really helps, second we really need a better way of getting my attention than beaning me on the head, and third I'm still working through this, it's complicated and I don't want to jump to conclusions while trying to explain to you what I'm seeing."

The 'labels' remain, but the rest of the text 'wipes'. After a second two sentences are spelled out. The higher one is any suggestions? while the lower one is how would talking to me be bad?

I consider complaining about that wording, then decide Taylor is probably just keeping words short or something else, not deliberately misrepresenting my words by fucking changing them. Might be easier for her to stick to fewer bugs for writing, or something. "Crickets? I don't like cricket noises, but they don't freak me out like beetle to the head does." Ugh, how do I word this... "As for the conclusions stuff, I don't really default to thinking in words, and I find that when I try to organize my thoughts with words, it tends to be... limiting, both in the sense that I have more trouble recognizing a possibility if I don't have the vocabulary for it, and also in the sense that I'll sentence up a possibility as just a sketch of a possibility and then my brain-" Wait. Is it my brain, if I'm a shard upload? In fact, is this even still a concern? "-basically just wants to build on whatever I verbalized instead of considering the full range of possibilities. So I talk to someone about something I'm studying, and I compare it to a river's flow, and now my brain will not let go of that metaphor and its implications until something has me going 'wait, that doesn't make sense'." Ugh, I'll just assume it does still apply. Might be a completely different explanation from my historical vague guesses as to why, like it's because I'm a shard upload or something... but if I am a shard upload and fake personality and blah made by alien supercomputers etc, probably any memories of things I found problematic still apply even if my engineered thoughts for why don't. I hope.

I don't have any crickets gets spelled out. Goddammit. After a delay, added below it is you don't think in words? What??? Yes, with three question marks. God, it's like a fucking chatroom fucking fuck that's why I remember chatrooms even though I didn't like them!

Uuugghrgh, I have never had to explain this shit to anyone but family before. Fake family that probably doesn't even exist. Which is why I have no such memories, so I would find this natural to feel new.

my god it just gets more annoying the more plausible it feels

Okay! Fine! Explanation time, I guess! "Have you heard of Asperger's?" Ignoring the distinct possibility the real reason is that I'm an engineered, shitty fake human! I don't even begin to know how I'll break that idea if I ever feel it merits explaining!

maybe? gets written out after a second. That's... okay. I really hope this isn't 'maybe' as in 'Taylor has heard those stupid, assholish assburger memes, and is wondering if I'm mispronouncing that or something'.

Wait.

How recently did Asperger's get identified and shit? Because Bet is supposed to have diverged from Omicron/Aleph in... 1980-something? Right?

Crap. This diagnosis might not even exist in Bet, or at least go by a different name. You know, assuming Abaddon didn't straight-up make it up for some fucking reason.

"Forget it, never mind that angle, let me start over." This is such a pain. "I actually primarily 'think in pictures', which is semi-normal and also a hideous simplification, but the point is that I don't actually default to the subvocal talking-to-yourself form of 'thinking' that is the pop-culture stereotype of what conscious thought resembles, and which is even actually accurate in a non-trivial fraction of the population. Well, semi-accurate. Point is, I'm not constantly mentally muttering to myself as my primary thoughtstream, I'm doing... modeling of how things can go, and stuff." Wait. Is this because of the Bakuda insertion prep stuff? Because being a strongly visual thinker sounds tinkertech-favorable. Though then again my memories insist I was bad at assembling furniture and whatnot?

Cornell sounds like a good school writes itself onto the wall via bugs.

Uh.

Er.

Huh. That is a reasonable conclusion to jump to for knowing this stuff, isn't it? Is... is Taylor envious of, uhhh, pre-me Alicia having gotten advanced education? Winslow was a hole, and canon Taylor was pretty quick to give up on further schooling when Leviathan wrecked things. She... yeah, I could totally buy she'd given up on the idea of ever going to college, even aside the superpower stuff making it a bit unnecessary.

Man, I don't even have fake memories of going to college. This feels weird, to have her possibly envying an experience I don't in any meaningful sense have.

After it occurs to me that likely merits an actual response, I say, "I guess. I'm just big on science in general." I've always wondered if that kind of interest correlated to tinker powers in canon. Am I a point in that direction? I suppose it depends on what's actually going on... "A-anyway-" Goddammit voice stop acting up! "-that's why I prefer talking to happen after theorizing is significantly done. Makes it easier to think through the problem without unnecessary fuckups."

okay

I wait to see if there's anything more, then go back to tinker-studying when nothing else seems forthcoming.

Okay, three chips. Huh. Only two of them have subspace transmitter/receivers. Two per set of three, I mean. But they're not directly linked? There's no evidence of damaged wires or anything like that, and the subspaceless chips don't 'mate' to either of the other chips in a more mechanical way. How does that work? Hijacking the nervous system, maybe? Or maybe those chips are fully automated and don't need to be able to receive instructions or cooperate with other chips or the like.

The chips are all also the same size, unlike the drug-spheres, not varying based on animal. Hmm. A minimum size requirement? Not immediately thinking of other sensible reasons to have them all the same size even though the pigeon would've been too small to readily fit the chips in the brain and all. Actually- "Hey, were the pigeon's chips on the outside, perchance?"

no

Okay, really confused now. Though I guess that explains why Taylor murdered an innocent pigeon: because it's not obvious on the outside there's a difference. Wait. "Did the other pigeon smell of the drugs?" Because that's what Taylor was saying was why she killed them. Well. Implying, more like.

yes

Huh. Weird. Is the drug... making it into the feathers, and then getting ingested by other pigeons while grooming? Why only two pigeons together smelling alike- was it? "Were there other pigeons that smelled of the drugs?"

not here

Huh. Did... did Taylor kill a mating pair? Not... sure what the mechanics would be there... but it's one of the more obvious explanations for this particular situation... whatever, three chips per animal, one doesn't have subspace comms. "Do you know where the chips were, specifically?"

The wall spells out look down. I obligingly look down, and see bugs near the chips. It takes me a second to properly parse them as trying to spell out words; at this distance, it's hard to not notice very viscerally that they're bugs. Still, it looks to me like Taylor is saying one chip was in the brain for each, one in the upper spine -that's the one that doesn't have comms- and one on... the heart?

Okay, the brain and spine chips make a kind of intuitive sense to me. Some kind of hijacking the nervous system for control thing, with the spine chip either doing some more automated control stuff or using the spine itself to 'talk' with the brain chip. I'm really not sure what to make of the heart chip, though. Especially since it does have subspace comms. If these were humans, I'd wonder if maybe it was for something like stopping the heart, as some additional layer of threat, but- well. Hm. Put like that, maybe it's for restarting the heart, if the drugs cause it to stop? I dunno, that's imaginable as a possibility, anyway. Still doesn't clearly answer why the comms, though.

In any event, this is looking pretty strongly to me like the tinker has more direct control over people than just getting them hooked and then threatening to take their supply away if they don't do as they're told. I kind of figured just from the animals showing up, but it was possible they were directed other ways than direct control. This also pretty strongly suggests the giant guy was being driven by the chips, not continuing to move by being harangued via an earbud I didn't notice or something. Nice to have that much confirmed, though I'm... well. I was about to say that I'm annoyed I didn't bring and use one of my tech-fouling grenades, but thinking it out I'm not 100% sure the guy would've survived that. He was unnaturally huge, and now I'm pretty confident Taylor is right it was caused by tinker drugs, so it's distinctly possible screwing up his tinkertech would've killed him. Probably slower and at least as horribly as what I did to him, too. So, uh, never mind that maybe-regret.

I decide to take apart and study the cat's set of chips. Right away I'm pretty sure (Probably primarily thanks to my power-provided 'tinker intuition') that while there's actual sensor bits in the chips, they're not anything suited to passive surveillance while I've got them here in my workshop. There's stuff for picking up electrical impulses and chemical information from the animals they're embedded in, and the chips are designed to power themselves basically entirely through passive means riding off the host animal's... stuff. Mostly the nervous system, I think, but there's systems that look to me to be for turning blood flow into, uh, hemoelectric power, I guess.

I sort of wish the possibility they still functioned as intelligence tools had occurred to me earlier, as tinkertech/powers in general mean a lot of normal assumptions aren't safe assumptions, but no harm no foul in this case. Something to keep in mind for if I run into future tinkers, though. Actually, canon alluded to tracking devices being kind of standard. I haven't thought about that because I don't do that with my constant stream of assorted devices, but...

… nnnnope, not finding anything that seems like a tracking device per se. Would be a bit redundant with the subspace comms, admittedly.

Anyway, the chips are less helpful to study than I'd like. I'm not tinker-intuiting anything about their programming, except the extremely unhelpful point I'd already basically assumed that they're designed for reprogrammability, and their observable physical design isn't flagrantly cluing me in on their range of storable programs or anything. Especially because even if I knew enough about regular computer chips to make sensible inferences, I'd just assume they were low estimates because tinkertech doesn't care about normal physical limitations.

Their actual physical construction also doesn't grab me in terms of offering inspiration for my own tech or anything. I already build computer chips into a non-trivial fraction of my tech. Somehow. Without remembering how I did it. These chips being designed to interface with biology doesn't give me ideas, which is semi-disappointing but on the other hand I'm not sure I'd want biotech ideas so whatever. More accurately, not sure I want biotech ideas of the sort I'd expect to get from this tinker. Help with medical inspiration would be nice. Turning people into flesh-and-blood robots that obey my will is not my thing.

At least they're raw materials for my own tech.

I don't even have an answer for what the heart chip is for. Ugh. That's intriguingly weird, I was hoping for an answer.

Ugh, fine, back to the orb stuff.

I'm just starting to pry off one of the cut-open orb's chips when multiple freaky things happen. Whizzing noises, wood breaking, glass shattering, metal pinging noises, and a biblical plague rising from the hotel and swarming off to my left. "What the fuck?" I look around, confused and spooked, not sure what the hell is going on, and then notice one wall has bugs spelling out get down!!

I stare at that for a second, watching the bugs moving to join the rest of the plague, distantly starting to hear screams. Something pings and goes rolling off a table, and it finally dawns on me that this is gunfire. I'm immediately crouching, trying to assess by visuals and memory what would be vaguely decent cover, notice the foyer of course has big-ass windows -several of them being the glass I heard shattering earlier- and decide to just start hurrying out of the foyer, deeper into the building, alternating half-crouching and semi-running-on-all-fours. (Huh, Bakuda's body is flexible enough to do that. Women are generally more flexible than men... or this is fake personality preparation bullshit...)

My heart is pounding by the time I'm far enough into the halls I'm inclined to think being shot is super-unlikely. Holy shit, I could have died with no warning. I really need to get myself some kind of proper armor, goddamn. I'm not sure I got particularly lucky in this case, as thinking back I think that was just a dozen-ish pistols being fired, and pistols are not designed for accurate long-range shooting, these people have good odds of being untrained, and it wouldn't be surprising if the tinkerdrugs are negatively affecting their aim, but that could easily have been a zero-warning death.

Fuck.

 

[IvanDead]

Especially since it reminds me of that one emoticon where I was never sure if the thumbs-up was meant to be sincere or sarcastic.

Click to shrink...

This mostly depends on the context, but you can safely assume that this also means "Ok, whatever, I don't want to discuss this further".

I'm not sure why I find the image of Contessa drawing through the portal so adorable. Not that I have any unambiguous evidence it was her, but it leaped to mind...

Click to shrink...

Well if it were me it would be because of the fedora, and me imagining her drawing while with a look of concentration and the tip of her tongue poking just out of the corner of her mouth.

my god it just gets more annoying the more plausible it feels

Click to shrink...

I wonder if she will ever find any evidence that, no, she is not an Abaddon Missile.

If I had, I could at least try the X-COM Pistol-and-Power-Armor strategy, of restricting myself to gear I'm confident won't hurt me...

Click to shrink...

GKBakuda: Okay, what about something like an iron-maiden, but very skintight, mobile like with joints, and spikes on the outside rather than on the inside?
GKBakuda's Shard: *Pushes schematic*
GKBakuda: ...Where's the release mechanism?
GKBakuda's Shard: *Shrugs*