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Tattletale keeping Aiden around her all the time is totally her trying to cope with not having Taylor anymore right? I wonder how good he has gotten with his power.
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Mar 12, 2018 17:02
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Pussy Quipped posted:Tattletale keeping Aiden around her all the time is totally her trying to cope with not having Taylor anymore right? If anyone realizes that Aiden is a bud of the QA shard he'd probably become a target. He may already be a target. Lisa could be keeping him close just to keep him (and the world?) safe.
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Mar 12, 2018 23:39
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If certain people realize it they'll be inclined to kill Aiden, makes sense to keep him close. Also little brother from tattletale's trigger and all that (so Taylor replacement, who was also sibling replacement). This was a solid chapter, confirmed some more obvious theories, setup for some good action/events in the future. A lot of the setup seems done and we're starting to get dominoes falling.
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Mar 13, 2018 00:40
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He's also a child that is a potential skitter/weaver/khepri. Teacher at the very least would probably love to get his hands on that.
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Mar 13, 2018 02:31
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Ward: man, so his sections are all well-written, but I'm kind of getting tired of Rain; I know it won't happen, but I'm sort of hoping that Tattletale will just flat-out kill him, and let us get back to focusing on Victoria and the misfit toys.
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Mar 13, 2018 17:48
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Omi no Kami posted:Ward: man, so his sections are all well-written, but I'm kind of getting tired of Rain; I know it won't happen, but I'm sort of hoping that Tattletale will just flat-out kill him, and let us get back to focusing on Victoria and the misfit toys. It's kinda funny that the few times we've seen him actually stand up for anything has been to his cluster of all people, in his dreams even if sporadically. So I was just gonna write something about how I don't care about Rain but I'd say it's interesting that Wildbow has made Rain into this kinda pathetic person who's very easy to casually dislike. I don't know if many readers are gonna be out there hating Rain or anything, but like you said being tired of him or finding him spineless and sad is much simpler. It kinda reminds me of Amy in the S9 arc, but there are two pretty big differences between the two. First is Amy had actual presence as something other than 'the pathetic person who hosed up badly and regrets it' before the event so as a reader it was more interesting. And second, the reader's investment in Amy didn't have to carry the whole climactic conflict like Rain basically carries this one. That's kinda the problem I'm having with Rain right now - he is not just our window into the Fallen side of the upcoming war, but also together with Erin makes up most of the 'stakes' as it were for the team. And naturally the same thing should be true for us as readers. But frankly, I just don't see how he's earned it narratively. It's not that he isn't complicated, or even sympathetic. It's just that his whole character is defined by his struggles with the Fallen and his cluster which gets harped on over and over. I don't feel like we know Rain at this point even despite being in his head four times, because his entire existence and all his interpersonal relationships are defined by the coming conflict and nothing else. I'm sure there are some people who like or don't mind Rain, but I feel like the way he's written is very explicitly in a way that isn't conducive to making the reader identify with him. I feel like making that his character out the gate and putting the burden of this very first major conflict in the story on his shoulders is not doing him any favors at all. I'm not actually worried about the conflict itself being interesting - the team is still fun to watch, you're invested in seeing the Fallen get hosed over, and of course introducing the Undersiders into the mix is an easy way to get people excited about it as well. But I'm not seeing Rain's long set-up paying off very easily here. At this point I'm struggling to think of a single character related to Rain or the Fallen/his cluster that I'm less interested in or whose fate I'm less invested in than Rain himself, good or bad. I'm therefore paradoxically very interested in seeing how his part of this conflict will go from a writing POV because I want to see if Wildbow can throw something into the mix that changes my mind on all this.
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Mar 13, 2018 22:07
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Ward 5d: Even when Rain tries to do the right thing he fucks it up real bad. I'm moderately certain he just signed Erin's death warrant, and even if he didn't the consequences are gonna be pretty dire, for her and for him. I'll agree that I'm getting slightly sick of him, he's just sort of a broken human being, which makes sense given what he's gone through but doesn't make for very compelling reading  I was really hoping he'd try to ingratiate himself with the Fallen, so he could get as many of them killed as possible while hopefully not dying himself, but Rain just burned that bridge pretty hardcore so  This whole whole thing is going to be a loving bloodbath, I hope whatever Tattletale is really getting out of it is worth a whole bunch of people dying, likely including some of her friends and allies! VV: That's kind of my feeling too, honestly. Random Asshole fucked around with this message at 22:20 on Mar 13, 2018 |
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Mar 13, 2018 22:10
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Tattletale is going to be dead when the dust settles from this poo poo.
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Mar 13, 2018 22:19
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Ward: Also the end of the chapter combined with my predictions from the last one makes the future look bleak for our old friend Foil. Hopefully I'm wrong and March just wants a hug and an updated power time-share agreement!
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Mar 13, 2018 22:20
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Ward: the further this story goes, the more ominous I feel the Undersiders' stake in general and Lisa's in particular is, and that really bugs me; I still like them more than the misfit toys, and Tattletale was easily my favorite character in Worm, and I almost wish she hadn't come back instead of reappearing and making herself vulnerable to the misery laser WB's characters tend to trip and step in front of. In regards to Rain, I'm increasingly getting Krouse vibes off of him, insofar as his core character seems to be that of a neutral or well-intentioned person who does bad things because circumstances demand it, and genuinely never had a chance to act within the bounds of his own volition. The problem is that I really disliked that character type, and the problems I had with Krouse are more and more starting to translate to Rain. I don't think that the things he does make him a bad person, but those things do make me dislike him, and nothing we've seen him do since his introduction have convinced me that he's changed since his trigger event. When the story started out I was on his side, because we met Snag as a villain and we're introduced to Rain as a troubled but fundamentally well-intended kid. I don't know if this is the intent of the writing, but the more we see of him, the more I agree with his cluster; at this point, I kinda genuinely want to see them win, wipe him out, and be done with it. On the Erin side, did that whole sequence feel kinda weird and jarringly out of character for her? There was that bit right before he left where he saw hope in her eyes and temptation towards the idea of leaving the horrible apocalyptic endbringer cult, and that makes me assume that she wasn't Valefor'd, mathers'd, or otherwise mind whammied, but it felt so weird to see her go so quickly from "I hate this place and everything about it, I only stay because my parents drank the kool-aid" to "Yeah, it kinda sucks, but maybe if I marry Rain things and live in a shack things will work out; I don't like him, and he's a mass-murderer, but at least he feels bad about it".
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Mar 13, 2018 23:25
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It's been so long that I'd forgotten how good Wildbow was at making poo poo get worse and worse and worse. How many characters that we care about are going to die in this fight? 
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Mar 13, 2018 23:27
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Whether or not Tattletale bites it "now" probably largely hinges on when in the course of the story Wildbow plans to shatter Vitoria's conceptions of the way the world works and turn her into an actual Hero. Anyway, some possibly crazy ideas. Tattletale is one of the core members of the actual "rulers" or "Wards" or whatever the hell they are called, she's the face (or one of the faces?) that organizes things on the "villains" side. Marsh isn't kill with Foil, she's Kiss. Parian is in more danger, in a way, than Foil herself is. Sveta's new found control is thanks to Teacher. Sveta and Weld would have ran into him while looking for clues to where they came from, he did loot Cauldron after all. Teacher is using Sveta, and team therapy to interfere with and sabotage Tattletale, and thus the "Wards".
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Mar 13, 2018 23:30
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I have no problem believing that Tattletale is helping to run the wards; by the end of Worm she was informally top brass with the PRT, and since Chevalier expressed an intention to push the PRT towards pragmatism over idealism towards the end, I have a lot of trouble imagining him not offering Tattletale a job. Plus, Lisa had that whole long talk with Taylor near the end of Worm about how she was starting to develop empathy and compassion for perfect strangers, and how she liked it. For her to really be the heartless information broker supervillain that Ward has depicted her as thus far seems like a huge step backwards.
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Mar 13, 2018 23:50
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So one of Foil's secondary powers thanks to the cluster is enhanced timing/precision. March is obviously a reference to the March Hare with his obsession for time, I wonder how that manifests as a full blown power other than Is Never Late.
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Mar 13, 2018 23:59
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Pussy Quipped posted:So one of Foil's secondary powers thanks to the cluster is enhanced timing/precision. March is obviously a reference to the March Hare with his obsession for time, I wonder how that manifests as a full blown power other than Is Never Late. Good catch! My guess would be sort of combat precog - killer reflexes, knowing when to strike, etc. Edit: I checked the wiki and yeah, Wildbow said that Foil can use it to dodge attacks and catch arrows, so that’s almost certainly it. VV: I’d say the rabbit mask is a big hint. Still, I’m slightly disappointed that she isn’t themed after the month of March, like an even shittier Calender Man. Random Asshole fucked around with this message at 02:54 on Mar 14, 2018 |
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Mar 14, 2018 01:25
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Pussy Quipped posted:So one of Foil's secondary powers thanks to the cluster is enhanced timing/precision. March is obviously a reference to the March Hare with his obsession for time, I wonder how that manifests as a full blown power other than Is Never Late. took march to be like, the act. coordinated movement by hundreds/thousands of people
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Mar 14, 2018 02:29
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Obviously this is all a giant red herring and it's referring to the music. Gonna put on a rousing performance and win Foil's heart.
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Mar 14, 2018 05:41
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I'm really interested to learn why other sets of cluster capes have these weird interactions with each other. It doesn't seem likely that they all have the same shared dream pentagon thing.
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Mar 14, 2018 05:46
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The Shortest Path posted:I'm really interested to learn why other sets of cluster capes have these weird interactions with each other. It doesn't seem likely that they all have the same shared dream pentagon thing. They definitely don't, back when Flechette was with the Brockton Bay Wards she had no idea she was connected to March, only that she popped up around the same time. My continuing theory is that the dreamspace is the fifth member's power - which means they could still be alive, using their control to conceal their presence and mindfuck the others. It would certainly explain how the person Team Snag brought into the mindspace was gruesomely murdered while they were dreaming!
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Mar 14, 2018 06:48
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Random rear end in a top hat posted:They definitely don't, back when Flechette was with the Brockton Bay Wards she had no idea she was connected to March, only that she popped up around the same time. My continuing theory is that the dreamspace is the fifth member's power - which means they could still be alive, using their control to conceal their presence and mindfuck the others. It would certainly explain how the person Team Snag brought into the mindspace was gruesomely murdered while they were dreaming! Maybe I wasnt paying enough attention, but I thought it was Mama Mathers who hosed up the outsider in the dreamspace.
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Mar 14, 2018 07:11
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I feel pretty opposite to you guys on Rain feelings, wildbow captures that religious cult feeling and adds superpowers to turn that poo poo to 11. I dislike him as a person, but as a character he feels incredibly realistic. I guess if you don't have any experience with similar things you wouldn't be able to identify with him or feel like you understand him. I'm not sure really how to say it, but he and his situation feel viscerally real to me in a way that characters like Amy or Reagent never came close to. It is hard enough for people to leave cults in our actual world, add in mind whammy superpowers and the steps Rain has taken to try to find a way out have easily earned him narrative weight for me. Question for you guys, how much do you know about this style of cult mentality/brainwashing type poo poo? ward 5d This chapter we've seen him reject staying with the Fallen, even in a best case scenario: mama mathers letting him be alone and Erin offering to marry him, the promise of a life on the edge of the Fallen where he could turn a blind eye to the atrocities they commit. Now the question is what he is going to do with March's group exactly. This is important in the larger story narrative as he is the first of the therapy group to be tested on his second chance, which is a major theme of the whole story. Is he going to turn the new leaf that he has been dancing around with through the whole therapy/hero group, or is he going to join up with March's Murder Party and kill off his problems? How is this choice going to change therapy group in general as well as every member? Outside of Rain specifically, the whole situation of villains going to murder the fallen and the wardens maybe getting pulled in is going to be some poo poo the group will have to deal with. Chances are good that no matter how the chips fall this ends up leaked to the general public and starts a poo poo-show. Maybe it'll spiral into some hosed-up laws and we'll see Victoria's mantra put to the test? I'm just spitballing a bit, but I guess I'm just a bit surprised that people don't see the implications this entire thing has for Victoria or the rest of the team. How will Sveta handle it if Rain joins March for Murder Party, will Ashley call the group a failure, will Kenzie take off with her, etc. My wild theory is a blend of necromonster's ideas. Basically, Tattletale is working with the wardens, and she is going to bite it in the upcoming fight. That'll precipitate a power vacuum on the villain side to pull the story out of cedar point and connect it to larger world things, and also force Victoria to confront some of her views (someone she views as bad guy turns out to be secretly helping good guys and dies to save lives). Big cape fight that murderizes a bunch of capes also might precipitate the war, because the advantage earth G has is "lots of strong capes". edit: to error 404 The guy was smeared and everyone's interior was hosed up, then Rain thought of mama mathers specifically and she didn't show up. So her power doesn't reach inside the dream space.
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Mar 14, 2018 07:13
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I know a fair bit about cults and cult mentality overall, I had a bit of fascination regarding Aum Shinrikyo for a while and I've seen/read a good amount about stuff like Jonestown, Scientology and extreme Christian offshoots and the like. But to me there's a difference between being impressed with Wildbow's portrayal of the Fallen as a cult, understanding Rain's character and not judging him harshly for his choices and struggles, and actually caring about Rain. Rain has very blatantly been depicted as separate from the team in not-so-subtle ways, even in his own internal dialogue. This is obviously done as another well-executed portrayal of cult mentality and as the reader we recognize it as such - he feels simultaneously like the team can't help him, and that he shouldn't pull them into his poo poo, both of which are understandable and the latter theoretically laudable. But it again works back to not making me care about him because as a reader, I become invested in these characters through the ways they interact with and bond within the team in general and with Victoria specifically. And Rain (as well as Chris but mostly due to lack of time in the spotlight) doesn't get that like the others do. The exception is a few scenes with Tristan, but Tristan is another character the reader and Victoria both are set up to be wary of at this point, who doesn't have the same kinda likeable rapport as Sveta/Vicky or Ashley/Kenzie or Mad Anxiety/Hollow Point. One issue for me is, I don't have any grasp on who Rain will be once this conflict is over. Clashing with the Fallen is the first real conflict of the story, between the cult, the cluster and whatever March wants him to do Rain is basically not going to come out of this the same person he came in. This is a huge part of his story at this point - he has nowhere to go as 'Rain, the reluctant cult-member' any more, he's at a crossroads and he can't take any of the paths so he has to push through the wilderness instead. But I have no idea who he might be when divorced from his position in the Fallen and his conflict with his cluster.
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Mar 14, 2018 09:22
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This isn't a particularly complex critique, but one of the core problems I have with Rain's storyline is that at least to me, it doesn't feel like it merits the amount of time and weight the narrative gives it. His interludes are all very well-written, but unless I'm missing an awful lot, I don't think we needed four of them. The main takeaways of these sections for me are 1) oh look, stuff is really raw at the fallen compound, 2) Man those dream sequences sure are rough, 3) Mama Mathers is really scary, I'd hate to be on a team that has to fight her, 4) yep, Rain's an angsty piece of crap. This could've been accomplished in one tightly-paced interlude, and I suspect the only reason that we got four was because WB likes writing these sections. (I remember him mentioning that Victoria wasn't a lock as the viewpoint character until he thought up the scene with her sleeping in her office; is it possible Rain was the original viewpoint person?) Anywhoo, as far as I can tell, that's it for the Fallen stuff. Cults are bad, Rain's not an evil guy but he's kind of an angsty jerk, and lots of violence sure is brewing. I'm sure the climax of this will be epic and decently well-written, but it feels like we could've gotten to here from go in half the time. I might be trying to apply novel pacing and editing to the serial format, but I don't think writing a story in serial excuses you from needing to focus on pacing. At this point it feels like we know nearly nothing about the vast majority of the protagonists, and I can't help but wish that we'd taken even half of the time spent with Rain and the apocalypse rednecks to learn literally anything about the half of the team we still know zip about.
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Mar 14, 2018 11:01
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I actually think the point of Rain's interludes is to give us insight on each of his clustermates. Since it takes days rotating to get that insight, it's better to space it out. The big takeaway I got from this interlude, aside from the thing that happened at the end, is that the fifth member of Rain's cluster is absolutely a Stranger, probably with some Trump power as well if you see it as their power being the one that enables the strength transfer in the dream world. The whole thing with the narrative establishing Rain was dreaming and immediately forgets the dream upon 'waking up' in the 'room' combined with Aisha showing up in this interlude and it being explicitly stated that Aisha's power interferes with memory retention seems to be important. Whoever the fifth member is, they're going to be important, perhaps even moreso than Rain. The reason I have a hard time connecting to/caring about Rain is because at this point in the story he's entirely a reactive character. This isn't a bad thing! He's in an extremely stressful situation where there are no good options available to him and his gradual breaking away from the cult combined with his cluster being out to kill him makes it not very surprising that every situation is treated as life and death by him. But it means I don't have a good grasp on what he'd be like when not stressed and exhausted and sick with guilt. I feel like there's an unspoken assumption that Rain is a 'good person' because he's breaking with the cult doctrine and has accepted Tristan and Sveta and Kenzie... but that's not really true. At best Rain is morally neutral in his actions, which is a step up for him but still leaves him quite a bit of a wildcard. Like, right now Tristan and Byron are his best friends and Kenzie and Sveta are part of Rain's extremely small emotional support system. I don't really think he'd have rethought his positions on racism and homophobia and case 53s being monsters if he didn't need Tristan and Sveta and Kenzie, and that's because Rain doesn't really have the emotional room for thinking about stuff he doesn't need to think about. He's deradicalizing but it's still largely driven by stress and fear. If that external pressure were to be removed, I don't know who he'd be, and I don't think he does either. EDIT: Like it's not bad writing because all of this is absolutely explained by the situation the character is in. But it's hard to emotionally get invested in a character when you don't feel like you have a grasp on who they are, even superficially. Probably people who have dealt with situations similar to Rain's (although hopefully less severe, dear god!) have more emotional investment in him, but I can't relate to him that way at all so it just leaves me shrugging but curious. PetraCore fucked around with this message at 05:28 on Mar 15, 2018 |
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Mar 15, 2018 05:26
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Yeah, I know a lot of people genuinely identify with him and enjoy this plotline, so I suspect my criticisms are super-subjective and relative to me personally, but I have a few big issues with Rain. One is that like you said, we genuinely don't have a good grasp on what kind of person he is, and what his motivations are beyond day to day survival; he's honestly reminding me more of Blake in that sense, since everything we see of him is a dark, angsty jerk who's putting off thinking about anything until he deals with an escalating series of immediate, potentially mortal threats. Another big issue I have with him is that I genuinely don't think he actually has changed. There's the shift in his beliefs, which I still don't fully understand, but assuming the cluster helped him to magically redistribute his hate and ignorance (because I have trouble believing that even a well-intentioned guy could go from growing up in white supremacist cult to being friends with minorities, people with non-heteronormative sexualities, and squids within the space of a few months), his role in team therapy has nothing to do with wanting to be a better person, it has to do with not being killed horribly by an angry mob of cluster buddies who at this point I'm completely rooting for. He turned on a dime from being go team therapy to "Welp, guess I'll walk mama mathers into the team headquarters and show her our entire plan and the upcoming threat," and I don't have that much of a problem with his actions (since the alternative was probably getting his head exploded by an angry thinker), but it bugs me that mentally he had no problems whatsoever doing this; there wasn't guilt, or indecision, it was just "Here is a problem, selling out a group of people who are going absurdly far out on a limb for me solves it". Likewise, the ease with which he jumps from team therapy to plotting with March makes me think that the only difference between the Rain we see in ward and the one who killed tons of people in the mall is that the latter has figured out that he doesn't have a viable career with the fallen. Anywhoo, subsequent elements of the story could totally prove me wrong, but thus far it feels like we're spending tons of time with a legitimately unpleasant person while the narrative revels in how dark, depressing, and disturbing it is, without actually building towards a payoff beyond "The fallen die" or "Rain dies," neither of which I believe we're actually going to get. Critique aside, I'm still kind of weirded out by Erin's section; unless I've badly misread her, jumping from "I'd leave tomorrow if I could get my family out" to "Welp, time to alienate the nice redneck boy and throw my lot in with the Fallen" feels like such a jarring jump. I genuinely don't think she's mastered, but her behavior makes no sense; now that the fallen threw her at Rain and he explicitly betrayed them, her best-case scenario is getting married to the horrifying middle-aged pervert with the horse head, and if the leadership somehow decides that Rain's BS is her fault, things could get way more awful pretty quickly. (Also, do you guys find it a little weird that they actually gave her to Rain? He has such little stock with the community that I would've expect them to go "Oh cool, you got us great intelligence on an upcoming threat. Now have fun staying at the bottom of the ladder while we abuse our power and go hand the hot girl off to someone awful with great powers.") On the fifth member side, one theory I heard was that the fifth member has a trump power, and sleeps during the day, inhabiting the dream in their absence. When she wakes up, the rest of them fall asleep, and the guy they hired got jacked up because he tried to hack the dream mechanism while she was still there, and she wasted him. I don't think there's much evidence to support any of this, but it's a neat idea.
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Mar 15, 2018 06:41
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Omi no Kami posted:Critique aside, I'm still kind of weirded out by Erin's section; unless I've badly misread her, jumping from "I'd leave tomorrow if I could get my family out" to "Welp, time to alienate the nice redneck boy and throw my lot in with the Fallen" feels like such a jarring jump. I genuinely don't think she's mastered, but her behavior makes no sense; now that the fallen threw her at Rain and he explicitly betrayed them, her best-case scenario is getting married to the horrifying middle-aged pervert with the horse head, and if the leadership somehow decides that Rain's BS is her fault, things could get way more awful pretty quickly. (Also, do you guys find it a little weird that they actually gave her to Rain? He has such little stock with the community that I would've expect them to go "Oh cool, you got us great intelligence on an upcoming threat. Now have fun staying at the bottom of the ladder while we abuse our power and go hand the hot girl off to someone awful with great powers.") Erin definitely has some Stockholm Syndrome-adjacent stuff going on, during their conversation she's actively trying to convince herself that it's going to be okay. When people are trapped in an untenable situation, the mind is capable of some pretty impressive contortions - something cults take full advantage of. If she were thinking purely rationally she would have run away with Rain rather then go through with it (or rather than stay behind after being rejected), but knowing that leaving would get her family killed has convinced her that staying with the cult is the only option. As for why they're giving Erin to Rain, Mama Mathers might be a monstrous psychopath but she ain't no dummy; Rain might be weak now but they're going to have to kill Snag, LL and Cradle anyway so they might as well keep Rain on their side for now and see what kind of power boost he gets out of it. Best case scenario, he becomes an emotion-manipulating, murderclaw-tinkering super-mover with cut-you-in-half beams, a pretty terrifying combo. If he still sucks, they get a few kids out of him and show everyone that ingenuity and loyalty are rewarded even if you've got poo poo powers. Absolute worst case - what happened in chapter - they haven't actually lost anything, Erin is now 100% convinced that there isn't any hope and is much more likely to marry whoever they want. In fiction, so many bad-guy organizations will mistreat potential defectors right at a critical moment (so the author has a clear-cut excuse to make them switch sides), I'm happy that Wildbow avoided that and writes villains who are at least moderately competent and capable of recognizing when someone is very obviously about to jump ship.
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Mar 15, 2018 08:00
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Random rear end in a top hat posted:As for why they're giving Erin to Rain, Mama Mathers might be a monstrous psychopath but she ain't no dummy; Rain might be weak now but they're going to have to kill Snag, LL and Cradle anyway so they might as well keep Rain on their side for now and see what kind of power boost he gets out of it. Best case scenario, he becomes an emotion-manipulating, murderclaw-tinkering super-mover with cut-you-in-half beams, a pretty terrifying combo. If he still sucks, they get a few kids out of him and show everyone that ingenuity and loyalty are rewarded even if you've got poo poo powers. Absolute worst case - what happened in chapter - they haven't actually lost anything, Erin is now 100% convinced that there isn't any hope and is much more likely to marry whoever they want. In fiction, so many bad-guy organizations will mistreat potential defectors right at a critical moment (so the author has a clear-cut excuse to make them switch sides), I'm happy that Wildbow avoided that and writes villains who are at least moderately competent and capable of recognizing when someone is very obviously about to jump ship. Hmm, I guess I can see that, but it still seems weird to me that they'd actually reward him; he is so transparently out of step with their culture that I would've guessed that they would've just used him for what they could and discarded him. It's not like he holds any chips between their thinkers and his general meh-ness.
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Mar 15, 2018 08:28
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Fairly sure Erin was magicked into falling for Rain. We’ve got Valefor there still right? He hasn’t done much good but not going for her at that point really was decent of him.
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Mar 15, 2018 08:29
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Omi no Kami posted:Hmm, I guess I can see that, but it still seems weird to me that they'd actually reward him; he is so transparently out of step with their culture that I would've guessed that they would've just used him for what they could and discarded him. It's not like he holds any chips between their thinkers and his general meh-ness. It's less of a reward, more giving the guy enough rope to hang himself.
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Mar 15, 2018 08:58
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There is a reason why in actual real life there are stories like this: https://www.npr.org/2017/08/20/544861933/how-one-man-convinced-200-ku-klux-klan-members-to-give-up-their-robes Or when you look at hardcore anti-gay republicans who have a kid that turns out gay and then suddenly they're not this scary out-group but have been humanized, and you see views shifted. It isn't too strange that interacting with the very diverse therapy group caused this in Rain. He seems to be genuine friends with Tristin, at the very least. Erin's actions, as Random rear end in a top hat explained, are very in-line with the way people act. She is given an option that is *much* better than what she was expecting. Pair up with her nice friend who is trying to not be like the rest of the Fallen instead of someone like Seir, and being able to live on the edges of the Fallen. Living on the fringes makes it easier to be willfully blind to the bad things going on. Convincing herself that this is the best option isn't a stretch, and it makes sense that she gets mad at Rain because he's (in her view) turning that much better scenario into that much worse one. Rain has definitely changed from who he was before his trigger. Before his trigger he was finding his way to fit into the Fallen, doing what we see Erin doing herself here, or a non-powered version of what Valefour did to himself. Rain as we see him now isn't trying to fit into the Fallen, we see him actively avoiding things like the bonfire activities, and he is trying to find a way out. He is.. not doing a good job of it, but he isn't in a position to realize that while we are (we're more like Sveta, but she isn't understanding what is keeping him from just leaving). Omi/Petra have picked up on something that I think is going to be very important to the story, that we don't know (Rain doesn't even know, because all he has known is the Fallen) who Rain is going to end up being. What he ends up doing in this upcoming .. pseudo-war is defining how he is using his second chance. He's the first character in this story who we're seeing in this situation, and I think that is pretty important for the story. Maybe my thought process of seeing this concrete example of how someone, who is a victim of circumstances, uses his second chance and how that'll impact the story is enough for me to be invested in the whole deal. How the team reacts to what he chooses to do also has really big implications for characters you guys (and myself) like a lot more. If Rain seeks out and kills his cluster and mama mathers, is the group going to accept him back? Are they going to try to stay a hero group, or are they going to be a grey-area type situation, or split up? Even just knowing that when he got to this point he went to March instead of them could have a big impact on the group (and we have the ur-surveillance tinker as well as Tattletale's propensity for finding/using info so one way or another the group is gonna find out).
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Mar 15, 2018 15:46
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I also think it's interesting that Rain claims the dream paints him in a worse light than is accurate, but I'm not sure if that's true. Even disregarding the personality bleed from cluster triggers, Rain has shifted a lot in positive ways. It's true that his segment doesn't really answer the question of 'was he laughing out of genuine enjoyment or out of panic/sickness/excitement', but in the way the others in his cluster hate him, that bit is pretty irrelevant. They don't hate him because everything is being painted in the worst light, they see him in the worst light because they hate him. Rain sees it as unfair to himself because he's got a lot more internal context than they do for how he ended up that way in the first place, but I don't think the dream itself is unfair because that applies to all of them. They ALL have additional context for their own identities and decisions that their dream segment doesn't properly convey. I mean, with the Fallen part of that is the threat of mental rewriting if you don't play the part well enough, but that's not the bit that makes what Rain did understandable but not excusable. Finally seeing Rain's segment also answers a big question about what exactly Rain did in specific that makes him more of a target to them then the Fallen in general, and that of course is holding the door closed past the point Sleip claims he wanted. But the thing is, Rain was waiting for a signal and didn't get one. I'm not defending what he did, but it feels like Sleip set him up to make the situation worse than planned because he's got it out for Rain for some reason, and then he intended Rain to die in the stampede but Rain triggered instead. I can see why that doesn't sooth Cradle, Love Lost, or Snag any. After all, Rain could have made the choice to open the door far earlier despite the personal consequences to himself. It would have almost definitely gotten himself killed, but it would have been the right thing to do. But he didn't, and now Rain's an easier target for that hate and bitterness than the nebulous upper levels that planned the attack or Sleip, because Rain is in their heads and they have to keep seeing his boneheaded brainwashed decision to kill people over and over and over. Like kiss/kill is a definitely thing that happens with clusters but a ton of the dynamic in this is just regular old human emotional reactions to super bad stuff. EDIT: Also can we discuss like original characters and stuff here? PetraCore fucked around with this message at 18:09 on Mar 15, 2018 |
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Mar 15, 2018 18:06
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I think you're pretty much spot on, and it is easy enough to hate someone for what Rain did. But then every single night the rest of them get to watch it happen again from a different angle, and I'm sure when it was first happening he was still trying to be a Fallen member, and their view of him cemented at that point. They don't believe or care if he says he is changing, because every 5 days they see him as that stupid shithead doing those same things. Btw the guy's name is Seir, it is from the Ars Goetia, part of the Lesser Key of Solomon. A bunch of the Fallen stuff is pulled from it. wildbow on mama mather's power: If you see her, she can visually appear before you. The more you look at her, the easier it is for her to appear. If you hear her, she can speak to you. The more you hear her, the easier it is to appear. If you touch her, she can give you the sensation of touch. The more you touch her, the easier it is to appear. When she appears, she seems to be able to sense things around her image. Sometimes it's not her, but other things, like a sound of beating wings, spiders, or blood. At the most basic, she appears if you refer to her by name, in word or writing. As you get more exposure to her, it happens if you think about her, if you refer to her in abstract, or if you even think about her in general, like not wanting to think about her. If you use a thinker power? Effect is stronger, and affect things other than sight/hearing/touch. I think its a hosed up wildbow version of hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil.
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Mar 15, 2018 20:05
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Does that explain if she can actually do something? Like can she hear you or just trick you she can hear you? Or can she hurt you or just make you feel something on your skin?
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Mar 15, 2018 21:11
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Affi posted:Does that explain if she can actually do something? Like can she hear you or just trick you she can hear you? Or can she hurt you or just make you feel something on your skin? when rain got back to the camp they were already preparing, so seems like she can actually sense those things
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Mar 15, 2018 21:21
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ward 5d spoilers We clearly get in-text confirmation that she has learned of the coming attack, because there is no other reason to gather all 3 branches of the Fallen together. She has some level of info gathering from her apparition though we don't know the precise amount and Wildbow was a bit vague. The fact that the therapy group took as long as they did to find out that the Fallen were the target (and the group has super surveillance tinker) makes me confident that Mama Mathers found out about it, and the scale of it, from showing up around Rain. I don't think can physically hurt you, but the fact that she is able to drive people into the insane asylum should tell you about the level of hurt she can put on your brain. Does it really matter if you're lit on fire or if you constantly feel like you've been lit on fire?
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Mar 15, 2018 21:24
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Ward: So I'm glad that team therapy finally clarified exactly what their plan is, but to quote a great thinker, loving why? They know that two groups of villains, both considerably larger and much better-funded than they are, intend on tearing into each other. Why not just keep Rain on the move and let those two obliterate each other without getting involved at all? I know both compounds have civilians in them, but it seems like they're taking on an incredible amount of risk and exposure in order to accomplish a really tiny amount of good.
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Mar 17, 2018 17:51
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ward So uh, the most basic point is that they're a group of heroes, and it pretty much runs counter to that whole idea to go "oh that's dangerous, we're going to let them murderize each other and gently caress any innocents that get caught in the crossfire". Like it might make tactical sense, but it makes no sense for them to do that. Outside of that, we have 3 outcomes for the fights. 1. Cedar Point villains win. They get a huge amount of rep, both in powered and non-powered community. Wiping out the Fallen probably gives them a seat at the table for high end villain activities, or they get folded into a high end villain org. They get a big rep with normal people, because they're the group that was willing to go deal with the Fallen. Maybe to the point that the populace doesn't want the heroes around at all, they'd rather have to put up with minor extortion in exchange for a group actually willing to take on poo poo like that. So you end up with Cedar Point as a major villain stronghold of sorts, and that poo poo is probably going to just get worse over time. 2. Fallen win. They're going to power-nap some reasonably strong capes, and they're going to go probably murder Cedar Point. They're itching for a fight, and when they win they're going to go collect their spoils of war, not just stay in the boonies. There are already established reasons why an out-and-out brawl is very risky, so the response the big cape groups can afford without hurting Gimel in the big picture is very limited. How hosed are they if Chev+Valk have to spend 3-5 years in an insane asylum waiting for mama mathers' effects to wear off enough to function again? How risky would it be for Valk to get mama mathers' powers? 3. Sort of draw. Mix of the two situations, the Fallen are going to retaliate and they don't hold back, the villains are going to escalate/fight back if they can, and you're going to have some sort of widespread super-terrorist poo poo going down. It isn't going to be completely contained in Cedar Point, and even if it was all the people there are fuuuuuucked. What of those options (or if there's another I'm not seeing, or if you think I'm drastically wrong about one of those) is a good outcome? Which of these would a group of heroes be willing to say "eh, I'm alright with this happening, I'll sit it out"? Their best outcome is Fallen wiped out but the villains too hosed to turn that into anything, but as we know there are a shitton of extra Fallen around so the outcome is probably in the Fallen's favor currently. They want to be on the scene to save civilians if possible, and to keep the situation from being a Fallen victory, maybe collar the remaining villains if possible.
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Mar 17, 2018 19:36
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Omi no Kami posted:Ward: So I'm glad that team therapy finally clarified exactly what their plan is, but to quote a great thinker, loving why? They know that two groups of villains, both considerably larger and much better-funded than they are, intend on tearing into each other. Why not just keep Rain on the move and let those two obliterate each other without getting involved at all? I know both compounds have civilians in them, but it seems like they're taking on an incredible amount of risk and exposure in order to accomplish a really tiny amount of good. if the villains attack fails and they capture and valefor a pile of villains (like tattletale or someone similarly dangerous) thats extremely bad. also this is the first large scale break in the truce i think, which the heroes want to not happen.
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Mar 17, 2018 19:54
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Hmm yeah, I'm probably thinking of this in much too Taylor-esque a fashion, but even with advance guard and Ward's team, it just seems like a really dangerous approach. To be fair, I don't think anyone is aware of what a big disaster in the making this is becoming since nobody knows that the Fallen are calling in tons and tons of reinforcements, but just in terms of pure numbers Hollow Point supposedly has 60-some villains plus whatever elements of the Undersiders organization take the field (and I'm hoping they don't; for some reason it feels like they all have huge targets painted on their backs), assuming they were right about that group having a 3:1 advantage over the mathers family that means they started with around 20 fallen capes, so that's at least 80 guys that Vicky knows about. The entire fallen contingent are murder-happy jerkfaces who won't be pulling any punches, and at least a sizeable chunk of the hollow point group feel roughly the same way. On the heroes' side we have advanced guard, and I'm assuming that 12-person element we saw in hollow point represented the bulk of their attack force, we have however many people Ward runs in the junior Wardens, then team therapy itself has five capes (Rain is there, too). I'm assuming most of AG/junior Wardens are inexperienced compared to the villains' group, and Vicky's team sure is. So, while I completely agree that wanting to prevent badness from spilling out of this is great, I just can't see how going toe-to-toe with these groups is, especially given how limited their intel and planning is. I think it'll be fun to read, for sure, but it just seems like a really bad idea to me.
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Mar 17, 2018 20:42
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ward / rebuttles The plan is definitely NOT to go "toe-to-toe" with anyone. Maybe re-read the chapter? We also aren't saying it is a good idea, we're saying it is something that, especially as heroes, they have to do. What happens when good people do nothing?
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Mar 17, 2018 22:09
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