I'm 93% Sure I Made A Post About This Before, But Taylor Using Other People's Powers Better Than They

Ok, it’s good to know that the Fallen at least have a coherent thematic throughline in Ward, and I guess I could see that working if it coheres with the larger themes of Ward. I know the members of Breakthrough and it seems like they’re set up to explore themes of imprisonment, violation and the aftermath of such. Victoria and her whole experience, Sveta and being a C53, Tristan and Bryon, etc, and I would imagine that the Fallen is that for Rain.

Still, even the most abusive, most cynically created cults have theologies. And I don’t think any sizeable cult can run without the rank and file being actual believers. So it’s worrying, in regards to verisimilitude, that the Fallen’s theology, as far as I’m aware, hasn’t significantly changed despite the actual apocalypse happening.

I should be excited to read Ward. There’s so much potential in a sequel to Worm. I care about the returning characters and I really, really, really liked what the epilogue of Worm set up. I’m maybe one of a handful of people that like Teacher (as of his epilogue). I love the idea of a work set in the portal ridden ruins of New York. The tension created by the amnesty and of the Wardens attempting to police this new world. And fundamentally, it’s incredibly interesting to move from a work where the world was slowly ending, to one where the world has ended, but which is no longer on the path to ending.

And yet, I’m aware that this potential is, at least partially, squandered. The evocative picture of New York replaced by the amorphous, placeless City. The problems of resource distribution mentioned and yet never fully integrated into the narrative. The apocalypse cult going through the apocalypse mostly unchanged.

Still I’ll read it. Who knows, maybe I’ll love it

Okay, so there's an entire a chasm between Farcille and Wolfspider. Because yes, it makes sense to see Marcille as having a crush on Falin, and that reading of her character could even be more enjoyable than assuming otherwise. Its a coherent ship and an enjoyable one. But with Worm, not reading Taylor and Rachel as crushing on each other actively detracts from the story's comprehensibility.

Constantly obsessing over the PRT threat ratings is the wormfic version of people who are way too into astrology.

"That was really Scorpio of you." Wrong. It was solidly Master 3 behavior. Stop being such a Breaker and assuming the worst of people.

What to Watch at the End

I've been happy to run in to a couple pieces of media back-to-back over the last week or so- plenty of down time, since I have that bug that's going around. They make pretty interesting companion pieces to one another, actually. With the end of the world so close now, we're starting to get a bit more genuinely thoughtful art about the subject, stuff you really can't say until you have this kind of vantage point.

They are The Power Fantasy (written by Kieron Gillen), an early-days ongoing comic of the 'deconstructing superheroes' type, and Pantheon (created by Craig Silverstein), one of those direct-to-streaming shows that get no marketing and inevitably fade away quickly; this one's an adult cartoon with two eight-episode seasons, adapted from some Ken Liu short stories, with a complete and satisfying ending. I'll put in a cut from here; targeted spoilers won't occur, but I'll be talking about theme and subject matter as well as a few specific plot beats, so you won't be entirely fresh if you read on.

Pantheon is a solid, if wobbly, stab at singularity fiction, with more of a focus on uploaded intelligence than purely synthetic (though both come in to play). It's about two-thirds YA to start, declining to about one-fifth by the end. The Power Fantasy, by contrast, is an examination of superpowers through a geopolitical lens that compares them to nuclear states; I'm not as good a judge of comics over all (particularly unfinished comics), but this one seems very high quality to me.

The intersection of the Venn Diagram of these two shows is the problem of power, and in particular the challenges of a human race handing off the baton to the entities that supersede it. They're both willing to radically change the world in response to the emergence of new forces; none of them even try to 'add up to normal' or preserve the global status quo. Both reckon with megadeath events.

I'm a... fairly specific mix of values and ethical stances, so I'm well used to seeing (and enjoying!) art and media that advance moral conclusions I don't agree with on a deep level. I used to joke that Big Hero Six was the only big-budget movie of its decade that actually captured some of my real values without compromise. (I don't think it's quite that bad, actually, I was being dramatic, but it's pretty close.)

Pantheon was a really interesting watch before I figured out what it was doing, because it felt like it was constantly dancing on the edge of either being one of those rare stories, or of utterly countermanding it with annoying pablum. It wasn't really until the second or third episode that I figured out why- it's a Socratic dialogue, a narrative producing a kind of dialectical Singularity.

The show maintains a complex array of philosophies and points of view, and makes sure that all of them get about as fair a shake as it can. This means, if you're me, then certain characters are going to confidently assert some really annoying pro-death claims and even conspire to kill uploaded loved ones for transparently bad reasons. If you're not me, you'll find someone just as annoying from another direction, I'm sure of it. Everybody has an ally in this show, and everybody has an enemy, and every point of view both causes and solves critical problems for the world.

For example, the thing simply does not decide whether an uploaded person is 'the same as' the original or a copy without the original essence; when one man is uploaded, his daughter continues thinking of him as her dad, and his wife declares herself widowed, and both choices are given gravitas and dignity. He, himself, isn't sure.

This isn't something you see in fiction hardly at all- the last time I can think of was Terra Ignota, though this show lacks that story's gem-cut perfection. It's that beautiful kind of art where almost nobody is evil, and almost everything is broken. And something a little bit magical happens when you do this, even imperfectly, because the resulting narrative doesn't live in any single one of their moral universes; it emerges from all of them, complexly and much weirder than a single simplistic point of view would have it. And they have to commit to the bit, because the importance of dialogue is the core, actual theme and moral center of this show.

The part of rationalism I've always been least comfortable with has been its monomania, the desire to sculpt one perfect system and then subject all of reality to it. This becomes doomerism very quickly; in short order, rationalists notice 'out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made', and then conclude that we're all very definitely going to die, once the singleton infinite-power system takes over, because it too will be flawed. (e.g. this joking-not-joking post by Big Yud.)

And don't get me wrong, I do take that concern seriously. I don't think I can conclusively, definitely convince myself that rationalism is wrong on this point, not to a degree of confidence that lets me ignore that risk. I don't at all begrudge the people devoting their entire professional lives to avoiding that outcome, even though I don't take it as given or even as particularly likely myself.

But it is precisely that monomania that is the central villain of this show, if it even has one. Breakdowns in dialogue, the assertion of unilateral control, conquering the world for its own good. The future, this show says, is multipolar, and we get there together or not at all.

That's a tremendously beautiful message, and a tremendously important one. I do wish it was more convincing.

The Power Fantasy works, quite hard, to build believably compassionate personalities into the fabric of its narrative. It doesn't take easy ways out, it doesn't give destroy-the-world levels of power to madmen or fools. Much like Pantheon, it gives voice to multiple, considered, and profoundly beautiful philosophies of life. Its protagonists have (sometimes quite serious) flaws, but only in the sense that some of the best among us have flaws; one of them is, more or less literally, an angel.

And that's why the slow, grinding story of slow, grinding doom is so effective and so powerful.

In a way that Pantheon does not, TPF reckons with the actual, specific analysis of escalation towards total destruction. Instead of elevating dialogue to the level of the sacred, it explores the actual limits and tendencies of that dialogue. It shows, again and again, how those good-faith negotiations are simply and tragically not quite good enough, with every new development dragging the world just an inch closer to the brink, making peace just a little bit more impossible. Those compassionate, wise superpowers are trapped in a nightmare that's slowly constricting around them, and they're compassionate and wise enough to know exactly what that means while remaining entirely unable to stop it.

It's most directly and obviously telling a story about the cold war, of course, not about artificial intelligence per se. The 'atomics' of TPF are just X-Men with the serial numbers filed off, and are therefore not constructed artifacts the way that uploaded and synthetic minds are; there's some nod to an 'superpowers arms race' in the AI sense of the term, but it's not a core theme. But these are still 'more than human' in important ways, with several of the characters qualifying directly as superintelligences in one way or another.

The story isn't complete (just getting started, really), so I don't want to speak too authoritatively about its theme or conclusions. But it's safe to say that the moral universe it lives in isn't a comfortable one. Echoing rationalists, the comic opens with an arresting line of dialogue: "The ethical thing to do, of course, would be to conquer the world."

In his excellent book Superintelligence, Nick Bostrom discusses multipolarity somewhat, and takes a rather dim view of it. He sees no hope for good outcomes that way, and argues that it will likely be extremely unstable. In other words, it has the ability to cloud the math, for a little while but it's ultimately just a transitional phase before we reach some kind of universal subordination to a single system.

The Power Fantasy describes such a situation, where six well-intentioned individuals are trying to share the world with one another, and shows beat-by-beat how they fail.

Pantheon cheats outrageously to make its optimism work- close relationships between just the right people, shackles on the superintelligences in just the right degree, lucky breaks at just the right time. It also has, I think, a rather more vague understanding of the principles at play (though it's delightfully faithful to the nerd culture in other ways; there's constant nods to Lain and Ghost in the Shell, including some genuinely funny sight gags, and I'm pretty sure one of the hacker characters is literally using the same brand of mouse as me).

TPF doesn't always show its work, lots of the story is told in fragments through flashbacks and nonlinear fragments. But what it shows, it shows precisely and without compromise or vagueness. It does what it can to stake you to the wall with iron spikes, no wiggle room, no flexibility.

But all the same, there's an odd problem, right? We survived the Cold War.

TPF would argue (I suspect) that we survived because the system collapsed to a singleton- the United States emerged as the sole superpower, with the Pax Americana reigning over the world undisputed for much of the last forty years. There were only two rivals, not six, and when one went, the game functionally ended.

In other words, to have a future, we need a Sovereign.

So let me go further back- the conspicuous tendency of biospheres to involve complex ecosystems with no 'dominant' organism. Sure, certain adaptations radiate quickly outward; sometimes killing and displacing much of what came before. But nature simply gives us no prior record of successful singletons emerging from competitive and dynamic environments, ever. Not even humans, not even if you count our collective species as one individual; we're making progress, but Malaria and other such diseases still prey on us, outside our control for now.

TPF would argue, I suspect, that there's a degree of power at which this stops being true- the power to annihilate the world outright, which has not yet been achieved but will be soon.

But that, I think, has not yet been shown to my satisfaction.

Obligate singleton outcomes are a far, far more novel claim than their proponents traditionally accept, and I think the burden of proof must be much higher than simply having a good argument for why it ought to be true. A model isn't enough; models are useful, not true. I'm hungry for evidence, and fictional evidence doesn't count.

It's an interesting problem, even with the consequences looming so profoundly across our collective horizon right now. TPF feels correct-as-in-precise, the way that economists and game theorists are precise. But economics and game theory are not inductive sciences; they are models, theories, arguments, deductions. They're not observations, and not to be trusted as empirical observations are trusted. Pantheon asserts again and again the power of dialogue and communication, trusts the multipolar world. And that's where my moral and analytical instincts lie too, at least to some degree. I concern myself with deep time, and deep time is endlessly, beautifully plural. But Pantheon doesn't have the rigor to back that up- this is hope, not deduction, and quite reckless in its way. Trying to implement dialectical approaches in anything like a formal system has led to colossal tragedy, again and again.

One narrative is ruthlessly rigorous and logically potent, but persistently unable to account for the real world as I've seen it. The other is vague, imprecise, overconfident, and utterly beautiful, and feels in a deep way like a continuation of the reality that I find all around me- but only feels. Both are challenging, in their way.

It's a bit scary, to be this uncertain about something this consequential. This is a question around which so much pivots- the answer to the Drake paradox, the nature of the world-to-come, the permanence of death. But I simply don't know.

Glow-Worm P.1

Everyone knows Ward's worldbuilding is ill-considered and often contradictory, but I really was not expecting the extent to which this would be apparent immediately.

There's coffee and ice-cream, electricity, the internet (and therefore internet cables), cellular infrastructure, libraries and newspapers, but also "[The City] desperately needs farmers".

"[The City] desperately needs farmers", but also thousands (possibly tens or hundreds of thousands) are being kept in refugee camps being feed by whatever government exists and being actively prevented from productively contributing. The fact that there is a processing of refugees beyond maybe giving them an ID, and which extends to background checks, is absurd: to reject anyone is a death sentence (one I doubt the Wardens in their second chance era would allow), most refugees would have been American citizens, and you just need the man power.

"[The City] desperately needs farmers", but also looting Bet, a method of sustenance, is illegal. This also increases the degree to which having coffee is out of place; if coffee isn't being liberated from the ruins of Bet then the coffee needs to be grown which you can't do in North-East America (unless there is a connected world with a more tropical climate, fingers-crossed), and would be being done at the expense of subsistence farming.

Its Year 1, but also its 2 years and 2 months since Gold Morning. What possible logic leads to people designating 2014 and not 2013, the year GM actually happened, as year 0? Defining the date of Scion's death, June 24th(?), as the new first day of the year, and the year immediately following his death as year 0, doesn't even work.

Even at the micro level, WB can't even it keep it straight within a single PHO post: Conrad, the refugee, is stated to have been traveling for four months to reach the refugee camp. He is also stated to have started his journey in June, but the post was made in August.

It also took two years for Bet to cool to the degree that Wisconsin is getting snow in Summer. I'm not an atmospheric scientist, but wouldn't the coldest days being those soon after the destruction, once the dust has had time to blanket the planet, but before any dust has had time to settle?

I do like how this chapter sets Victoria up as a nerd and as a person actively knowledgeable about current affairs (I must say, its weird to read the comments and realise that people didn't know this was her). I also appreciate the foreshadowing for threats from Bet, and the conflict between ordinary people and Capes.

Internal Inconsistency Counter: 5

Inconsistency with Worm Counter: 0, but only because the city hasn't yet been confirmed to not be New York

@the-joju-experience asked me about Issue 1, page 1 of The Power Fantasy, mentioning "the scale of the Superpowers in the image and the single intro line." It definitely is remarkable that these two incredibly powerful characters are kept small and in the corner of the panel- making them look like an afterthought to the peaceful, everyday city scene. For me it creates this sense of separation for the two Superpowers- their power makes them outsiders to the mundane world.

Sometimes smallness represents weakness or unimportance, but here I think it's more about them not centered in the image, because they're not really a part of this world. We see two laughing people much closer to the foreground, showing that this is the kind of thing people are doing on this lovely evening in the city. They're the rule- Valentina and Etienne are the exception.

The sense of the two Superpowers' isolation is reinforced by the lineart and color. Most of this page is packed full of vivid color and intricate detail, but right around Valentina and Etienne is a patch of gray. The ground under their feet, the wall behind Valentina, and the door just around the corner. It singles them out as not really part of this lovely evening scene. There's also a lot less detail drawn right around them- there's chalk drawings on the wall, sure, but notice how the bricks and stonework around the two of them drop out of view right next to them. In an image that's drawn with so much diligent attention to reality, Valentina and Etienne exist outside of that tangibly detailed world.

Basically- I'd say this page illustrates how everyday life can be beautiful and peaceful, and how our two Superpowers are isolated from that life. This is the very first page of The Power Fantasy- nothing's been said or shown in-canon about their powers, or the burden of having those powers. But I think the visuals here do a lot to provide emotional context to Etienne saying, "Of course, the ethical thing to do is to take over the world."

Etienne himself is standing casually, and he's wearing fashionable but not outrageous clothes- his body alone doesn't make him look like he has godlike powers that would actually enable him to follow through on what he says. But the framing of the page tells us there's something different about him- something about him that sets him apart from those laughing background (foreground?) extras. He's visually not just here to have fun on this otherwise beautiful night- when he makes that big bold statement, it looks like a serious moment in an otherwise lighthearted world.

The dialogue of The Power Fantasy takes a few more pages to really drive the point home of how Valentina and Etienne's powers isolate them from the rest of humanity, as well as their own ability to be human and find joy. But the art has already started doing that in this very first image. I think, in some half-conscious way, I understood that all along- it's part of what makes the comic emotionally work. But, thanks to Joju for encouraging me to look close enough that I actually spelled it out to myself!

If Lung didn't kill Bakuda in the birdcage, I could see Amy and Bakuda making each other worse, somehow.

I could write an Amy×Bakuda piece. I really could.

There really is basically no reason for Imp Vista friendship to happen in a world where Regent doesn't blow up but I really wish there was. Maybe in comedic less serious AU they can still be Best Friends because there really is something so engaging about a world where the Undersiders and Wards hate each other but are also forcing friendship through gritted teeth off the clock for the sake of Team Little Sisters

Imp invites Vista to one of Taylors block parties in hopes that exposure to raw villainous joy will turn Vista supervillain. Vista brings the Wards with her in hopes that exposure to good natured heroes with a system of ethics will make Aisha want to join the Wards. Everyone is out of costume and random adults try and solve the tension between what they perceive as two groups of teenagers having a spat over nothing. Lisa and Chris Win are forced to shake hands and apologize lest they set a bad example for the kids watching. They play Cornhole and Regent makes the Wards mess up every single throw. Emotionally charged game of Uno turned philosophical debate between Brian, Taylor and Dennis.

In conclusion I have a vision for a beautiful world of WardSiders frienemyship and it all boils down to this image

I don't know I'm not done talking about it. It's insane that I can't just uninstall Edge or Copilot. That websites require my phone number to sign up. That people share their contacts to find their friends on social media.

I wouldn't use an adblocker if ads were just banners on the side funding a website I enjoy using and want to support. Ads pop up invasively and fill my whole screen, I misclick and get warped away to another page just for trying to read an article or get a recipe.

Every app shouldn't be like every other app. Instagram didn't need reels and a shop. TikTok doesn't need a store. Instagram doesn't need to be connected to Facebook. I don't want my apps to do everything, I want a hub for a specific thing, and I'll go to that place accordingly.

I love discord, but so much information gets lost to it. I don't want to join to view things. I want to lurk on forums. I want to be a user who can log in and join a conversation by replying to a thread, even if that conversation was two days ago. I know discord has threads, it's not the same. I don't want to have to verify my account with a phone number. I understand safety and digital concerns, but I'm concerned about information like that with leaks everywhere, even with password managers.

I shouldn't have to pay subscriptions to use services and get locked out of old versions. My old disk copy of photoshop should work. I should want to upgrade eventually because I like photoshop and supporting the business. Adobe is a whole other can of worms here.

Streaming is so splintered across everything. Shows release so fast. Things don't get physical releases. I can't stream a movie I own digitally to friends because the share-screen blocks it, even though I own two digital copies, even though I own a physical copy.

I have an iPod, and I had to install a third party OS to easily put my music on it without having to tangle with iTunes. Spotify bricked hardware I purchased because they were unwillingly to upkeep it. They don't pay their artists. iTunes isn't even iTunes anymore and Apple struggles to upkeep it.

My TV shows me ads on the home screen. My dad lost access to eBook he purchased because they were digital and got revoked by the company distributing them. Hitman 1-3 only runs online most of the time. Flash died and is staying alive because people love it and made efforts to keep it up.

I have to click "not now" and can't click "no". I don't just get emails, they want to text me to purchase things online too. My windows start search bar searches online, not just my computer. Everything is blindly called an app now. Everything wants me to upload to the cloud. These are good tools! But why am I forced to use them! Why am I not allowed to own or control them?

No more!!!!! I love my iPod with so much storage and FLAC files. I love having all my fics on my harddrive. I love having USBs and backups. I love running scripts to gut suck stuff out of my Windows computer I don't want that spies on me. I love having forums. I love sending letters. I love neocities and webpages and webrings. I will not be scanning QR codes. Please hand me a physical menu. If I didn't need a smartphone for work I'd get a "dumb" phone so fast. I want things to have buttons. I want to use a mouse. I want replaceable batteries. I want the right to repair. I grew up online and I won't forget how it was!

Something I’ve only occasionally seen mentioned is how Cauldron capes still have a degree of irony between their power and their trauma

Take Coil. While moments away from being rescued from Nilbog’s monsters, he is faced with a split-second choice: to kill his superior officer or to not. He didn’t know which was the right call, whether it was possible for them both to survive or whether letting his superior live would have doomed them both. And so, he made his choice, and was left to deal with the consequences of it. And then he drinks a vial and is given the ability to delay the making of any such decisions, until the consequences were known.

Or Battery. She wants powers to take down Madcap, and gets powers that operate similarly to his but perform better. Except, of course, only for a handful of moments, leaving her ultimately worse off than him. She loses to him 7 times, and only wins on the 8th because Legend is there