Yea, I do wonder what kind of thinker classification she should have. It was briefly mentioned (very early on) by someone in the Protectorate that she might be a Thinker 1 or 2 but now they think that the sense she gains as a result of the bugs is borderline clairvoyance within her range.

I'd be able to make a guess is we had a firmer grasp on thinkers. We only know of Tattletale being Thinker 7 (according to what info the Protectorate has/had at some point) and that they themselves only had a Thinker 7 and two Thinker 8s that they could call on at short notice, for the Echidna situation. But then, since their protocol means they need at least 3 Thinker 8s decisions in order to escalate to the highest threat level... they must have more.

 

I think she's basically using the insects as a giant botnet, distributing her thinking under stressful circumstances. She's not being super smart or insightful generally when there's not a lot of pressure on and she doesn't have her swarm all riled up. Then during a fight we have crazy ideas and lateral thinking popping up. I'm not sure exactly how intentional it is but the bugnet makes sense to me, at least it explains how she went from having no clue how to deal with people pre-powers to being extremely clever in handling them now that the swarm is always on call

 

Was she necessarily bad at dealing with people beforehand? I thought it was more a case of her not being so confident due to being ostracised by the people she had to spend time near.

 

Oh, well, maybe not a social butterfly but that doesn't mean she wasn't okay at dealing with people. An extended period of being bullied like that could only have degraded her ability to interact, so we have a bit of an unbalanced view of how she dealt with people. We only saw, in an Interlude, her behavior from some point after her Mum died, after she was supposedly mostly recovered.

 

I dunno. The author's mentioned second trigger events an awful lot for it not to happen. I don't know what'd be worse than getting your head cut open by Bonesaw, or being trapped in Echidna, so I'm not sure what kind of trauma Skitter would have to go through to trigger a second event.

 

Spoiler

She already had her second trigger event; remember when she could hear through her bugs the guy listening to an ipod outside the hospital room? The question is if she'll have a third trigger event that lets her constantly function at her high stress super bugmaster mode

 

One thing really telling was when Noel/Echidna talked about how Grue, Eidolon, and Skitter "smell" different from other capes.

Grue's had a second trigger, Eidolon can feel a second trigger out of his reach. Definitely foreshadowing for Skitter.

 

I think that was a perception shift caused by drugs, or borderline unconsciousness, or her other senses shutting down. I don't actually remember where that happened in the story to go and check. Was it before S9, when Skitter ends up in Coil's doctor's surgery covered in bugs?

Rather than it being a second trigger event, I think that was Skitter interpreting the sensations from her bugs better. A learned skill.

 

The 'hearing' through bugs does indeed seem like a learned skill. That's the way it's been set up for us, at least.

One small gripe with this story. Does anyone else feel that the pace - in-universe - is remarkably quick? It's only been something like a couple months since the start of the story and so much horrific stuff has hit Brockton Bay. the author's lampshaded it, I think, and given a few explanations for why things keep happening but... it still seems like a hell of a lot.

Oh yea. I remember thinking that at the time, may have remembered it for a few 'chapters', and then it slipped my mind entirely!

 

Yes, it does. The pace has been non-stop. The first proper break I noticed was at the end of Arc 19, after Echidna. A few things were resolved, and both Taylor and the reader got a breather. Taylor's had a few week-or-longer breaks from the action during the course of the story, but Wildbow jumps over them, and so for us it has seemed relentless.

 

Spoiler

Stupid question, but in Director Piggot's interlude (16), she talks to Coil (I'm still surprised he succeeded her as director despite the fact he spent time in prison for killing the captain of his team) after the failed operation against Nilbog and he says:

"I thought I might trigger, perhaps. Hoped. I suppose I don't have the potential."

Does that mean he bought his powers from Cauldron? I can't remember if it was ever implied or not, and there's no mention of his trigger event or lack thereof in his own interlude.

 

Spoiler

It's heavily implied he did, I believe.

Expensive, years to pay off, still owed a favor.

Week's service?

 

Regarding second triggers:

Spoiler

Of Grue/Eidolon/Skitter, we know Grue triggered twice. Eidolon is ridiculously powerful and versatile, so it's reasonable to believe he's already triggered twice and refuses to believe it. Skitter's sheer dexterity with her bugs and possible crowdsourced thinking using them suggests she may also have double triggered. Skitter is the biggest reach of the three, but Eidolon isn't a reach at all so it makes Skitter more plausible.

Regarding swarmsourcing her brain:

Spoiler

One situation where Skitter was making due with relatively few bugs was against Levithan, and while she was very brave during the fight she didn't actually come up with any gamebreaking ideas. She was able to track him, but that was largely an accident engineered by her just trying to sting his insides. Considering that most other fights Skitter has been in had her coming up with some great angle, this absence of such could be some supporting evidence.

 

Spoiler

Eidolin got his powers from Cauldron though. He couldn't have had a second trigger.

Also, should we maybe split this thread? Having pages of spoilered conversations is a bit annoying. Perhaps a new thread should be made for those who are up to date?

 

I'm not sure why we're still using spoiler tags for anything other than the most recent updates. Anyone who hasn't read the story yet should know it's worth reading within the first 10 posts alone. I don't think we usually keep tagging spoilers for this long.

 

We should just drop the spoiler tags. We're already past 100 posts. The only people reading this far are going to be those who've read the fic or don't care about spoilers. There are plenty of good, non-spoilery reviews at the beginning of the thread for new readers.

edit: ninja'd.

 

You mean the inevitable breakout from the breakout-proof prison? I've been waiting for it.

I'd love to know what Panacea's message was, and why it made the Simurgh change course. I'm predicting the Simurgh will attack Brockton Bay, simply because everyone is so sure that the Endbringers never strike the same place twice in a row. Either that, or she hits the Birdcage. Probably Brockton though.

 

My current running assumption is that Theo is going to be the cause of the Apocalypse mostly because you can trace the chain of events back to the Traveler's initial entrance to Earth Beta and his timelimit to kill Jack synchs up too perfectly with the end of the world; throw in the fact that Jack surviving Brockton Bay means the end of the world and that's my guess. I don't know if he'll be the next arc though, we'll probably first be dealing with the fallout from the Protectorate falling apart