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Path of the Immeasurable Swarm [Worm/Cradle]

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Boss Hoss said:
He was talking about Suriel, she's very much alive.
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Suriel is pretty much the person he's closest to and he respects her immensely.

Arcman said:
Eithan hasn't been this delightfully surprised since Lindon revealed Dross to him in canon.

With Penance in hand, Mercy can force everyone out of her backyard at this point. Maybe not Shen depending on what he's looted from the Labyrinth to defend against it, but if it isn't used immediately it'll buy the gang more time to grow to Monarch.

But Mercy is probably going to use it immediately. Either at Sseth, or Shen. The Dreadgods are a last option, for obvious reasons.
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Eithan is arguably a lot happier since this is both Taylor as a Judge candidate, someone who can understand him and Hera is really neat.

Penance is going to be a big help for the Akura faction and Mercy being the one to have control of it is for the best.

lostAncilla said:
Okay that was a really good update - a triumph of character development. Thank you very much!

This cultivator crossover of all things has amazing character work. This is basically the opposite of what said genre usually trumpets and I am absolutely floored by it.

Eithan should now understand that extending trust can pay off big time and Taylor acknowledges how the people in her life have changed her for the better. Amazing build up and realization!
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Cradle is very good at making character development super important in a natural and organic way and it's carried over here as well. Eithan learning to trust people and Taylor talking about how her relationships with people have changed her for the better is great. For Hera it feels like Taylor has turned the study to become stronger into a genuine love of learning for example.

Fionaaaa said:
Honestly I think Taylor and Eithan are very compatible personalities, assuming they can get over some of their mutual issues.

I ship it.
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They do vibe really well when they actually stop posturing and just talk. Though I don't think either of them are really interested in romance. But if they where they'd be surprisingly compatible. I do think at the very least they'd make good friends now that they've opened up to each other.

Jen T said:
There was a small part of me worried that this trend towards giving QA an identity and an avatar, no longer reliant on Taylor, might ruin their inseparability by connecting with others independently.

It's not going to do that.

I loved all the imagery in the rest of the chapter, and I adore Ozriel and Suriel being compared to Taylor and Mercy despite the huge difference in the nature of the relationship. Taylor's so, so close to understanding Eithan, and it really does feel like she's more of a potential, eventual peer to him (Telariel's successor or understudy or something) than a subordinate, despite, well, the obvious. It's a really neat dynamic.
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Taylor and Hera are a partnership and are planing on learning as much about the multiverse as they can together. Taylor and Mercy's relationship is more familial then Ozriel and Suriel's but that doesn't mean that the realtionships aren't important.

Taylor getting the Spider mantle is something I can totally see happening long term.

Jen T said:
Insofar as there's any one character who would be interesting to see in that role, which I'm not sure is the case, Eithan is definitely it, both because their conversational and emotional dynamic is great and I want to see more of it and also because there's...basically no one else, ignoring for the moment anything involving incompatible sexualities.

Hera is most of the Khepri gestalt and bonded deeper and far more inhumanly than any relationship, Charity is Taylor's mentor-cousin, Mercy is her younger sister, Taylor has repeatedly shot the spider sage down, the bad guys either cosplay as a sociopathic preteen boy or are Reigan Shen, Northstrider is awful, and Lindon and Yerin are obviously taken.
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Neither Taylor or Eithan really have a lot of possible romance options for them so if they where inclined the other would likely be the best option. It's just I don't think either of them are inclined to romance. Though it may be possible post story when they're all ascended.
 
SkrmnMrgsm said:
In some ways i'm surprised that all of this happened so fast, but in others it felt so natural. This was well done, brilliantly characterised, and threaded some messy needles on levels of threat response. I can't say for certain, but i think it probably holds up pretty incredibly for people who don't know the source material too.

I'm impressed tbh, thanks for the chapter
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I can also confirm, it was beautifully written and well characterized even coming in only from the Worm side and picking up most of the Cradle stuff through this fic.
 
Pheeeeenomenal! Sometimes characters just speaking from the heart to each other makes for the greatest moments in a story.
 
I was not expecting this epic! :) Beautiful chapter with amazing character development, as well as Taylor getting to advance a very important half-step with her Sacred Arts. Looking forward to her continuing to develop the Spider Concept and probably manifest the Oracle Icon. Love the Star Forge they discovered as well! Very cool. :)
 
Thank you for the chapter!

derivativeoflife said:
[GREETING]

Eithan's face went from tense, to confused, to completely gobsmacked. "What are you?" he asked, focusing all of his senses on her. I thought the question was probably rhetorical, but she answered anyway.

[ADMINISTRATOR]

"I… I see," said Eithan. "I have never…" He trailed off, examining her further. Slowly, an enormous, delighted grin grew on his face. "Aren't you just magnificent?"

[AGREEMENT]
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This was perfect, everything I could have hoped for from this interaction. Eithan's probably not been so pleasantly gobsmacked in a very long time.

And it doesn't end there!

derivativeoflife said:
He grinned so broadly, it nearly split his face in half. "The door will open for you, if you want it to."
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This is truly Eithan's very good, excellent, wonderfully surprising day.

Also…

derivativeoflife said:
"Oh!" said Mercy, her eyes widening. "You made her a body! That's so cool! Wow, you're really tall. Can I hug you? I bet you give great hugs with all those arms!"

[ACCEPTANCE]

Hera clearly didn't see the point, but Mercy wasn't deterred. She jumped forward, wrapping her arms around Hera's hips, her head only coming up to Hera's stomach. Hera just stood there for a second, so I mentally nudged her until she reached down and wrapped several dozen pairs of arms around Mercy. Aside from her very alien perspective on things like physical affection, I gathered that she saw her avatar more as a character she was controlling than as herself. I appreciated her indulgence.

Mercy was grinning goofily when they parted. "You really do give great hugs! I should make an Enforcer technique to give myself extra arms so I can give hugs that good. You should hug Taylor too, I bet she didn't even ask for one!"

I snorted slightly. "Maybe later."
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Hug data catalogued and archived.

derivativeoflife said:
I reached back towards her, sharing my own vision. The world twisted, and our visions merged into one. We stood together in the center of my web. Her avatar embraced me from behind, her many pairs of arms wrapped around me possessively. Around us, my spiders had become crystalline constructs, their many legs skittering across dimensions.
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[HUG]

Thank you Mercy lmao.
 
derivativeoflife said:
"Tell me something, Taylor. Have you ever wanted to be someone other than who you are?"

The question caught me off guard, and I took my time to think about it before I answered. "Yes. But not for a long time. You should know as well as I do that no one reaches our level if they can't accept themselves."

"...I suppose I do," he replied. I didn't think I'd ever seen him look so sad before. "Maybe I really am a fool, for hoping otherwise."

It was easy to forget that Eithan had his own demons, skilled as he was at hiding them. "We can't change who we are," I said. "But I think we can become better versions of ourselves."

"A better version," he repeated. He pondered that for a while, laughing slightly to himself, then looked up. "Well, then. Allow me to deal with the obstacle in our way, and we shall see if you're correct."
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Interestingly, I feel like Taylor gave Eithan/Ozriel a proper roadmap to actually changing himself here. Eithan desperately wants to be someone else, i.e. not himself, but that's an unproductive thought. It seems like he's just been trying to 'fake it till he makes it' to wholesale replace himself with someone else, someone that he'd prefer to be, while also probably not really believing it's possible. I'd imagine it's also hard for someone with such insight in general and self-knowledge in particular, to really believe he can simply be different by faking it long enough.

Taylor's talk of becoming a better version of yourself implicitly involves accepting yourself as you are, rather than trying to change by rejecting your current self, but Taylor is indirectly pointing out that you definitely can change small things about yourself if you want it enough and work at it from your current self. It's not hard to see from there that if you build up enough small changes in the same general direction, you'll have ended up changing yourself in bigger ways. You just shouldn't try to do it all at once or by simply erasing who you were.
 
Just so you know. I sat down to read this update at work. Instead of listening to the threshold audio book. NOW I'll go listen to it. :)
 
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Dudeman said:
Interestingly, I feel like Taylor gave Eithan/Ozriel a proper roadmap to actually changing himself here. Eithan desperately wants to be someone else, i.e. not himself, but that's an unproductive thought. It seems like he's just been trying to 'fake it till he makes it' to wholesale replace himself with someone else, someone that he'd prefer to be, while also probably not really believing it's possible. I'd imagine it's also hard for someone with such insight in general and self-knowledge in particular, to really believe he can simply be different by faking it long enough.

Taylor's talk of becoming a better version of yourself implicitly involves accepting yourself as you are, rather than trying to change by rejecting your current self, but Taylor is indirectly pointing out that you definitely can change small things about yourself if you want it enough and work at it from your current self. It's not hard to see from there that if you build up enough small changes in the same general direction, you'll have ended up changing yourself in bigger ways. You just shouldn't try to do it all at once or by simply erasing who you were.
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In that regard, it's very meaningful that Eithan, immediately after that conversation, acknowledged his primary Icon as Death, rather than continuing to hold out for Something Else.

(Even if I did kind of giggle at Taylor's "no prodigy can just will themselves an Icon" line -- I mean, she's not wrong, but also the limits are probably a good bit more flexible than she thinks: Eithan as the Cosmic Janitor certainly does fit the Broom Icon, but I'd hesitate to say that the literal Reaper fits it more than he fits the Death Icon.)
 
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Coldmage said:
The problem with this plan is the best shard for achieving it is the Eye, and the Eye is a massive asshole that unlike all the other shards is still planning to blow up the Earth.
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simple counter point:

that its trying to blow up the earth and thus a "massive *******", means that by definition its NOT the best shard.

also, the shards are at their best when working together, especially since you'd want them to be able to work together to better optimize their discovery of madra/authority usage.

so you definitely would want QA, high priest, ...basically all of them really.
 
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Dragon_352 said:
simple counter point:

that its trying to blow up the earth and thus a "massive *******", means that by definition its NOT the best shard.

also, the shards are at their best when working together, especially since you'd want them to be able to work together to better optimize their discovery of madra/authority usage.

so you definitely would want QA, high priest, ...basically all of them really.
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The easiest solution to this problem in my opinion is to have Queen Administrator/Hera devour the Eye or become the new entity. The problem is the Eye can do something even the Albion cannot do, have 100% accurate predictions without fate manipulation (which gets around the issues the Albion have) in addition the observation and prediction shards are supposed to work with/be a part of Path to Victory for example Diana's shard was originally part of Scion's Path to Victory ability. There is also the issue they need to do something about the Eye anyway since once it realizes there is authority it should not take to long for it get the Oracle Icon and considering its already existing capabilities it would be able to outmaneuver everyone with the slightest opportunity.
 
Coldmage said:
The easiest solution to this problem in my opinion is to have Queen Administrator/Hera devour the Eye or become the new entity. The problem is the Eye can do something even the Albion cannot do, have 100% accurate predictions without fate manipulation (which gets around the issues the Albion have) in addition the observation and prediction shards are supposed to work with/be a part of Path to Victory for example Diana's shard was originally part of Scion's Path to Victory ability. There is also the issue they need to do something about the Eye anyway since once it realizes there is authority it should not take to long for it get the Oracle Icon and considering its already existing capabilities it would be able to outmaneuver everyone with the slightest opportunity.
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considering the Authority/madra/etc is new to the shards, I think its fair to assert that the precog probably stops being perfect around the Albion (if not out-right stops working entirely, the butterfly effect is brutal).

Also, the Oracle Icon, even when perfectly manifested, is not un-counterable because you can't precog your way to victory in cases where victory doesn't exist which is totally possiable when your dealing with reality editors.
 
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Dragon_352 said:
considering the Authority/madra/etc is new to the shards, I think its fair to assert that the precog probably stops being perfect around the Albion.

Also, the Oracle Icon, even when perfectly manifested, is not un-counterable because you can't precog your way to victory in cases where victory doesn't exist which is totally possiable.
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The problem is that creating a situation where victory is completely impossible would be very difficult to nigh impossible in the long term. In addition, there is absolutely no reason to take such a massive risk when Queen Administrator/Hera can just turn the Eye into part of her. There is also the fact that if Queen Administrator/Hera takes over the shard network she can prevent the Titanomachy that is coming, stop the broken triggers and give shards to people she likes (I think Broadcast is a good fit for Mercy).
edit: Also, high ranking precog powers like Path to Victory and the Simurgh can work around this by modeling and looking into the future (both methods to get around blind spots)
 
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Assuming the Titanomachi hasn't happened yet, that is. I'm kinda vague on the timeline here, but hasn't Taylor been on Craddle more than long enough ?
 
Coldmage said:
The problem is that creating a situation where victory is completely impossible would be very difficult to nigh impossible in the long term. In addition, there is absolutely no reason to take such a massive risk when Queen Administrator/Hera can just turn the Eye into part of her. There is also the fact that if Queen Administrator/Hera takes over the shard network she can prevent the Titanomachy that is coming, stop the broken triggers and give shards to people she likes (I think Broadcast is a good fit for Mercy).
edit: Also, high ranking precog powers like Path to Victory and the Simurgh can work around this by modeling and looking into the future (both methods to get around blind spots)
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if we are allowing for the possability of QA eating the shard network, then theres no point in talking about which one's best--we are already agreeing that you want to take the entire thing and not leave any out.

the only reason precog can work around blind spots in worm canon is because their not actual blind spots--their just programmed to "ignore" those targets.

if they were real blind spots, things simply AROUND them would be hard to see and they'd have to "work around" anything that is even in direct line of sight or connected to them acoustically---also any humans/similar interacting with the thing would spread the "blindness" like a infection to one another---

a real blind spot would reduce the bin-turkey's effective precog range from years to mere days (edit: if not hours or even minutes---it takes 1/7th of a second for light to travle around the planet and 2minutes for sound) even on the other side of the planet as it woulden't take long for even very indirect changes to spread across the entire planet.
 
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You know, Hera's many hands aren't just for hugs, she could both literally and figuratively smack the stupid out of the whole network simultaneously. Also, kinda want Vicky and Fury to meet.
 
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