Alicornutopia

Bluelantern wrote:Huh, hard to explain, but I think my issues are:
1)Glam is assigning too much blame to themself.
2)They are not assigning enough blame to other people, or at least underplaying their role on this.
*2.1)When Piggot said "You are not negotiating from a position of advantage" (or something like that) I think that marks her a person that can't be trusted to play fair. Which doesn't create a healthy mental enviroment to anyone. Like, that by itself would make me label her as "someone that probably should be removed from power at earliest convenience".
3)They are downplaying their own suffering over the matter, which is sort of... unstable? I mean, I think they need a degree of being certain that they should or should not stick to something, which also includes realizing that their own rights are valid and should be respected.

And... I don't know maybe there is a deal of bias, because I think that Glam suffering is a bad thing?

Okay, it's easier to respond to those topics.

1) Saddes subscribe to the "Heroic Responsibility" narrative, even if they don't have a name like that for it. It's subverbal, even. Basically, everything is their fault, especially things they should have "known better" than to cause. Glam feels like they should have "known better" in all interactions with adults, so it's all their fault.

2) Along with (1) comes something that's like... a weird mix of everyone being a PC and an NPC. On the one hand, everyone is an agent to Saddes, everyone's interesting, everyone deserves to be treated like a person, and they like everyone. On the other, they understand that some people's disposition and circumstances might make it harder to break out of certain molds or patterns, and they completely sympathise with it and are only sometimes bitter about it. Their description of the situation with Ms. Yates to Youth Guard guy shows some of this: Ms. Yates may not be the best person in the world, but she's been dealing with parahumans for a while, Glam acted in a very threatening way (see (1)) even if they didn't realise this earlier, she was only doing her job and it included following general guidelines the Protectorate had set, etc. This characteristic is less subverbal than (1), it's something they have to sometimes actually think about, but they genuinely do like people in general, they were sincere about it to Lorica, so that helps a lot.

3) They do realise this, but because of (1) and (2) they also do tend to downplay their own suffering as less important. In their opinion, though, they're only making other people's suffering exactly as important as their own. They also have an inner sense of "fairness" that was grossly violated by the YG when they did what they did, causing other people lots of suffering and potentially even ruining Yates' career because of something Glam did recklessly, and Glam feels like Glam "should be punished" for having caused this: because of (1) and (2), punishing other people is nowhere near as effective as punishing themself for not having been able to prevent the disaster.

As for Glam suffering being a bad thing, well, Glam agrees.

I may not :3

Glam has only had a partial explanation for Yates leaving. Supposedly, it was entirely voluntary on her part, but I don’t think anybody actually believes that. What actually happened?

Yates was strongly advised to resign, and agreed mostly on the grounds that this looks better on her résumé and is more likely to come with a recommendation for future prospects from Piggot compared to being fired to placate the YG.

And the YG is the one giving this strong advice, despite all the times Glam said Yates should not personally get in trouble? I was hoping it was something a bit more complicated, because I still had hope the YG were not quite that bad. Other than this part, they had not acted in a way Glam had earlier explicitly asked them not to act. Even with the later phone call they simply refused to act in the way he requested, instead of actually asking in a way he requested they not.

I'd've guessed Director Piggot would've advised her so, because it's bad for both of them if the Youth Guard get an opportunity to force a firing.

Yeah, it was mostly Piggot's advice.

In Glowficced Wormverses, are parahuman abilities magic or Sufficiently Advanced Science? Based on the details of canon I’ve picked up, the latter seems more likely, but I think I remember something classifying it as magic.

On a completely different topic, why do the aliens in Gem’s world let the witch get so far out of control as to eat the Earth? It seems like, even more than harnessing its substantial energy, they should want to prevent existential threats to the one planet with emotions.

Presumably it got out of even their own control.

That’s what I thought, but something Gem said in Most Likely a Refuge made it sound like they purposefully let it happen.

It's all just Sufficiently Advanced. The fact that powers don't break conservation of energy is important in canon, but it also comes up at the exact point where readers' eyes tend to glaze over so it's easy to miss. (This is also why Eden wanted Kithabel—she's a potential solution to entropy.)

The thing that treated it like magic, would that be Grendyne? Her magic copied powers for about the same reason the Mirror would be able to.