I’ve got a surprise for him but I can’t find him anywhere.
Early Tyler Tobies inability would most likely not be because Tyler happens to have something he needs to take care of but because he is actively avoiding his surprise.
“I’ve got a surprise for him but I can’t find him anywhere.” is what Toby said, and Temp.Observer is saying that Early Tyler would be fleeing Toby because he didn’t want the surprise rather than because he had something else important to do.
Actually, this reaction from Cecil’s coat is odd. I don’t remember it ever acting that way towards Toby. This is not the first time the coat has encountered Toby (03302012). And whatever hostility there is against Toby is really from Cecil.
So either the coat is simply reflecting Cecil’s dislike for Toby,
OR
The coat is reacting to WHAT Toby’s trying to bring to Tyler.
I believe Toby is being tricked into either hosting something that the coat dislikes or changing himself in a disturbing way which the coat dislikes. If the coat was reacting to Cecil’s dislike of Toby that would have bean a thing since before this arc. I guess its possible that Cecil’s dislike has recently grown but if anything he should be getting used to Toby.
I just thought the coat could be picking up on hostility towards its master. Cecil has been excluding Toby from his brother’s life since day one. And while we know if anything Cecil is just giving Tyler an excuse to do something he already wanted to do. Toby would likely blame Cecil for stealing his brother from him.
Toby hasn’t shown any resentment to Cecil though. Remember that Toby wants to be friends with Cecil thanks to his shared memories. I’d even say he wants to be friends with Cecil as much as he wants to be a good brother to Tyler.
As for Cecil, while Cecil dislikes Toby, it’s not a dislike filled with anger and expressed with hostility. At its worst, it’s very civil, and more about getting metapower vibes from Toby than anything personal. After all, Cecil does know who Toby is and why/how he has powers. That understanding would pretty much remove any personal feelings of distrust in someone as rational as Cecil.
Yea most likely something Toby is hosting or some way Toby was changed or changed himself.
I have every reason to believe that Cecil’s negative feelings for Toby are for reasons Cecil knows are not rational that would actually go down over time.
I think its a combination of the radiation which he’s getting used to not meaning anything bad, and Toby falling into some sort of uncanny valley because he’s not completely his own person but not quite Tyler, and subconsciously scapegoating Toby for Tyler lying to him.
Its true the comic has given us no indication that Toby has any ill will towards Cecil. Its just more likely to be something that went up with time than Cecil’s weird feelings towards Toby.
Remember Toby got his powers fixed. He no longer has Chaos and Order effects and the comments on the raffle prizes page suspect a glove to be linked.
If Toby is now just Order and the coat is Chaos…
Toby’s powers did not get “fixed” of his “Chaos and Order” effects. Any time he uses them, they produce a reality-warping side-effect to balance them out, whether in favor of Chaos or Order (02012012).
I think the cure you’re thinking of is this: 04062012. What happened was that Toby warped reality to officially or actually become Tyler’s twin brother (the meeting where the powers were presented with both Tyler and Toby makes me think it’s less the latter, more the former, legally rather than some sort of retcon reality warp (03022012)). The catch was that Cecil would distrust him and not think of him as his friend though they were once the same single person.
Even after Toby made himself and Tyler brothers (and removed the curse on Cranston’s mental powers), the reality warp side effect remains as seen here, when a robot-breaking punch also creates butterflies: 11262012.
Okay, but he’s not pure Order now. Nor is he pure Chaos. The balancing side effect worked for *both* Order and Chaos. If something he does with it benefits Order, the effect kicks in to counter that, thus is for Chaos. If something he uses it on follows Chaos’ agenda, the side effect reins it in for Order.
So what’s happening now- assuming he’s cured and not merely being really careful with the side effects of his powers- is the side effect is simply gone- and that means no balancing out for both Order and Chaos…
… Which leads me to suspect that a really big reality-warping side effect is in Toby’s future if he ever loses whatever it is he’s using to circumvent the side effect- OR it’s simply going to happen despite it.
Reminds me a lot of the pen-and-paper RPG Mage: the Ascension. All players characters- mages- are basically reality warpers of different sorts and specializations. You’re really powerful but each time you really push reality, you accumulate Paradox points (which you can think of as representing actual paradox or reality contradictions caused by your reshaping of it). Accumulate enough and you will get backlash which can be really horrific depending on the amount you’ve accumulated or how big an effect you pulled off.
I can’t help but feel Toby’s simply holding off “paying” for his reality warping rather than cured of it.
The simple solution, then, is for him to have both an Orderly and a Chaotic effect – where *both* of them are positive in some way, or at least not negative. Like stopping a villain’s rampage (orderly) by turning his weapons to butterflies (chaotic).
I’m pretty sure he’d be better off just destroying the weapons than turning them to butterflies. Making butterflies is not inherently chaotic its the fact that he didn’t choose that part of the outcome that would be
How do we know what counts as Orderly and Chaotic? We have some simplified working definitions- “Doing what everyone else wants” vs. “Doing what you want” (paraphrased)- but if so, parsing what’s what gets messy when we go into specifics. A rampage is obviously against Order but making butterflies isn’t necessarily Chaotic as TO pointed out.
Practically speaking, time: Toby will mostly be using his powers in the heat of battle- he won’t have much time and attention to spare for analysis and decision-making.
Also, another practical aspect: Toby can see to some extent the possible future side effects of his chosen use of his power, but it’s not like he can *choose* them. That’s an important difference/detail. If Toby has Plan A for his power, Side Effect A will result. In order to avoid SE A, he’ll have to pick Plan B which will have its own SE B. With the previous two problems, going with your suggestion is going to be tough.
Lastly, even if Toby manages to follow both Chaos and Order with what he’s doing, what’s to stop his power from imposing a side effect anyway?
Toby should try to mitigate the cost/side effect of his powers- he’s already doing that- but I think it will always entail something else as part of it. The responsibility for this power is just not going to be simple.
Honestly I think figuring out how to do good in such a way that it technically favors chaos will be the easy part of ethically balancing his powers. In the not so distant as we would like to pretend past he could have teleported all the slaves in America to Canada for instance. That would likely have a ton of side effects he wouldn’t like but that’s because the world is complicated. He’s having issues with balance because he’s a kid who doesn’t know the difference between doing what is right and doing what others expect of him yet.
The warping Toby did was to cure Cranston of the curse on him, in exchange for Cranston handling the work to make him part of Tyler’s family. The bad luck spillover he suffered as a result (since it was being done to help him as well as Cranston) resulted in him being unable to gain Cecil as the best friend he’d ever have. However one needs to consider that a GOOD thing, because otherwise it would have been one more thing he’d taken (albeit unintentionally) from Tyler just due to his existing.
Since we don’t have Toby’s rules well-defined for us, it’s very difficult to figure out how to use his powers to solve problems. He can do “anything,” but anything plot-inconvenient would come with an unacceptable price. Since he’s a side character for the most part, this works. If he were more of a main character, the definition of “orderly” and “chaotic” results/uses and how these get “balanced” would need more definition. Quantum, when he grows up, might have learned how to use his power in ways that let him control the primary and backlash effects by doing two things that balance on the order/chaos axis while serving good ends. This will still provide its own limitation to his power, perhaps slowing him down as he has to study consequences, or simply still requiring him to come up with esoteric or sideways solutions rather than simply “wishing” the problem solved.
It’d be interesting to see an alternate timeline where Toby doesn’t make that deal with Cranston, and see what form Cranston’s redemption takes, and what other fallout from Toby getting “the best friend he could ever have” out of Cecil would be. Was Toby’s choice the right one, because it would have destroyed Tyler in some fashion? Or should he have left well enough alone because it would work out? Or were either timeline going to have about the same mix of upsides and downsides for Toby and Tyler?
I don’t think ethics really comes too much into Toby’s powers. For all its flaws and limitations, that’s why D&D’s moral alignment system works and is popular: it knows there’s a difference between “Order” and “Good”, and “Chaos” and “Evil”. The forces of Order may be made up of angels and Chaos has demons and imps, yet the big bosses are pure embodiments of Order and Chaos. In fact, I don’t think Toby has any real moral problems (he acts heroically and certainly isn’t like spoiled all-powerful parallel universe Tyler) with his powers.
On that note, I’m not sure it’s a case of “doesn’t know the difference between doing what is right and doing what others expect of him yet” either. Toby hasn’t really had any conflict with adults (except for the O&C direct influence/’Meh’ incident) or authority or others in general. His most disastrous use of powers so far was in Destructive Writing and he fixed that.
Also, the side effects aren’t even necessarily malicious, either. Teleport that turns nearby people’s clothes into Tron costumes and telephones into bananas? The worst, most tragic ones were Cranston giving up Redemption and Toby not having Cecil as a friend.
Funnily enough, I just realized that such would have happened “anyway”. Cranston broke the agreement he made about inhibiting his powers (even if it was justified/wasn’t his fault), but he’d have to be punished and being freed from his telepathic curse makes him seem politically untrustworthy to people in the know. Cecil rejecting Toby happened in the sense that Cecil doesn’t like metahumans. Huh. If you think about it, those “punishments” seem like Order balancing the scales (or maybe the latter is Chaos; hard to tell).
Ultimately, I’m very doubtful Toby can cheat or tame or eliminate the side effect. I think Toby’s power has a price to be paid for no matter what he does. Age, wisdom, and growing skill can allow him to be very careful with it, but I just don’t think there’s truly a way he can render the side effect as meaningless.
That said… The RPG I mentioned, Mage: the Ascension- given the whole “push reality; reality pushes back” thing in its magic system, thus the safe and meaningful way to use your reality-warping powers in that setting was to be really, really, really subtle about it. They called it “coincidental magic”- altering reality so lightly and cleverly it seems like you didn’t alter reality at all. It seemed like coincidence. An example of which is throwing a baseball at a bad guy. Your throw misses, but your magic means it bounces against the wall behind him, hits him in the back of the head and knocks him out. A VERY unlikely thing to happen- but possible.
Toby knows this and has done this. Who’d have thought guiding a paper airplane could end an invasion of inter-dimensional beings?
I believe that Toby can deal with the whole order chaos balance thing but the world is complicated and sometimes well intentioned actions have negative consequences.
My take is a lot of but not all the consequences would happen simply because the world is complicated and not because of a side effect of his powers. This I believe is going to be the thing that Toby can never quite master.
Another part of the issue is “power incontinence” when his powers actually do something that he did not ask them to. I believe that this most likely could be solved by balancing between the forces extracting a price. This will require understanding what Law and Chaos want and understanding the difference between chaos and evil, ultimately I think this will be easier to navigate than just the fact that the world is complicated.
His powers still work exactly the same way is my take. He poured two drinks with his powers – one the use of his powers, the other his side effect. That struck me as significant as *he can use his powers so both use and side effect are what he wants*. I don’t know how far that goes, but *everyone* knows ‘quantum’ relates to consciousness, so maybe each time he *intends* for the side-effect to work out… it just does.
Toby affects luck, occasionally, doesn’t he? If he wants to be lucky enough to catch Tyler, or if it would be unlucky to find Tyler, perhaps the coat would be affected by that as well?
But when the Order/Chaos war is happening he’s close to Toby many times without a reaction. So either Toby’s Wish/Unwish in the Destructive Writing story changed something, or it’s not Toby himself that it’s reacting to.
While it’s a bit out of the blue, the Wish/Unwish is possible. It was implied that the restoration of things back to normal wasn’t perfect. From a writing perspective, if it’s the case, Aaron’s being very subtle and gradual in introducing this change.
I’m more of the “it’s not Toby himself” theory, but there’s nothing we can see on Toby’s person that such could be… :-/
I do not think it was from destructive writing, it seems to me that it is most likely the change that Toby was talking about. Ya’know, the one where he no longer has that whole universal balance thing? I don’t like him much right now either as he now is pretty much all powerful. Toby has a good heart, but power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. I have a few options that I think would make sense:
1. Toby becomes too much of a danger to humanity and is given a limiter to prevent him from causing mayhem (or has his powers removed/is given a limiter to stop him from using them).
2. Toby becomes a roaming vigilante, fighting for his twisted view of justice.
You get the point, something will happen (unless Aaron decides to not do anything and leave a gaping hole in the plot).
I also think its likely from whatever Toby did to fix his powers.
I don’t believe Toby is likely to become evil, but taking away the whole balance thing would still likely cause more problems than it solves.
Right now Toby is careful with his powers which is a good thing.
A ten year old with good intentions could decide to kill all parasites, make it rain soda, make it always sunny. Note the most obvious sounds good but is a horrible idea a ten year old would catch so likely not these specific things.
Also Toby already tried to solve his family problems by giving Tyler super powers. One major difference between Tyler and Toby is Toby has been shown actively seeking his “parents” “love” whereas Tyler has been shown trying to cut his “parents” from his life when possible. If Tyler gained superpowers when Toby tried he could have ended up miserably seeking his “parents” approval.
But Tobey has most of Tyler’s memories, wwith the notable accretion of the Moonshadow ones, so shouldn’t he have at least some of Tyler’s memories of failed attempts to gain powers.
Been a while since Cecil’s coat acted up.
When an eldritch coat expresses displeasure at something even as a being outside of the common sense of man, you know something’s off
Unless they do something or an orbiting ship does they will meet in the room. They could stay shrunk and play mission impossible.
If Tyler were still the kid he was entering PS238 the correct connector would so not but.
I think youre missing a few words there. Or have extra ones, I’m not sure.
I’ve got a surprise for him but I can’t find him anywhere.
Early Tyler Tobies inability would most likely not be because Tyler happens to have something he needs to take care of but because he is actively avoiding his surprise.
That didn’t make a whole lot of sense either.
“I’ve got a surprise for him but I can’t find him anywhere.” is what Toby said, and Temp.Observer is saying that Early Tyler would be fleeing Toby because he didn’t want the surprise rather than because he had something else important to do.
Seems to me that Cecil’s coat has the dislikes for Tyler’s “twin brother”
It’s nothing personal. The coat just hates him for existing as a combination of two opposing magic forces.
Except that the coat didn’t show any dislike for Malphast (03302012).
Actually, this reaction from Cecil’s coat is odd. I don’t remember it ever acting that way towards Toby. This is not the first time the coat has encountered Toby (03302012). And whatever hostility there is against Toby is really from Cecil.
So either the coat is simply reflecting Cecil’s dislike for Toby,
OR
The coat is reacting to WHAT Toby’s trying to bring to Tyler.
Hm. I could be wrong because of one detail: Toby’s not carrying anything in his hands…
I believe Toby is being tricked into either hosting something that the coat dislikes or changing himself in a disturbing way which the coat dislikes. If the coat was reacting to Cecil’s dislike of Toby that would have bean a thing since before this arc. I guess its possible that Cecil’s dislike has recently grown but if anything he should be getting used to Toby.
I just thought the coat could be picking up on hostility towards its master. Cecil has been excluding Toby from his brother’s life since day one. And while we know if anything Cecil is just giving Tyler an excuse to do something he already wanted to do. Toby would likely blame Cecil for stealing his brother from him.
Toby hasn’t shown any resentment to Cecil though. Remember that Toby wants to be friends with Cecil thanks to his shared memories. I’d even say he wants to be friends with Cecil as much as he wants to be a good brother to Tyler.
As for Cecil, while Cecil dislikes Toby, it’s not a dislike filled with anger and expressed with hostility. At its worst, it’s very civil, and more about getting metapower vibes from Toby than anything personal. After all, Cecil does know who Toby is and why/how he has powers. That understanding would pretty much remove any personal feelings of distrust in someone as rational as Cecil.
All in all, they’re all good kids.
Yea most likely something Toby is hosting or some way Toby was changed or changed himself.
I have every reason to believe that Cecil’s negative feelings for Toby are for reasons Cecil knows are not rational that would actually go down over time.
I think its a combination of the radiation which he’s getting used to not meaning anything bad, and Toby falling into some sort of uncanny valley because he’s not completely his own person but not quite Tyler, and subconsciously scapegoating Toby for Tyler lying to him.
Its true the comic has given us no indication that Toby has any ill will towards Cecil. Its just more likely to be something that went up with time than Cecil’s weird feelings towards Toby.
Remember Toby got his powers fixed. He no longer has Chaos and Order effects and the comments on the raffle prizes page suspect a glove to be linked.
If Toby is now just Order and the coat is Chaos…
Toby’s powers did not get “fixed” of his “Chaos and Order” effects. Any time he uses them, they produce a reality-warping side-effect to balance them out, whether in favor of Chaos or Order (02012012).
I think the cure you’re thinking of is this: 04062012. What happened was that Toby warped reality to officially or actually become Tyler’s twin brother (the meeting where the powers were presented with both Tyler and Toby makes me think it’s less the latter, more the former, legally rather than some sort of retcon reality warp (03022012)). The catch was that Cecil would distrust him and not think of him as his friend though they were once the same single person.
Even after Toby made himself and Tyler brothers (and removed the curse on Cranston’s mental powers), the reality warp side effect remains as seen here, when a robot-breaking punch also creates butterflies: 11262012.
More recent, here – http://ps238.nodwick.com/comic/2017-02-08/
@ Faust:
Okay, but he’s not pure Order now. Nor is he pure Chaos. The balancing side effect worked for *both* Order and Chaos. If something he does with it benefits Order, the effect kicks in to counter that, thus is for Chaos. If something he uses it on follows Chaos’ agenda, the side effect reins it in for Order.
So what’s happening now- assuming he’s cured and not merely being really careful with the side effects of his powers- is the side effect is simply gone- and that means no balancing out for both Order and Chaos…
… Which leads me to suspect that a really big reality-warping side effect is in Toby’s future if he ever loses whatever it is he’s using to circumvent the side effect- OR it’s simply going to happen despite it.
Reminds me a lot of the pen-and-paper RPG Mage: the Ascension. All players characters- mages- are basically reality warpers of different sorts and specializations. You’re really powerful but each time you really push reality, you accumulate Paradox points (which you can think of as representing actual paradox or reality contradictions caused by your reshaping of it). Accumulate enough and you will get backlash which can be really horrific depending on the amount you’ve accumulated or how big an effect you pulled off.
I can’t help but feel Toby’s simply holding off “paying” for his reality warping rather than cured of it.
The simple solution, then, is for him to have both an Orderly and a Chaotic effect – where *both* of them are positive in some way, or at least not negative. Like stopping a villain’s rampage (orderly) by turning his weapons to butterflies (chaotic).
I’m pretty sure he’d be better off just destroying the weapons than turning them to butterflies. Making butterflies is not inherently chaotic its the fact that he didn’t choose that part of the outcome that would be
@CCC: I don’t think it’s that simple.
How do we know what counts as Orderly and Chaotic? We have some simplified working definitions- “Doing what everyone else wants” vs. “Doing what you want” (paraphrased)- but if so, parsing what’s what gets messy when we go into specifics. A rampage is obviously against Order but making butterflies isn’t necessarily Chaotic as TO pointed out.
Practically speaking, time: Toby will mostly be using his powers in the heat of battle- he won’t have much time and attention to spare for analysis and decision-making.
Also, another practical aspect: Toby can see to some extent the possible future side effects of his chosen use of his power, but it’s not like he can *choose* them. That’s an important difference/detail. If Toby has Plan A for his power, Side Effect A will result. In order to avoid SE A, he’ll have to pick Plan B which will have its own SE B. With the previous two problems, going with your suggestion is going to be tough.
Lastly, even if Toby manages to follow both Chaos and Order with what he’s doing, what’s to stop his power from imposing a side effect anyway?
Toby should try to mitigate the cost/side effect of his powers- he’s already doing that- but I think it will always entail something else as part of it. The responsibility for this power is just not going to be simple.
Honestly I think figuring out how to do good in such a way that it technically favors chaos will be the easy part of ethically balancing his powers. In the not so distant as we would like to pretend past he could have teleported all the slaves in America to Canada for instance. That would likely have a ton of side effects he wouldn’t like but that’s because the world is complicated. He’s having issues with balance because he’s a kid who doesn’t know the difference between doing what is right and doing what others expect of him yet.
The warping Toby did was to cure Cranston of the curse on him, in exchange for Cranston handling the work to make him part of Tyler’s family. The bad luck spillover he suffered as a result (since it was being done to help him as well as Cranston) resulted in him being unable to gain Cecil as the best friend he’d ever have. However one needs to consider that a GOOD thing, because otherwise it would have been one more thing he’d taken (albeit unintentionally) from Tyler just due to his existing.
Since we don’t have Toby’s rules well-defined for us, it’s very difficult to figure out how to use his powers to solve problems. He can do “anything,” but anything plot-inconvenient would come with an unacceptable price. Since he’s a side character for the most part, this works. If he were more of a main character, the definition of “orderly” and “chaotic” results/uses and how these get “balanced” would need more definition. Quantum, when he grows up, might have learned how to use his power in ways that let him control the primary and backlash effects by doing two things that balance on the order/chaos axis while serving good ends. This will still provide its own limitation to his power, perhaps slowing him down as he has to study consequences, or simply still requiring him to come up with esoteric or sideways solutions rather than simply “wishing” the problem solved.
It’d be interesting to see an alternate timeline where Toby doesn’t make that deal with Cranston, and see what form Cranston’s redemption takes, and what other fallout from Toby getting “the best friend he could ever have” out of Cecil would be. Was Toby’s choice the right one, because it would have destroyed Tyler in some fashion? Or should he have left well enough alone because it would work out? Or were either timeline going to have about the same mix of upsides and downsides for Toby and Tyler?
@ Faust:
I don’t think ethics really comes too much into Toby’s powers. For all its flaws and limitations, that’s why D&D’s moral alignment system works and is popular: it knows there’s a difference between “Order” and “Good”, and “Chaos” and “Evil”. The forces of Order may be made up of angels and Chaos has demons and imps, yet the big bosses are pure embodiments of Order and Chaos. In fact, I don’t think Toby has any real moral problems (he acts heroically and certainly isn’t like spoiled all-powerful parallel universe Tyler) with his powers.
On that note, I’m not sure it’s a case of “doesn’t know the difference between doing what is right and doing what others expect of him yet” either. Toby hasn’t really had any conflict with adults (except for the O&C direct influence/’Meh’ incident) or authority or others in general. His most disastrous use of powers so far was in Destructive Writing and he fixed that.
Also, the side effects aren’t even necessarily malicious, either. Teleport that turns nearby people’s clothes into Tron costumes and telephones into bananas? The worst, most tragic ones were Cranston giving up Redemption and Toby not having Cecil as a friend.
Funnily enough, I just realized that such would have happened “anyway”. Cranston broke the agreement he made about inhibiting his powers (even if it was justified/wasn’t his fault), but he’d have to be punished and being freed from his telepathic curse makes him seem politically untrustworthy to people in the know. Cecil rejecting Toby happened in the sense that Cecil doesn’t like metahumans. Huh. If you think about it, those “punishments” seem like Order balancing the scales (or maybe the latter is Chaos; hard to tell).
Ultimately, I’m very doubtful Toby can cheat or tame or eliminate the side effect. I think Toby’s power has a price to be paid for no matter what he does. Age, wisdom, and growing skill can allow him to be very careful with it, but I just don’t think there’s truly a way he can render the side effect as meaningless.
That said… The RPG I mentioned, Mage: the Ascension- given the whole “push reality; reality pushes back” thing in its magic system, thus the safe and meaningful way to use your reality-warping powers in that setting was to be really, really, really subtle about it. They called it “coincidental magic”- altering reality so lightly and cleverly it seems like you didn’t alter reality at all. It seemed like coincidence. An example of which is throwing a baseball at a bad guy. Your throw misses, but your magic means it bounces against the wall behind him, hits him in the back of the head and knocks him out. A VERY unlikely thing to happen- but possible.
Toby knows this and has done this. Who’d have thought guiding a paper airplane could end an invasion of inter-dimensional beings?
I believe that Toby can deal with the whole order chaos balance thing but the world is complicated and sometimes well intentioned actions have negative consequences.
My take is a lot of but not all the consequences would happen simply because the world is complicated and not because of a side effect of his powers. This I believe is going to be the thing that Toby can never quite master.
Another part of the issue is “power incontinence” when his powers actually do something that he did not ask them to. I believe that this most likely could be solved by balancing between the forces extracting a price. This will require understanding what Law and Chaos want and understanding the difference between chaos and evil, ultimately I think this will be easier to navigate than just the fact that the world is complicated.
His powers still work exactly the same way is my take. He poured two drinks with his powers – one the use of his powers, the other his side effect. That struck me as significant as *he can use his powers so both use and side effect are what he wants*. I don’t know how far that goes, but *everyone* knows ‘quantum’ relates to consciousness, so maybe each time he *intends* for the side-effect to work out… it just does.
Toby affects luck, occasionally, doesn’t he? If he wants to be lucky enough to catch Tyler, or if it would be unlucky to find Tyler, perhaps the coat would be affected by that as well?
The coat reacts to Toby without Cecil being aware of him, here:
http://ps238.nodwick.com/comic/2017-01-30/
But when the Order/Chaos war is happening he’s close to Toby many times without a reaction. So either Toby’s Wish/Unwish in the Destructive Writing story changed something, or it’s not Toby himself that it’s reacting to.
Good catch, sir!
While it’s a bit out of the blue, the Wish/Unwish is possible. It was implied that the restoration of things back to normal wasn’t perfect. From a writing perspective, if it’s the case, Aaron’s being very subtle and gradual in introducing this change.
I’m more of the “it’s not Toby himself” theory, but there’s nothing we can see on Toby’s person that such could be… :-/
I do not think it was from destructive writing, it seems to me that it is most likely the change that Toby was talking about. Ya’know, the one where he no longer has that whole universal balance thing? I don’t like him much right now either as he now is pretty much all powerful. Toby has a good heart, but power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. I have a few options that I think would make sense:
1. Toby becomes too much of a danger to humanity and is given a limiter to prevent him from causing mayhem (or has his powers removed/is given a limiter to stop him from using them).
2. Toby becomes a roaming vigilante, fighting for his twisted view of justice.
You get the point, something will happen (unless Aaron decides to not do anything and leave a gaping hole in the plot).
Wow, I got off that subject fast!
I also think its likely from whatever Toby did to fix his powers.
I don’t believe Toby is likely to become evil, but taking away the whole balance thing would still likely cause more problems than it solves.
Right now Toby is careful with his powers which is a good thing.
A ten year old with good intentions could decide to kill all parasites, make it rain soda, make it always sunny. Note the most obvious sounds good but is a horrible idea a ten year old would catch so likely not these specific things.
Also Toby already tried to solve his family problems by giving Tyler super powers. One major difference between Tyler and Toby is Toby has been shown actively seeking his “parents” “love” whereas Tyler has been shown trying to cut his “parents” from his life when possible. If Tyler gained superpowers when Toby tried he could have ended up miserably seeking his “parents” approval.
I suspect it’s something going on with Toby right now, unrelated to Cecil. Maybe Toby finding Tyler is really bad. We will see, I hope.
The surprise? Toby won one of the power-granting items, and wants to donate it to Tyler?
But Tobey has most of Tyler’s memories, wwith the notable accretion of the Moonshadow ones, so shouldn’t he have at least some of Tyler’s memories of failed attempts to gain powers.
Come to think of it, if Toby lacks Tyler’s memories of being Moon Shadow, then it’s possible Toby lacks other memories as well.
The power granting items were already Tyler’s before the party.