So, sorry for the delay. SV just up and erased most of my responses. I nearly just gave up and didn't respond.
My answers are much more terse, because I'm very grouchy over losing what felt like a couple thousand or so words of much more detailed responses and the occasional citation.
Please don't take it personally.
The PRT / Piggot doesn't care so New Wave has given it's last gasp.
Of course not, they have no control over New Wave.
However, the 8 parahumans that made up the former movement known as New Wave are of immense interest to the PRT though. What happens to them has been the subject of intense debate and argument.
It was asked whether Piggot thought the trial had been held according to the letter and spirit of the law, not whether she approved Canary being Birdcaged or not. Nothing was said about Piggot being involved with sabotaging Canary's trial. That is why I wanted clarity on how Piggot went from "in your personal opinion, outside of your role as Director of the PRT ENE, do you feel the trial of Paige Mcabee was conducted in accordance with the letter and spirit of the law" to "I had no idea where the implication that I was somehow involved with sabotaging Canary's trial came from". Piggot seeing it as a personal attack and why she does despite the fact that the questioner could (as a person who was involved in rescuing and currently involved sheltering Canary) have a number of other reasons tells us about what kind of person she is.
It is certainly possible to hear a question as an accusation and I was interested in how you saw Piggot going from one to the other. (I unfortunately have personal experience about a question being taken out of context, mostly because the person was a thief who had been selling some of my books at a second hand bookstore. She thought me asking if she'd seen a book was a subtle attempt at trying to get her to incriminate herself, so I know that if there is guilt a question can sound like an accusation. I also know that we misremember and overthink conversations.)
Xanatos came out of nowhere, has powerful allies, Recluse and Thrawn, that also came out of nowhere, and is frighteningly well informed.
His question is similar to asking the Boston chief of police about a massively political case in New York. There's no reason to ask that question unless it's somehow relevant.
Of course, the PRT is considering that Xanatos may just be trying to take Piggot's measure, but writing about boring stuff seemed, well, boring. I suppose if I rewrite it I could go back and just make an explicit list of some of the options the PRT was considering in light of those questions. The PRT has entire groups of analysts devoted to countering Thinkers
Eh, with the message thing, the Travelers could have just checked the chat history between Vicky and Amy and just based the responses from that. It would make it rather difficult to differentiate between real and fake ones if they don't have some specific code. Doubly so in a stressful situation.
This is exactly what the Travelers did.
The killing people with no kill orders thing when they actually hadn't been involved with Panacea's disappearance at all, on the other hand, is far more likely to get them in legal hot water. First-Degree Murder is a felony, no matter the criminal status of the victim.
Yes, though Carol can make the argument that it was self-defense while carrying out their role as vigilantes.
Writing enormous buffers does mean that when you get issues pointed out you can't correct them. Which of course only encourages you to double down and dig in.
Uh, are you talking about me or in general?
I very much can correct my stories when such errors occurs, and have done so in the past. I'm already doing exactly what you said I can't do, just in a different story. I've put AEoS on hiatus as I rewrite arc 1 and 2, and correct a massive plot hole I found in arc 3 while doing the the beta edits.
Vicky loves her sister. This is really what should matter most. It isn't the first time that Amy has used the hospital to avoid Vicky, it is the first time that Vicky let her without ever visiting her. Vicky has gone to the hospital to see her sister both in canon and in this story. Amy hiding out there is not some magic black box from which she's completely undetectable. Vicky is a very blunt person and you've shown that. She isn't the sort to just allow space. Furthermore the idea that Amy could just stay away for days at a time without returning for clothes doesn't get suspicious?
Really?
I mean, you state, with italics for emphasis, that "it
is the first time that Vicky
let her without ever visiting her". That's rather a big claim. Do you have anything from canon to back up such an absolute statement?
Perhaps obviously, I disagree with your assessment. In Metastable, I even have Amy reference that she's continuing to use the hospital to avoid Vicky, and Amy texts Vicky that she's going to walk home on Sunday (after 8pm) that she wants to have some time alone to think.
Vicky loves her sister, and 'recognizes' that Amy is dealing with getting halfway out of the closest and then going through a sudden and intense breakup with her first girlfriend. That doesn't make Vicky's response 'harass Amy even though she clearly wants to be left alone'.
Vicky is a blunt person, but that doesn't make her dumb as a brick. Besides, not getting to see Amy for one single day, Monday, shouldn't be grounds for Vicky to freak out and go chasing her down. By Tuesday, perhaps Vicky was planning to force the issue, but a clarification on that issue is never going to come up in story.
There was no actual reason that Amy needed to be unconscious for that long. That was entirely a conjured timing for dramatic effect. The Travelers are Ziz bombs. It would not have been in the least bit unusual for them to kidnap Amy an hour before the hospitals were blown up simply because then it wouldn't be coincidence or contrivance but Simurgh's plan. Hell half the plot in this we already think is Simurgh's master plan anyway. Then there's no time gap to be explained. The timing on everything was arbitrary. Panacea being kidnapped a couple days later or the bombings being a couple days sooner affects nothing at all.
If Amy wasn't unconscious for that period of time, there wouldn't be much point, narratively, to including this event in her subplot.
A key aspect of this part of Amy's subplot was her recognition that 'Vicky was not going to come and save her'. Amy would have refused to believe that Vicky would fail to save her if Amy had only been kidnapped for an hour or so. However, being missing from Sunday night to Tuesday morning was a much harder thing to shrug off.
the timing was completely arbitrary, outside of the story, because I wanted to advance Amy's subplot and get moving on it. Inside of the story, I felt it would have been obviously contrived, even to the point of getting through Krouse's thick head, that he Simurgh wanted this outcome, if Bakuda had accidentally immediately provided the perfect cover for the Travelers.
If Amy continues to build her entire life around Vicky, then she doesn't grow as a character. I could write her out of the story that way, I suppose, because of [Redacted]. Otherwise the timing was necessary as a key part of nearly every aspect of how this affects Amy's mental state.
Danny pushing for info on Amy's life should have made Carol more interested in keeping track of Amy as well.
Please give Danny a little credit.
He didn't ask:
"Hey Carol, how much time does Amy spend at the hospital?"
"So, how's emotionally abusing your kid working out for you?"
"Do you think Amy uses the hospital to escape her home life, or is it just the only place she feels like her life has value, even if she hates healing?"
I couldn't write that section well, which is why I skimmed over it, but I imagined Danny asking questions more like:
"Having parahuman kids seems hard. Do you think New Wave will do a franchise thing if they go off to college out of state?"
"Is being a lawyer a big help for your hero work, or is it just two separate things? Is the next generation of New Wave thinking of any possible professional careers as a part of heroing?"
Dad suspects Amy is being emotionally neglected, therefore he's not going to tip off her abuser that he's onto her.
It doesn't resolve the fact that Vicky at any time could and would have gone to check on Amy in person.
Nope, Vicky can go a day without freaking out over not seeing Amy.
Amy (the travelers) has even been texting Vicky to let her know how much of a pain some big cases in the hospitals are being for Monday, and that she continues to want to have time alone to think.
I think most of us point things out not to get you to change the story, but to make you aware of issues you missed. I can't see something happening and give my (hopefully) reasonable reasoning. Or maybe give a quote to show this or that is fanon. And at the end of the day you use that to improve the rest of the story or to write another story.
(So we're the selfish and doing it to (hopefully) get more and better stuff to read later.)
Why wouldn't you want the story changed if it's poorly written?
I mean, that may not be worthwhile, but that's a compromise for dealing with reality, not the ideal.
If there's issues, I generally lean towards correcting them.
However, I've seen enough people talking nonsense disguised as literary criticism, because they don't like a direction of a story, that I'm wary of taking advice on how to correct my writing without a thought and discussion. I try to not assume any individual is malevolent, but I've seen enough of it on SB/SV that I'm not will to assume that
everybody reading my story had good intentions. Besides, if I do have to fix something, it's because I've missed it while writing it, and then in the couple of revisions it's already gotten. I need to discuss, otherwise, I'd imagine there would be bad patch jobs as I don't understand what needs to be corrected about the plot, because the plot as is already makes sense to me.
-intercity speed limit is usually 75, at least where I've been.-
The PRT is transporting Lung out of city. They're bending the rules. Getting Lung into the Birdcage is kind of important ;-)
The recent discussion has managed to confuse me and I don't feel like rereading the chapter right now. Could I get some time-line help:
Travelers kidnap Panacea.
Three days of messages that manage to hold off Vicky.
Hospital that fake messages claim Amy was at is bombed.
~Some time~ (Probably days?) of searching for her, giving up on her, bringing the fight to the ABB.
Killing Bakuda and Oni Lee.
~Some hours, I think~
Amy's interlude.
You have the timeline right.
That timeline is wrong (does the timeline that follows this change your thinking,
@inverted_helix?)
Sunday
after 8pm, Amy texts Vicky that she's leaving the hospital and wants to be left alone. Amy gets kidnapped by the Travelers
Monday
Using Amy's phone, the Travelers continue to text Vicky, to mislead her about her location and activities.
Tuesday
Bakdua bombs the hospital, Amy is sought by Vicky and New Wave. Amy wakes up, has an epiphany that Vicky won't be able to save her, gets in touch with Recluse.
The Hebert Shadow Cabal of Totally Not Evil solves all the problems, creating no trauma for anybody.
Amy gets dropped off with the PRT. The Hebert Shadow Cabal of Totally Not Evil declares victory and goes home.
Piggot even explicitly thinks that she's being vindictive in considering Amy as having been kidnapped for three days.
ou also have it right that days of unconsciousness are very weird. The Travelers would have had to set up IV fluids to prevent Amy dying of dehydration. As there's no sign they did this, she should probably be dead.
Uh, that's not in keeping with how any parahuman powers work in Worm.
Genesis created a projection to 'keep Panacea unconscious for as long as safely possible'. Obviously, Genesis should have done 'keep Panacea unconscious for about an hour', but there they would have dragged Amy in front of Noelle right then, and there would have been much greater odds of Evil-Amy, not to mention that Amy would not have had her little moment of maturation in her thoughts about how perfect Vicky is, and that Vicky isn't always capable of saving her.
If Genesis used her powers with SB/SV competence, then canon Worm would have been very different. Genesis did something new, sedate somebody, and botched it on her first try. That's life sometimes.
The conversation where the two come to the conclusion that this is the only way to control for all the variables in their power research would be amazing.
I would very much like an omake or two on such a topic.
I don't know if this was mentioned last time a chapter claimed there was 'normally' an Endbringer warning but; there very much wasn't.
The very first time they had a warning that wasn't the Endbringer itself rocking up was Taylor's Leviathan fight, and the system was basically still in alpha-test.
So that's massively AU, but not something I know if you're already aware of or care about.
Yeah, my bad.
It just slipped my mind. I was thinking: so, the Simurgh is like twelve or twenty feet tall. Regular people with regular telescopes regularly track satellites that are smaller. "Obviously" the Simurgh (unlike Leviathan or Behemoth) is tracked. Otherwise every city the Simurgh attacked would be condemned in the 15 or so minutes when it first arrives. Even just getting Strider to start bringing in people would take 5 or so minutes, and it takes dozens or even hundreds of parahumans to drive off an Endbringer.
Of course, humanity regularly loses track of malfunctioning satellites that aren't actively moving to avoid detection, so I'm happy to agree that it's totally possible for the Simurgh to avoid detection.
If I end up rewriting Metastable, I'll add that to the list of things to correct.
This seems to sum up Tagg competency.
I was greatly entertained by that comic. Thank you for sharing.
Tagg might turn out a bit different from his usual depictions (My bet: Taylor laces his water pipes with Tinker-LSD due to internet rumors of being a Ziz-bomb hardass, so he spends all his time being super chill).
Well, unlike canon, Brockton Bay isn't a trashed city that only avoided being condemned because of Taylor. Instead, in Metastable, the city just carried out a successful defense against the Simurgh. Tagg isn't competing against Skitter, he's taking over from a politically compromised Director. Recluse has no territory, and no options for Tagg to target. Recluse is a ghost, and it's not like Tagg can go raid her territory, or otherwise threaten her.
Also, I've no plans for a Tagg interlude. The majority of chapters will continue to be from Taylor's biased perspective. Unless Tagg gains the ability to harass or attack Taylor, she's not likely to pay much attention to him.
Wait, just how big is your buffer?
I'm currently stalled on chapter 17.3.
I think, when I started posting Metastable, I had 250k or maybe 300k words already written? I had that written down somewhere, but I don't care to find it in my notes. So, yeah, I've been stuck for a while. Also, gong through each chapter prior to posting is a drain on time. Usually there's lots of small things to be fixed or adjusted, and there's a chapter a week of drag that I have to work through.
I feel like unpacking the reasoning behind that. I don't write inn order to be able to post. If I feel like talking about a story of mine, I post it. I started Metastable to learn about how I write. That's it, not even to improve, just for some self-awareness. I only decided to post this story once I was well into it. Originally, my vague plans were to just not post it, and make my first posted story AEoS.
I'm having some serious issues with Metastable, in moving from mid story to the buildup to endgame. Irritatingly, AEoS is giving me exactly the same sort of trouble. Well, not exactly. I'm having trouble with the actual endgame. It's very frustrating. Both stories are just too large, or perhaps cumbersome. Hermione Granger and the Troubles with Sparky was much easier to end.
I've been struggling with Metastable for some time. AEoS has surpassed it in terms of narrative progression (again, in the parts I've written, not the parts I've posted), and even writing out a short story (sparky) and getting to the end has not enabled me to just pass by the writing issues I struggle with in Metastable or AEoS. I'd say that's the overall reason I'm slowing down the posting of Metastable. I've reached the point where I'm no longer confident in my ability to recover the pacing for the story.
@Tascion has done a good job with the characters
Thank you for the compliment.
I rather like this Piggot. She's a nice mix of reasonable (as in, she has understandable reasoning, even if they're not perfect), some self-awareness, competence (though the reaction of 'Our Ward might have done horrible things and the intended overwatch was useless? Better remove even more of it!' is... maybe not-so-super. Still I kinda get where she's coming from), humor (she's just so done with teenagers, and the reaction to Taylor's shenanigans is great. Especially handing over their security protocols to produce something more reasonable) and resigned, misanthropic exhaustion. She really comes across as someone who's spent way too much time dealing with the rotary excrement distributor called Brockton Bay, and counts her days not by whether the shit hits the fans, but by how much.
I'm very pleased by your description of Piggot. That's nearly exactly what I intended.
The only part I'd adjust is "Our Ward might have done horrible things and the intended overwatch was useless? Better remove even more of it!' is... maybe not-so-super".
Piggot screwed up in her decision making here. Sophia was already caught, and had been enabled by her handler, so, Piggot fired her handler. Piggot moved the funds saved into Kid Win's tinkering budget, which she expected to grant to him later in the year. In my mind, that would be a fine decision, if the Wards were adults and could be trusted to handle themselves for a few months. The Wards aren't adults, but Piggot treats them as mini-adults, instead of as children. In part, that's why she's so unforgiving of their mistakes. Their issues would be unforgivable in professional soldiers, but Piggot isn't allowed to punish them like they're soldiers, even though Piggot is required to treat them with more privileges than her PRT troops. Piggot assumed, incorrectly, that Renick could get a truthful response to simply asking Vista 'are their any problems that you need handled that the PRT has missed because your handler had to be fired for incompetence.' (This is how I reasoned that in canon that Vista's issues were missed: Vista shares a useless handler with Sophia.) Vista acts like a teen, and tries to prove she doesn't need help or support, while Piggot assumes all the years of Vista's experience make Vista able to be professional, such that Vista will report issues that are the responsibility of somebody else to handle.
