I was about half way through the chapter when I thought "Weaver reminds me a lot of Armsmaster", and not ten minutes later I was reading about Weaver contemplating exactly the same thing. Perfection, Wildbow. Perfection.

 

To be fair, it's a far less douchey Armsmaster. I honestly enjoyed the second half far better than the first of this chapter though; wildbow gets office politics so well.

 

Well I doubt Armsmaster was always a prick, especially at Taylor's age.

 

Nope; He's a Prick 7 now, but when he started out, he was rated Prick 4.

 

Good chapter.

Since everything is going so well, I assume everyone Taylor loves is about to die again.

 

Lol, your profile; is that Bonesaw?

Gotta admit I like the fact that Taylor is becoming more and more of a magnificent bastard.

 

Taylor is most certainly getting her 'For the Greater Good' on. Whether or not this is a bad thing remains to be.

 

I'm just waiting for it to bite her in the ass in that she ends up not knowing the best option for once. One thing that the story has done well to establish is that Taylor's Thinker rating is well earned; she's got incredible multitasking and lateral thinking abilities, but it leads to her always thinking that she knows best. I don't want to say it's a lack of empathy, but almost an inherent disrespect for authority. Call it a combination of a lack of trust in anyone above her in the power structure (which has been acquired for good reason) and an inability to get over her own dislikes to put herself in others shoes. She's got great empathy when she tries, but often does not make the effort.

 

Interesting wikipedia fact: Khonsu means "traveller".

 

Calling it now, this is Cody's fault.

 

Funny thing is, they picked that name before they knew he could teleport.

 

I'm starting to feel a little detached from the story, with the timescale changing so radically. Earlier I said it felt like a sequel, but maybe it's an epilogue instead. I hope the jumps slow down again after Scarab, I feel like we're missing out on too much with all this skipping.

Also: Did we miss Leviathan's regularly scheduled appearance? They were hoping the Simurgh would show instead of #4, but that would imply that Leviathan already hit.

 

No I think they were hoping it was Simurgh because the floating dust as well as the lack of his usual indicators made it quite obvious that this attack wouldn't be Leviathan. I'm guessing they were just hoping that it was more changes to the endbringer cycle which was already altered with the death of Behemoth.

 

Damn, how do you not just lose all hope after that? At least they now know that someone is making the Endbringers and they can start concentrating on that.

 

Did I miss something?

 

Nah, am just speculating that the appearance of another endbringer that makes up for all the weaknesses that allowed Behemoth to be defeated kind of shows that there is something making them.

 

Could be creation, could just be picking the right Passenger for the job. That's the entire Endbringer strategy after all; if one strategy fails, find a new one that makes the old strategy useless. Either way we don't know for certain if the Endbringers are created or not.

 

Tt conjectured in Chevalier's interlude that the Endbringers' physical appearance and size (even the appearance that we were harming them) were deliberately designed for psychological effect, because otherwise there is no point to their outer layers. She said "behemoth was fashioned. unnatural life"

 

Point, I'd forgotten about that. That raises the question of who is creating the Endbringers then. The current favourite theory is Cauldron and the Doctor Mother (her part in the plan Alexandria came up with), apparently, though I've yet to find a decent reason for why they'd do it.

 

We've seen Weaver control the swarm when in a time bubble thing, and sort of control the swarm when asleep/unconscious.

I think she's going to die. It'll be during a time she's 'spread out', and she might not even notice the fact she's been stabbed, or shot, and is bleeding out.

That will be the end of an arc, and the interlude chapters will feature the bugs around her site of death going batshit insane.

Until she pulls herself together, like Dr Manhatten, except made of bugs, not blue.

And then she'd really earn her level 2 in near-everything status - she'd have no real body, and be able to move her consciousness at the speed of thought. She's already shown she can see, hear, and touch through the bugs. It wouldn't be much of a stretch to add smell/taste.