I suspect it is designed to try to stun its target. Since it knows that Tyler is completely powerless, its zaps are currently merely uncomfortable for adult superheros. If it gets confused and tries to actually capture the Powers, it might increase its power to the point that they get hurt, but I am fairly certain that upgrading to “lethal” is not in the cards.
Most of these kids have no strong reason to care, I suppose, but shouldn’t American Eagle be intervening in this battle on behalf of truth, justice, and the American way? Also, shouldn’t Julie be sticking up for her crush Moonshadow?
I didn’t realize that “Castle” laws were a partisan issue.
Granted, in a world where superpowers are so abundant, the argument over the “right to bear arms” might shift from gun ownership to the offensive use of superpowers. In which case I would think that American Eagle’s (and her party’s) talking line on the issue might be very different than in our own world.
But American Eagle and Patriot Act wouldn’t work too well as parodies of American politics if the PS238 universe’s Democrats and Republicans were too different from the real world.
Self defense is sort of a partisan issue because the left believe that people should have more of a burden to prove that they really and reasonably felt threatened and violence was really the only option than the right. With some exceptions allighning with general sympathies of the sides.
This is actually booby trapping their home or place of business which is a different thing than defending yourself in your own home again the right is more likely to sympathies with if they weren’t trespassing this wouldn’t be an issue.
Because she’s meant to be the “broad appeal” version of Democrat politics, she’d probably take a nuanced “but only sometimes” approach (especially since she’s a kid, and they usually don’t think through their ideas of what’s “right” in a given situation to determine an underlying rule, just going with their gut) on Castle Laws. Because Democrats who take a hard-line pro-sue-the-pants-off-a-guy-defending-himself-in-his-own-home position still lose elections here, meaning that, while there are hardliners on the Left who support such a position, most don’t. So, since she’s a broad appeal face for that side of things, she’d be against having defensive weapons like this set up where they might hurt people, but not overtly against the idea of using them against real bad guys if you happened to have them. Fortunately for her, she gets to play in the case-by-case basis world after the fact, so it’s fairly easy for her to be emphatic about her position.
Patriot Act, on the other hand, is a bit more of a pastiche of what the Left thinks the Republican view is, but in this case, he’d probably just come off as weirdly harsh in proclaiming everyone’s right to defend themselves. I think a significant part of that is that he’s a boy trying to be a “tough guy,” and that makes him come off – in his childish way – as being more about justifying hurting people than about doing what is necessary to defend people.
Well they are both Superheroes so both of them probably think lethal use of force is going Too Far as a general rule, because they’re used to a world where non-lethal force works fine, and everyone can take at least a decent thumping.
‘Apologizing for “Father” may clue a ps238 kid as to the source for some of the computer issues. I’m not rating Zodon any more villanous than before. He seems to have a better idea about the consequences of the chaos-orb than Tyler-napper chick. He’d like it, but he wants power and respect not decimation.
Right now our attention is off Tylor-Toby-Kidnapper which I consider the most important thread. Ron’s coming of age and Flea’s cleverness are great, but they are supporting Tyler’s agency. Parents and kidnapper (and maybe Toby) are not. Zodon and the chaos orb are red herrings. Not that I mind the adults getting zapped due to their paranoia and not trusting Tyler without any just cause…
I think terming the chaos orb a “red herring” is going a bit too far, though I concur that the central plot thread is Tyler and what P&G want with him. I suspect the chaos orb is actually woven into that. Zodon is also not a red herring so much as a tangential line complicating (and enabling, to a degree) Tyler’s ability to have influence on the fate of the chaos orb.
While I agree that Toby should be doing more to promote Tyler’s agency, I also suspect that he isn’t failing to do so out of callousness or cruelty, whereas the others involved are. Toby’s doing it out of desperation and ignorance. I am sure he’d have foolishly assumed Tyler would want what Toby was planning, but I’m also sure that he’d have preferred to introduce the plan to Tyler in a way that lets Tyler come on board, rather than springing it on him like this. The other threads have forced his hand, however.
I am fairly sure that Toby will make the “I know better” mistake if Tyler balks, but remember, too, that Toby doesn’t know Moonshadow is Tyler, so he’ll be more within his rights to assume he knows what Tyler would want more than Moonshadow does. After all, Toby WAS Tyler for the majority of his life. If Toby finds out Tyler balks at this plan, he’ll try to persuade him…but I doubt he’d force it. He might, but only if it became time-critical and he didn’t think Tyler really knew what was going on. (Note: this doesn’t entirely justify the “I know better than Tyler what Tyler wants” attitude that would be evinced, but it’s not ENTIRELY wrong, because it’s quite possible that Toby really does know better than Tyler what the actual situation is. And, importantly, Toby really does have Tyler’s best interests at heart, even if he’s wrong about what those are.)
So…no, I don’t think Toby can be lumped in with the “denying Tyler’s agency” crowd, because what we know of his character and motivations suggest that, even if he’s technically doing so, he’s doing so because he lacks a better option. Ask yourself what he should do differently, then remember that he doesn’t know where Tyler is and doesn’t know how to convey the plan to him to ask his opinion, and has to do what he can for his brother with what he does know.
I do agree that Zodon still isn’t particularly villainous. He’s not “in the right” for activating the tower’s defenses, but I’m 100% sure he knew they wouldn’t actually hurt anybody. He IS that smart.
I really like your assessment of Toby’s motives here. I think it’s also important to remember that Toby already gave Tyler powers once, and if I remember the story correctly, it made Tyler happy and it helped fix his relationship with his parents. So in this case Toby literally does know better than Tyler, because he’s already been through this situation before.
Granted, Tyler has already seen alternate versions of himself who had powers and none of them were happy, I wonder if Toby remembers that situation.
I looked over the story and I think Toby sort of skipped the part about how this effected Tyler’s relationship with his “parents”. Also I get the impression that there was a day or at most a week where Tyler had powers thats not really enough time to make an informed decision.
Toby saw that his brother’s reaction to his plan was panic but he told him it will be different this time. I think the real difference is Toby ignores Tylers desires because he wants to do give Tyler what he wants but can’t so he’s grasping at straws, Tyler’s “parents” ignored his desires because they didn’t really care. Also Toby is a child and younger than Tyler so its understandable for him not to know what do to here.
The Herring is quite a tool in this village fight. Also it may be a little bit … well, not too fresh … 🙂 CNR
/me ducks from thrown fish and especially hammers
—
IF it’s Toby trying to buy a set of powers, I guess he’s mimicking his parent’s style of doing things: “We know best, Here you go, now we have bought your happiness, you don’t need to say »thank you«”. He needs a different role models.
1. Guess who wants to reduce her size now.
2. The adults can’t pursue the kids with the orb without leaving the others undefended.
3. Isn’t Zodon still under the Tyler identity?
It’s conceivable that Zodon anticipated the move of focusing the drones’ attention away from kid-sized targets (himself being more similar to kids than adults in size, if maybe not mass when including his chair), though that’s a bit more of a Batman Gambit than I’d really expect of him. However, it’s quite plausible that he expected the force employed by the system to be low (because it’d be aimed at Tyler, and to incapacitate or maybe even just discourage rather than to kill) and expects that he can endure that level of nuisance well enough to get out before it becomes an issue – especially given the target-rich environment.
Wait, when were the drones turned on?
Given the “Father” remark, right after Zodon told FLOYD to do so.
Nice of Pistonic to stop the drones from shooting kids. Not nice that Tyler can get shot in his own house.
But thanks to Pistonic, Tyler’s not going to be targeted. 🙂
No thanks to Zodon, who created this situation in the first place. :-/ Sorry, now gotta disagree with the idea that Zodon has lost his villain status.
I’m not going to go so far as to say Zodon is a hero. But the drones setting is stun. Not exactly typical of villains either.
I doubt it was Zodon who set it to stun. “Stun” is probably their default setting, as per being the security system of a superhero group.
I suspect it is designed to try to stun its target. Since it knows that Tyler is completely powerless, its zaps are currently merely uncomfortable for adult superheros. If it gets confused and tries to actually capture the Powers, it might increase its power to the point that they get hurt, but I am fairly certain that upgrading to “lethal” is not in the cards.
Most of these kids have no strong reason to care, I suppose, but shouldn’t American Eagle be intervening in this battle on behalf of truth, justice, and the American way? Also, shouldn’t Julie be sticking up for her crush Moonshadow?
This battle just broke into the kid’s area. It’s probably only been moments. I don’t think either of them has had time to react.
“Crush” in more ways than one….
“I think she squeezed my back too hard.”
Not to put too fine a point on it, but afaik shooting people in your own home IS the american way?
The conservative American Way. That’s something Patriot Act would stand up for, not American Eagle.
I didn’t realize that “Castle” laws were a partisan issue.
Granted, in a world where superpowers are so abundant, the argument over the “right to bear arms” might shift from gun ownership to the offensive use of superpowers. In which case I would think that American Eagle’s (and her party’s) talking line on the issue might be very different than in our own world.
Everything’s a partisan issue these days.
But American Eagle and Patriot Act wouldn’t work too well as parodies of American politics if the PS238 universe’s Democrats and Republicans were too different from the real world.
Self defense is sort of a partisan issue because the left believe that people should have more of a burden to prove that they really and reasonably felt threatened and violence was really the only option than the right. With some exceptions allighning with general sympathies of the sides.
This is actually booby trapping their home or place of business which is a different thing than defending yourself in your own home again the right is more likely to sympathies with if they weren’t trespassing this wouldn’t be an issue.
Because she’s meant to be the “broad appeal” version of Democrat politics, she’d probably take a nuanced “but only sometimes” approach (especially since she’s a kid, and they usually don’t think through their ideas of what’s “right” in a given situation to determine an underlying rule, just going with their gut) on Castle Laws. Because Democrats who take a hard-line pro-sue-the-pants-off-a-guy-defending-himself-in-his-own-home position still lose elections here, meaning that, while there are hardliners on the Left who support such a position, most don’t. So, since she’s a broad appeal face for that side of things, she’d be against having defensive weapons like this set up where they might hurt people, but not overtly against the idea of using them against real bad guys if you happened to have them. Fortunately for her, she gets to play in the case-by-case basis world after the fact, so it’s fairly easy for her to be emphatic about her position.
Patriot Act, on the other hand, is a bit more of a pastiche of what the Left thinks the Republican view is, but in this case, he’d probably just come off as weirdly harsh in proclaiming everyone’s right to defend themselves. I think a significant part of that is that he’s a boy trying to be a “tough guy,” and that makes him come off – in his childish way – as being more about justifying hurting people than about doing what is necessary to defend people.
Well they are both Superheroes so both of them probably think lethal use of force is going Too Far as a general rule, because they’re used to a world where non-lethal force works fine, and everyone can take at least a decent thumping.
Since its not really the computer either way, it could also mean sorry my father is everywhere at once or sorry my Last Place is such a jerk.
I wonder what the rays being fired are? They can’t be lethal if they think everyone is Tyler and has to capture them.
‘Apologizing for “Father” may clue a ps238 kid as to the source for some of the computer issues. I’m not rating Zodon any more villanous than before. He seems to have a better idea about the consequences of the chaos-orb than Tyler-napper chick. He’d like it, but he wants power and respect not decimation.
Right now our attention is off Tylor-Toby-Kidnapper which I consider the most important thread. Ron’s coming of age and Flea’s cleverness are great, but they are supporting Tyler’s agency. Parents and kidnapper (and maybe Toby) are not. Zodon and the chaos orb are red herrings. Not that I mind the adults getting zapped due to their paranoia and not trusting Tyler without any just cause…
I think terming the chaos orb a “red herring” is going a bit too far, though I concur that the central plot thread is Tyler and what P&G want with him. I suspect the chaos orb is actually woven into that. Zodon is also not a red herring so much as a tangential line complicating (and enabling, to a degree) Tyler’s ability to have influence on the fate of the chaos orb.
While I agree that Toby should be doing more to promote Tyler’s agency, I also suspect that he isn’t failing to do so out of callousness or cruelty, whereas the others involved are. Toby’s doing it out of desperation and ignorance. I am sure he’d have foolishly assumed Tyler would want what Toby was planning, but I’m also sure that he’d have preferred to introduce the plan to Tyler in a way that lets Tyler come on board, rather than springing it on him like this. The other threads have forced his hand, however.
I am fairly sure that Toby will make the “I know better” mistake if Tyler balks, but remember, too, that Toby doesn’t know Moonshadow is Tyler, so he’ll be more within his rights to assume he knows what Tyler would want more than Moonshadow does. After all, Toby WAS Tyler for the majority of his life. If Toby finds out Tyler balks at this plan, he’ll try to persuade him…but I doubt he’d force it. He might, but only if it became time-critical and he didn’t think Tyler really knew what was going on. (Note: this doesn’t entirely justify the “I know better than Tyler what Tyler wants” attitude that would be evinced, but it’s not ENTIRELY wrong, because it’s quite possible that Toby really does know better than Tyler what the actual situation is. And, importantly, Toby really does have Tyler’s best interests at heart, even if he’s wrong about what those are.)
So…no, I don’t think Toby can be lumped in with the “denying Tyler’s agency” crowd, because what we know of his character and motivations suggest that, even if he’s technically doing so, he’s doing so because he lacks a better option. Ask yourself what he should do differently, then remember that he doesn’t know where Tyler is and doesn’t know how to convey the plan to him to ask his opinion, and has to do what he can for his brother with what he does know.
I do agree that Zodon still isn’t particularly villainous. He’s not “in the right” for activating the tower’s defenses, but I’m 100% sure he knew they wouldn’t actually hurt anybody. He IS that smart.
I really like your assessment of Toby’s motives here. I think it’s also important to remember that Toby already gave Tyler powers once, and if I remember the story correctly, it made Tyler happy and it helped fix his relationship with his parents. So in this case Toby literally does know better than Tyler, because he’s already been through this situation before.
Granted, Tyler has already seen alternate versions of himself who had powers and none of them were happy, I wonder if Toby remembers that situation.
I looked over the story and I think Toby sort of skipped the part about how this effected Tyler’s relationship with his “parents”. Also I get the impression that there was a day or at most a week where Tyler had powers thats not really enough time to make an informed decision.
Toby saw that his brother’s reaction to his plan was panic but he told him it will be different this time. I think the real difference is Toby ignores Tylers desires because he wants to do give Tyler what he wants but can’t so he’s grasping at straws, Tyler’s “parents” ignored his desires because they didn’t really care. Also Toby is a child and younger than Tyler so its understandable for him not to know what do to here.
The Herring is quite a tool in this village fight. Also it may be a little bit … well, not too fresh … 🙂 CNR
/me ducks from thrown fish and especially hammers
—
IF it’s Toby trying to buy a set of powers, I guess he’s mimicking his parent’s style of doing things: “We know best, Here you go, now we have bought your happiness, you don’t need to say »thank you«”. He needs a different role models.
The chaos-orb isn’t a red herring. It’s the MacGuffin.
And given the gaps in Toby’s memories, I’m not sure he actually can know what Tyler wants.
1. Guess who wants to reduce her size now.
2. The adults can’t pursue the kids with the orb without leaving the others undefended.
3. Isn’t Zodon still under the Tyler identity?
It’s conceivable that Zodon anticipated the move of focusing the drones’ attention away from kid-sized targets (himself being more similar to kids than adults in size, if maybe not mass when including his chair), though that’s a bit more of a Batman Gambit than I’d really expect of him. However, it’s quite plausible that he expected the force employed by the system to be low (because it’d be aimed at Tyler, and to incapacitate or maybe even just discourage rather than to kill) and expects that he can endure that level of nuisance well enough to get out before it becomes an issue – especially given the target-rich environment.