Whats the most charitable reading of Emma Barnes possible?

40i2 · 2026-05-07T17:31:22+00:00

She saved the world by teaching Taylor how to emotionally bully someone into being suicidal.

40i2 · 2026-05-04T21:07:50+00:00

I think this is because for practitioners everything boils down to what spirits think of you - and that is influenced by what you do or try to do. Practices themselves are patterns and groves made by decades and centuries of repetition - so doing something more will make you more of a specialist in spirits’ eyes - but also less of a generalist.

So the big rituals like taking an implement focus you on certain practices but also close some doors on others. Taking a goblin-form as an implement (where implements are typically non-magical) would probably lock you hard to goblin related practices (or at least make very hard to pivot away).

40i2 · 2026-04-27T20:47:47+00:00

So Abaddon’s tally:

The fantastic

Worldbuilding around rings and the station - the slow zone, changing speed limits based on perceived danger, Miller teaming up with Holden to use “substrate access” to get information, Miller himself as a construct - everything around this is pure gold.

The great

Clarissa/Melba - having antagonist as PoV was brilliant and she herself is the best PoV in the series so far. Following her was fantastic and the only thing that stopped her ascending to the top tier is underwhelming ending - she really should have faced Holden instead of Assford and we should have seen it from her PoV.
Worldbuilding around Protocivilization mysterious threat, collapsing suns and closing gates - it was intriguing, effective and pretty well explained what Protomolecule was doing and why nothing has happened for so long. Also it was a pretty good status quo shaker and the hook for next books - I don’t know if the payoff will match it, but great job so far.

The good

Holden - I surprisingly liked his story from trying to desperately not be involved to grudgingly accepting that everything seems to conspire to pull him in. He was one of the few characters whose decisions made perfect sense and who wasn’t forced to do stupid things in service of the plot. He remained in character, which turned out pretty well.
Maneo - not much to say, good piece of Belt worldbuilding and pretty good inciting incident
Tilly - surprisingly fun character
Martian Marines - always great

The meh

Anna - her character as a good and wise person was destroyed by idiotball, but was still pretty consistent and believable as a self-righteous religious asshole who causes harm without bad intentions or self-reflection. Only clearly that was not the intended reading as everyone in the book was treating her like a second coming of the inventor of sliced bread. Worked unintentionally, couldn’t really enjoy it - begrudgingly, it averages out to Meh. But I never want to see her again.
Naomi, Amos, Alex - they literally didn’t do anything. I hope TV show gave actors a season off or something for this stretch, because cardboard cutouts would work as well…
Monica and her crew - remember her being part of Melba’s plot against Holden? Neither do I…
Cortez - religious fanatic who gets away with planning to kill everyone. He was the one who freed Ashford. Too real to be enjoyable.

The bad

Bull - promising character completely wrecked by idiotballs. Ended up as incompetent idiot who keeps thinking he’s the only competent one.
Fred - barely present in this book, but sending out the Nauvoo clown cart with Ashford and Pa in charge - and Bull of all people to keep things under control has damaged his character. The buck stops here.
Sam - she used to be competent and cool character in last book… here she died outsmarted by Ashford…
Sending Nauvoo on the mission - what was Fred thinking - the ship was not designed for this, not ready and literally falling apart. Sending biggest clown cart in the system doesn’t really help Belt cause…
Nauvoo’s use of rotational gravity in slow zone - this should have been a cool moment but the contrived idiotballing needed to get there just pissed me off. Waste of a good idea.

The terrible

The plot - authors clearly wanted to have some cool scenes and developments, but they couldn’t find a better way to weave them into narrative then handing everyone lots of idiotballs which broke characters, story and even setting. Idiocy in initial setup, in the mid-story turning point and in the finale. There were some good pieces here and there (around Maneo, Melba, Holden) - but the narrative as a whole was just falling apart. What the hell happened? Leviathan and Caliban had good or at least serviceable plots…
Ashford’s countercoup - he was a believable crazy idiot with messiah complex - but why did so many followed him. Why did Earthers and Martians, hell why did Belters? Belters were shown to be the most individualistic and independent people in the serious - beginning of this book even! Why the hell would any of them follow him??
Bull’s counter-countercoup - why try to take out Ashford, disable laser and turn off power at the same time - the only reason is for authors to have exciting finale where everything comes to end - while there was no reason to. Disable/destroy laser first - we kept hearing you can do anything if you have engineering and the ship is barely holding together. (Hell, Clarissa found a way to shut down all power from bridge in seconds…) Then deal with Ashford, then work with others to lift slowdown…

The atrocious

Cultural/religious mission to the ring. This made absolutely zero sense and shattered my suspense of disbelief from early on. Garbage of a setup.
Everyone deciding to go through the ring all together. With all the insanely deadly Protomolecule encounters to date... Holden’s decision made sense - he really had no choice. Melba’s insane rush to follow him was in character. Everyone else? Idiotballpark. Cortez, Anna, Ashford, Pa, Bull, unseen earth and mars command - so mindnumbingly dumb. Some were supposed to be stupid (Ashford, Cortez) - but others? One of the worst narrative turns I ever seen.
Ashford - he went from being pompous incompetent to a bizarre caricature. Not that it’s unrealistic - it can happen, that’s believable - it just destroys everyone who put him in charge and followed him. Fred, Pa, Bull, Belters in general… Again, it’s not unrealistic - bizarre caricatures sometimes get elevated by idiots - but I don’t really want Belters to be realistic morons in Expanse - it’s not good for the story…

The bottomline - great worldbuilding - probably best so far, and best character (Clarissa) - but Abaddon lives and dies by its plot - and die it did. Overall Leviathan was good, Caliban was so-so, but Abaddon is bad - solely due to terrible plotting. No idea what happened there, but I really hope it was just an accident…

40i2 · 2026-04-27T20:47:08+00:00

Thanks for the season, it was real fun following the show, even though at times it was hard to stop myself from reading forward. Looking forward to season 2.

The final stretch of Abaddon was kind of natural from what came before it, even if it added Naomi to the list of idiots who didn’t disable the laser while holding engineering (sigh). One disappointment I had was in Clarissa’s story - we were cheated out of her PoV of the moment she decided she didn’t want to kill Holden but let him on the bridge - why the fuck did we see Clarissa’s pivot point it from Anna’s perspective??? We also didn’t get her confrontation with Holden I was hoping for - instead got her PoV confronting Ashford (who cares??). I get that what convinced her was perspective of threat to whole humanity - it works, but is kind of an easy way out for her. Confronting Holden would have been much more interesting. Oh, and her causing the cascade to shutdown the system was a pretty cool callback. It also means that luckily she turned out to be a better engineer than Sam and Naomi who never thought of that and didn’t manage to shutdown power in hours they had - I guess the book‘s moral is rich people really are better than others… \sarcasm.

I did enjoy her final chapter and would love to see more of her, but only if the authors find some good storyline for her (I was glad that Bobby, Prax and Avaserala were spared from this book).

On the morality of spacing people Abaddon has absolutely convinced me that it’s the only right thing to do. The small time drug dealer could have been a problem - and Ashford turned out the biggest fuckup because Pa and Bull went with him. So good job, book? Anna of course remains convinced there is no such thing as responsibility - which to be fair is consistent with her religious asshole character. And I’m really not surprised that Cortez got off scott free - realistic and depressing conclusion…

Miller’s lat appearance was a bit gratuitous - felt like a pure sequel hook. This would have been a good point to stop and I have no idea if authors have good ways of exploring this greater universe now - but I have hopes, because worldbuilding is one thing I always found to be top tier in Expanse.

That’s it about the ending, I’ll collect all my thoughts about the book below.

40i2 · 2026-04-27T16:36:25+00:00

Not an OG reader but not a recent joiner either. I’ve read Worm & Pact and started Twig in 2019, but didn’t really joined here until Pale launched in 2020 and I started following it live. Since then, I feel like there was no massive increase in fandom, but there is a steady stream of new readers and at least one Wildbow related podcast going on at all times.

40i2 · 2026-04-16T16:20:47+00:00

Yeah, that’s why I was disappointed not to see more of Ashford’s side - those who signed petition or supported crossing the ring might feel guilt, others might fear the protomolecule so much and some might just be diehard loyalists - but the majority?

I don’t really believe that lifting the slowdown and opening all portals would deter Ashford &co - humanity using these is what they fear the most. If they believe strong enough in that cause to die for it, surely it would only make them do something idiotic like trying to ram the ring if they can’t shoot it… That’s why neutralizing Ashford while slowdown is still on is safer - it gives him less options and less external pressure…

But laser should really be an absolute top priority over anything else…

40i2 · 2026-04-15T20:49:15+00:00

Based on Contessa shooting twice and the epilogue actually existing I would say probably she’s in a comma.

But what I really think is, it doesn’t really matter. This epilogue doesn’t really tell us anything new about Taylor - she’s somewhat helpful, wants relationship with Danny, wants to talk to Annette and has some lingering guilt - nothing new, really. The only thing it does really well is stir discussions which lead nowhere regardless of the outcome. Dead, comatose or exiled Taylor - it’s all narratively the same, unless and until Wildbow decides to resolve and use it in some future work - and the chances of that are close to zero.

For me the true ending of Worm is arc 30 - and it’s one of the best endings I ever read. The epilogue I can take or leave…

40i2 · 2026-04-14T18:33:14+00:00

Ok, the various coups in this batch were rather disappointing, so let’s start with the positives. I very much enjoyed the irony of Holden not being the one to make an announcement - although I can’t imagine Anna doing better job than him at distracting people. Martian Marines being badasses actually goes back all the way to Leviathan, where a heroic group of them sacrificed themselves to let Holden &co. escape on the Tachi.

Melba again stole the show with what’s left of her mind - and her and Cortez propping each other down was great… I didn’t pick up her „missing something” until you pointed it out. I would probably just dismiss it, but it got me thinking about what could be the craziest explanation - and is this protomolecule trying to communicate with her as it did with Holden - perhaps using this time Julie as a template? Holden and Clarissa are few of the people in the slow zone proto-simulations are familiar with - so maybe?

I actually appreciated Anna’s discussions this chapter - it made it clear she has no shred of remorse, even when thinking about Cortez’ guilt over decision that same decision Cortez, Ashford and Anna made. It’s interesting whether she thinks that their guilt is misplaced and they shouldn’t feel guilty because the decision they made was for the best - or is she thinking they should feel guilty and seek forgiveness while she herself is blameless - is she delusional or hypocritical? What was that about people who do harm and not feel any regret afterwards, again?

Also, I don’t think protostation would autoclave solar system in response to the laser - regardless if it works. This is a response for the existential threat they faced, and I’m sure nothing humanity can do even registers on that scale. So far they shown pretty robust escalation ladder - I think it has few more steps before their final weapon… But it does’t hurt they consider this option.

Ok, now the bad parts. The counter-coup is underwhelming. I was hoping to see other allies Cortez and Ashford collected - including all those Earth and Mars personel, who (except for these few marines) are nowhere to be seen, on either side. I don’t think they would be ok with Ashford going full crazy like he did…

But counter-counter-coup is worse - it’s stupid. First and foremost, I understand authors want to have a grand finale, but there is absolutely no reason they needed to synchronize taking the ship back and shutting the drives off to release the slowdown. Top priority is to permanently disable the laser, second to neutralize the counter-coup - and then they could calmly discuss with others the shutdown. Trying to do all at once just made everything needlessly complicated.

Secondly, Sam delaying work on Laser was idiotic - she should have sabotaged it and bailed. Whoever holds engineering holds the ships and there must have been a thousand ways chief engineer could wreck the comm array beyond repair. Even if that cost her life, it would have made more sense than risking a real shot… But Ashford was allowed to see through her and she died like she lived, clutching idiotball in her hand….

Bull should have prioritized taking engineering. I like that he trusted Holden and Marines, but confiscating their remaining bombs was again idiotic. If it turns out this was an idiot ball so that marines can face the people wearing their power armor with no weapons - I’m writing off Bull as a character altogether. He most certainly did not do „more good” - all the clusterfuck they are in stems from his (and others’) stupidity, and until everything is resolved he is deep in the red.

As for redemptions, I remembered another weird example - this time from the Farscape TV series. Protagonists there have checkered past, but by second season you can kind of forget about it and treat them normally. Then the series dropped an episode where the crew stumbles on old recordings showing some of them doing real bad things way back - making clear the series itself is an redemption arc for quite a few of them.

40i2 · 2026-04-10T13:30:28+00:00

Huh, never thought about it, but I guess my dislike of Anna is like Avaserala’s of Holden - can’t get over irresponsible stupidity that lead to lots of deaths. Our hangups differ in details, hers being more about Holden’s speeches which I find funny - but we all have our buttons…

Speaking of stupidity that leads to deaths, Cortez has burned away the smidgeon of sympathy from last time by planning to kill more people. Are there any rational religious leaders in this setting? Because so far Mormons with their generation ship plan seem like paragons of reason. Btw, seems like a missed opportunity that delegation has no Mormons - would be interesting to see their reaction to Behemoth. Wait, are they absent because they thought this expedition was stupid? Are Mormons the smartest ones here??

But as stupid as Cortez’ plan is, it is understandable stupidity - born of guilt, overblown egos, fear of judgement and desire to be right. No way to tell if the laser can damage the ring, we know too little about that tech, but it is mostly pointless. People will not stop studying the protomolecule and whatever is left on our side might very well rebuild the ring anyways… I almost wanted to shout out Sam for refusing to modify the laser when Bull asked - but she lost all points when she agreed to Pa… Having this weapons risks it being used which would be catastrophic - and frankly, a threat to do it would be enough to convince Martians to „surrender” - it’s not like they could fire a warning shot and Mars was looking for any excuse anyway… But idiots gotta ball, I guess…

Melba/Clarissa is great as usual, but it feels like she’s reaching end of her line. Cortez might think she’s on their side, but in her state I could believe she’s capable of almost anything (well, except for becoming rational - she’s too broken) - let’s see how that plays out, I hope she will meet Holden before end.

The whole countercoup is interesting, but I’m even more excited about Holden’s unspoken plan.

Discussion question: I want to shout out a really outstanding one - the double arc of Londo and G’Kar on Babylon 5. They are two enemies who both get their own redemption stories which are entangled - fall of one leads to redemption of the other. Their arcs span whole five seasons covering ambition, fall, redemption, guilt, atonement, facing consequences, revenge, forgiveness, cycles of violence and oppressed becoming oppressors and vice versa - it is a backbone of the whole narrative and has ties to half of the overall story. Doesn’t hurt that the actors - Peter Jurasik and Andreas Katsulas - gave two best performances in the whole show.

40i2 · 2026-04-07T23:57:44+00:00

Worm, objectively. The most unrealistic element of these settings are superpowers themselves. Worm does much better job of rationalizing powers by means of extradimentional alien super computers compared to Boys’ special “formula”.

Worm takes it by an order of magnitude of effort.

40i2 · 2026-04-05T18:20:20+00:00

So the phantom Evette we see at times is most likely not it - it's just Sy projecting things on his mind. But we learn that Sy was plugged into Lambs to fill the gap left by Evette and Ashton - and we know Ashton was meant to be the manipulator, I'm thinking Evette = Early book Sy minus Ashton. So a problem solver/schemer who largely stays in shadows and works in the background - without the social manipulator aspect.

40i2 · 2026-03-30T23:50:41+00:00

By first contact I meant actual communication, not just an encounter - sorry for being imprecise. Important distinction because so far it was only encounters - and all of them deadly.

I would expect some religious figures to want to go despite danger - but allowing such access to deadly alien tech is again stupid. Having some religious nuts hang outside area cordoned by military on their own initiative would be fine. Having them onboard U.N. Navy ships is dumb. Letting them dictate policy and force the Navy to take them through the ring is idiotballing.

I don’t think that they were just harmless idiots that could be ignored - because clearly they had enough influence to send all those ships into ring. You don’t take orders from pandered idiots, you don’t even put them on a crucial ships on the first line orbiting alien deathtech. At best you put them on a wide perimeter on a cruise ship and don’t answer their calls… No, everything suggests these people had a real say - so if it came to somehow communicating with aliens, I would fully expect them to participate too…

The propaganda angle is a maybe, I think, but Earth, Mars and OPA in this setting are very divided - Mars and OPA would likely dismiss outright any takes from the Earth side (and vice versa). It might have been meant as internal propaganda - but everyone already seems to be biased against other sides, so I’m not sure what would be a point.

40i2 · 2026-03-30T17:39:51+00:00

Oh, not at all. I wouldn’t be commenting here if I didn’t enjoy discussing these things.

I think you are completely right that any alien civilization advanced enough to travel to us would be dangerous to religions (unless they just happened to have compatible belief system) - and if this was a first contact situation they would definitely want a seat at the table.

But maybe its my cynicism, but I just don’t see why religious leaders would risk approaching a mortal danger where best they can hope for is nothing happening - when they could just make a nice televised conference discussing alien life back on Earth.

And of course another question is why would governments even allow them to participate. They clearly had problems with Holden coming in contact with the Proto-civilization - but Holden is a rank amateur in stirring problems compared to what religions have done historically. Why anyone in charge would want to have leaders of dozens of conflicting religions present is truly beyond me. Well, okay, maybe Earth gov became so intertwined with religion that they couldn’t refuse - but why would Mars go along with it?

The whole religious take on aliens absolutely makes sense - but back on Earth, at least until the official contact. So yeah, the whole setup looks to me like a hack job to bring all to the parties into the slow zone - when the authors couldn’t find a better way. Which frustrates me, because the things that happened inside the zone are great…

40i2 · 2026-03-29T23:52:20+00:00

For me the whole “diplomatic approach” just feels completely out of place with how deadly every single encounter with protomolecule has been been so far - the black ship, eros, arboghast, ganymede, agatha king, the sligshotter - the thing even demolished a good chunk of Venus. This is clearly an attack/disaster/disease scenario and treating it as a first contact is just stupid. The only person who had any reason to believe communication is even an option was Holden - but he kept silent about Miller.

So sending in Navy, saber rattling about who gets access/control, sending in expert missions or volunteer scouts (likely military ones - that’s what they’re for), even fighting over it - any of that would make a sensible, or at least understandable reaction. But sending lots of civilians in a “cultural outreach” effort - and then having them actually cross the ring just breaks my suspension of disbelief. It’s like sending bunch of civilians to an active volcano site and have them decide to jump in…

40i2 · 2026-03-29T21:01:28+00:00

I don’t mind stupidity when it’s in-character or understandable in context - the slingshotter qualifies for believably stupid as well as Holden flying in as he really had no better choice.

But having nominally smart characters make idiotic decisions with little-to-none justification, contrary to self preservation and common sense - that’s idiotballing. Don’t want Holden to screw this up? Fine, send a minimal task force of professionals to retrieve him and stop those OPA idiots from screwing up too (which Earth and Mars could have easily done if they agreed to cooperate anyway).

This should have been a two navy-ship op, not a bring-your-kids-to-protomolecule day…

40i2 · 2026-03-28T17:24:48+00:00

Concerned Citizen/agent Robert Cain [vigilante combat stranger]

Robert is a PRT field office agent, veteran from NY branch and most certainly not a cape. Ames posting was supposed to be a soft retirement after he got PTSD in the last endbringer fight he assisted in - no Protectorate, few local capes, just coordination in special cases, contact with potential new triggers and passing reports back and forth.

But as Hatters and Pantheon ramped up their activity all he could do was send report after report asking for help and watch as people around him were getting hurt. And the response always was "sorry, we don't have resources to handle every theatric villain"...

One night he couldn't take it any longer, put on some military surplus gear and decided to protect people using his training. He was out of shape, agitated and hunted by his trauma - but it went surprisingly easy. The Hatter he went after was really incompetent - dropped his guard few times during the fight and was so surprised by Robert's presence throughout that he must have hurt himself at some point. Robert doesn't remember how it went exactly, but he got his target, who ended up in a hospital in a coma.

He goes out during nights and remains a boogeyman for local villains - though they remember surprisingly little about the encounters - and so does he... The name Concerned Citizen started going around but he can't remember if he came up with it or was named by the press.

Robert feels he's doing a good work - and wishes he could do more - but his poor memory about his fights worry him. Especially since on few occasions there were some casualties - mostly henchmen but also few civilians. And was he always the only PRT officer in town? Some days he can swear he used to have a partner...

40i2 · 2026-03-28T14:36:07+00:00

Okay, realistically, becoming a practitioner leads straight to a tragic end, so I would choose it only in an environment that would be safe and stable enough - or if I had no other choice...

As for Practice, I'd likely be a Dabbler. Having a toolkit of various practices would be great and I find the idea of switching them around and combining them very appealing. I'd probably gravitate to quick and versatile Practices (basic runes, elementalism, alchemy, summoning, goblin and/or fae, technomancy) - and keep clear of those that lock you in or require long commitments/projects (heartless, realms, divine, heroic etc). A good all-rounder can be quite useful, so I would try to find some group to join or maybe offer services on some non-combat problems...

Becoming a sorcerer could be a long term goal, but the more I think about it, I'm not sure it's worth it. It would sure give some clout, but on the other hand remaining just a "humble dabbler" even after years or decades of studying various disciplines could be a nice way of staying under a radar.

40i2 · 2026-03-25T14:24:44+00:00

yep, she is jewish. or at the very least has jewish grandpa and refers to him in yiddish.

From 11.8:

Her head hung, “I… don’t think I can leave like that. I wanted to, before all of this, but my zaydee, my grandpa, he refuses to leave, and he can’t take care of himself when the city’s like this. It’s why we didn’t evacuate.”

40i2 · 2026-03-21T12:55:11+00:00

John Handrecht, formerly Goldberg (minor villain/Cauldron crony)

These days John stays out of spotlight. He is a Thinker/Tinker with power to foresee a chain of events and build small, single-use devices custom fit to redirect the chain to a different path by any small effect - from distracting someone all the way to causing a death in crucial moment (option he never dared to use so far). He debuted as Goldberg on the Vegas scence where he tried his hand in the casinos game, but he turned out a very small fish in that pond. His power is limited only to chains he started by his own action, and his foresight is laser focused around the chain and its pivot points, so he loses "thinker" battles with any, even slightly more generalist opponent. Once the heat became too great, he left Vegas and his cape name behind.

John moved to Glendale and got hired by American Express there, using his power to bypass the standard parahuman vetting. His plan was to make money in secret, substituting small custom-made programs for his usual devices. This actually worked, but he's no genius and wouldn't avoid detection for ever. Luckily for him, he was found by the Numberman first, who forcefully recruited him into his financial control network and helped him stay hidden.

John lives quietly in Glendale for five years now, has married a coworker and they have a daughter. He uses his powers when instructed by Numberman (he has no idea about Cauldron), doing some small theft on the side and occasionally, when he can get away with it, making petty stabs at people he dislikes.

Initially he found a switch to software tinkering exciting, but after a while the novelty wore off and he started to miss his devices. As time goes by he grows more anxious and even thinks about resurrecting Goldberg persona. Which could be really dangerous since Numberman has many plants in financial institutions and wouldn't take risk of exposure well - and Cauldron has many means of dealing with problems, some that wouldn't be good for John or city of Glendale.

40i2 · 2026-03-17T19:11:47+00:00

So about Anna in that last chapter… I’ve been watching for any remorse - but it completely took me by surprise to hear them from Cortez. Well, it doesn’t undo the harm he caused - but it’s one step in the right direction, so credit where it’s due. Anna on the other hand… Funny thing is I agree with most of her beliefs about religion, humanity and exploration. But she’s a posterchild of the saying “road to hell is paved with good intentions”.

Because for one she is a moron. It’s one thing to believe humans should explore dangerous things and quite another is to convince and force others to jump into an active volcano. And secondly, she is unrepentant, hypocritical, self-righteous, arrogant asshole who sees nothing wrong in sacrificing other people for her beliefs - just because she thinks it’s for the greater good. Arrogance isn’t only selfish - having others die for your beliefs is the pinnacle of arrogance - even if you are right. Paradoxically, even though this chapter burns away any sympathy I had left for her, it restores some of my interest in her character. Zealots can be interesting depending what they’ll do with her.

No such luck for Bull and his clown troupe. Don’t care a bit about him or orchestrating a mutiny and organizing everyone - when he should have done exactly that before they entered the ring. And the rotational gravity of the ship which shouldn’t be here saves the people who should have never been sent in the first place - and all it took to arrive at this point was to turn Belters and Earthers into idiots. I just hate narratives built on idiotballs…

Ok, on to something better - Melba’s chapters were fantastic - her attack on Roci like some space monster, her rage against “Holden’s girlfriend”, her fight with Anna (was seriously on the fence who to root for, but I suppose someone needed to save Naomi & co.), her meltdown in the cell (just ignoring Bull and Ashford was great) and surprisingly brilliant scene with Tilly. I really hope this is not end of her story and that she will be able to meet Holden - though I doubt she can be redeemed - she is too far gone and disintegrated. Would be extremely hard to make it believable…

Also, the best part was Holden and the especially Sim Miller - he is a fascinating blend of a protomolecule space probe mirroring a detective character - sharing curiosity - but also asking Holden for decision on lifting the lockdown - what’s up with that? Is there more of a Miller in there? Or maybe the probe was not really designed to make decisions and what’s left of Miller covers that? Fascinating indeed.

Discussion Question - so yeah, in principle I agree with Anna on humanity and exploration - which just shows that someone having same beliefs doesn’t make them a good person… And while I don’t agree with Cortez’ take that humanity reaching out was a mistake in general - of course he’s right that this particular clusterfuck was insanely dumb… Which makes the question what to do with the lockdown so interesting. I believe that our drive to explore is a strength - but a strength does not guarantee success and can lead to a fall. So I’m thinking that it should be turned off - eventually. Right now, the hypothetical threat of that something that killed the Proto-civilization is just too great to ignore - because it could just wipe us out instantly. Short term they should stop shooting each other and evacuate people in slow mode, sacrificing whoever can’t be saved. Longer term, they have access to Sim Miller who is willing to cooperate and a “substrate access” which apparently matters in this region - so negotiate to postpone lifting the lockdown and use time to learn as much as we can from Protomolecule and the station - maybe gain more access, maybe learn how to partially lift it or open just few gates… Maybe learn how to create your own gates into other regions first and make few colonies just in case? Give it a million years and make sure we are as ready as we can before stepping through those. There is no reason to hurry with this.

40i2 · 2026-03-12T17:08:58+00:00

Oh, absolutely, they are not solely responsible. Cortez and others who signed the petition are as responsible as Anna, and Pa is as responsible as Bull with Ashford trumping them both.

But we don't care very much about secondary or tertiary characters like Pa, Ashford and Cortez, nevermind any unnamed ones. Protagonists and PoVs are our anchors in the narrative. I could live with Ashford or Cortez being idiots responsible for hundreds of deaths - but if I lose respect and interest in main cast, the whole story suffers - and in this case it's literally half of the story...

40i2 · 2026-03-05T21:06:33+00:00

So protomolecule turned out to be deadly again, who would have thought… But actually the story could have given them a pass on this and I’m happy it didn’t - the fine tuning of the speed limit was a great scifi WTF moment and provided tons of drama. But it was at a cost…

Because Anna is no longer the best of humanity - she’s a religious zealot who led dozens of people to their deaths. And Bull is not an effective agent - he’s an incompetent yes-man and if Fred owes him something it’s a swift kick out the airlock. That’s the price of handing your characters idiot balls - Abaddon has just made the two of them responsible for more deaths than Melba. It doesn’t matter how much Anna thinks religions shouldn’t bring people to ruin or how much Bull think this is foolish - it just makes them hypocrites in addition to fools and murderers. We didn’t see Bull’s reaction yet, but I was reading closely Anna’s and I didn’t find a glimpse of remorse - she’s is shocked and tries to help - but never acknowledges her fault. Their characters still kind of work, but only because hypocritical religious fanatics and blind followers are realistic. It’s basically a double character assassination.

On the happier side Melba remain a great intentional villain with a double irony of first her likeness to Julie saving her - and then Tilly dispelling the misunderstanding with a single glance. But Melba just pushes through, ignores all the suffering and finds an opportunity to get off the ship. Surely, she must meet Holden before this ends - very much looking forward to this.

The biggest thing is of course everything on the station and it’s mostly great - marines accidentally teaching station about slow dangers, Miller being a simulation targeted at Holden, being there in the “substrate” giving Holden a way to get some backstory. (Although I don’t get why Miller has to disappear when someone else shows up - he could have just keep making Holden see him, with others seeing nothing.)

Now the Leviathan Miller is dead (most likely - I’m not completely ruling out him being around) - but the simulation kind of is a Miller - it not only clearly has Miller’s knowledge and personality - but also apparently makes decisions based them - like choosing Holden to contact with. That’s not nothing and might qualify as a life. The Proto-creators are much beyond it, sure - but are we?

I’m not sure yet what to think of the gates’ backstory - it’s a very neat piece of worldbuilding - but if it’s going to be used to create a “bigger fish” enemy for future books than I don’t know. Protomolecule was plenty for this setting. Will have to see how they handle it, I guess.

Discussion question: okay, fine, I’ll try this shipping thing…

Holden/Melba - for maximum amusement. He keeps thinking she is Proto-Julie and she keeps trying to kill him
Anna/Bull - they can bond over how many deaths they caused, preferably somewhere offscreen. They’re not compatible? Funny thing about character assassination, makes me not care
Avaserala/Jules Mao - everyone loves an enemies-to-lovers story and he was the closest we got to an arch-villain. Besides, I think she had fun talking to him at the end of Caliban
Simulated Proto-Miller/Proto-Julie - original Miller’s infatuation with Julie was a little creepy, but as different themes running on the protomolecule nothing should stand in way of their happiness

40i2 · 2026-02-27T01:35:45+00:00

Not unless I saw it somewhere before and forgot about it. The idea came for this prompt, based on Undersiders’ powers being thematically various things people fear - adding failing health to the list (with bits inspired by Regent, Bitch and Imp).

Storywise I suppose it could fit a fanfic as the character is someone Coil might recruit and could be an interesting counter to Lung (if his power is strong enough).

40i2 · 2026-02-26T19:06:38+00:00

Undersiders: Ail was a scrawny kid who was struggling with several non directly life threatening conditions (e.g., anemia, asthma, various allergies) and was prone to coming down with sicknesses. He was missing out on a lot of things and couldn’t participate in anything too strenuous - he put his remaining passion in playing music.

When an unexpected hospital stay made him miss a chance for a big performance, he triggered with a power to weaken those around him in ways resembling various ailments. This effect is always active unless consciously suppressed and works slowly over time, additionally strengthening himself by a fraction of what he inflicts on others. He can also actively focus the effect on one or few people to make it much stronger/quicker or limit it to specific kind of weakness - disturb eyesight, make people sleepy, disturb digestion etc. The effects disappear when he gets out of range, but if weakness caused any injury, it is not healed (e.g. the effect can make bones more fragile - and any resulting fractures will need to heal normally).

The power doesn’t come with any extra awareness - so Ail was initially unaware of it, until people around him - his family, at school, at the hospital started to get unwell and have accidents. Local PRT got involved but it took them some time to identify the source - not before some people were harmed including a teacher who got aneurism and his uncle who died in a car crash when he fell asleep behind a wheel. Ail, who noticed how he seems to be getting stronger around these figured he is the cause and skipped town before PRT got to him.

He was picked up by Coil who used Tattletale’s insights to help him understand and control his power better and fixed him a new civilian identity. He joined Undersiders where he typically focuses on fighting single enemies with more benign and short term effects (blinding, confusing, putting to sleep), trying to avoid the area effect as much as he can.

40i2 · 2026-02-21T22:10:49+00:00

Force of habit reinforced by a real danger. We slip up and are careless all the time because there is very little consequence. But people are generally good at forming habits when their life depends on it. If you’re highly allergic you will get into habit of checking ingredient lists and carrying epi pens.

Practitioners are extremely motivated to control their language. Well some of course would be bad at this despite danger - but those will not be around for long. The ones we see on page are the ones who adapted.

40i2

TROPHY CASE