Which is exactly why the author is dragging out all of this Wards drama. You pick an OP powerset and you have to create "human drama" and the PRT or Danny in any way constraining the protagonist is good enough for most people.

The worst part is, the longer this is dragged out the more powerful Taylor gets thereby exacerbating the situation.

We might end up with this Wards drama interspersed with some gang fighting and then leap to larger threats from there.

 

The problem I think is that author's either do a Timeline A/Timeline B thing, or portray it from Coil's perspective. Coil could be a fun antagonist if you never see anything from his PoV and you write the Timeline transitions into the story (depending on whose PoV you're writing from of course). This is something that Firebird did well a few chapters/segments/whatever ago when Coil tried to kidnap Taylor in the library. That sequence is a good example on how to do it right.

All her problems would be 100% solved if she got her head removed from her ass.

 

I do think he's a shitty antagonist in general.

All the things notes said about Amy also apply to Coil (and Saint).

But he also has a really shitty power. Not shitty mechanics-wise, just shitty on a narrative level. Combined with his nature it's all very bad.

He's too big to ignore but makes himself too small to actually notice and deal with if you diverge from canon.

That's the real problem. Most writers have wisely stuck to Wildbow's structure and only really show the timeline split in his interludes, preventing needless confusion and pointless drama, so it's not a structural problem with how the conflict is framed. Combine that with the interminable abduction attempts that only serve to show how badass Taylor is and you have a shitty protagonist.

If there's anything good about this powerset is that this Taylor has a credible reason for sniffing him out.

 

I think that has less to do with Coil and more to do with author's not knowing how to write him well, and/or they aren't willing to let Dinah get kidnapped because reasons.

Personally, I'd enjoy reading a story where Coil executes his plan, and wins, before Taylor triggers. It could allow his power to not come across as contrived as it does in most other fics, and it could present Taylor with new and interesting challenges.

It could also not be another canon rehash or OP-Taylor fic.

 

So with the advent of a new Cenotaph sequel I've been wondering. In the fic Taylor is mistaken for a changer who turns into bugs (mostly by her own devising), but I've been wondering if this is actually possible with the 'rules' Wildbow used for creating powers.

We know that powers are accessed through a gland in the brain, so my instinct is to say that this at least must remain whole, otherwise there's no connection. I can't remember if there are any characters mentioned as having a power similar to that either, though it's been a long while since I read Worm.

Anyone able to confirm this one way or the other for me?

 

The obvious counterexample is Fog who could turn into a cloud of acidic mist. Taylor turning into a swarm of bugs seems in line with the powers of the setting.

 

And doesn't Cauldron have that living wind in it's base?

 

There's also Acidbath who can melt into a puddle of acid.

 

I'm not really concerned with the distinction anymore. If no one knows how to write him well then he's a shitty antagonist. CYOAs aren't inherently bad either.

Perhaps another way to put it is that characters like Coil and Amy ask more of a writer than other characters, because of inherent parts of their characterization and powers, causing them to suck.

That seems even more difficult to do, because the majority of his forces are probably off in Boston or wherever so he looks even more innocuous.

EDIT: Do you mean to just remove him from the story? Or to pull what A Cloudy Path is doing? Because I guess that can work.

 

Someone like Amy can be handled well if you're okay with major divergences from canon. If Taylor gets Panacea's powers, for example, canon is out the window. She starts off as Nilbog-lite, probably ends up Master-ing villains that try to gang up on her, and either the PRT comes down hard on her due to her potential or she joins something like the Guild.

Continuous escalation--> she can modify people's connections to shards so she's a good trump, along with everything else.

So its a story-breaking power only if you want to write a slow-paced story. If you want to write a good story that doesn't take 500,000 words to get to the point, its fine.

As terrible as Amelia was in some respects-- all of its characterization, basically-- it handled the escalation reasonably in the beginning, and ran it to its logical conclusion.

Firebird, while entertaining, and moderately exciting, has gotten completely bogged down in a Wards "Will I or Won't I?" drama that feels pretty contrived. An alternate path, like the one you suggested, would have been a nice smooth escalation upwards, culminating in an Endbringer battle she takes part in and is a key player in. Then we can branch to parts of canon we didn't see much of-- maybe the Guild recruits her and puts her on a S-class threat clearing mission. Or maybe Cauldron steers her into the path of the Ash Beast as a trial run to gauge her abilities.


There's dozens of ways to make those kinds of powers work-- you just need to be willing to let canon fly out the window. There's no reason to stay in Brockton Bay.

 

I have no idea what Cloudy Path is doing, so (maybe) no.

IIRC, his plan was to control both the heros and villains, so he does that. He gets instated as PRT Director and his team of minions (Travelers/Undersiders) hold Brockton Bay's criminal element.

Enter Taylor, who wants to take down the criminals but doesn't 100% trust the PRT because Sophia (who was outed as part of Coil's plan to take control) and probably a more sensible reason. So she teams up with what's left of New Wave instead. Taylor and New Wave fight it out with the criminals, and Tattletale lets enough hints "slip" regarding Coil that they are able to paint a rough picture of what happened. Coil kills Tattletale for this, which only serves to cement this theory in Taylor and New Wave's mind even if they can't 100% prove it yet. They then spend the rest of the story trying to get Coil out of power. The story would end with Coil being ousted right before an Endbringer attack - I'm thinking Simurgh - which wouldn't actually be shown in the story proper, but the results would be shown in an epilogue chapter.

I don't have a reason why they wouldn't just tell someone what the hell's going on - such as Alexandria...who might be a bad example because wasn't Cauldron sort of backing Coil in canon? - who could and would oust Coil. But other than that hiccup, I think it could work.

 

I don't think Cauldron was backing Coil, quite the opposite. He was an experiment to see if a feudal system could emerge where a parahuman could set up a stable infrastructure and form a government. If Taylor and New Wave were able to reliably tie him to those kind of crimes to the point where Alexandria would intervene (if she wasn't Cauldron) then I think she'd just consider his efforts a failure.

Though she did try to push Skitter back into the warlord mentality when she surrendered, so I dunno.

 

This is something that comes up a lot but I'm not really sure what exactly people mean or what they're basing it on.


Either way, I'm not sure it matters. Coil is supposed to be an independent experiment in one city. His success or failure can be left to him because he's not important. The PRT is essentially the backbone of the defense of humanity. She sees no reason to not interfere then when Taylor is pulling her shit.

Also: I'm pretty sure she says that she and Cauldron were on the outs or out of communication.

 

There is no evidence for this. I mean, it's a theory, but the simpler one is that Alexandria had a PR thing to deal with and wanted Taylor submissive and willing to get the book thrown at her; even simpler, Alexandria's a dick and resented a teenager telling her the score.

 

Cauldron wanted Taylor to remain leader so that the Undersiders could take part in their Parahuman State experiment. Alexandria was aware of this, and I see no reason why she would go against Cauldron's wishes.

 

I'll admit I can't say much on Alexandria's motivations in that section, I'm basically rehashing what I've seen elsewhere so if there's no evidence then fair enough. The point is, though, that Alexandria isn't likely to intervene to help prop up Coil - the whole purpose of the experiment is to see if such a situation is sustainable on its own. Cauldron wouldn't go after him so long as he toed their line, but if he couldn't make it work without their help then he isn't much use post Scion (when they probably wouldn't be around to hold things together).

 

It's not much of an experiment when you interfere.

 

It won't be perfect, but mostly independent Parahuman State is still better than no Parahuman State, I suppose. And they were interfering before that as well -- Tagg was appointed as Director specifically because they knew he wouldn't compromise: Alexandria admitted as much, though not in so many words.

On the other hand, why would Alexandria (and Cauldron, by proxy) make it her personal mission to put Taylor in the Birdcage as soon as she surrendered? Tagg would never have compromised with or without Alexandria, so it doesn't make much sense any other way.

Canon is inconclusive however, the most the text tells us is that Alexandria wanted Taylor to attack her. Exactly why is unclear.

 

So A Cloudy Path updated and I'm starting to get tired of it. For those of you who haven't read it, it's a Worm/Supreme Commander crossover with Taylor having the tinker specialty of one of the factions the Aeon. Supreme Commander's whole thing is von Neumann machine armies and Taylor at the end of the story will be pumping out massive ships in seconds. There are a lot of overpowered Taylor stories, most of them honestly, but A Cloudy Path distinguished itself by having her slowly build, not jumping from no one to omnipotence in three chapters. The slow pace was an asset in the beginning but now the author has taken it too far, the most recent chapter was eight thousand words on Taylor's self image after superheroing for a month post Leviathan.

It makes me sad because up through the Leviathan fight the story was pretty great, one of the best in the fandom, but since then the pace has been so slow as to make it nearly unreadable. It might be more manageable when/if its completed and the reader can just power through but now waiting a month for a chapter on makeup kind of wrecks it.

 

I don't think the pace has really slown down; it's just that an absurdly slow pace is much more tolerable when the story is getting 5k+ word chapters every day than when it's getting a chapter every week or two.