I suspect you’re right about cartoon physics. The chaos debt probably accumulates while sitting in the can and is going to be a whopper once it merges with Power’s again.
Hopefully some of the bad mojo was drained off when they used it as a blaster on Zodon.
See, from OUR perspective it’s obvious, because we just see the stories where the can breaks. From the characters’ perspective, though, there’s a nice period, maybe even several centuries long, where the evil’s locked away, so it’s kind of easy to downplay the inevitable badness.
Eh, the logical answer to me was get Malphast and go on a quest to take it back to the Chaos dimension his mom is from and dump it back into the Primal Chaos or how ever they can get it to go back to being a part of the plane and not in him.
But it wants to go back.
If it can want, it .ight be able to choose.
And that means it could choose not to merge with Primal Chaos, but to go back to Toby. No matter how long it takes or how much damage it’ll do along the way.
Interesting point on which to focus. It wants to go back. Are Toby and Tyler going to become triplets?
Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised, but it actually seems like the most sensible thing to do here is to let Zodon have it. Zodon seems to have a plan to harness it. Let it burn off the Chaos through his guidance and it could stabilize the situation.
OF course, I find it funny that they’re assuming everything Toby does is order and that all the backlash was chaos. He has as much power to induce chaos (well, had) as order. How do they know order is what he was always tapping?
Heck, I wouldn’t be surprised if the “give up the best friend I could have had” bit was an order backlash for the chaos caused by solving the Principal’s problem and forcing his parents to keep both him and Tyler.
Also, his powers aren’t “creation and destruction” nor “ruin and preservation.” They’re “order and chaos.” Both can be destructive. Both can be creative. And saving a planet doesn’t mean increased order, nor does destroying one mean increased chaos.
Here’s hoping the fallout from this results in an epiphany on Toby’s part that makes him much better at using both halves of his power.
That’s the thing though, popular misconception is that Order=Good and Chaos=Evil when both can be either good or evil (look up a novel by Paul Kidd called A Whisper Of Wings, two entities are introduced that latch onto the main protagonist sisters, one is responsible for the rigid order their people live under the other unleashing Chaotic War in order to break that stasis as it’s slowly killing them as a people and race, with effectively BOTH Order and Chaos proving evil). Unsurprisingly everyone treated the Chaos aspect as evil and locked it away because heroes favor Order even when they should know sometimes Chaos is best.
His power is his own. Order and chaos added the balance effect to what he already had. The side effect depends on how his power use is interpreted.
It would be interesting if he sometimes is considered to have chaotic actions and order is the siphoned off effect.
Tyler had figured out the trick to Toby’s powers well enough. Do little things so that it’s not his power themselves doing what he wants. Instead, let the effects of minor usage of his powers accomplish his goals. If shutting down a portal letting powerful entities of Order and Chaos enter our realm will just be replaced by different but equally bad results, then guiding a paper plane with a rune of “Meh” drawn by someone else to the portal will get the job done without serious repercussions.
Anyone here know the old pen-and-paper RPG “Mage: the Ascension” by White Wolf Studios? You played a titular Mage and your powers basically amounted to reality warping. However, push reality enough and it pushes back via a force called “Paradox” (because your warping of reality creates contradictions in reality). So the trick was to be really, really subtle about it. If you instead used your powers to warp reality in such a manner that it could be explained and accepted as something that could actually happen (“Coincidence”), then you avoided suffering from Paradox. You could will a building to just blow up with your enemies inside, but Paradox would get back at you for causing the building to explode when it shouldn’t have. But if you fired a gun at a building and somehow the bullet ricocheted all the way to that box of explosives next to your enemies, then it would be an incredible but still plausible feat of luck.
So your saying the issue might be the fact that Toby can have his powers be boring but practical or awesome but impractical but he doesn’t think to make his powers boring but practical possibly because he will never “win” his “parents” “love” with boring powers.
First, I didn’t even talk about Sovereign and Ultima. They’re not at all part of what I was saying.
Second, if we were to add them to this discussion, as far as they want a child with powers, I figured they’d still- SADLY- be amazingly thrilled with Toby and awful with Tyler.
Third, I guess you could call it “boring but practical” versus “awesome but impractical”, but I honestly find the labeling to be subjective and a bit of a false dichotomy. I find efficiency and subtlety that’s super-effective to be awesome AND practical. I guess one way to put it is- for people who play Magic: the Gathering- how subtle and technical Blue magic can be.
Fourth- most importantly, and where the previous three are BESIDES my real point- Toby doesn’t need to lock away the drawback of his powers. He just needs to be smart and subtle and controlled about it. Toby should use his powers to only create minimal effects (thus incurring only small costs) but the effects of such minimal effects (which weren’t directly created by his powers) leading to his desired outcome.
For example:
Supervillain robbing a bank.
Toby energy blasts villain to stop him.
Toby’s powers do something that balances all of that.
Vs.
Supervillain robbing a bank.
Toby causes that villain to trip.
It’s the tripping and the fall that stuns the villain and stops the crime.
Toby’s powers does something that balances out ONLY the tripping but can’t/won’t do anything about the resulting stopping of the crime.
Remember: canonically, Toby DID stop an invasion of otherwordly forces trying to influence our world (Order and Chaos). But where all his powers did was just guide a paper airplane, said invasion was NOT replaced by something just as bad. I guess, conceivably, someone somewhere just crashed his favorite kite into a tree as a cost of Toby’s power (sorry, Charlie Brown), but that’s about it.
4. Its true the solution is not to lock away the feedback if for no other reason because its going to get out eventually and because Toby proceeds to use his powers recklessly when the debt still exists.
3. You make a good point powers that get stuff done but you are can’t be sure are not just coincadence are awesome in themselves.
I’m actually not sure if it didn’t have a huge feedback because steering the airplane itself was a small thing or because it stopped two invasions not one.
Temporary Obsessor:
“I’m actually not sure if it didn’t have a huge feedback because steering the airplane itself was a small thing or because it stopped two invasions not one.”
Because it was a small thing (or, rather, NOT a big thing): panel 1 of 04062012.
@Nobody:
PS238’s been pretty consistent about it, so I’m pretty sure Toby’s right, or mostly right.
Besides, if Toby was wrong about it, there’d be some serious implications, not just in-universe but from a writing/audience perspective. Wrecking character concept consistency would just mess things up- including this particular storyline.
Lawful bad, chaotic bad or naughty?
My understanding is:
Lawful bad chaos happens.
Chaotic bad order happens.
Naughty (not really evil but chaotic) Order happens.
Its possible lawful and good are interchangeable to the two groups he made a deal with though or I’m simply greatly misreading things.
I’m not sure if the two teams represent the order and chaos sides or the chaotic evil and lawful good corners.
If its the corners sort of. If its the sides neutral good would be better.
Actually what corners means is if he is good he will want to use his powers for chaotic good, or chaotic neutral things and only occasionally lawful good stuff, plus if he’s going to satisfy a chaotic or evil desire better to use his powers to do so than to do it the old fashioned way.
What sides means is he needs to learn what it is to be the two sides actually are so he can be neutral good with his powers.
Umm. Or you could TRADE the thing to Power & Glory. Let them take it to another reality and flog it to a super villain. Not only are you rid of it, but you get something good out of it. And the karma is all theirs: Let the buyer beware.
The idea that “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction” is pretty limiting for a super power. Why not try calling your shots? Want to bring someone back from the dead? Kill a guy. Want to stop a bank robbery? Arrange for the corrupt banking CEO to get arrested at the same time. Get a cat out a tree? Put a bird IN a tree. “The Scales of Justice MUST BE BALANCED!” can be said with a loud voice while quieting a noisy motorcycle.
But yeah, Chaos Magic and Unknown Tech works, too.
I get Toby has real problems.
But his powers being a zero sum game is only an issue because he somehow got it in his head that being able to snap your fingers and solve all problems ever with no negative consequence is the default.
I’m not sure Toby does or can have complete control of the chaotic side of things, just by its nature its going to be a little random and not going to obey him without question.
I have suspicions that Toby might some input into what the backlash but not be able to tell the chaos side which input to listen to.
I’m hungry (but that’s not that important right now)
It would be cool if I saw a villain and could test out my new powers (but I don’t want to make one)
Ugh my brother practically evicted me from my own life and he resents me and won’t even really try to fix things at home and is keeping secrets which on some level I might consider my own memories and of course the bulk of actual non toxic support goes to him. (But I really want to be a good brother.)
You’re still treating the Chaos side as if it’s got more will behind its backlash than the Order side. Toby doesn’t really have two powers. He is a reality warper. What he has is a requirement that his power create as much Order as it does Chaos, and vice-versa. If he does something that creates Order directly, then his power will act to counter that by producing some random Chaos. If he does something that produces Chaos directly, his power will counter that by doing something that induces commensurate order.
It’s easy to create Order because human minds prefer it, in general. We want a specific end result, and Toby thus bends reality as hard as he has to to ensure it. This is why it seems Chaos springs up as the backlash.
If I were Toby’s guardian or even guidance councilor, I would strongly encourage him to study both Chaos Theory and (more importantly) Evolutionary Algorithms. Particularly Swarm Intelligence and Genetic Algorithms. These last two use a lot of randomization to test things, with the only order imposed being in evaluating the results to select for the “best” solutions at each iteration or generation.
Toby could induce Order in the control while producing myriad Chaotic test solutions. He determines an ordered RESULT he wants, and then lets his power try means of getting there. Because the solutions which produce ill results are chaotic and created chaos, he can guide the order backlash to undo their harm. Keep some desirable side-effects that he never planned for (chaotic outcomes) to balance the final Ordered solution he keeps to his real problem.
Your right I shouldn’t treat order as having less will than chaos. So thinking about it chaos would be more likely to express its will by not letting Toby have the final say, while order would express its will by limiting Toby’s options and having definate consistant predictable consequences to his choices.
@Savev The evolutionary algotithms idea is excellent, but I fear it still involves a ridiculous amount of order imposition. Either you must maintain “rules” that constrain ALL the Chaorderic units at all times (“do what you will, as long as it complies with this doorstopper of a ruleset”), or accept that, while one acts to slow a falling person’s descent, another gives them rabbit ears, another still increases gravity to maintain the acceleration, 3 more learn to self-replicate before the cull, and one gives you strong opinions about parsley.
Creative, but do not mess with wild magic.
So here’s a kicker, what if it was merged with *Tyler*? Is this is the ultimate evil plot that revolves around P&G, getting Tyler and this and doing some sort of back alley experimentation? Interesting, discuss…
I doubt the story will go there, because Tyler’s story is of an unpowered superkid. But it might for an arc or so, in the same manner as Jimmy Olsen getting superpowers.
Removing Tyler and Toby’s other narrative elements that would be harmed by this, it would be an interesting dynamic: twin reality warpers whose powers are to do anything they want as long as it increases net Chaos/Order (depending on the twin), but which gets weaker with each use that isn’t balanced by his brother.
In essence, using Toby as Order and Tyler as Chaos, when Toby uses his powers, it induces order and forces results neatly, and when Tyler uses his power, it is wild and crazy stuff that doesn’t make any sense (see: Discord in MLP:FiM) but is still what he wants. There’s a finite “mana pool” between them, and when Tyler uses his power, his mp drops while Toby’s rises commensurately. And vice-versa.
So why is Toby in that room? He was down with the rest of the kids playing games and interacting and being all vague and stuff?
Could it be that what we saw as ‘Toby’ was actually some kind of Avatar or those short term clones he’d been using to cover for Tyler previously? And the ‘real’ Toby has been in this room and thats why Tyler kept getting vague innuendos because the avatars didnt have all the info?
And of course the singing fat boy wants to play with a ball of pure chaos thinking he can use it to gain power. Good to see that the super villains are still blinded by their own ego.
To be fair, Zodon has demonstrated that he actually does know what he’s doing when he acts on these sorts of schemes. The only time he’s screwed up was when actively sabotaged. I suspect he could harness it safely.
Zodon inevitably gets screwed over by fate when he tries to do something outright villainous. Whenever he’s helping the heroes for whatever reason, his plans go off with minimal fuss.
Kid’s destined to be a hero and in denial about it.
Honestly, I see less “screwed by Fate” and more “self-sabotage.” Zodon doesn’t have it in him to be more villainous than petty anti-heroism. The only time “Fate” screwed him up was when Paradox stopped him from messing with the timestream, and that was likely less because Zodon would really do anything evil, and more because Paradox’s job is preventing that kind of thing.
Oh…oh dear. I think I know what might happen. Toby wanted to get Tyler powers, the chaos was then pulled out of him, what if the chaos powers may enter Tyler…that will not necessarily be good.
I like Flea’s response when he finds out Toby COULD potentially end up destroying a planet if he ever saved one (so no stopping an extinction level event asteroid) with his powers complete, because Flea was clearly not being serious about the question and totally didn’t expect to basically hear ‘yes I could end up destroying a planet by saving one.’
I’m still wondering how all of this connects to P&G. Was the chaos sphere thingy what Sarah needed in order to get powers? Or was it only for giving powers to Tyler, which would then result in some sort of weird balance-y thing that made Sarah get powers too because of magical destiny stuff? I’m just speculating here, no real clue whether any of this could actually happen. Also, if tyler were to get chaos powers, would they still be connected to Toby and therefore require that both of them use their powers regularly to keep things balanced? So many questions!
Also, with Ron’s powers being revealed bit by bit more, could he eventually return to ps238? I doubt Praetorian academy would want him back, and even if they did he might feel an obligation to return to his former school, maybe even join up with 84’s group. Looking back, I feel like how they specifically said that they would accept non-FISS heroes may have been foreshadowing for this eventuality, since Ron is a former FISS. Would he return as Argonaut, his FISS number, or Captain Clarinet? I personally favor the latter, as it shows how everything can come full circle.
Another interesting possibility- What if the chaos sphere broke containment, but instead of going back to Toby it distributed among all the super-kids in the building, resulting in extreme party chaos. This might even give Toby a power boost to restore order, but after that things would go back to the whole balance thing, and as many people have said lead up to an arc for Toby in which he learns how to accept both sides of his power and use it most efficiently. Either that or they’ll go on an inter-dimensional quest to return Toby’s powers to “normal”. It would be rather poetic if they did this, only to realize that it kinda happened on its own anyway, and that basically Toby isn’t perfect and needs time to grow into his powers like any other kid.
I would so love to see Toby realize that Tyler is Moon Shadow, have a big brotherly scene in which Tyler begs Toby not to tell anyone. Toby agrees, but tells Tyler that if he wants to do what’s best for his friends, he’ll stop living in the dark. Maybe Moon Shadow will have a proper super-team, with Tyler becoming a symbol for every person out there who wants to help save the world someday. He could spark dozens of programs centered around the idea of there being other ways to save the world than run around in a cape. I’m imagining all the aboveground kids getting super involved, and some of them finding their way to ps238. This would continue the already set up arc of integrating the super with the non-super, and blurring the line between what is normal and what is not.
Kinda started rambling there, but the point is, there are infinite possibilities. I would love to see this strip go in any of these directions, but if it does something completely different then that’s fine too.
When the containment breaches and all the chaos is unleashed on the city the result will obviously be the most chaotic event possible, something that none of the heroes would ever possibly be able to predict.
IT. WILL. DO. ABSOLUTELY. NOTHING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It seems to me that the most obvious way to get rid of the chaos energy in the gun-thing would be to shoot it at things. Use your Order powers to stop a villain, then shoot chaos blasts at another villain you don’t really like. Or shoot it into space or something.
(Maxim 24: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a really big gun.)
Oh boy… That’s kinda crazy scary how things are with the dude’s powers.
Has Toby learned nothing from watching cartoons, sealing evil in a can is never a long term solution.
Toby may have learned, but were the parents watching that cartoon?
I suspect you’re right about cartoon physics. The chaos debt probably accumulates while sitting in the can and is going to be a whopper once it merges with Power’s again.
Hopefully some of the bad mojo was drained off when they used it as a blaster on Zodon.
See, from OUR perspective it’s obvious, because we just see the stories where the can breaks. From the characters’ perspective, though, there’s a nice period, maybe even several centuries long, where the evil’s locked away, so it’s kind of easy to downplay the inevitable badness.
Goku will show up and punch it really hard, no worries.
Then we can wish everything back to normal.
Oh dear.
I think it may be time to relocate Toby to a dead planet in another solar system until the fallout finishes.
Or relocate the rest of us to another planet, because this has ‘No Save’ written all over it.
Eh, the logical answer to me was get Malphast and go on a quest to take it back to the Chaos dimension his mom is from and dump it back into the Primal Chaos or how ever they can get it to go back to being a part of the plane and not in him.
But it wants to go back.
If it can want, it .ight be able to choose.
And that means it could choose not to merge with Primal Chaos, but to go back to Toby. No matter how long it takes or how much damage it’ll do along the way.
Interesting point on which to focus. It wants to go back. Are Toby and Tyler going to become triplets?
Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised, but it actually seems like the most sensible thing to do here is to let Zodon have it. Zodon seems to have a plan to harness it. Let it burn off the Chaos through his guidance and it could stabilize the situation.
OF course, I find it funny that they’re assuming everything Toby does is order and that all the backlash was chaos. He has as much power to induce chaos (well, had) as order. How do they know order is what he was always tapping?
Heck, I wouldn’t be surprised if the “give up the best friend I could have had” bit was an order backlash for the chaos caused by solving the Principal’s problem and forcing his parents to keep both him and Tyler.
Also, his powers aren’t “creation and destruction” nor “ruin and preservation.” They’re “order and chaos.” Both can be destructive. Both can be creative. And saving a planet doesn’t mean increased order, nor does destroying one mean increased chaos.
Here’s hoping the fallout from this results in an epiphany on Toby’s part that makes him much better at using both halves of his power.
That would be nice. ^_^
That’s the thing though, popular misconception is that Order=Good and Chaos=Evil when both can be either good or evil (look up a novel by Paul Kidd called A Whisper Of Wings, two entities are introduced that latch onto the main protagonist sisters, one is responsible for the rigid order their people live under the other unleashing Chaotic War in order to break that stasis as it’s slowly killing them as a people and race, with effectively BOTH Order and Chaos proving evil). Unsurprisingly everyone treated the Chaos aspect as evil and locked it away because heroes favor Order even when they should know sometimes Chaos is best.
His power is his own. Order and chaos added the balance effect to what he already had. The side effect depends on how his power use is interpreted.
It would be interesting if he sometimes is considered to have chaotic actions and order is the siphoned off effect.
Tyler had figured out the trick to Toby’s powers well enough. Do little things so that it’s not his power themselves doing what he wants. Instead, let the effects of minor usage of his powers accomplish his goals. If shutting down a portal letting powerful entities of Order and Chaos enter our realm will just be replaced by different but equally bad results, then guiding a paper plane with a rune of “Meh” drawn by someone else to the portal will get the job done without serious repercussions.
Anyone here know the old pen-and-paper RPG “Mage: the Ascension” by White Wolf Studios? You played a titular Mage and your powers basically amounted to reality warping. However, push reality enough and it pushes back via a force called “Paradox” (because your warping of reality creates contradictions in reality). So the trick was to be really, really subtle about it. If you instead used your powers to warp reality in such a manner that it could be explained and accepted as something that could actually happen (“Coincidence”), then you avoided suffering from Paradox. You could will a building to just blow up with your enemies inside, but Paradox would get back at you for causing the building to explode when it shouldn’t have. But if you fired a gun at a building and somehow the bullet ricocheted all the way to that box of explosives next to your enemies, then it would be an incredible but still plausible feat of luck.
So your saying the issue might be the fact that Toby can have his powers be boring but practical or awesome but impractical but he doesn’t think to make his powers boring but practical possibly because he will never “win” his “parents” “love” with boring powers.
Um…
First, I didn’t even talk about Sovereign and Ultima. They’re not at all part of what I was saying.
Second, if we were to add them to this discussion, as far as they want a child with powers, I figured they’d still- SADLY- be amazingly thrilled with Toby and awful with Tyler.
Third, I guess you could call it “boring but practical” versus “awesome but impractical”, but I honestly find the labeling to be subjective and a bit of a false dichotomy. I find efficiency and subtlety that’s super-effective to be awesome AND practical. I guess one way to put it is- for people who play Magic: the Gathering- how subtle and technical Blue magic can be.
Fourth- most importantly, and where the previous three are BESIDES my real point- Toby doesn’t need to lock away the drawback of his powers. He just needs to be smart and subtle and controlled about it. Toby should use his powers to only create minimal effects (thus incurring only small costs) but the effects of such minimal effects (which weren’t directly created by his powers) leading to his desired outcome.
For example:
Supervillain robbing a bank.
Toby energy blasts villain to stop him.
Toby’s powers do something that balances all of that.
Vs.
Supervillain robbing a bank.
Toby causes that villain to trip.
It’s the tripping and the fall that stuns the villain and stops the crime.
Toby’s powers does something that balances out ONLY the tripping but can’t/won’t do anything about the resulting stopping of the crime.
Remember: canonically, Toby DID stop an invasion of otherwordly forces trying to influence our world (Order and Chaos). But where all his powers did was just guide a paper airplane, said invasion was NOT replaced by something just as bad. I guess, conceivably, someone somewhere just crashed his favorite kite into a tree as a cost of Toby’s power (sorry, Charlie Brown), but that’s about it.
4. Its true the solution is not to lock away the feedback if for no other reason because its going to get out eventually and because Toby proceeds to use his powers recklessly when the debt still exists.
3. You make a good point powers that get stuff done but you are can’t be sure are not just coincadence are awesome in themselves.
I’m actually not sure if it didn’t have a huge feedback because steering the airplane itself was a small thing or because it stopped two invasions not one.
Temporary Obsessor:
“I’m actually not sure if it didn’t have a huge feedback because steering the airplane itself was a small thing or because it stopped two invasions not one.”
Because it was a small thing (or, rather, NOT a big thing): panel 1 of 04062012.
That’s clearly what TOBY thinks, but he doesn’t have to be right…
@Nobody:
PS238’s been pretty consistent about it, so I’m pretty sure Toby’s right, or mostly right.
Besides, if Toby was wrong about it, there’d be some serious implications, not just in-universe but from a writing/audience perspective. Wrecking character concept consistency would just mess things up- including this particular storyline.
…You know, technically he already DID save our planet from Prospero. Good thing that was back when he was just Tyler’s Muggle meat-puppet.
HEY!! What happens if you do something BAD?
Lawful bad, chaotic bad or naughty?
My understanding is:
Lawful bad chaos happens.
Chaotic bad order happens.
Naughty (not really evil but chaotic) Order happens.
Its possible lawful and good are interchangeable to the two groups he made a deal with though or I’m simply greatly misreading things.
So what you’re saying is he needs to change his character to ChG alignment?
I’m not sure if the two teams represent the order and chaos sides or the chaotic evil and lawful good corners.
If its the corners sort of. If its the sides neutral good would be better.
Actually what corners means is if he is good he will want to use his powers for chaotic good, or chaotic neutral things and only occasionally lawful good stuff, plus if he’s going to satisfy a chaotic or evil desire better to use his powers to do so than to do it the old fashioned way.
What sides means is he needs to learn what it is to be the two sides actually are so he can be neutral good with his powers.
Well, I guess that might explain Cecil’s coat. How’s the coat going to react to the Chaos Ballâ„¢?
So it being made by a Chaos-being decided it hates QP because he got all the Chaos taken out of him, leaving him with Pure Order?
In that case the coat would probably really like the Big Ball O’ Chaos.
Umm. Or you could TRADE the thing to Power & Glory. Let them take it to another reality and flog it to a super villain. Not only are you rid of it, but you get something good out of it. And the karma is all theirs: Let the buyer beware.
Unless of course they sell it to someone in this reality, in which case it comes back and (potentially literally) bites them in the rear.
The idea that “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction” is pretty limiting for a super power. Why not try calling your shots? Want to bring someone back from the dead? Kill a guy. Want to stop a bank robbery? Arrange for the corrupt banking CEO to get arrested at the same time. Get a cat out a tree? Put a bird IN a tree. “The Scales of Justice MUST BE BALANCED!” can be said with a loud voice while quieting a noisy motorcycle.
But yeah, Chaos Magic and Unknown Tech works, too.
Apparently the adults never considered the idea that storing something like that on the same plane of reality as Toby was probably a bad idea.
*Did* they store it on the same plane of reality as Toby? Reality has been warped a bit in the process of Tyler and Ron getting hold of it…
They had it stashed in their tower, so it was either on the same plane or next to a portal with all too easy access.
“Balance between good and evil” sounds WAY more like order than chaos
Uhhhh… 0_0 Hoo boy.
I get Toby has real problems.
But his powers being a zero sum game is only an issue because he somehow got it in his head that being able to snap your fingers and solve all problems ever with no negative consequence is the default.
Not “the default” so much as “the most desirable outcome.”
The issue remains that people are treating it as if the order side was always under his control, and the chaos side wasn’t.
I’m not sure Toby does or can have complete control of the chaotic side of things, just by its nature its going to be a little random and not going to obey him without question.
I have suspicions that Toby might some input into what the backlash but not be able to tell the chaos side which input to listen to.
I’m hungry (but that’s not that important right now)
It would be cool if I saw a villain and could test out my new powers (but I don’t want to make one)
Ugh my brother practically evicted me from my own life and he resents me and won’t even really try to fix things at home and is keeping secrets which on some level I might consider my own memories and of course the bulk of actual non toxic support goes to him. (But I really want to be a good brother.)
You’re still treating the Chaos side as if it’s got more will behind its backlash than the Order side. Toby doesn’t really have two powers. He is a reality warper. What he has is a requirement that his power create as much Order as it does Chaos, and vice-versa. If he does something that creates Order directly, then his power will act to counter that by producing some random Chaos. If he does something that produces Chaos directly, his power will counter that by doing something that induces commensurate order.
It’s easy to create Order because human minds prefer it, in general. We want a specific end result, and Toby thus bends reality as hard as he has to to ensure it. This is why it seems Chaos springs up as the backlash.
If I were Toby’s guardian or even guidance councilor, I would strongly encourage him to study both Chaos Theory and (more importantly) Evolutionary Algorithms. Particularly Swarm Intelligence and Genetic Algorithms. These last two use a lot of randomization to test things, with the only order imposed being in evaluating the results to select for the “best” solutions at each iteration or generation.
Toby could induce Order in the control while producing myriad Chaotic test solutions. He determines an ordered RESULT he wants, and then lets his power try means of getting there. Because the solutions which produce ill results are chaotic and created chaos, he can guide the order backlash to undo their harm. Keep some desirable side-effects that he never planned for (chaotic outcomes) to balance the final Ordered solution he keeps to his real problem.
Your right I shouldn’t treat order as having less will than chaos. So thinking about it chaos would be more likely to express its will by not letting Toby have the final say, while order would express its will by limiting Toby’s options and having definate consistant predictable consequences to his choices.
@Savev The evolutionary algotithms idea is excellent, but I fear it still involves a ridiculous amount of order imposition. Either you must maintain “rules” that constrain ALL the Chaorderic units at all times (“do what you will, as long as it complies with this doorstopper of a ruleset”), or accept that, while one acts to slow a falling person’s descent, another gives them rabbit ears, another still increases gravity to maintain the acceleration, 3 more learn to self-replicate before the cull, and one gives you strong opinions about parsley.
Creative, but do not mess with wild magic.
IIRC, someone here called this about Toby. Someone here deserves a cookie. 🙂
So here’s a kicker, what if it was merged with *Tyler*? Is this is the ultimate evil plot that revolves around P&G, getting Tyler and this and doing some sort of back alley experimentation? Interesting, discuss…
I doubt the story will go there, because Tyler’s story is of an unpowered superkid. But it might for an arc or so, in the same manner as Jimmy Olsen getting superpowers.
Removing Tyler and Toby’s other narrative elements that would be harmed by this, it would be an interesting dynamic: twin reality warpers whose powers are to do anything they want as long as it increases net Chaos/Order (depending on the twin), but which gets weaker with each use that isn’t balanced by his brother.
In essence, using Toby as Order and Tyler as Chaos, when Toby uses his powers, it induces order and forces results neatly, and when Tyler uses his power, it is wild and crazy stuff that doesn’t make any sense (see: Discord in MLP:FiM) but is still what he wants. There’s a finite “mana pool” between them, and when Tyler uses his power, his mp drops while Toby’s rises commensurately. And vice-versa.
And suddenly giving ‘Tyler’ or Toby new super powers sees like a good idea if you can get rid of the old batch.
No wonder power store is trying so hard if only to save their own lives\planet
So why is Toby in that room? He was down with the rest of the kids playing games and interacting and being all vague and stuff?
Could it be that what we saw as ‘Toby’ was actually some kind of Avatar or those short term clones he’d been using to cover for Tyler previously? And the ‘real’ Toby has been in this room and thats why Tyler kept getting vague innuendos because the avatars didnt have all the info?
He got called away earlier, remember? Probably because the containment of that chaos-ball was breached and he had to get to this room.
And of course the singing fat boy wants to play with a ball of pure chaos thinking he can use it to gain power. Good to see that the super villains are still blinded by their own ego.
I doubt Zodon know exactly what it is, although he seems to be right that the EDF is incapable of containing it.
Also, I don’t know where you get the idea that he’s fat. He’s actually pretty small (except for his swelled head).
I think he’s talking about Zodon’s hologram, which Zodon himself has complained looks rather girthy.
You are correct, but Zodon’s hologram avatar is, um, of wide girth, presumably to cover the chair as well as Zodon himself.
The fact that it resembles one of Gary Larson’s prototypical kid-cartoons is no doubt due to Mr. Clay’s quirky sense of humor.
To be fair, Zodon has demonstrated that he actually does know what he’s doing when he acts on these sorts of schemes. The only time he’s screwed up was when actively sabotaged. I suspect he could harness it safely.
Zodon inevitably gets screwed over by fate when he tries to do something outright villainous. Whenever he’s helping the heroes for whatever reason, his plans go off with minimal fuss.
Kid’s destined to be a hero and in denial about it.
Honestly, I see less “screwed by Fate” and more “self-sabotage.” Zodon doesn’t have it in him to be more villainous than petty anti-heroism. The only time “Fate” screwed him up was when Paradox stopped him from messing with the timestream, and that was likely less because Zodon would really do anything evil, and more because Paradox’s job is preventing that kind of thing.
Oh…oh dear. I think I know what might happen. Toby wanted to get Tyler powers, the chaos was then pulled out of him, what if the chaos powers may enter Tyler…that will not necessarily be good.
I like Flea’s response when he finds out Toby COULD potentially end up destroying a planet if he ever saved one (so no stopping an extinction level event asteroid) with his powers complete, because Flea was clearly not being serious about the question and totally didn’t expect to basically hear ‘yes I could end up destroying a planet by saving one.’
A bunch of people totally called this earlier, kudos to them.
I’m still wondering how all of this connects to P&G. Was the chaos sphere thingy what Sarah needed in order to get powers? Or was it only for giving powers to Tyler, which would then result in some sort of weird balance-y thing that made Sarah get powers too because of magical destiny stuff? I’m just speculating here, no real clue whether any of this could actually happen. Also, if tyler were to get chaos powers, would they still be connected to Toby and therefore require that both of them use their powers regularly to keep things balanced? So many questions!
Also, with Ron’s powers being revealed bit by bit more, could he eventually return to ps238? I doubt Praetorian academy would want him back, and even if they did he might feel an obligation to return to his former school, maybe even join up with 84’s group. Looking back, I feel like how they specifically said that they would accept non-FISS heroes may have been foreshadowing for this eventuality, since Ron is a former FISS. Would he return as Argonaut, his FISS number, or Captain Clarinet? I personally favor the latter, as it shows how everything can come full circle.
Another interesting possibility- What if the chaos sphere broke containment, but instead of going back to Toby it distributed among all the super-kids in the building, resulting in extreme party chaos. This might even give Toby a power boost to restore order, but after that things would go back to the whole balance thing, and as many people have said lead up to an arc for Toby in which he learns how to accept both sides of his power and use it most efficiently. Either that or they’ll go on an inter-dimensional quest to return Toby’s powers to “normal”. It would be rather poetic if they did this, only to realize that it kinda happened on its own anyway, and that basically Toby isn’t perfect and needs time to grow into his powers like any other kid.
I would so love to see Toby realize that Tyler is Moon Shadow, have a big brotherly scene in which Tyler begs Toby not to tell anyone. Toby agrees, but tells Tyler that if he wants to do what’s best for his friends, he’ll stop living in the dark. Maybe Moon Shadow will have a proper super-team, with Tyler becoming a symbol for every person out there who wants to help save the world someday. He could spark dozens of programs centered around the idea of there being other ways to save the world than run around in a cape. I’m imagining all the aboveground kids getting super involved, and some of them finding their way to ps238. This would continue the already set up arc of integrating the super with the non-super, and blurring the line between what is normal and what is not.
Kinda started rambling there, but the point is, there are infinite possibilities. I would love to see this strip go in any of these directions, but if it does something completely different then that’s fine too.
Regarding P&G: The bill of exchange Tyler found spells it out quite clearly. They want Tyler, in exchange Sarah gets a fresh set of powers.
When the containment breaches and all the chaos is unleashed on the city the result will obviously be the most chaotic event possible, something that none of the heroes would ever possibly be able to predict.
IT. WILL. DO. ABSOLUTELY. NOTHING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Chaos at its best.
It seems to me that the most obvious way to get rid of the chaos energy in the gun-thing would be to shoot it at things. Use your Order powers to stop a villain, then shoot chaos blasts at another villain you don’t really like. Or shoot it into space or something.
(Maxim 24: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a really big gun.)