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Firebird, a Worm AU/Xover?

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chibipoe said:
I wouldn't do that.

Though while making some changes, contemplation was made to a Phoenix reset, just to be funnya jerk.
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I don't hate in-universe explanations for things like Coil suddenly changing the outcome of something (and when I started reading this again, the first part about her thinking someone was watching her was what made me think it was Coil). I just think they need to be done convincingly, and in the same chapter, and without too much repetition being shown.

Which was why I would have been happy to hate this chapter, if that was the case, because I couldn't find a single change! Of course, then I checked this one against what I thought was the last one, and when I came back to this page you'd posted that it was just an updated version.

So it's all good :)
 
Imagination said:
In science, it's called the Observer Effect, and is basically summed up as "sometimes observing a phenomenon inherently changes it." Seeing the future will inherently change it, even if the only differences are in thoughts and feelings.
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In Worm much of the future is explicitly set in stone. If a pre-cog sees something happen that's how it will happen, not how it might happen.
 
VolantRedX said:
In Worm much of the future is explicitly set in stone. If a pre-cog sees something happen that's how it will happen, not how it might happen.
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Uh. I thought in Worm, pre-cogs were explicitedly using simulations to predict the future. If so, then nothing would anything be set in stone.

Also, Coil's precog doesn't work like that. Neither does Dinah's, at least when she is giving probabilities. And her prediction of the coming apocolype is dependent on what particular events happen - thus one path is not set in stone.
 
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notmi said:
What.

Where are you taking that from?
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The fact that there are three major pre-cogs in the setting. Contessa, whose Path can perfectly predict most events happening no matter what most people do or don't do. Dinah who gives flat odds of events happening, but largely her predictions happen (Taylor leaves the Undersiders, Jack Slash dooms humanity, Skitter turns herself over to D&D). The Simurgh, who can set things into motion years in advance to gain the perfect result no matter what anyone does to fight her.
 
That girl really needs a hug. Personally, I'm hoping she decides she just wants to go home and crawl into bed, and that Danny has been waiting up, but just grabs her in a massive hug and says something like "Go get some sleep, kiddo, we'll talk about it more tomorrow."

Ideally this would be followed by "I just can't stand the thought of losing you, whether it's to the dangers of being a cape or ignoring me and walking out. You're the only thing I have left that matters," but I'm trying to be semi-realistic here, and neither of them are that communicative.
 
VolantRedX said:
In Worm much of the future is explicitly set in stone. If a pre-cog sees something happen that's how it will happen, not how it might happen.
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Counter-example:

Dinah. She sees every possible future and groups them by criteria. A 35% chance means that in 35% of the futures she sees the criteria was met. Even ignoring that, the fact she gives probabilities, not definite statements, is enough. That one action has a very high probability does not mean it is guaranteed to occur, after all, and the reverse is equally true.


And beyond that, this:
If a pre-cog sees something happen that's how it will happen, not how it might happen.
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doesn't actually disprove my point.

If your pre-cog vision accounts for you using your pre-cog, fine. It actually proves my point because it means that by using your pre-cog, you have effected future events, purely by viewing them. Because if you hadn't used your pre-cog, then the events wouldn't play out as your pre-cog would have predicted because your actions (Without pre-cog) wouldn't have accounted for having seen the future. Seeing the future event changed how you reacted to it, which is, in essence, the Observer Effect.
 
VolantRedX said:
The fact that there are three major pre-cogs in the setting. Contessa, whose Path can perfectly predict most events happening no matter what most people do or don't do. Dinah who gives flat odds of events happening, but largely her predictions happen (Taylor leaves the Undersiders, Jack Slash dooms humanity, Skitter turns herself over to D&D). The Simurgh, who can set things into motion years in advance to gain the perfect result no matter what anyone does to fight her.
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None of those things support your previous statement. Obviously, if you look into the future, and do the exact actions necessary for an event to happen, that event will happen, as is such with Contessa and Ziz. Dinah just finds how likely something is to happen. They are just simulations, they are not in any way already determined events. Taylor could have, for instance, looked into the future to see how the conversation would go, then purposely done something differently. That would lead to a different result. That's kind of how precog works.
 
Now we have a worn out Taylor trying to be forced into the Wards. When she finds Madison/Browbeat is a member, she'll flip out. The best case for the PRT is that Taylor say "screw it", quits the Wards, and joins Rockshow as independent heroes. The worst case for them is she goes villain and willingly joins Coil. After all, if "heroes" are bullies with a badge, how much worse can villains be?
 
VolantRedX said:
The fact that there are three major pre-cogs in the setting. Contessa, whose Path can perfectly predict most events happening no matter what most people do or don't do. Dinah who gives flat odds of events happening, but largely her predictions happen (Taylor leaves the Undersiders, Jack Slash dooms humanity, Skitter turns herself over to D&D). The Simurgh, who can set things into motion years in advance to gain the perfect result no matter what anyone does to fight her.
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Ziz is powerful, but not as powerful as we like to believe. Most of her master plans are just the result of throwing shit at the wall until it sticks. We don't see the >99.9% of plans that are averted without incident, just the spectacular successes, and that leads us to assume that everything went perfectly when it very much did not.
 
Worm precog does in no way set the future in stone.
Dinah gives probabilities and those odds change all the time as events progress. By the very nature of her power she sees possibilities instead of the future.
Contessa feeds her power a theoretical optimal result and her power provides her the instructions on how to achieve that result. Failing that it gives her the next best thing. If the result cannot be achieved she gets a 404 error. Failure to follow instructions as presented will result in a failure to achieve the desired result.
The Simurgh uses a suite of precog, retrocog, and clairvoyant powers and its own intellect to manipulate events and predict those events' outcomes to a Bullshit degree of accuracy up to a Bullshit degree of temporal range.
 
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VolantRedX said:
The fact that there are three major pre-cogs in the setting. Contessa, whose Path can perfectly predict most events happening no matter what most people do or don't do. Dinah who gives flat odds of events happening, but largely her predictions happen (Taylor leaves the Undersiders, Jack Slash dooms humanity, Skitter turns herself over to D&D). The Simurgh, who can set things into motion years in advance to gain the perfect result no matter what anyone does to fight her.
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Contessa's predictions are explicitly in her interlude shown to be slightly imperfect, but the shard compensates for it by constantly making new predictions and course correcting it's plans to account for predictions being off. In the short term it is pretty much perfect but in the long term it does deal with things not going as planned however it is programed well enough that the plan is corrected before the changes would cause problems.

We don't know how accurate Coils predictions would be because he only only goes a couple of hours between splits and only the chosen timeline ever actually happens so all we know is that it is good enough to correctly predict Coils choices other than that the simulated timelines could be subtly off and we (and Coil) would never have a way to tell.

The fact that Dinah gives percentages instead of certainties makes it pretty damn clear that predictions aren't absolute. Sure most of the predictions she has that give good odds of something happening have it happen but that is just math. Note that she gave a 34% chance of ever seeing her family again after Coil died but she did see them shortly after showing that unlikely things do happen sometimes.
 
cyberswordsmen said:
We don't know how accurate Coils predictions would be because he only only goes a couple of hours between splits and only the chosen timeline ever actually happens so all we know is that it is good enough to correctly predict Coils choices other than that the simulated timelines could be subtly off and we (and Coil) would never have a way to tell.
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Coil isn't a pre-cog.
 
VolantRedX said:
Coil isn't a pre-cog.
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Canon lists it as one of the several possible ways his power could work. (Coil himself doesn't know or really care which is true.)

Word of God says he is. It is reasonable to ignore Word of God when convenient, but not the extent of claiming him not being a precog as fact unless you are specifically talking about the context of a specific fanfiction that used a different explanation which isn't the case here.

Also on the Simurgh her interlude has her say that she sees possibilities that she navigates to design her plans. If she had certainties no planning would be needed because she would just see her plans and actions already formed. She herself says she can usually work around the blind spots created by precogs. I imagine for ever successful plan like Mannequin or the Travelers she has dozens that fail but that is enough to make her terrifying as she works in bulk.
 
With apologies in advance, as no one here really participated in things elsewhere, but.

Debates on the specific of how Taylor's precognition works are fine. Even questions/discussion comparing it again other precognitives. I may even chime in. These are acceptable.

Derails about what the various precogs do that isn't relevant to Firebird? Doesn't belong here. I don't want it here. Full stop. Coil's power debates can absolutely go hang too.

Other things that can stay away are morality debates unless they directly pertain to this story.

Actually, just Worm canon in general. I pillage as needed, but this is Firebird, not Worm. Shit be different, yo.

Again, apologies, but the last thing I want is getting drawn onto another fucking carousel or having other people riding one in a debate that has nothing to do with Firebird. Today pretty much killed my tolerance for debates and derails and arguing. Maybe it will grow back.

I am fairly lenient, honestly, but all it will take is another day like today and then it's going to be Undefeated of the East, West, South, North, and Center, Super Asia on someone's ass.

(Why Super Asia? Because fuck TTGL. It lacks Toho Fuhai.)
 
Any words on why Taylor isn't considering joining her friends in their crime fighting? Seems like that was kind of skipped over. Sure she got angry with them, but she just realized she probably shouldn't have.
 
I doubt she wants to think about much of anything more until she's gotten some rest. Then too, she needs to settle her own immediate situation before she goes out heroing again.
 
Franklymydear said:
Any words on why Taylor isn't considering joining her friends in their crime fighting? Seems like that was kind of skipped over. Sure she got angry with them, but she just realized she probably shouldn't have.
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One thing at a time. She didn't give them much opportunity to do more than tell her who they were. They will be addressed, along with this other stuff, in 2.7.
 
But then, everyone was actually willing to talk things out now, then Taylor might be in a better mood to disscuss things with everyone else parent included, so......will there be a filled out probationary Ward form filled out, or will shego indie with the other two, after considering all her options available, excluding any sudden plot hooks of course.
 
Thank you for the updated chapter. I do prefer it over the first version. The way you handled Taylor not being able to telepathically read Piggot due to the difficulty of sensing Piggot through her own shields while being extremely tired and Piggot's own self-control makes a difference. (Lieutenant Simmons not greeting Taylor by name also makes it seem more professional in my opinion.)

First, some comments.

Piggot comes across as competent, which isn't something I've encountered very often in a story. Thanks, it makes her more believable.

Her thoughts about choice, specifically "illusionary" choice seems to indicate that Tailor will be given the opportunity to make a choice. And if it isn't the right one (the one that Piggot wants her to make) then a different choice will be made for Taylor. (Kind of what Armsmaster and Miss Militia did, but probably not as nice. Note that I don't believe that what they did was nice or right.)

Piggot learning to control her emotions via focussing on the current conversation is very believable. There is an empath in the Wards and if your Piggot's opinions and thoughts are anything like the one in the original story Gallant being constantly reminded about how she sees him and his teammates would, at the very least, be bad for disciple. I assume you'll show us later how effective this technique is when Taylor isn't exhausted. (I hope the answer is not very, but then I don't like Piggot.)

Now for a few questions.

Any chance of you stating what Piggot would have ordered if Taylor decided not to meet with her after being instructed to by Miss Militia?

chibipoe said:
She looked at the clock, noting the time. The doctor would be in shortly to get her detached from this and then she could meet with Taylor Hebert. She began cleaning up the files spread out before her, then sent a message to the agent she had escorting the girl around the less sensitive parts of the building. She was going to get unhooked, cleaned up and then she would see what could be done with this situation.
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chibipoe said:
"Now," Danica said, breaking the silence after a moment. "Please understand that how all this happened wasn't intended to happen as it did. I cannot speak for others, but I can say that while your day was incredibly stressful, keep in mind that none of us, especially not the Director, are against you. Whatever you decide, remember that, please?"--
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It is quite clear that Lieutenant Simmons was briefed about Taylor and knows at least some of what was done to her. Was she given Taylor's name?

Also, how many other PRT/Protectorate members know that Taylor is a parahuman? We know about Armsmaster, Miss Militia, Gallant, Browbeat and Piggot. Lieutenant Simmons might know and whoever the PRT assigns as the new spy at Winslow High School (Lieutenant Kellar possibly) will probably know. Who else?

Lastly (since I have to go) I do hope that in a future chapter Taylor takes the time to discuss what Armsmaster and Miss Militia did to her with Victoria as well as with Catherine and Minako. (What can I say, I believe actions have consequences.)
 
kokuenDG said:
This takes place a few weeks after the Locker right?
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Apologies, missed this question in light of other things.

Arc 2 takes place over... Friday, February 25th to Monday February 28th. We are now at late Monday evening on the 28th. So it is approaching two months since the locker incident.
 
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