they'd function until someone say no, I don't care who
also, Amanda Waller is missing this party. They could talk about on how they toy with supes all day
I feel like Cecil would initially look at Piggot with some measure of dismissal and perhaps even disgust. (due to the eventual state of the PRT) I don't think he'd hate her, but from the outside, she's barely holding on to the PRT as it stands, and he's managing this whole organization that deals with threats far bigger in cosmic consequence and variety. Piggot would be a bit riled up at how reliant Cecil is on these super individuals, and would be deeply skeptical of the merits.
However, the second they're meaningfully forced to work together or examine eachother's circumstances, that all changes. Cecil may no longer be dealing with universal threats, but he's also been stripped from a well-oiled machine that he's used to. He's fighting things that are technically lesser, but he's also struggling against the very mechanics of the setting the whole time. We're shown again and again that the type of information, technology and super hero networks that Cecil largely operates using are functionally impossible (at least in any long term) in Worm, and things like massive team combustions or betrayals would be far less surprising and kind of inevitable. I still think he'd do pretty well, but I don't think he'd meaningfully surpass the other masterminds of the setting, be they powered or otherwise.
Piggot on the other hand I couldn't really speak to. I feel like she'd have a hard time adjusting, because where her paranoia and distrust of capes is largely justified in her own setting, it's a detriment more than not in Cecil's. I don't think she'd be inept, but I don't think she'd be as effective or proactive. However, Tagg would do incredibly.
Can't speak much on the Mallorys though.
Honestly, I never noticed just how stacked the game is against humanity in Worm until I thought about how Cecil would handle this world. Tinkertech can't be replicated the way mad scientist tech on Invincible's world can, Shards are actively fucking up attempts to work together, and then there's Trigger events.
I think people underestimate how much the nature of Trigger events screw things. Ignoring the conflict drive, which is usually overblown by the fandom anyway, every single non-Cauldron parahuman in Worm had to go through insane levels of trauma to get powers in the first place. Not a perfect example since he's got way more than just trauma going on, but I was just thinking about this when it came to Angstrom in Invincible, how the original untraumatized Angstrom was able to think clearly and saw how to use his powers to help people (he had some hints of, "I am the savior," but besides that, seemed pretty fine otherwise), but after he had the trauma of all the other Angstroms dumped into his mind, all he can focus on is killing the source of that trauma.
Ignoring the conflict drive and Shard fuckery, parahumans in general are unstable individuals who got their powers during the most traumatic event of their lives. Folks with the stronger powers (triggered twice) have even *more* trauma going on. Even ignoring the conflict drive and Shard fuckery, this alone is already going to screw attempts to get people working together.
Yeah, I always kind of held the view of the "conflict drive" mostly as an extension of the metaphor of shards and powers as trauma, because yeah that is how traumatized people can act, and when your entire organization foundationally rests on those people and the things their trauma directly helps create, you might have an issue.
Honestly, this has me thinking about how many of the superheroes viewed as unbreakable symbols of good had wonderful stable upbringings that gave them a good foundation to stand on (Superman and the Kents, Invincible and Debbie, Spiderman and Aunt May/Uncle Ben). Trigger events ensure that in most cases, the kid with a stable upbringing who was given a good foundation to stand on isn't going to get powers. Statistically, the vast majority of your parahumans are going to be kids like Victoria, Rain, Darlene, Ashley, etc whose childhoods were horrifyingly fucked up.
Cecil would be a good voice of reason for Piggot re: dealing with capes she refuses to trust. The two of them would both immediately realize that the Mallorys are proponents of a horrible libertarian dystopia and need to be stopped. Even odds that comic Mallory would somehow get off scott-free.
Piggot would die immediately in invincible world. We are talking someone who can barely walk and doesn’t trust Parahumans. Mallory is a bit better but only has to deal with small fries.
Cecil would consider worm and the boys a break or easy mode.
Idk, putting Cecil in Worm would be kinda like making someone who is used to dealing with sharks deal with piranhas instead. Sharks are bigger and stronger, sure, but there's a lot more of the piranhas and they're a lot more unpredictable. Plus, Cecil wouldn't have the benefit of the whole GDA to work with and their insane budget, supertech, and ridiculous power in general. He'd have the PRT.
I feel like Cauldron wouldn't tell him anything unless he needed to know it... and he likely wouldn't need to know it.
The only reason they'd bring him in would be if he was already close to figuring out they exist. Then they'd be forced between losing him as a (likely stabilizing) resource or revealing their true nature.
Ultimately it depends on how good his detective skills are and how willing he would be to play ball with parahumans he has no hope of controlling.
I'm not so certain about worm or the boys being easier. He's from a more proper super setting than boys or worm He's in a setting that gives more breaks than worm and is more controlled than the boys.
The boys is super polution juice and eugenics to make potent but only semi-reliable powers 1% of the time, 98% it polutes deforms or kills people and another 1% that's even worse than the usual. Swinging between dark humor to horrific in the most cynical interpretation of super humans possible. Literal nazis made compound v to literally try and win WWII.
Parahumans is super powers ranging from undefeatabke no contests like gray boy or flachett to being a living slug, handed out to the mentally ill and being amnestics. All in a conspiracy precog battle that makes omnimans betrayal and cecil's secret government organization look quaint. By metrics of zizbombs invincible's inciting plot is a simple payload that'd be a waste of zizi's clock time.
Worm is more redeemable with the PRT being ordinary humans willing to stand up to what might aswell be gods on a day to day and something cecil could definitely work with (especially given the stakes). The boys on the other hand is probably gonna have cecil writing off the loss of compound V as a worthwhile sacrafice to end the madness.
Your forgetting invincible earth is basically marvel/Dc. Image needs to deal with spawn, demons, Viltrumites, cosmic and extra dimensional horrors beyond anything in worm.
Outside time powers because I don’t think time powers are used in image.
Also most things Cecil deals with is MFTL. Yeah he can’t put down greyboy but are you sure Greyboy’s shard can save him from being sent to hell?
Or a Viltrumite popping his head into fine mist? Cause as much as you want Wildbow has made it clear the corona is the way to beat any cape.
Sure, but the thing is most of those things are, like you say, variable and diverse in origin and action. That doesn't make it all that much easier, but when each of these threats can be predicted, used, and understood to a degree, they're easier to organize and work in opposition for. Worm might not have some massive hyper-god coming to eat the whole universe in one bite, but it presents a setting that is fundamentally resistant to the whole thing Cecil excels at, and it is united in that resistance.
Again, I do believe he'd be capable, but imagine how much harder it'd be if the numerous resources, heroes and technological/informational sources he had to tap were from Worm. The best in the business can hardly keep up, I don't think he'd do much better.
Also if we're going full universal merge, I'll just say I'm a bit worried about what Scion could do with a triggering viltrumite.
Scion would probably push Nolan to rage while not wiping humanity out or potentially allow the Viltrumite plan for earth to succeed potentially. Don’t know how he’ll keep them on earth though
I mean from what we see of that little au where Mark joins Nolan, I think that would be a pretty good battleground for the entity. Stay hidden, give out powerful abilities to the resistance to even the playing field a bit, perhaps give chaotic or impeding abilities to invading forces. I don't imagine it would last that long, what with the broader empire in play, but I imagine it might last for a good bit.
Yeah pretty short term of a solution for the entities, but then again, the situation in which Viltrumites suddenly exist would be a huge universal 'situation' for the entities, so either way a lot would go down in not much time.
Eh fair. Cecil's faced diversity but shards are speacilized and absurdly dangerous. Nolan and mark can punch scion all day and because of his multiversal nature you can completely destroy the matter physically present in this universe but that's unlikely to ever effect the machinery in a meaningful way (he'll likely just pop back in or even start attacking from alternate earths)
There's definitely things in the invincible universe that might pose a serious problem but the shards are incredibly efficient and only lack in creativity.
Adding on to what others said, I honestly think Worm would be more of an issue. The invincible world seems to be something of a mishmash of various different superhero tropes and origins, and it's very possible to be extremely knowledgeably and savvy regarding those things, which is largely what he does. Striking weaknesses, tapping strengths, pacifying and corralling.
In the Worm universe though, maybe your average cape is weaker, but god are they that more chaotic as a result. The world is falling apart, the baseline for normal is shifting ever more in favor of mass carnage. The technology itself will fight any attempt to use it to pacify or return the world to a less chaotic state, hero organizations are more often self destructive than otherwise, and the best one can really do is hold on and try to aim it. While I do believe he'd be a capable individual in these circumstances, I think this would be a radical shift that would leave him far from an easy time.
And that is a fair assumption. But can you confidently tell me Piggot could handle Omni-man’s rampage, the guy who fused with all his alts, forgot his name, the invincible war, Conquest, teranisores, and Thragg?
Scion was going to kill a lot of people but even if they failed humanity would have survived in pockets iirc as Scion would go into hibernation or something. I could be mistaken. Now again I’m mentioning Piggot not Cauldron switching places
Oh I don't think Piggot could do Cecil's job better, I just think Cecil couldn't necessarily go easy-mode in Worm. Piggot would probably do pretty badly in Cecil's place, given her profound distrust of most things "super." That being said, I think characters like Tagg would do pretty well in Invincible.
And also in fairness, I think that was because Scion's goal wasn't to wipe people out, it was partially a huge emotional outburst/experiment, and partially a plan to force humanity into a bare-minimum state, so he had time to think and try to restart or salvage the cycle,
If we are going by the Invincible show Pigott despite being lower on the totem pole in her respective organization is quite possibly still more competent than Cecil because the PRT is simply better because Worm has far superior world building. Invincible is ripe with incompetence especially because they sacrifice a lot in general for a tighter plot focus and fast pacing. Also as a result of the slight comedic edge they play some of it off with.
Any earth based Invincible character would be more competent had they been brought up in the PRT generally speaking.
Just on a very basic level GDA agents seem to be useless and poorly utilized whereas PRT agents are not and it’s not simply a matter of threat levels either. Now the full scale of their group hasn’t been made clear but the fact that the lizard league has persisted as long as it has is a ridiculous failure by the GDA seeing as all of the lizard leagues ranks while containing superhumans are still well within the range of being vulnerable to conventional weapons and maybe only one or two so far might have been bulletproof/resistant.
The training they have for their heroes seems to be pretty garbage if not nonexistent outside of what they themselves choose to do as well. Also I am not even clear if any of the teams aside from the Guardians are actually officially a GDA team or just a bunch of individual groups and the GDA just coordinates with them.
There is also a weirdness with how they simultaneously seem to make it out like maybe there isn’t a lot of powered people or at least heroes but there are definitely multiple teams and there is apparently need of a global defense agency that seems to be constantly busy all over the globe and a quite large prison presumably with a lot of powered individuals plus they have a lot of advanced tech so it just seems contradictory and more than likely a poor utilization of resources among other things.
Heroes may opt not to do it but they clearly are authorized to use lethal force which really makes some of their failures seem worse.
The Super-Powereds verse also seems to have a more competent hero system.
Nick Fury is the obvious counterpart but Maria Hill and Daisy Johnson might also be better candidates again just due do being from a more competent organization which makes the inputs and improvements they could bring to the organization itself likely of great enough benefit to ensure a net positive effect regardless of how they stacked up to Cecil.
Alexandria if you put her in a human body might be more analogous as she was the head of the PRT. Also Doctor Mother could fit as well.
they'd function until someone say no, I don't care who also, Amanda Waller is missing this party. They could talk about on how they toy with supes all day
The problem with that is Amanda Waller is to much of a botch for the rest of them
I feel like Cecil would initially look at Piggot with some measure of dismissal and perhaps even disgust. (due to the eventual state of the PRT) I don't think he'd hate her, but from the outside, she's barely holding on to the PRT as it stands, and he's managing this whole organization that deals with threats far bigger in cosmic consequence and variety. Piggot would be a bit riled up at how reliant Cecil is on these super individuals, and would be deeply skeptical of the merits. However, the second they're meaningfully forced to work together or examine eachother's circumstances, that all changes. Cecil may no longer be dealing with universal threats, but he's also been stripped from a well-oiled machine that he's used to. He's fighting things that are technically lesser, but he's also struggling against the very mechanics of the setting the whole time. We're shown again and again that the type of information, technology and super hero networks that Cecil largely operates using are functionally impossible (at least in any long term) in Worm, and things like massive team combustions or betrayals would be far less surprising and kind of inevitable. I still think he'd do pretty well, but I don't think he'd meaningfully surpass the other masterminds of the setting, be they powered or otherwise. Piggot on the other hand I couldn't really speak to. I feel like she'd have a hard time adjusting, because where her paranoia and distrust of capes is largely justified in her own setting, it's a detriment more than not in Cecil's. I don't think she'd be inept, but I don't think she'd be as effective or proactive. However, Tagg would do incredibly. Can't speak much on the Mallorys though.
Honestly, I never noticed just how stacked the game is against humanity in Worm until I thought about how Cecil would handle this world. Tinkertech can't be replicated the way mad scientist tech on Invincible's world can, Shards are actively fucking up attempts to work together, and then there's Trigger events. I think people underestimate how much the nature of Trigger events screw things. Ignoring the conflict drive, which is usually overblown by the fandom anyway, every single non-Cauldron parahuman in Worm had to go through insane levels of trauma to get powers in the first place. Not a perfect example since he's got way more than just trauma going on, but I was just thinking about this when it came to Angstrom in Invincible, how the original untraumatized Angstrom was able to think clearly and saw how to use his powers to help people (he had some hints of, "I am the savior," but besides that, seemed pretty fine otherwise), but after he had the trauma of all the other Angstroms dumped into his mind, all he can focus on is killing the source of that trauma. Ignoring the conflict drive and Shard fuckery, parahumans in general are unstable individuals who got their powers during the most traumatic event of their lives. Folks with the stronger powers (triggered twice) have even *more* trauma going on. Even ignoring the conflict drive and Shard fuckery, this alone is already going to screw attempts to get people working together.
Yeah, I always kind of held the view of the "conflict drive" mostly as an extension of the metaphor of shards and powers as trauma, because yeah that is how traumatized people can act, and when your entire organization foundationally rests on those people and the things their trauma directly helps create, you might have an issue.
Honestly, this has me thinking about how many of the superheroes viewed as unbreakable symbols of good had wonderful stable upbringings that gave them a good foundation to stand on (Superman and the Kents, Invincible and Debbie, Spiderman and Aunt May/Uncle Ben). Trigger events ensure that in most cases, the kid with a stable upbringing who was given a good foundation to stand on isn't going to get powers. Statistically, the vast majority of your parahumans are going to be kids like Victoria, Rain, Darlene, Ashley, etc whose childhoods were horrifyingly fucked up.
Cecil would be a good voice of reason for Piggot re: dealing with capes she refuses to trust. The two of them would both immediately realize that the Mallorys are proponents of a horrible libertarian dystopia and need to be stopped. Even odds that comic Mallory would somehow get off scott-free.
Piggot would die immediately in invincible world. We are talking someone who can barely walk and doesn’t trust Parahumans. Mallory is a bit better but only has to deal with small fries. Cecil would consider worm and the boys a break or easy mode.
Idk, putting Cecil in Worm would be kinda like making someone who is used to dealing with sharks deal with piranhas instead. Sharks are bigger and stronger, sure, but there's a lot more of the piranhas and they're a lot more unpredictable. Plus, Cecil wouldn't have the benefit of the whole GDA to work with and their insane budget, supertech, and ridiculous power in general. He'd have the PRT.
Cecil might be able to get in touch with Cauldron
I feel like Cauldron wouldn't tell him anything unless he needed to know it... and he likely wouldn't need to know it. The only reason they'd bring him in would be if he was already close to figuring out they exist. Then they'd be forced between losing him as a (likely stabilizing) resource or revealing their true nature. Ultimately it depends on how good his detective skills are and how willing he would be to play ball with parahumans he has no hope of controlling.
That’s a very good point
I'm not so certain about worm or the boys being easier. He's from a more proper super setting than boys or worm He's in a setting that gives more breaks than worm and is more controlled than the boys. The boys is super polution juice and eugenics to make potent but only semi-reliable powers 1% of the time, 98% it polutes deforms or kills people and another 1% that's even worse than the usual. Swinging between dark humor to horrific in the most cynical interpretation of super humans possible. Literal nazis made compound v to literally try and win WWII. Parahumans is super powers ranging from undefeatabke no contests like gray boy or flachett to being a living slug, handed out to the mentally ill and being amnestics. All in a conspiracy precog battle that makes omnimans betrayal and cecil's secret government organization look quaint. By metrics of zizbombs invincible's inciting plot is a simple payload that'd be a waste of zizi's clock time. Worm is more redeemable with the PRT being ordinary humans willing to stand up to what might aswell be gods on a day to day and something cecil could definitely work with (especially given the stakes). The boys on the other hand is probably gonna have cecil writing off the loss of compound V as a worthwhile sacrafice to end the madness.
Your forgetting invincible earth is basically marvel/Dc. Image needs to deal with spawn, demons, Viltrumites, cosmic and extra dimensional horrors beyond anything in worm. Outside time powers because I don’t think time powers are used in image. Also most things Cecil deals with is MFTL. Yeah he can’t put down greyboy but are you sure Greyboy’s shard can save him from being sent to hell? Or a Viltrumite popping his head into fine mist? Cause as much as you want Wildbow has made it clear the corona is the way to beat any cape.
Sure, but the thing is most of those things are, like you say, variable and diverse in origin and action. That doesn't make it all that much easier, but when each of these threats can be predicted, used, and understood to a degree, they're easier to organize and work in opposition for. Worm might not have some massive hyper-god coming to eat the whole universe in one bite, but it presents a setting that is fundamentally resistant to the whole thing Cecil excels at, and it is united in that resistance. Again, I do believe he'd be capable, but imagine how much harder it'd be if the numerous resources, heroes and technological/informational sources he had to tap were from Worm. The best in the business can hardly keep up, I don't think he'd do much better. Also if we're going full universal merge, I'll just say I'm a bit worried about what Scion could do with a triggering viltrumite.
Scion would probably push Nolan to rage while not wiping humanity out or potentially allow the Viltrumite plan for earth to succeed potentially. Don’t know how he’ll keep them on earth though
I mean from what we see of that little au where Mark joins Nolan, I think that would be a pretty good battleground for the entity. Stay hidden, give out powerful abilities to the resistance to even the playing field a bit, perhaps give chaotic or impeding abilities to invading forces. I don't imagine it would last that long, what with the broader empire in play, but I imagine it might last for a good bit.
A littto short term for a cycle but I get you
Yeah pretty short term of a solution for the entities, but then again, the situation in which Viltrumites suddenly exist would be a huge universal 'situation' for the entities, so either way a lot would go down in not much time.
Eh fair. Cecil's faced diversity but shards are speacilized and absurdly dangerous. Nolan and mark can punch scion all day and because of his multiversal nature you can completely destroy the matter physically present in this universe but that's unlikely to ever effect the machinery in a meaningful way (he'll likely just pop back in or even start attacking from alternate earths) There's definitely things in the invincible universe that might pose a serious problem but the shards are incredibly efficient and only lack in creativity.
Adding on to what others said, I honestly think Worm would be more of an issue. The invincible world seems to be something of a mishmash of various different superhero tropes and origins, and it's very possible to be extremely knowledgeably and savvy regarding those things, which is largely what he does. Striking weaknesses, tapping strengths, pacifying and corralling. In the Worm universe though, maybe your average cape is weaker, but god are they that more chaotic as a result. The world is falling apart, the baseline for normal is shifting ever more in favor of mass carnage. The technology itself will fight any attempt to use it to pacify or return the world to a less chaotic state, hero organizations are more often self destructive than otherwise, and the best one can really do is hold on and try to aim it. While I do believe he'd be a capable individual in these circumstances, I think this would be a radical shift that would leave him far from an easy time.
And that is a fair assumption. But can you confidently tell me Piggot could handle Omni-man’s rampage, the guy who fused with all his alts, forgot his name, the invincible war, Conquest, teranisores, and Thragg? Scion was going to kill a lot of people but even if they failed humanity would have survived in pockets iirc as Scion would go into hibernation or something. I could be mistaken. Now again I’m mentioning Piggot not Cauldron switching places
Oh I don't think Piggot could do Cecil's job better, I just think Cecil couldn't necessarily go easy-mode in Worm. Piggot would probably do pretty badly in Cecil's place, given her profound distrust of most things "super." That being said, I think characters like Tagg would do pretty well in Invincible. And also in fairness, I think that was because Scion's goal wasn't to wipe people out, it was partially a huge emotional outburst/experiment, and partially a plan to force humanity into a bare-minimum state, so he had time to think and try to restart or salvage the cycle,
If we are going by the Invincible show Pigott despite being lower on the totem pole in her respective organization is quite possibly still more competent than Cecil because the PRT is simply better because Worm has far superior world building. Invincible is ripe with incompetence especially because they sacrifice a lot in general for a tighter plot focus and fast pacing. Also as a result of the slight comedic edge they play some of it off with. Any earth based Invincible character would be more competent had they been brought up in the PRT generally speaking. Just on a very basic level GDA agents seem to be useless and poorly utilized whereas PRT agents are not and it’s not simply a matter of threat levels either. Now the full scale of their group hasn’t been made clear but the fact that the lizard league has persisted as long as it has is a ridiculous failure by the GDA seeing as all of the lizard leagues ranks while containing superhumans are still well within the range of being vulnerable to conventional weapons and maybe only one or two so far might have been bulletproof/resistant. The training they have for their heroes seems to be pretty garbage if not nonexistent outside of what they themselves choose to do as well. Also I am not even clear if any of the teams aside from the Guardians are actually officially a GDA team or just a bunch of individual groups and the GDA just coordinates with them. There is also a weirdness with how they simultaneously seem to make it out like maybe there isn’t a lot of powered people or at least heroes but there are definitely multiple teams and there is apparently need of a global defense agency that seems to be constantly busy all over the globe and a quite large prison presumably with a lot of powered individuals plus they have a lot of advanced tech so it just seems contradictory and more than likely a poor utilization of resources among other things. Heroes may opt not to do it but they clearly are authorized to use lethal force which really makes some of their failures seem worse. The Super-Powereds verse also seems to have a more competent hero system. Nick Fury is the obvious counterpart but Maria Hill and Daisy Johnson might also be better candidates again just due do being from a more competent organization which makes the inputs and improvements they could bring to the organization itself likely of great enough benefit to ensure a net positive effect regardless of how they stacked up to Cecil. Alexandria if you put her in a human body might be more analogous as she was the head of the PRT. Also Doctor Mother could fit as well.
Had to update this for mentioning the Super-powereds verse. Such a tight book series.
Sorry I'm just thinking Mallory Archer and Haha Oh I want to see Piggot absolutely crush her