#13.i2p1

[krixwell-liveblogs]

It’s like the world’s gone mad, and I’m the only sane person left.

You might not be entirely wrong about that.

So who’d feel like this? I’m thinking Sundancer.

Director Emily Piggot finished the last

Oh! I guess we’re following right on from Skitter’s message, and talking about PR a fair bit.

Emily, huh?

Remember that whole thing with “JPIGGOT”, back in Parasite? Back then, I was informed that the J was likely an error born from Wildbow not having finished naming her yet (which also told me that we would be finding out her actual first name sooner or later).

I’d like to suggest a compromise: She writes and thinks of her name as Emily, but her parents were jerks so legally, it’s spelled with a silent J at the beginning - Jemily Piggot - and that’s what the PRT used to determine her username back when she didn’t have the authority to object. She doesn’t like that spelling, but she never got around to having it legally changed.

of her coffee and paused to survey the enormity of the task that lay ahead of her.  The scale of it could be measured in paperwork.  Piles of it.

Everyone’s favorite thing!

Sometimes two feet high, the stacks of paper were arranged in rows and columns on every available surface, including the top of her coffee maker and the floor around her desk.

For the previous quote, I was looking for an image from Homestuck that I thought was something like this, but it seems I misremembered, because this is the best I found:

and that’s really not that much for the comically overworked aesthetic.

There were stacks of stapled pages, each topped with a weight to protect it from the gusts and breezes that flowed through the open window frames.

Oh man, yeah, even just one of these piles getting caught by the wind would be a disaster.

[krixwell-liveblogs]

“Yes?”

He raised the laptop he carried in his hands.  “The guys in CS asked me to bring this to you.”

SWEET DIGITAL RELEASE FOR WORN-OUT WRISTS

She shook her head, refusing the offer, “For now, every computer that comes in is supposed to be used for setting up the consoles and communications.”

I appreciate it... but look what you’re dealing with, woman.

You gotta draw the line somewhere. You gotta draw a fucking line in the sand, dude. You gotta make a statement.

You gotta look inside of yourself and say, “What am I willing to put up with today?”

NOT HANDWRITTEN PAPERWORK

[krixwell-liveblogs]

So very few of them knew it, but they were counting on her.

Looks like someone has a high estimate of her own importance in events.

It might not be entirely wrong, but I don’t think it’s entirely correct either. The PRT, aside from arranging supplies, has been looking pretty useless for a while.

Though it’s understandable that some of that is because they’re swamped with work right as their infrastructure gets shattered.

She heaved herself out of her chair and made her way to the coffee machine to refill her mug.

“Director?”

Oh, hey, another person. What’s up...

...Weld? Clockblocker?

She turned to see Kid Win standing in the doorway.  He looked intimidated.

Dang it, he was my third guess.

[krixwell-liveblogs]

The whole nation was watching.  People across America ate their TV dinners while they watched the news, seeing footage of the slaughters in downtown Brockton Bay, white sheets draped over piles of bodies.

She managed to go eight or so paragraphs before mentioning the media and public perception of the Brockton Bay cape scene.

I wonder if Skitter has made it to national news yet.

Oh man, I just realized, if Piggot gets the news of Burnscar’s death, will she be trying to twist it into being the PRT’s accomplishment, like what happened after the ABB’s defeat?

The before and after shots of areas devastated by Shatterbird.  Flooded streets.  Fundraising efforts were launched, many succeeding, while yet others leveraged the situation to cheat the sympathetic out of money.

Of course.

Honestly, I’m glad to get a look at what the outside world thinks of Brockton Bay’s situation.

The world waited to see if Brockton Bay would become another Switzerland, another Japan, another region that simply couldn’t recover.

Oh man, what happened to Switzerland? Behemoth, attracted to the slopes that would spread his lava widely? The Simurgh, appreciating the altitude?

Also I guess losing Kyushu threw Japan into chaos. Maybe there were more parahuman antics that doomed it, but I’m guessing that’s what really started it.

Ground lost to the Endbringers in their relentless campaign of attrition against humanity. 

Yeah.

I mean, at this rate it’s still going to take them a long time to bring an end to humanity - way longer than it’s going to take before the bigger threat is likely to show up even if Jack does get killed in time - but it’s a slow yet steady loss.

[krixwell-liveblogs]

The shift from uniform typed words to countless styles of handwriting, it said something about the innumerable voices, the break down of the cohesive, ordered whole.

Oh yeah, I suppose it wouldn’t be all her handwriting.

What resulted were hundreds, thousands of self-interested voices.  One in five condemned her, two in five pleaded with her for assistance in some form, and the remainder simply expected her to perform her duties as a cog in the machine.

Sounds about right.

She looked over the sheer volumes of paper around her office.  The PRT handled cases where parahumans were involved, and these days, it seemed like everything and everyone was touched in some way by the heroes, villains and monsters of Brockton Bay.

I mean, I’m pretty sure we don’t actually know any named characters who have nothing to do with capes, but that’s a result of the story being about the capes, so from our perspective, that’s all the people we’re going to hear about. (Unless Wildbow trolls us with an Interlude about someone entirely unrelated to the plot, but that’s not really his style.)

In-universe, though... yeah, Shatterbird (by Shattering the city), the other Nine (by attacking lots of civilians), and the Undertravelers (by taking over territories in most of the city) have really caused almost everyone to have some aspect of their lives be affected by parahumans.

...by the way, Piggot didn’t mention the rogues.

Every time the other precincts had the slightest excuse, they would claim that it was the PRT’s responsibility.

Oh jeez.

If they had no excuse at all, they would claim it a joint responsibility.  Until she read over the cases in question and either signed off on them or refused them, the job was in her hands.

Damn, that really does put a lot of work on her.

As far as the ones passing the buck were concerned, it was out of their hands.

Regular police: *passes the buck*

Director Jemily Piggot: “Dude, I’m already holding like a hundred of these! At least give me a bag to carry them in or something!”

[krixwell-liveblogs]

Interlude 13

This is actually the 24th Interlude (not counting the bogus April Fool’s ones I added), but sure.

I literally just wrote this about an hour ago, but for the benefit of archival readers going back to this chapter’s tag later on:

Next chapter, I’m pretty sure we’re going into an Interlude. Who did I speculate on us reading the perspective of, again? Oh yeah, one of the Travelers. There’s been so many signs that we’re about to find out about their past that I suspect we’re going to find out before Taylor does, in the upcoming Interlude.

So what am I expecting, more specifically?

Hm. Maybe a bit of flashbacking, possibly put into contrast with how things are now among the Travelers, and a look at how they feel about having just been in Bonesaw’s clutches to save Grue. I don’t know what to expect regarding their actual backstory, but I do have my theory that it involves someone or something being after them, possibly Cauldron.

There’s also the question of which Traveler’s perspective we’d be following. I’m kind of hoping for Sundancer, though I certainly wouldn’t object to getting to know Ballistic a bit better either. Trickster seems most likely, though, since the personality underneath his facade was hinted at in the Arc.

Noelle would also be very interesting. See what all of this, and her situation, looks like from her perspective.

In short, I’d be up for anyone, but Trickster and, secondly, Noelle seem the most likely suspects.

If it’s any of them at all. If I drop that assumption, I have no clue who it’d be, though, and it’s more fun to speculate on the guess I do have.

So yeah! Let’s jump in and find out!

[krixwell-liveblogs]

The fact that Dragon’s system could divine these details, as always, unnerved her.  This time, in light of recent events, it unsettled her all the more.

So wait. Does it (she) pull up new questions like these each time?

She typed in the words ‘Slaughterhouse Nine’ and watched as information began appearing in lists.  News items, sorted by relevance and date, profiles, records.  Lists of names.  Casualty reports.

I wonder to what extent she’s interacting directly with Dragon without knowing it.

I mean, surely they have regular systems too, but...

Also it just occurred to me why stealing data is such a personal violation to Dragon. From Dragon’s perspective, the Undersiders stole memories from her brain.

Emily clicked through the records.  Sorting as a timeline, she found the entry muddled with Armsmaster’s simulation records on the fighting abilities of the Nine.

I suppose if it wasn’t entirely clear that it was simulation data, that could be an issue.

No reason to throw it out if it’s not a problem like that or the simulation being dangerously inaccurate, though.

He’d been preparing to fight them.  A double-check of the modification dates showed he’d seen the entries recently.

...coddammit, Army, did you not learn from Leviathan?

[krixwell-liveblogs]

This would be a battle won with preparation, and for that, she needed information.

Hey, look, it’s that good old theme again!

It took her a moment to adjust to the smaller keyboard.  She entered her passwords, and answered the personal questions that Dragon’s subsystem posed to her.  Why is your nephew named Gavin?

Maybe her sibling was a huge fan of Rooster Teeth.

Your favorite color?  Irritating- she didn’t even know her favorite color, but the algorithms had figured it out before she did.

Ahaha! That’s not how favorites work, Dragon!

All information divined from the countless pieces of data about her that were in official emails, photographs and surveillance footage from the PRT buildings.  It was with a moment of trepidation that she typed in For Gawain, knight of the round table.  Silver.

Well, that answers my unstated question earlier about what Public Image’s fur color should be. Now we just need a mane color and style (I’m thinking denim blue, short with big buns), and a cutie mark that looks something like 📺, and we’re set!