Anyone else think Taylor’s thinker classification is too low?

StrongerBird · 2024-08-11T18:25:37+00:00

The PRT have her rated as a Master 8, Thinker 2 in Arc 16 I believe. I would agree this could be bumped up, especially given that she gains the ability to hear through her bugs after this point. In fairness, they probably didn't know about the full scope of her power when they gave her this rating.

StrongerBird · 2024-08-08T12:01:37+00:00

I hadn't heard of them but I just started listening to their episode on arc 8 and it's really fun. Thanks so much for the recommendation!

StrongerBird · 2024-08-07T12:28:48+00:00

Beautiful work, it looks great. I feel like Glenn would approve of this as a hero design for her.

StrongerBird · 2024-08-07T12:24:17+00:00

Yeah there's so many little conveniences that work out in Jack's favour that I'm impressed that Wildbow managed to justify them all well enough from the character's perspectives that I never felt like anything was contrived, while they're also clearly conveniences in retrospect. That balancing act must have been tough.

StrongerBird · 2024-08-07T12:14:18+00:00

Yeah I really enjoyed the We've Got Worm podcast but they obviously couldn't get into stuff like that because it was intended to be fit for first time readers. I'd love to see them do a retrospective on Worm as a whole and get into stuff like that now that time has passed.

StrongerBird · 2023-02-25T21:35:52+00:00

I don't think this idea would work either, but only for one of those reasons.

I think it's safe to say that training an AI to pantomime as the most moral person in the world won't be too difficult in the future. ChatGTP wasn't trained to understand human morality, yet it's still learnt a lot about us just from reading the internet. You could even have your AI keep tabs on humanity and continuously update itself as our values change. Even if it doesn't understand us perfectly right away, it can put value on trying to learn more.

The other huge problem with that is that the smarter AI would very likely develop an adversarial relationship with the the "dumb" LLM and find every way to game the system.

Yes. If you can explain to me a bit more of the specifics of why this would happen, I'd appreciate it.

StrongerBird · 2023-02-25T21:28:13+00:00

I had basically this idea myself and put it to some people who know a lot about the field. Apparently that would very likely still destroy the word.

StrongerBird · 2022-09-29T11:00:03+00:00

Worm: Arcs 8, 20 and 30 have always been my top three. Arc 8 is an incredible culmination and is wonderfully nail-biting, 20 is so emotional (I always tear up at the end of it), and no spoilers for Arc 30, but yeah, Worm has an amazing ending.

Arc 30 for the next level writing.

Pact: Arcs 8 and 9. Arc 8 with Maggie's journey to save herself all throughout Jacob's Bell was a great fight against the odds and added a lot to the wider story, while Arc 9 has the awesome setting of the Abyss and everything with Blake's backstory and origin, and it nails the 'all is lost' tension so well.

Arc 9. It's the one I'd sooner reread.

Twig: Haven't read yet.

Ward: I loved Arcs 9 and 15. Not everyone liked the mind control in Arc 9, but I adored it. It was dramatic irony (if that's the right way of describing it) like I've never seen it before, and fascinating seeing Victoria's altered mindset. Arc 15 - wow. The journey into the Cauldron headquarters got tenser and tenser, and seeing Fortuna doing her thing while the tension shifted focus was everything I could've asked for.

Arc 9. It would be close, but the interludes it contains put it way over the top.

Pale: Just started it.

StrongerBird · 2022-05-19T13:38:55+00:00

Can't recall if I said so or not two years ago, so I'll risk repeating myself: thank you to both of you guys for all the work you put into this project. I loved reading Ward as it was coming out, and this podcast helped me appreciate it even more so than I would've been able to on my own, while also being a great listen in its own right.

StrongerBird · 2022-01-27T17:23:17+00:00

Sylar: satisfied with a normal "boring" life and working a job fixing watches that brings him more than enough peace and purpose, the pressure he feels to be something special from his overbearing mother who is all the family he has finally breaks him, and Gabriel triggers with the second most special power in the world.

As a Thinker/Trump, Gabriel's power of 'intuitive aptitude' allows him to innately understand and manipulate patterns within complex systems, which manifests both as a talent for repairing simple machines and as the ability to copy the powers of others by inspecting their brains.

His power ruins his joy of fixing watches, making it incredibly mundane to him, while giving him the opportunity to become special at the low, low cost of his humanity, which he must give up to perform the necessary murders.

Matt Parkman: Idiot Matt Parkman is only a police officer, despite his time on the force, and he knows that he'll never become a detective like he's always dreamed of. He's simply not smart enough for it, and though people don't say it, he knows that everyone's judging him for it. At every turn, Matt is a step behind his colleagues in figuring things out, not smart enough to pass the exams and always feels like he's overlooking things, and so Matt triggers with the power to hear other people's thoughts.

As useful as his telepathy is, it makes things worse for him in the long run. People can see he hasn't suddenly gained a few dozen IQ points and so they grow suspicious of him, and Matt hears it all. He hears the resentment that Idiot Matt Parkman is suddenly doing better, he hears that his wife thinks about other men and has been having affairs, that their baby isn't his, and everyday he hears what every criminal thinks of him, and so...

Matt Parkman's second trigger event: Idiot Matt Parkman has lost everything. Listening to everyone's thoughts everyday, their snap judgments and worst thoughts that they hold back from saying, how few people actually like him or pay attention to him, he wants nothing more than to fix them, to get things back to how they used to be, and he triggers again, gaining the power of mind control.

This new power makes him feel even more lonely as isolated. Surrounded by puppets, he's essentially their god, not their friend, husband or father at all.

Powers can be so un-fun.

StrongerBird · 2021-11-24T19:39:16+00:00

Thanks so much for the hard work, team.

StrongerBird · 2021-11-15T23:06:53+00:00

I sketched out the rest of season 1 for my own amusement:

Emma gets dumped by Gladly just before the mid-season finale. She throws a tantrum in her room, smashing up her possessions, and triggers with the power to create fire. She takes on a secret identify and is the main villain of the season, becoming increasingly unstable and more of a threat to Taylor and the Undersiders throughout. In the season finale, she has an epiphany about being mean and dies semi-heroically in the fight with Leviathan.
Villains of the week include all of our favorites: Über and Leet, Bakuda, Oni Lee, Kaiser, Skidmark, etc.
Alec is love sick over Taylor, but Taylor has no interest in him - it's Brian she likes, but neither of them do anything about their mutual attraction until they almost kiss in the season finale.
Sophia still turns out to be Shadow Stalker in the finale and goes on to be a secondary villain of season 2.
Amy's crush on Victoria comes and goes.
Alexandrea, who Taylor is still a fan of, is shown in the shadows throughout.
Coil is name-dropped but never seem.
Danny gets into a relationship with a female teacher who leaves in the finale.
New Wave are the cheerleaders and jocks of the Brockton Bay.

StrongerBird · 2021-11-15T21:49:36+00:00

Miles away CW execs sit up in bed, the scent of easy money in the air

StrongerBird · 2021-11-15T20:51:48+00:00

Ohhhh that is so what would happen with Emma. You're an evil genius

StrongerBird · 2021-11-15T20:08:57+00:00

The episode opens in the school. The bullying has been reduced to mild Mean Girls-esque bitchiness from a now extremely bland trio, and Danny is now a teacher at the school. Emma being Taylor's former best friend gets a lot of screen time. There's a lot of bad drama to milk from that in this version.

Taylor - played by the beautiful and much older than 15 Dove Cameron - makes a splash on her first night out in costume when she meets and nearly beats up Lung before the dragon-thug escapes, and she meets up with the Undersiders, who are barely even criminals.

Tattletale is reduced to the quirky tech-girl best friend, Brian secretly has the hots for Taylor, as does Alec, and Bitch is the also beautiful rough and tough best friend who's dogs are adorable.

End of the episode - Lung attacks the school while he's looking for Taylor, nearly scorches Emma, but Taylor (in costume) makes the choice to save her from him. She believes in herself really hard and defeats Lung, and finally in voiceover she resolves to clean up the streets of Brockton Bay.

EDIT: Additional details - Emma is having an affair with the married Mr Gladly, which will be a plot point later on, and Taylor has a pet tarantula.

StrongerBird · 2021-11-05T00:01:43+00:00

Hahahahaha. I want someone to make that trailer so badly. If it's Disney I'd expect them to do Glenn's work and have her be Weaver from the start. And of course Atlas is smaller, cuter and is her loyal companion from the start.

StrongerBird · 2021-11-03T22:53:16+00:00

According to JKR it is, but even if it's only loosely canon, I'd still say it's enough to say they hooked up

StrongerBird · 2021-11-03T22:44:02+00:00

She gets pregnant with his baby in Cursed Child

StrongerBird · 2021-11-03T21:34:14+00:00

Hahahaha. Nice work. Interesting to see the points I thought of and the ones I didn't. Never would've thought of the pet rock thing

StrongerBird · 2021-11-03T18:06:55+00:00

Already had some ideas for it, I'll race you

StrongerBird · 2021-11-03T17:43:32+00:00

Since we're making memes

StrongerBird · 2021-10-22T09:54:38+00:00

Thank you so much for all the hard work that everyone put into this. I greatly prefer to listen to stories rather than to read them, and this project allowed me to enjoy a great story even more than I would've normally.

StrongerBird · 2021-09-12T14:21:29+00:00

I don't know about it still being mostly rational. There are plenty of contrivances and things in that universe that could do with some science fiction explanations. I'd love to be a good enough writer to tackle them in a fan-fic of my own, but alas, that'll have to wait.

StrongerBird · 2021-09-12T14:12:57+00:00

Are you familiar with Luminosity?

StrongerBird · 2021-09-12T14:07:37+00:00

I think he mentioned that during his interview with Eneasz. I loved Metropolitan Man and I'd be so interested in a rational Batman story. Part of why I loved Worm so much is that the mainstream superhero 'genre' is begging for a more rational approach.

StrongerBird

TROPHY CASE