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Vespa

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I wonder how many digits Taylor's bank account has now? Or would it be with the #-Man under the name HOUS?
I still can't wait for the next time our friendly HOUS decides to go out and visit the people of Brockton Bay. Maybe go to the Boardwalk to have a celebratory ice cream, maybe participate in one of Parin's plays, maybe take a tour of the PRT headquarters wearing a trench coat and sunglasses.
 
YuffieK said:
"The Chief Director expressed her displeasure at me last night and ordered me to both 'Fix this.' and 'Have Panacea heal you immediately, THAT is a Direct Order. I'll not have you escape by dying on me.'"
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What Costa-Brown could have done instead is give Piggot a choice: give permission for Panacea to heal her and retain her command, or be relieved, declared mentally incompetent and healed against her will before she is charged with negligence and delerection of duty. She chose the former.
 
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Coil just got whoopsied... oh well. Fantastic best and most fitting way see him die in a fic. No drama no last stand or plot... just oops he was allergic!
 
FaerieKnight79 said:
The core problem with Coil's power is one he has no idea of. Coil thinks it's two sets of events running in real time, and he can chose to keep the sequence of events that benefits him more. But it's not. It's two simulations, ran side by side. Even if you assume the simulations can be done start to finish in 0.000001 seconds, this still means he's not actually done anything yet. If he simulated 3 hours of activities, then those three hours of activities have not happened yet. According to Wildbow, his shard then masters Calvert after running the simulations and deciding which one Calvert would have chosen to keep, and forces Calvert to preform that sequence of actions exactly. Possibly while editing the simulation to account for variables which it hadn't known about before guiding it's Calvert puppet through the actions.

Presumably, it then feeds Calvert the second discarded simulation's results in real time. Not that he could actually react to anything in that second simulation by choice, since his reactions would have also been simulated in advance.

Why yes, I do think the way Calvert's power works (according to Wildbow) is stupid as hell. Wildbow basically made a precog ability that's actually useless.
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Even with that monumentally stupid explanation for the power, what makes it useless? It's still capable of producing the experience Calvert expects under his model - unless you also decide that shard simulation-based precog doesn't actually work. At that point, yes, it's a garbage power, though only slightly more so than every other precog-dependent power, which is quite a lot of them.
 
grommile said:
The part where it puppets you, so if the simulation has errors, you are lolfucked on a level other precogs are not because you have lost the ability to react to the errors.
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That's what makes it slightly worse than every other precog power if you assume all precog powers are useless.

It does not make the power useless, really. Only makes it worse than useless if it's already useless.
 
mp3.1415player said:
But it's an entirely valid thing to say that if you can see him you can kill him, because the 'other timeline' isn't actually real.
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I don't think this is right. It's certainly true that if you are in the real world, and you can see him, you can kill him. But the problem is that first condition. You have absolutely no way to know whether you're living in the real world, or in one of Coil's simulations.

If you're in the real world, and you attack Coil, his power can't protect him. But if you're in a simulation, your time is limited anyway, and all you've done is make sure your real-world alternate doesn't get the chance to attack.


But say you don't accept the philosophical position that simulated people are people. In that case, the claim "if you can see him, you can kill him" might be technically true, but it's extremely misleading. For a person who acts according to this advice will be less successful than a person who treats Coil's simulations as actual timelines. And what good is advice if following it puts you in a worse position?

If you would follow this advice given the chance, Coil's simulations of you would do the same. But that means Coil's precog tells him to not give you that chance!

In short, if you believe that "if you can see him, you can kill him", you won't see him.


Honestly, there's a decent argument to be made that Coil's simulations are actually alternate timelines. They're just running on the hardware of Coil's shard instead of the physical universe. But in the end, it doesn't matter. Short of an external factor like Varga, or directly mucking with Coil's shard, Coil's power is observationally identical to what he believes it is.

It's sort of like interpretations of quantum mechanics. The Copenhagen interpretation is more intuitive, but the idea that wavefunctions collapse has issues if you look too closely. The many-worlds interpretation sticks to the verified physics, but forces you to genuinely consider what it means to put a person in superposition. But in the end, no remotely plausible experiment can distinguish the two interpretations, so for all practical purposes, you're free to treat either one as fact.
 
I have to admit, when I read about the rotten boat on the side of the lake my mind went to The Goonies, so if there's a pirate vessel somewhere out on that lake I wouldn't be surprised... or weird non-Coil sourced boobytraps.
 
STokun said:
it's a pity that taylor just let lisa go from the base. after the description of the dungeon and how taylor made her way to the base, i thought that lisa should be taken underground too. maybe lisa using her power could have revealed some secrets. maybe she could have figured out whose boat it was and how it got there? (i'm really worried about this). maybe it's a pirate boat? Maybe they could find a pirate treasure?
maybe someone talented could write a little omake about this?
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Better, it's Captain Nemo's Nautilus or rather, the place she was constructed.
See Taylor getting more & more confused.
Alternatively, it's the Black Pearl or some other fancy pirate ship.

But really, with a bit of work, this could be that cave from that Nautilus series that is currently running on amazon prime.
Just throw in some more of the original Jules Verne book, you know, while making the submarine a bit more logical.
No big windows, but lots of small ones, layed out in bigger and bigger circus, think Apollo Moonlander, here, for one.
Then a moon pool and well dock combi, where the well dock is the entrance to the moon pool.
Study below it, thus letting you put that organ on a very nice location.
Engine rooms on the side, redundant power supply.
As for a fun one, what about a Arc reactor like cold fusion reactor that combines all the various reactor setups we currently are thinking about and then some?
Think Y in terms of engine layout and if you want to be fun, let the Nautilus be constructed from welded titanium plates or so.
Figure out a nice way for it to ram, that is actually realistic, like say the principles behind a ice rated bow or how certain new oilrigs have a ☆ to the third, in terms of concrete foundation shape, to handel the ice fields from crossing it.
Do add in something to protect the pressure hull from such shocks and maybe a double or even tripple hull setup???

Yeah, joking a bit, here, but can you blame me?
Want to see Danny doing a spittake about what Taylor found.
Her finding the construction location of the Nautilus, from Jules Verne..... 😂

Edit:
As for the well dock and moon pool, it's for the rowboat, can't have it implode or get wet inside, right?
Above water it's a well dock, under water, it becomes a moon pool, thanks to the higher roof.
Also makes it easier for divers, to get in and out, as a bonus.
Back hull can be seen more as a W, that is connected to a Y.
 
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FaerieKnight79 said:
Coil died to a couple wasp stings. But that was a bog standard normal wasp, and he didn't melt into a puddle of goo from the venom. Nor was he burned to a crisp during the melting process.
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Piggot: "It would have been such a shame if that happened, especially if he was conscious the entire time. Of course, we now have a body to prove he is dead, so I will take it as a win regardless. Also, I need to find out who did it, especially if it was a Parahuman. If it was, see if he or she wants to join the Protectorate. And shake their hand. If it wan't, I still want to shake their hand."

MTB said:
Will her pheromone analysis enable her to concoct the exact mixture to put anyone into an anaphylactic shock?
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Taylor and QA: "Oh, what an interesting idea that shall need to be attempted."

Everyone Else: "For the love of God, no!"

mp3.1415player said:
She's not out hunting Nazis for sport, for example.

Yet...
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She may see if she can make it a holiday for all of Brockton Bay to participate in. After all, what are Nazis good for other than stomping?


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBRcuXAxqEA

Replace weasel with Nazis.
 
grommile said:
The part where it puppets you, so if the simulation has errors, you are lolfucked on a level other precogs are not because you have lost the ability to react to the errors.
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Except that the simulation of you and how you will react and the puppeting auto-adapt to changes in conditions AND it feeds you all the data in real-time. You don't get the data beforehand. You will never know whether things happen like they have been originally simulated or whether your experiences are on-the-spot adjustments.
finegeometer said:
I don't think this is right. It's certainly true that if you are in the real world, and you can see him, you can kill him. But the problem is that first condition. You have absolutely no way to know whether you're living in the real world, or in one of Coil's simulations.

If you're in the real world, and you attack Coil, his power can't protect him. But if you're in a simulation, your time is limited anyway, and all you've done is make sure your real-world alternate doesn't get the chance to attack.
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You are ALWAYS in the real world.
 
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Ralyx said:
I expect that one of Taylor's first attempts at expanding the types of insects her power includes will surely be the multitudes of microscopic insects like mites. Every human will be lit up like a petri dish.

Taylor: "C'mon now, you can't possibly argue that these don't qualify if you're including crabs!"

And then she learns about tardigrades, and suddenly becomes Crawler-lite.
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I'm also thinking there will be rationalisation that eels are basically just swimmong worms, then eels are fish just like these, then frogs are basically just fish that can jump around on land ans on and on until the entire animal kingdom is opened up. Arbitrary limitations are no match for a determinator's willpower.
 
The best part of Coil's power is that, due to how it works, it literally has to know everything going on at all times, but deliberately doesn't tell Coil anything outside of the simulated realities. The only real point of failure is an an out of context problem (like Varga), which means the issue isn't that Taylor couldn't be predicted but that (with a little help from QA) she didn't trip anything in the simulated timelines to warn Coil. Meanwhile his shard is happily tracking the hundred wasps in the ventilation shaft and just not helping Coil discover them.
 
dot_dot said:
I'm also thinking there will be rationalisation that eels are basically just swimmong worms, then eels are fish just like these, then frogs are basically just fish that can jump around on land ans on and on until the entire animal kingdom is opened up. Arbitrary limitations are no match for a determinator's willpower.
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Eventually: "And what are people really, except a bunch of cells?" cosplays the tang ending of End of Evangelion
 
MultipleChoice said:
The best part of Coil's power is that, due to how it works, it literally has to know everything going on at all times, but deliberately doesn't tell Coil anything outside of the simulated realities. The only real point of failure is an an out of context problem (like Varga), which means the issue isn't that Taylor couldn't be predicted but that (with a little help from QA) she didn't trip anything in the simulated timelines to warn Coil. Meanwhile his shard is happily tracking the hundred wasps in the ventilation shaft and just not helping Coil discover them.
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That kind of thing is par for the course with parahuman powers, though. Pretty much all of them are practicing arbitrary restrictions between what the shard could do and what the shard actually does for the user.

One particularly common one is the power origin tendency. Many powers act like they have to emanate from particular parts of the user's body. But outside a bit of the brain, most parahuman bodies have no particular physical relation to the shard. Certainly Clockblocker's shard should be able to stop things within some radius of his brain whether or not he's in skin contact, if it wanted to. Probably it could also detect them, since it's able to map the bounds of an 'object' for purposes of freezing. And absolutely shards don't have to be consciously directed to work.

So Clockblocker's shard surely could automatically freeze any high-velocity projectiles coming towards him, making him bulletproof. Clockblocker's power doesn't include that behavior.
 
I feel like the talk over the specific details of Coil's power are kind of irrelevant, since he was obviously using both branches to screw with Tattletale in the same room. Even the maximalist interpretation would just result in both versions of him getting stung by the same wasp in the same room at about the same time.
 
I'm side-eyeing Cauldron right now, I don't think they're going to appreciate Coil suddenly dying. Though it amuses me how convoluted any Path Contessa asks for is going to end up, because Taylor is a pretty damn hard target right now on top of the whole protection through obscurity thing. The latter is the only part she could do anything about directly.
 
SlickRCBD said:
However the others you mentioned didn't attack her or were otherwise non-hostile. She's killed all the hostile ones.
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Sophia Hess is, sadly, still alive and well. Neither she nor the PRT are yet aware that she's had repeated contact with the HOUS, and in fact is responsible for the Trigger of same, but she is a very strong countervailing argument against the idea that being a hostile cape (or more precisely, a cape inimical to Vespa) is an automatic death sentence. The only death credibly and positively linked to the HOUS in public knowledge is Hookwolf, who was killed in the process of rescuing Vista from his murder attempts; as that falls under the "defense of others" clause of acceptable use of force, never mind that he had a Kill Order in this setting, it is alarming to the PRT because of its means of action (giant fuck-off hornet supervenom existing is quite reasonably alarming to anyone with a brain) but not because of what it says about the inherent risks of dealing with the HOUS, who demonstrated herself to be willing to rescue said Ward and of interacting harmlessly enough with both Missy and Amy, and of course the hospital staff. If one absolutely must have a creature of sheer atavistic nightmares living in one's city, it is probably for the best, all things concerned, that said creature seems to be vaguely inclined to protect the helpless.

But more importantly, the PRT has inarguable evidence of one interaction (rescuing Vista) and anecdotal evidence of a second (rescuing the mugging victim), and absolutely no evidence of a vast majority of Taylor's activities which might be cause for rather more alarm; the HOUS is terrifying conceptually but not an existential threat to their personnel or operations, since its extremely limited known activities are benevolent and nominally heroic.
 
Kit said:
But more importantly, the PRT has inarguable evidence of one interaction (rescuing Vista) and anecdotal evidence of a second (rescuing the mugging victim), and absolutely no evidence of a vast majority of Taylor's activities which might be cause for rather more alarm; the HOUS is terrifying conceptually but not an existential threat to their personnel or operations, since its extremely limited known activities are benevolent and nominally heroic.
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Not to mention even with the hookwolf incident the HOUS Rammed him at speed to get him away from Vista and before escalating to the nope nope fluid verbally gave an Ultimatum of which Hookwolf Refused before finding out very finally that it wasn't a Bluff and died for it

Alongside mostly using physical intimidation on the muggers

So there is a Semi Clear seeming means of determining levels of Escalation against any particular scenario and opponent

And the wasp stings of Coil will either not be tied to the HOUS or if they figure out the Master power that the Observing Wasps stung him after she had left the area and the wasps were free to act as Wasps do and sting people when getting swatted at whilst investigating the Surroundings
 
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