 brain surgery by Bonesaw or Panacea) some of her insights or ideas she could propose could even go beyond those of the Cauldron or Valkyrie.
Considering that Teacher seems to be very interested in powers themselves and how they work not just as means of building an empire, but to do something bigger with them himself, he should be very interested in Taylor (at least if he is aware she is still alive), because, depending on what he wants to do specifically and why, Taylor (again even without her powers) could become one of his greatest assets, or his most dangerous enemies.
Same goes for others who mess or want to mess with the Shards themselves – like Valkyrie seems to do, or just want to understand powers, Shards and Entities from a more academic point of view. They should also have a good reason to keep close attention to Taylor if they are aware that she’s alive, and just how much she can understand on the topic.
If Victoria ever has a chance to go to meet Taylor, she should probably forget about reapplying to that university in megalopolis. Taylor could probably teach her more than a legion of university professors.
I should’ve said “If Victoria ever has a chance to WORK WITH Taylor[…]” in the last paragraph above. I don’t mean to imply, that Victoria has to go after Taylor, and couldn’t meet her in some other way.
What is important for Victoria is that the ladies would need to have a reason and an opportunity to compare notes on powers, and their sources. This is what would give Victoria a chance to learn.
Looks like I need to make a small correction to the method of quick searching for strings in Worm, I described a few comments above. Looks like you need to search by Arc, not in 10 arc chunks. There is at least one browser that gets confused otherwise, and searches only through text of a few chapters in the beginning and the end of the displayed text.
On top of it, when you display an Arc you need to make sure that all chapters are displayed before searching for strings. In longer Arcs you need to click at “Older posts” button at the bottom of the page before all chapters are displayed. Clicking “Older posts” repeatedly can let you display an entire ten arc part of Worm, but as stated above may NOT let you correctly search entire text with CTRL+F. Stick to individual Arcs, when you want to do such search.
Re. 10, just so I’m not misunderstood. I am aware, that the person who could do the most to keep Amy from leaving is Victoria, but considering what she went through herself, Victoria is perfectly excused in my eyes. The second line would be the other New Wave members, but it is obvious that they were also not up to the task (each of them for different reasons).
Someone in the Wardens should’ve noticed what’s gonig on with Amy, and stepped in. If they thought that they were also not up to the task, they should have asked for help from someone who was. This is the type of situation when you should send someone like Ms. Yamada in. I don’t care how filled is Yamada’s, and other specialist’s schedule was. There must be someone for Amy who is not only a heartbroken girl, but also an invaluable resource and a potential S-class threat. Best thing about it is that Victoria told Yamada precisely that almost ath the beginning of the story, and Yamada apparently ignored it. It may turn out to be Jessica’s worst mistake yet.
On top of it nobody in the Wardens thought, that maybe keeping Amy on a leash not much longer than Riely’s probably wasn’t the best idea, especially when Amy was in such a bad place psychically already. Guess that people chose to see former Birdcage inmate, and nobody thought why Amy ended up there exactly.
So yes, Wardens could react in time, they just turned out not to be sensitive enough.
…huh? You got a very different impression of Amy’s situation than I did.
All of her work was still closely monitored by Bonesow, and don’t tell me nobody would rise an issue if she stopped regularly reporting her whereabouts to Warden HQ. That’s no freedom.
I think you’re confusing things. It was Bonesaw who had all her work checked by Panacea. Not the other way around. That’s a mark of trust, but suspicion. And given that she had regular meetings with Marquis, I’d say she was allowed a great deal of freedom of movement. She was living in an apartment complex that housed Warden personnel, but I interpret that as a perk of what she did for them and not a restriction.
I’m pretty sure that she was working as an independent contracter — a rogue.
The way I see it Bonesaw and Panacea were checking each other’s work. I can also see why they would agree to this. They both understood, that they’d done horrible things in the past, and they may potentially snap again. It is a danger they will likely never be fully free from – they allowed their powers to overtake too much of their personalities once, and as long they have those powers it can potentially happen again. They needed someone to look them at their hands, and they were the only ones who can do it for each other right now.
Those two, and Nilbog (who is prone to the same sort of madness) are in a very similar situation, and not just because of similarities between their powers. All three of them agreed to various degrees of oversight and other limitations of their freedoms, because they accepted the fact that they did and potentially could do it again. That they kept each other company was because they understood not only each other’s powers, including destructive potential of those powers, better then anyone else, but because they could use this understanding to keep each other sane.
And I stress, that those limitations put on Panacea, Bonesaw, and Nilbog were ultimately self-imposed. I do not believe that any of those three couldn’t escape their current situation if they put their minds to it. It is just that they realized that if they did it they could end up slipping, and doing something they would regret later. The fact that Valkyrie found both Bonesaw and Niblog peacefully working with everyone next to the Wardens HQ is the best proof of that. They passed up a perfect opportunity to escape. Especially Niblog could rebuild his little kingdom in whatever world the HQ ended up in without any problem, and return to his old ways. The fact that there were not so many people around could be a problem for Bonesaw, but I’m certain she could work aroud it if she wanted to escape.
Amy ultimately chose to escape at Niblog’s prodding, because her situation ultimately became unbearable for her. Her strongest motivator, and at the same time the reason she is susceptible to giving her power too much control over her actions and personality is her obsessive love for Victoria likely largely caused by addiction to Victoria’s aura.
It is impossible to tell how much of it is love, and how much is addiction, but since addiction is almost certainly involved Amy is just as unable to let go of this love, as Victoria was unable to stop loving Amy after her emotions were alterd. In fact Amy’s situation is likely even worse, because she probably does not even suspect that addiction is involved (neither does Victoria suspect it for the record), while Victoria knew the reason behind her state of feelings. How do you fight against addiction if you don’t even know you’re addicted after all? The other reason that Amy’s situation is worse is that Victoria’s artifical love could be cured by Amy, while Amy’s powers can’t affect herself, and there seems to be no one else available at rhe moment, who could and would be willing to magically cure Amy’s addiction/obsession with Victoria even if they knew about the problem.
What Amy did was puruse the object of her love/addiction, until it became clear that getting it would be impossible. At that point she tried to run not from the Wardens, or the system that put unfair restrictions on her, but from Victoria. She run both because she fears what she will do if she is constantly reminded of Victoria’s presence while being unable to be with her, and because this constant reminder hurts her so much. Of course as long as she is not strong enough to resist her obsession/addiction she will probably keep trying to find a way to get back to Victoria one way or another.
The only way to deal with Amy’s problem is for her and likely also for Victoria to realize what the source of this “love” is first, and then to get professional help. Confronting Victoria once they realize the nature of the problem would probably help both of them a lot, as much as it would be painful for them, especially for Victoria who would need to face the fact that she inadvertently manipulated Amy’s feelings just as severely as Amy manipulated hers.
For what it’s worth, Wildbow has come out and said that while Vicky’s aura had a part to play in Amy’s original attraction, the fandom overemphasizes it by a huge margin. It is a little detail for the observant, but it is incorrect to say that Amy’s feelings are entirely the result of the aura or in any kind of way an addiction to the aura. The idea that Vicky accidentally mastered Amy through repeated exposure to her emotion aura is false.
Trebar, do you have a source