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...Who Needs Enemies? [AltPower!Taylor / Worm]

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The Steve said:
As for !ZombieTale thus far, well...

You know how her power kinda goes wonky with not enough information? Well, Coil's room is bereft of things to gather information of. Part of that was deliberately done by Coil to help counter Lisa's power, and the other is his tastes.

This leads to the inevitable WWTTD repeatedly checked at sixty FPS.

[WWTTD]
Tattletale: Tattletale is hungry. The only food available is Coil. Would Tattletale eat Coil if no other food was available? Yes, Tattletale would eat Coil. OtherTattletale, what part should I eat?
OtherTattletale: OtherTattletale is testing now. Tattletale does not like Coil's leg, nor his arm. It is tough and not a lot of meat. Torso seems to be the best bet.
TattleTale: Thank you OtherTattletale. I shall discard the other timeline and get started.
*Afterwards*
Tattletale: Tattletale has fed, thus extending Tattletales's mean time to failure. Now let's look around. I see there was a door behind us. Would Tattletale have checked the door first? Yes, Tattletale would.
[/WWTTD]
Now if Coil had left a sandwich on his desk when he died, Tattletale would have been much more likely to eat that instead. It would depend on the mustard really, Tattletale don't do no Dijon.

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Coil Timeline shenanigans are a bit tough to write correctly.

@Asheram The order goes like this. Tattletale tries to take advantage of a frazzled Coil to off him, and she succeeds as she has several times in the past. Coil takes the other timeline and shoots her in the head while she was drawing the gun. He splits the timeline anew, with one on the phone to get more information, the other checking his gun.

Enter Endbringers.

Tattletale sits up, grabs her gun and shoots Coil A. Coil B empties remainder of clip into Tattletale again, this time in the torso as the headshot didn't work.

Tattletale's torso gets welded shut, Coil can't jam a new clip in, and they make damn sure that this time their creation does not die again.
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I'm going to give your work the benefit of the doubt and request that you please state your reasoning again in 'reader-dumby talk'. Maybe it makes sense for events to happen this way with your ASBMT, but so far it comes off a heck of a lot more like you're either feeding off controversy, gorn, and/or stroking your throbbing hate-boner for Tattletale.

I hope you have a good line of reasoning, because otherwise I'll feel the need to attempt a lambasting while also focusing through the tension-headache of 'this so stupid'. As I'm skilled at neither, that would be the less desirable outcome for me.

Main irritations described broadly;
- In the morgue and partly-vivisected? Not a death caused by an Endbringer.
- The two+ timelines of Tattletale's attack on Coil. Why so similar?
- Tattletale being fixed by Simurgh in idiotic fashion, ie in the least useful/power-efficient way.
- Tattletale 'fixed' sufficiently enough to fulfil orders, then 'fixed' more when Coil is killed? Either the first fix was in fact not sufficient, or Simurgh decided to 'improve' the fix for no reason.
- WWTTD script should first go "Tattletale is hungry. How would Tattletale deal with this amount of hunger in this situation?"

Considering how subtly and intricately the Simurgh can make plans and engineer disaster-dominoes, you seem to have written the only fic I've read that makes her look incompetent. I knew coming in this story was crack, but you seem to occasionally try and shoe-horn some hyper-serious ASBMT event in, and it doesn't mesh well.

Apologies if this comes off as too harsh, but I'm just... kind of sad and disappointed in the chapter.
 
killfr3nzy said:
you seem to have written the only fic I've read that makes her look incompetent
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Do a search for "Memories of a Simurgh." Enjoy having your worldview shattered.
(Caution: Do NOT read it's parent story, "Memoirs of a Simurgh Victim." That will shatter your worldview in an entirely DIFFERENT fashion.)

Also keep in mind that this is the Simurgh we're talking about. A completely alien creature with only an academic understanding of human nature, BUT near-perfect pre- & post-cognition. For all we know, the situation with Tattletale is her responding to orders Taylor hasn't given yet. Perhaps Zombie!TattleSnake is necessary to make some future orders easier to follow. Or maybe Simurgh saw Tattletale feeding the PRT information in the future. WIth the 'no kill' order in effect, this might have been the most effective way to neutralize her as a threat.
 
wclathan3 said:
I would argue against.

A lawyer doesn't so much deal in logic as much as precedence and procedure. A programmer deals in logic. In other words, a lawyer seeks to exploit the rules to his client's benefit while a programmer uses the rules to eliminate exploits.

The difference is:

Programmer: "IF this, THEN that, ELSE that other thing."

Lawyer: "Since this has happened this way in the past, then it should happen the same way now."

The programmer is the better choice b/c the lawyer would have no precedent or procedure to follow or exploit.
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Which is why I said both. That way when there is precedent and procedure the lawyer side can help as well.
 
@killfr3nzy Hmm, I'll try, but there may be a bit of problems with spoilers and such so I shall be a touch vague and hope it gets across. If not, it will become a bit more clear in time I hope.

- The morgue case was one I replied to on page 25.
- As I stated earlier, Coil and much of the world was not expecting three Endbringers to come visiting, and, he called in TT for intel as he dropped a more speculative timeline in order to maximize his survival chances, ie. Plans to escape by air and by vehicle, etc. TT takes advantage in one timeline and kills Coil, something she had done several times thus far, and something he normally respects her for, but now is certainly not the time for this, and as such he takes care of the problem a bit more succinctly.
- The repairing of TT was Ordered after the deed, by mere moments, and since time travel doesn't work or there'd be Eden all fine and dandy, there are consequences to this. Also, there were no BioTinkers in range for her to crib notes off of, hence why all repairs are being done by conjunction of either B, L, S, or combinations thereof.
- There is a point about the Coil timelines and the Endbringers that a few sharp people caught on to which will be explained in times to come.
- As for the Scripting of Tattletale, I tried to base it on the same derived by the Entities in WIldbrow's interlude about their evolution and logic, only, being recursively called multiple times per second.

Much of this story is the consequence of what happens when actions are done with poor amounts of data, from the very first few deviations of the Simurgh in the 1.1 onwards.

And as for the subtle and intricacies of the Simurgh in Canon, that's because we keep putting human attributes onto a now in hindsight completely nonhuman being. Consider the actions of the Leviathan vs Behemoth and note that Big B can move awful darn fast in India when needed. I noticed that their actions resemble each others in parallel when in situations where specific responses need to be done.

@wclathan3 Client's are not Precognible, if such a word exists... And ninja'd. Good to see attention being kept.

As for feeding off of "controversy, gorn, and/or stroking my throbbing hate-boner" the answers to that are No as much of this is stapled out long before there were responses to be controversial, No as sexualization of violence done thus far, and No as I am at best indifferent to TT aside of wincing when vulpine is being tossed about like a ladies stole.
 
Quick question to you all, when Behemoth went through New York, did he step on the Rockefeller Center? I cannot recall if he did or not.
 
The Steve said:
Quick question to you all, when Behemoth went through New York, did he step on the Rockefeller Center? I cannot recall if he did or not.
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Of course this would be relevant to the plot. I should have expected.

Seriously though, NYC was rebuilt, so if he did it's likely been fixed or renovated in some way.
 
The Steve said:
@killfr3nzy Hmm, I'll try, but there may be a bit of problems with spoilers and such so I shall be a touch vague and hope it gets across. If not, it will become a bit more clear in time I hope.

-snipped for debate-
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+Respect for your level-headed response to my scornful review. Not enough respect to regret it. Yet.
The Steve said:
- The morgue case was one I replied to on page 25.
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I saw that one, and it didn't make sense to me. Don't know the period of time between 'body brought in' and 'begin creepy desecration' but given that there should be one, as well as between 'death', 'body found' and 'body brought in', I don't see how the Endbringers could have had time to cause it during their speedrun to Client. I guess this could be a plot point later, but many other events are described so it seems weird.
The Steve said:
- As I stated earlier, Coil and much of the world was not expecting three Endbringers to come visiting, and, he called in TT for intel as he dropped a more speculative timeline in order to maximize his survival chances, ie. Plans to escape by air and by vehicle, etc. TT takes advantage in one timeline and kills Coil, something she had done several times thus far, and something he normally respects her for, but now is certainly not the time for this, and as such he takes care of the problem a bit more succinctly.
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The description of the scene makes it look like the two timelines are exactly the same except for one being ~5 seconds advanced - ie CoilA turns away, TattleA draws gun + CoilB turns away, CoilA shot + CoilB turns back, TattleB is drawing gun + CoilB shoots her. It seems unlikely that they would be so similar.
The Steve said:
- There is a point about the Coil timelines and the Endbringers that a few sharp people caught on to which will be explained in times to come.
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I noticed that either every Endbringer had precognition, or they shared Ziz's PoV. Also, her precog doesn't allow her to view both timelines at once, strangely.
The Steve said:
- The repairing of TT was Ordered after the deed, by mere moments, and since time travel doesn't work or there'd be Eden all fine and dandy, there are consequences to this. Also, there were no BioTinkers in range for her to crib notes off of, hence why all repairs are being done by conjunction of either B, L, S, or combinations thereof.
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Considering the care and ingenuity she takes in even this update, it wouldn't take much for Ziz to create a blank brain and program it with the post-cog thoughts/memory of Tattletale, or at least give those same memories and observed planned actions to the TattleBot. Especially since they thought they could bring back Shadow Stalker, who is literally smoke on the wind right now.

Then there's the fact that Ziz seems to pick the barest-functional way of fulfilling her orders in a seemingly frustrated and passive-aggressive way - so if Tattlebot was seen as an adequate solution, she should not have revisited it by adding in some Coil meats, given that she's done that for no other task ever.
The Steve said:
- As for the Scripting of Tattletale, I tried to base it on the same derived by the Entities in WIldbrow's interlude about their evolution and logic, only, being recursively called multiple times per second.

Much of this story is the consequence of what happens when actions are done with poor amounts of data, from the very first few deviations of the Simurgh in the 1.1 onwards.
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The fact is the scripting should be better. As is, it's on the level of 'fail to gather information on surrounding environment, randomly pick one aspect of current requirements, try and fulfil that requirement without considering directives ActAsHost, BlendIn.'

Considering the Simurgh has insane computational power and the ability to see ALL THE DATA, these actions are pointlessly self-defeating.
The Steve said:
And as for the subtle and intricacies of the Simurgh in Canon, that's because we keep putting human attributes onto a now in hindsight completely nonhuman being. Consider the actions of the Leviathan vs Behemoth and note that Big B can move awful darn fast in India when needed. I noticed that their actions resemble each others in parallel when in situations where specific responses need to be done.
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Not actually sure what comparative actions you mean except that they were all sandbagging and each using
a specific 'playstyle' that did not crib off each other too much. Behemoth pulling some Leviathan-style blitzkrieg doesn't necessarily mean that they think alike, or, more importantly, that they think like Ziz.

I derive my understanding of the Simurgh's complexity from endgame Worm, where she is the only Endbringer with independent motives and actual agency. Also, she has her own Interlude, IIRC.
 
Castle_Bravo said:
Or was she?
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I mean, there's a lot of uncovered ground in canon! She could have been a humanitarian. We have no way of knowing!

For that matter, Armsmaster could have been a swinger, Miss Militia a huge fan of trashy bodice ripper novels, and Chevalier secretly wanted to be a pretty, pretty princess. There's all KINDS of wiggle room available!

Societies, by necessity, enforce a minimum set of mores. For example, you can't randomly stab your neighbor cause you felt like it. Torturing babies for your personal amusement, also frowned upon.
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Oh, you CAN do both of those. And, as long as you don't get caught, no one will care. It's just that when/if you do get caught, you're going to be dealing with minor problems with your social life. (However, given the number of marriage proposals famous killers get in prison, only MINOR problems.)

wclathan3 said:
Armsmaster: "The Endbringer attack has been repulsed. Final Death toll: -4? Hold on, let me double check that."

It's an Endbringer attack. I seriously doubt anyone cares about checking I.D. right now.
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Franklymydear said:
"Oh, I forgot to carry the one. Wait a minute, that just makes it -5!"
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"Welcome to my bar! Drink it up before they blow it up! ...aren't you Armsmaster? I didn't think you- ...the numbers keep going down. Right. Uh-huh... look, how about I just leave the bottle? Nothing sadder than a grown parahuman crying, man."

leontrollski said:
77 highschoolers all having mild strokes that obliterate precisely 1 day of memory.

very subtle. no one will notice that.
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IT FITS THE REQUIREMENTS. IT IS A PERFECT PLAN.

Look, they're trying, man. At least they're all still sane, non-zombified, and more or less still able to act, right? Technically, putting them all into a persistent vegetative state would have worked, too. (Pretty sure, at least.)

Senevri said:
Personally, I think "Autonomous Weapons Platform" is more accurate than "Space Battleship", but the difference is academic, pedantic, and semantic.
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So... we'll have eighteen pages of increasingly vitriolic arguments about the difference, gotcha. I'll get the popcorn.
 
Actually I want to chime in on both the bodice rippers and the school amnesia ploy.

First, Bodice rippers ftw.

Second, it clearly isn't that bad a plan to give the entire school 1 day amnesia. It protects Taylor who can say, "I don't remember" and clearly, it works. At least it works for a year (and a day), after which fairy magic wears off and maybe someone thinks it through a second time. Or translated from GU's pov, after a year the Simurgh wasn't looking to see if their cover was still intact so after that point anything from this day could be used to identify Taylor. Just remember, in a story with an almost all powerful perfect precog, when you give them orders like, "Make sure X doesn't happen for a year." And it results in plan Y, you know that plan Y is a good plan and will work out even if you don't know why.
 
The Steve said:
there were no BioTinkers in range for her to crib notes off of,
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Ummm, what range are you giving her and what definition of tinker are you using? Depending on those two that answer is actually wrong, as with certain definitions of tinker there is one right there in brockton bay that could be combined with the simurgh's post-cog to restore tattletale perfectly.

IIRC what the simurgh did in cannon is bassically ping the shards nearby for "how do i do _____?" certain shards should actually fit that bill without being rated as tinker by the PRT
 
girador said:
Ummm, what range are you giving her and what definition of tinker are you using? Depending on those two that answer is actually wrong, as with certain definitions of tinker there is one right there in brockton bay that could be combined with the simurgh's post-cog to restore tattletale perfectly.

IIRC what the simurgh did in cannon is bassically ping the shards nearby for "how do i do _____?" certain shards should actually fit that bill without being rated as tinker by the PRT
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This is a good point. However, wasn't there also something somewhere about her range being really darn large (like, planet sized)? Or was that fannon? Anyhow, maybe they forgot?
 
@Rakdos92 It's coming, but work, sickness, and the usual bits of life impede. I'll aim for the end of the day, but don't quote me.

@Franklymydear the only problem with time travel is, why on earth would an entity die at all if they are paired and could do so? Even if mass was a problem, a message made from energy would work and bam, no Eden loss.

Entropy is a big deal for the Entities, that's the whole reason why they do what they do. With sufficient powers, they can reassemble the scrambled egg, but the energy and effort involved always makes it losing game in the end.

Oh, and as for the Simurgh, do note that normally she has knowledge about situations in advance, and much of her infinite machinations rely heavily on fudging effects at just the right time, not after the fact and picking up the pieces. For her, it's much easier to telekinetically hoist Humpty Dumpty than putting him back together again after he's fallen.

She reacts poorly to the unexpected in comparison to Behemoth and Leviathan, hence her pretzeling of Alexandria. Mostly as a pre-cog unexpected is really really rare.


*EDIT*
Oh and she's using the same shard pinging range that people do when they trigger, unless emergencies demand the extra energy spent. Had Taylor said "I want all dead people today to be rebuilt exactly as they were" the energy cost would be great, but they would do it. But she ended up saying to them "Any direct or indirect deaths where you are a technical factor set to not dead." Sort of, in Swahili.
 
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chocolote12 said:
This is a good point. However, wasn't there also something somewhere about her range being really darn large (like, planet sized)? Or was that fannon? Anyhow, maybe they forgot?
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At one point in canon Simurgh affects a digital message sent from Dragon to Brockton Bay while Simurgh was in orbit above the area. Rather than taking this for the couple hundred kilometer distance to the ground orbit actually implies (considering she's holding herself there with telekinesis it could actually be just about any altitude admittedly from much lower to much higher) it's been twisted into global range.
 
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inverted_helix said:
At one point in canon Simurgh affects a digital message sent from Dragon to Brockton Bay while Simurgh was in orbit above the area. Rather than taking this for the couple hundred kilometer distance to the ground orbit actually implies (considering she's holding herself there with telekinesis it could actually be just about any altitude admittedly from much lower to much higher) it's been twisted into global range.
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It's been twisted into that due to Word of God about the scale of Endbringer capabilities. Blame Wildbow for the furious wankery.
 
hellgodsrus said:
Plz cry moar.

In all seriousness, who didn't predict the Endbringers were jobbing seriously? I mean, dynakinesis alone is a planetkiller.
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Well, I always figured it wasn't actually dynakinesis, otherwise Behemoth would be displaying a much wider range of capabilities than in canon, even holding back. I figure we would have seen capes getting picked apart at the molecular level if that was the case, kinetic energy shenanigans, and more.

Of course I suppose it's possible that Behemoth was capable of all that, but the disparity between that and the abilities canon Endbringers show is so massive that I think he's a a lot more limited than 'dynakinesis' suggests.
 
Depending on just how much mass is packed into an Endbringer, core included, throwing one into a sufficiently massive black hole could result in a total energy equal to or greater than 4*1069​ joules...
 
Sasha said:
Well, I always figured it wasn't actually dynakinesis, otherwise Behemoth would be displaying a much wider range of capabilities than in canon, even holding back. I figure we would have seen capes getting picked apart at the molecular level if that was the case, kinetic energy shenanigans, and more.

Of course I suppose it's possible that Behemoth was capable of all that, but the disparity between that and the abilities canon Endbringers show is so massive that I think he's a a lot more limited than 'dynakinesis' suggests.
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I thought he did have that, iirc when he was still jobbing and got hit by the India destroying beam he managed to nullify the kinetic energy while leaving the thermal energy hit him (essentially cutting the power of the beam in half) and he already vaporizes people in his radius so why bother with affecting the molecular level? (remember they have to ration out their energy levels over the projected 300 years of escalation), iirc in his first appearance he also managed to make his lightning bolt curve around Alexandria and hit one of the Iranian capes.

Its not much different then when people were informed by the production staff of Awakening of the Trailblazer that the 00 Quan[T] could have destroyed the ELS fleet by itself (albeit after 3 months of nonstop fighting)
 
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