But there is stupid and there is stupid, how superior can you feel when it is can be proved to be false, as aliens are superior both biologically and technologically.
I don't think it is unrealistic though, idiots tend to be the loudest in those kind of things.
The interesting thing about Lena and Minnie's dynamic is that, for all Minnie keeps suggesting horrifing weapons and world-threatening action, Lena isn't horrified, or even all that surprised, just exasperated. After all Lena is actually capable of doing pretty much all of the things Minnie talks about on her own if she so wished, and she knows it. She could bring the world to its knees almost as easily as Minnie. The only real difference is just that Lena knows why she shouldn't.
i find the alien racism really stuped. was it like that in the show? like i undestand if people where afraid and shit but the the humans in this fic seems to be for some reason think themselfs superior to races that can wipe our species like how in the word does the goverment in thar world even deal with the bullshit power some aliens have.
Yes. It was always there it just didn't become prominent until after the magical Kryptonian (as in designed by Krypton, not just the species) supersoldier project attempted to take over the world with dream dimension powers. At that point the showrunners decided to make a grassroots human supremacy organization (as opposed to Cadmus which is a rogue government blackops human supremacy organization) the arc antagonist for a season.
Arrowverse started good but by this point it's fallen into the CW soap opera trap.
Lena paused. "Within reason. Power armour isn't acceptable casual attire anywhere outside of Gotham or Greater Bialya; and even then it depends on who you're meeting since Bruce will take it as license to break out a salmon ladder and take off his shirt."
Temporary deficiencies,' Kara mouthed in apparent disbelief. Lena was with her. How, exactly, did one cause those with sound and shocks without also killing human cells?
Needing Water counts as Needing Nutritional Supplements, I think.
Between Brown Pants, wetting themself & vomiting, that would be very unpleasant without ever reaching Lethal.
(Sound would definitely mess with the Inner Ear)
And as for dealing with Bugs? Well, they'd be Delicate Devices - the right pitch (resonant frequency) would be very effective! (All that needs to be done to ruin a computerized system is damage the circuit board, mother board or any other delicate component…)
Meh, Lena should be fine. She once, apparently, built a device that can neutralise most any energy-weapon within an area of roughly building-scale. It took a team of sanity-adjacent scientists, I think, months(?), to reverse-engineer it... . She really ought to be considered to have a superpower in my book.
Meh, Lena should be fine. She once, apparently, built a device that can neutralise most any energy-weapon within an area of roughly building-scale. It took a team of sanity-adjacent scientists, I think, months(?), to reverse-engineer it... . She really ought to be considered to have a superpower in my book.
unfortunately in the comic hero genre, a human who is super smart to the point they can build things collective humanity didnt even theorize yet, isnt considered a power. they just have high IQ, totally normal! .... its actually one of the few things i liked about Worm, it didnt try to sprinkle in some super smart normals into the mix, they rightfully classified them as having powers, obviously lol
unfortunately in the comic hero genre, a human who is super smart to the point they can build things collective humanity didnt even theorize yet, isnt considered a power. they just have high IQ, totally normal! .... its actually one of the few things i liked about Worm, it didnt try to sprinkle in some super smart normals into the mix, they rightfully classified them as having powers, obviously lol
Idiot savants drawing from the collected unconscious and genetic memory. Both completely normal things for an unpowered person to do, like how Lovecraft's fiction was transliterated from the quantum foam after he "saw too much" while helping Tesla beat back an extradimensional incursion using experimental lightning guns.
Idiot savants drawing from the collected unconscious and genetic memory. Both completely normal things for an unpowered person to do, like how Lovecraft's fiction was transliterated from the quantum foam after he "saw too much" while helping Tesla beat back an extradimensional incursion using experimental lightning guns.
Than how do they explain when the mekboy makes a function gun with only two blocks of metal that are in the vague shape of a gun but is till able to fire bullets?
Than how do they explain when the mekboy makes a function gun with only two blocks of metal that are in the vague shape of a gun but is till able to fire bullets?
I don't think this is relevant considering that orks do not exist in this story. I know that the term "grimderp" is frequently used to refer to 40K and Worm, but the overlap in terminology does not mean they are the same setting.
EDIT: Please take that to an Arrowverse, comic, etc. discussion thread or something similar.
Than how do they explain when the mekboy makes a function gun with only two blocks of metal that are in the vague shape of a gun but is till able to fire bullets?
Did I not just say collective unconscious and genetic memory? It's a comic book setting, if the precursor civilization couldn't make a fully functional death beam by strapping a couple stone blocks carved with wiggly symbols together then what the hell were they doing? Psionicly generated sub-dimensions analogous to a hollow earth where dinosaurs are used as beasts of burden probably.
I'm glad that you enjoyed them! This comment was actually a bit of a pick-me-up since classes have been kicking my butt; turns out that the schedule I thought was good for writing was only good while energy levels lasted, and being on campus all day drains my energy fast.
It's worse than that, not only does the code have bugs, but so does the hardware!
The typical ribosome, the piece of hardware which 3d prints proteins based on g-code (RNA), is, shall we say, less than perfect.
Some creatures have less inaccurate ribosomes, but who wants to look like a naked mole rat?
In addition, although the universe which QA calls home is strictly deterministic, ours is quantum -- God plays dice with the universe -- and sufficiently tiny machine is absolutely guaranteed to have a nonzero chance of occasional failure.
Does anybody know whether the universe where the story takes place is deterministic?
AN: It's shorter than usual, but it's been sitting on my laptop for over a month now and I just want to get it over with.
Lena may have underestimated Minnie's ability to turn Lena's ideas into a reality without actually sharing how they got there. It was baffling. Lena even helped with assembly, and she still didn't understand how Minnie knew that each device would work.
Oh, Lena managed to mostly figure out what she was looking at after a short period of time. The issue was that there was an almost ludicrous degree of precision required in order to obtain any given result, and Lena didn't understand how Minnie knew it would work. Sparks dancing across a millimeter-thick bed of lint in order to activate a circuit that triggered a process that initially seemed unimportant but changed the frequency of vibrations and would actually keep the whole device from destabilizing and what the hell.
They should have been beyond fragile and into the realm of non-functional within minutes. Instead, Minnie had casually thrown one dehumidifying box at the wall with all her inconsiderable, preteen strength. The dehumidifier still worked all the way until Minnie pulled the casing open, then it completely ceased to function.
It was brilliant. It was insane. Lena had no trouble believing that Minnie was superpowered to some degree; there was genius, and then there was manufacturing new designs on the fly with inconsistent materials and having them work after only a few missteps. Minnie had to possess perhaps the single most effective system of patent protection that Lena had ever seen. Such obfuscation could be useful even if it would make it difficult to turn her designs into something capable of being mass-produced.
Despite innocuous possible justifications for such skills, Lena still felt unease slowly creep up on her. An adult might conceal their work from others so that they might earn their rightful rewards. A child, however, should not have been subjected to such pressures. Lena was increasingly worried that there might be a connection between such obfuscation and Minnie's attempts to prove her worth. How better to prove that you were irreplaceable, if not by ensuring that nobody else could understand or recreate your designs? Or, worse, there was what Minnie had said earlier: "Anything replicable can be repurposed as a weapon." How many times had Minnie seen innocuous items used for violence until she learned her methods of obfuscation?
Lena hated the thought, which only made her more certain that she was on the right track. Add in Minnie's earlier, dismissive almost-use of "non-powered," and Lena doubted her own ideas regarding whether Minnie actually had superpowers at all. Oh, it looked like Minnie did, but that might be a survival skill. It wasn't as though Minnie's creations were beyond human ability to comprehend; Lena might not grasp everything she was looking at, but she had at least learned how to make a laser rifle capable of punching through concrete if she ever wanted to. She didn't want to, but Minnie had managed to nearly finish a pen-sized laser addition to her bullet-blocking Acquaintance before Lena understood what she was looking at and stopped the precocious preteen.
...And then Lena still let Minnie finish it afterward, albeit with immediate testing and disassembly, to confirm that light still behaved as Minnie expected. Minnie had simply seemed so droopy behind the mask and Lena didn't have the heart to let Minnie remain upset. Lena was a little worried about spoiling Minnie, but not so worried that she would be strict right off the bat. Boundaries might be important, sure, yet Lena felt a little rebellion might be healthier than demanding absolute obedience even with important rules—aside from the Conquest-class Friends. Lena still wasn't going to let Minnie build any of those no matter how good Minnie's argument.
"It won't be assigned to replication or attacks. I simply wish to demonstrate my ability to create Friends that are both cute and delightfully deadly."
Or how bad her argument is, as the case may be. Did Minnie seriously expect that to work? Deadly was not supposed to be a "delightful" trait, and Lena had made that opinion quite clear. Was Minnie deliberately overstepping so that lesser requests would seem innocuous in comparison? A distraction might be in order, and the unusual efficiency of the laser design had given Lena an idea.
"Minnie," Lena said patiently, "we've been over this. It actually feels as though you're so determined to make weapons that you're overlooking other uses. Those lasers, for instance? The amount of energy loss we aren't seeing is unheard of. If it can maintain that as far as I think it can, then you've just designed a low-infrastructure means of wirelessly delivering energy across distances. It's a monopoly-breaker and incredible humanitarian tool all in one, and those uses would have a far greater impact than inventing just another means of hurting others."
Oh, it wasn't as efficient as transporting energy through conductive cables—more energy lost as heat and light—but the minimal infrastructure requirements were game-changing. The heat part wasn't too much of an issue, but she did need to do something about the light; if she started upscaling Minnie's idea for energy infrastructure, someone would be blinded sooner than later.
"Output towers would be weapons, though," Minnie noted, frowning faintly. "Or easily weaponized. Attacks by polities and theft would be inevitable unless I am allowed to implement self-defense and anti-tampering protocols, which seems unlikely. A system of receivers connected to a single transmitter tower would still necessitate that the tower be defended."
Lena could already imagine all the tower defense memes if Minnie had said that in public. More importantly, though, Minnie was right. Certainly, they could leave the defense of transmitters up to the military of whatever nations they were installed within, or even the US military, but—well, that was all kinds of disasters waiting to happen. The original intention was as death rays, and if it wasn't for the sheer amount of good they could do, Lena wouldn't be risking letting the power station designs out of her and Minnie's heads.
Even if she ignored the potential defense issues, keeping it under L-Corp's control—or Lena's, since she wasn't trusting anyone else with control over it—would mean private control of a series of military-grade long-ranged lasers in numerous sovereign nations, and comparably threatening control over their access to energy. Not ignoring the defense issues meant, say, deploying Conquest-class Friends or other mass-producible means of guarding them.
Even scaled down, it would be a long-ranged assassination tool to rival any other. Its ability to be used as such would keep Lena from using it for good. Humanity's tendency to hurt each other was literally the thing keeping Lena and Minnie from giving everyone nice things. It felt like the alien-detecting scanners all over again: Lena started with such good intentions, but people would soon corrupt her designs into something meant only to harm. Was this feeling why Minnie was so obsessive about obfuscating her designs? The one time Lena actually understood how one of Minnie's devices worked, and she learned how to make something more accurate and dangerous than any conventional firearm.
"I can't think of a way to use it for energy transfer while avoiding giving the world a cheap method of accurately assassinating their rivals from miles away," Lena admitted quietly. "I'm sorry. For once I rushed ahead with an idea without considering the consequences."
Minnie's brow wrinkled and she shook her head.
"It was a legitimate observation. I do consider combat usage first and foremost, and often view supplementary usage as means of improving combat ability. However, I will note that the distribution of any sufficiently valuable advancement will disrupt preexisting power structures and encourage attacks by those who see their power being threatened."
Minnie stared expectantly at Lena, who could imagine what she wasn't saying: Minnie would prefer to have unused weapons than lack protection against those attacks. Lena could sympathize with the sentiment, but she'd seen what possessing weapons did to people. They stopped looking for other solutions and started to look for nails, or vaguely nail-shaped objects, to use their new hammers on.
This was sounding less and less like Minnie wanted a hammer, though, and more protection against the kinds of threats she was used to enduring. Lena wanted to believe that Minnie would be safe, but it would only take one scare to reinforce Minnie's trauma and make her backslide.
Lena closed her eyes, sighed, and almost asked Minnie what she would need to feel safe. At the last moment, she remembered that Supergirl was supposed to—never mind, the babysitters having combat abilities would be a perk, not the goal. Lena reluctantly opened her eyes and stared down at Minnie. Lena was going to regret this, she just knew it.
"What would convince you that you're safe? I know 'more Friends,' my question is how many. Don't forget that you'll have human bodyguards, too—if you want to give them something, I'm not instantly opposed to the idea."
Lena thought about it a little more; then added, "I don't suppose a robotic dog would be enough? The sentiment isn't too different from any other service dog."
Minnie instantly perked up and let a smile slip by her mask. However, her apparent cheer didn't stop the precocious preteen from pushing her luck.
"Not on its own. Unless I am left unsupervised, I will need at least two Guardians in order to protect against attacks from multiple angles."
Lena rested her forehead in one palm and sighed.
"'Unless you're left unsupervised?' Let me guess, you're planning on building a troop transport in the shape of a dog?"
Minnie blinked and actually looked somewhat surprised. Lena instantly regretted opening her mouth and raising that idea. It looked as though Minnie might not have considered it after all.
"I had not disqualified that from the list of possibilities, but I had assumed that creating such a Guardian would violate any edict against multiple creations. A lack of supervision would, however, let me utilize manufacturing processes which should not be shared until after you're protected from telepathic intrusion."
Lena blinked and tried not to laugh. It wasn't hard; any initial amusement vanished as soon as she started thinking about why Minnie might use different processes depending on whether or not she was being watched. Lena's reason for watching was innocuous, but whoever used to monitor Minnie clearly hadn't had Minnie's best interests in mind.
"How about one dog and a few accessories?" Lena offered. "I'll even let you build them without constant supervision if you promise not to put anything in your mouth and gain my approval before making anything."
Lena hoped Supergirl and Administrator could pull through with those telepathic shields soon. Lena knew she was giving Minnie pretty much everything the child wanted, but if it helped Minnie feel safer and happier? It was worth extending a bit more trust than might be strictly advisable.
…Not even one week since Lena had tried to say no, and Lena's caution was already crumbling under the weight of Minnie's big, sad eyes. Lena was in so much trouble.
Not even one week since Lena had tried to say no, and Lena's caution was already crumbling under the weight of Minnie's big, sad eyes. Lena was in so much trouble.
Others may have considered that supervising Minnie with one of the few people capable of actually keeping up with her designs enough to step in before WMDs are built would be enough to minimise risk. However, they didn't account for the human factor.
Now she has a superintelligent enabler, with increased resource procurement. Perhaps we can't simply drown the bonfire in gasoline after all...
Not only are Lena's mental defenses crumbling before the sad eyes of her new ward.
But she, unwittingly, has already allowed her ward to build the most devastating weapon of all, the puppy eyes shall be deployed at every opportunity imaginable, and few that are not.
Lena thought about it a little more; then added, "I don't suppose a robotic dog would be enough? The sentiment isn't too different from any other service dog."
Minnie instantly perked up and let a smile slip by her mask. However, her apparent cheer didn't stop the precocious preteen from pushing her luck.
But Alivaril, the things you give us are always nice!
Lena's problem seems to be that she's getting hit with the "Oh, my kid is so cute!" parts of parenting without the years of sleepless nights, diaper changing, and Terrible Twos to provide immunization when they're being used as levers for manipulating her into being more permissive. Kara should get her in touch with Martha for parenting advice -- Ma Kent knows what's what and how to set a youngster who's well meaning but has more power than sense straight... and if there's any question about Lena going all old school Luthor, well, there's not likely to be anyone else who'd have a better chance at unraveling that either, particularly with the social position of being a mentor figure in one of the few areas Lena is not especially talented in.
That does raise the severe danger of Ma sussing out their nascent feelings for each other and teasing or otherwise meddling, but I don't think either of them are quite self aware enough in that regard to recognize the threat, and the potential "OMG, Kara wants me to meet her family!?" moment has some amazing amusement misunderstanding potential!
