loreweaver-universe: every window within a forty-mile radius of my current position has functionally ceased to exist as a window and can now be more accurately described as “potential shivs”, “the cronch”, “anti-foot countermeasures”, and/or “boy howdy do I hope they never find me” Looks like we found one of the men who bought Shatterbird’s power.
It is just me or you kind of underestimate Panacea/
Possibly.
I do think Panacea could undo Bonesaw’s work if it was all Bonesaw. The thing that made me think she couldn’t fix Grue was Mannequin’s parts. The casings, the technology, the pieces that aren’t covered by Panacea’s total control over biology.
Admittedly, those parts might’ve been fairly easily removable.
Prions are a real thing. They are proteins that are folded wrong in a way that causes brain damage in mammals (For instance Mad Cow Disease is caused by them) depending on which protein exactly it is that are folded wrong.
Prions are anormal proteins that caude diseases, like the mad cow disease
Ahh, I see. Makes sense that something like that would be used to disable the gemma.
Brian became SUPER-SAIYAN. How do you feel about this development? Do you think he’ll remain the good boy we know or do you think he’ll change?
Hmm.
He’s certainly going to need some recovery time, and I don’t think he’s coming out of a second trigger event like this, as well as everything he’s been through at Bonesaw’s hands, unshaped by the experience. But who knows how much he’ll have been shaped by this, or whether the obtaining of additional powers in itself could cause some kind of personality shift.
He’s already proven himself willing to kill, brutally, though I’m inclined to think he already was when it came to the Slaughterhouse Nine.
I don’t really know, honestly. Next chapter is going going to be interesting.
…
As for how I feel about his powerup, I think it’s a neat concept that needs to be handled with care in order to avoid power creep. If characters start having third and fourth trigger events, a line has been crossed into territory that makes your Dragon Ball reference quite appropriate. However, I trust Wildbow to handle it well, so I’m not too worried.
I do feel like a little more foreshadowing might’ve been good here. We knew double trigger events might be a thing, but it has only barely come up before, in a way that would be easy to forget long before it became relevant. As a result, the possibility of a double trigger is not quite a deus ex machina, but it’s really close and can easily feel like one.
But hey, the line between a deus ex machina and a good twist that works to the protagonists’ advantage can be thin sometimes.
Overall, I quite like this development, but feel like there are certain ways it could’ve been improved.
Cant clarify much, and dont know if the screener would rather redact this, since its not brought up again in the story, but Brian lied about what his trigger event was to sound more manly. But his first trigger does have to do with him wanting to protect Aisha but not being able to. Thus the second one being above and beyond the scale of the same situation. It fits, its beautiful, sad and fuck me do I not wish other characters to go through a second trigger event
Huh. His trigger story did seem a little odd in comparison to later ones, and it’s pretty much the only one we know that didn’t fit my theory that the power is designed to help out in the trigger event (this in spite of me theorizing something similar to that all the way back when his and Taylor’s were the only two I knew – I think I just liked the idea, honestly). Darkness is a power that would suggest a need to hide or blind, which has nothing to do with what Brian told us.
There’s one more detail (besides “Aisha is in trouble and I can’t help”) that needs to stay true for his actual trigger event: Aisha didn’t know he got the power at first, or at least, Brian didn’t know that Aisha knew. That suggests he didn’t end up using it immediately in a way that she would see (which lines up with his claim that he noticed his power later)
But yeah, I would imagine he was telling the truth about a lot of the stuff that had no bearing on his manliness. Very likely most of it was true except that he confronted his mother’s boyfriend with fisticuffs. Successfully, in any case.
Your third session for 13.9 is mistagged. 😛
Hehe. 😛
Context for archival readers since I’ve deleted the relevant posts: I originally ended the second session right before the final line of the chapter (I was aware there wasn’t much left, but I had to go). Later the same day I came back and finished up the chapter, tagging the two additional posts as session 2 even though I’d ended that session, then deleted the end-of-session post.
Now that Krix has invoked the term “whale,” can you tell him that everyone calls them “space whales?”
Hah, nice!
This was pretty good, though I could see it being controversial for giving Brian a bunch of new powers that were super convenient for the situation, almost out of the blue.
It is convenient, but in a way that matches my theories for how trigger events work. There were quite a lot of the powers – which is a little more iffy and might cause misguided accusations of Brian being a Mary Sue – but that was pointed out by Taylor and will likely be addressed further, so I’m not too worried about that.
Bonesaw was somewhat less on the funny side this time than I was hoping she might be (I was prepared for the fact that this might be the case since it was a very serious situation), but she still had her moments. Such a precious little monster.
She also didn’t get anywhere near as far into fucking up the Undertravelers’ bodies as I was expecting. That’s a good thing for the Undertravelers, of course, though I was actually kind of hoping for more on that front too, mainly for the character development as they deal with the consequences? However, the exposition on how powers and brains interface, the Dandelion scene and especially Brian’s powerup make up for it.
In other status quo news, Burnscar is dead (and less importantly, Hack Job, though that might be something I’d missed from a couple chapters back). That means there’s a second open spot in the Nine, signalling that the nomination game plot is likely getting moved away from in favor of taking out the Nine gradually.
That’s probably a good thing to do. If they just took out Jack, I do think the Nine would fall apart (though Siberian and Bonesaw would probably stick together), but I’m not sure the six or seven remaining Nine running around Brockton Bay individually is that much better.
Next chapter: The wind-down, I think. First they need to get out of here and fetch Regent and Bitch (Regent can let Genesis know she should dissolve via Shatterbird), though. We’ll likely learn more about Brian’s state, either from him or from Tattletale, and maybe hear Imp’s story from the horse’s mouth.
See you then!
Even compared to being in Bonesaw’s clutches, I felt more helpless as ever.
This is a good ending line, but I’m quite distracted by the use of “as” instead of “than”.
Darkness boiled out of his skin, a thin layer. It moved slower than it had before, thicker, more like tendrils sliding against one another than smoke. Just like the arm he had across his chest, gripping his elbow for stability, it was a kind of barrier, armor or a wall erected against the world. He walked slowly.
Hey, don’t make yourself a cocoon, you already went through one metamorphosis today. If not a literal one.
Nobody complained, despite the proximity of our enemies and the fact that the darkness he’d spread out had to have alerted Hookwolf’s contingent about our existence.
What, and the giant swarms of bugs heading towards this place wouldn’t?
Were there just not that many bugs here?
I watched Brian as I walked behind him. I’d just been paralyzed, about to receive involuntary brain surgery. Now, in a much different way and for different reasons than before, I was again unable to offer him a hand. I couldn’t even talk to him without being afraid I’d say the wrong thing.
Probably best to let him be for a bit.
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