Annoyingly, Zodon has a point. If he tells them who he is, his tip gets discarded because he’s a villain-in-training. If he doesn’t tell them who he is, it gets discarded because some random tipster couldn’t possibly know what he’s talking about.
Well, when the random tipster know that you have a chaos orb in your basement, it gives them a bit of credibility, even if you’re also suspicious about their sources.
Unfortunately, with the Powers in charge, the group would probably just reinforce what they’ve been doing to contain the orb, rather than rethink their concept. After all, they think they know better than everyone else…
I imagine Rock that the Powers maintain secret ID because that’s the accepted behavior of a hero and with it what heroes do they of course go along with it as the ‘burden’ of being a hero. Something compatible with their massive egos so that when they inevitably fail to be as humble as they think they are in behaving like ‘the little people’ people will dismiss it as part of their eccentricities rather than end up outing them.
Zodon’s preferred follow-up plan being ‘infiltrate hero headquarters and steal the McGuffin Device’ does sort of point to why ‘Plan A’ is off the table.
Well for reason A… It would be hard trying to fake fake or convince someone that you are a completely normal high ranking person important enough to know about the chaos orb to leave a tip they would listen too.
Reason b… It would be hard enough also ensuring that the Powers would listen to you and not dismiss your tip, rant about how they know what they are doing, or even rush forth and attack you for knowing about their chaos orb.
Reason C… Why let them keep it? You managed to get something made out of all the junk the heroes shot into space. You proven that you can out smart heroes and villains so why not steal the gum drop orb and flash the villain card as an excuse?
You made me review the origin of the balancing part of Toby’s powers: 02012012
I was under the impression that BOTH the Order AND Chaos parts of Toby’s reality warping did the balancing (Chaos if he created Order, Order if he created Chaos) but now I’m not so sure.
The logic of extracting the Chaos Sphere from him would follow the idea that only the Chaos part of his powers created the the balancing side-effect.
But, if so, shouldn’t Toby now NOT be able to do anything “disorderly” as a result?
It could be that the “chaos” orb is a chaos and order orb, it just accounts for all of the side effects of his powers. Toby and the EDL just might not completely understand what they took out of him, and thus mislabeled it. (Which could explain why Did in won’t call it a chaos orb, he’s smart enough to understand what it actually is.)
My understanding is that he doesn’t have an “order part” and “chaos part” of his powers. Whether the orb contains every backlash, or contains energy that would have gone into the backlash, is relevant. If it contains every backlash, then it’s getting more powerful whether he causes chaos or order, as whatever counterbalance his power would be compelled to do is shunted into it. If it contains chaos energy or order energy in a measure equal to what his power would have been forced to use, however, then it should actually get net energy reduced when he uses one that is less common.
In other words, if it’s storing actual chaos/order energy, then he’s probably reducing its overall power when he causes manifestations that are chaotic. Because he does orderly manifestations more often, so chaos is the one he has a “debt” to. If it’s just storing every backlash, then it’s getting stronger no matter what he does.
A third possibility that just occurred to me is that the orb only stores “chaos” he would involuntarily create. In that case, if he DOES do a “chaotic” thing, there still will be an orderly backlash.
Also, he’s a kid who goes to the same school as all the other heroes. They may not see him as a supervillain in training and much as he sees himself that way. Or he could have told Toby or Tyler, or other ps238 kids he’s worked with in the past. But his reason for not telling people is more about his perception of how people see him, than how they actually see him, do what might have worked doesn’t really matter.
I want to say Zodon should have tried an intermediary or trusted they would at least take a look, but lets be honest if this plan was at least partly the Powers and the person giving the hint didn’t pre blame someone else for the problems it caused and absolved the Powers for all responsibility there is no way the Powers would listen.
It is a tried and true trope that, when it comes to warnings, practically everyone is Cassandra.
For those who believe there was an easier way to do this, you’re right, but try working in the corporate world and you’ll get a hint of why this trope keeps coming up.
Meetings: None of Us Is as Dumb as All of Us.
You remind me of a story by Asimov, wherein a commonwealth of humanoids made first contact with Earth… and discovered to their shock that humanity was different from every other humanoid known, in that they grew more emotional and less rational in direct measure to the numbers in which they were gathered.
I, Zodon, have sabotaged your Toby superpower containment unit on behest of his evil clone, Tyler, in the following ways…
A. I have learned the error of my ways, mostly I live here too. Anyways here’s what you need to do to fix it.
B. Anyways if you don’t meet my demands you will never find the instructions to fix it which I have placed in the following location.
Given their mental problems that’s one of the few ways you could actually get them to respond in a roughly predictable fashion that would work to your benefit. Unfortunately Zodon likely doesn’t know enough about the Powers to employ such a scheme since it requires enough knowledge of them to enact flaw exploitation (like he did with Ron back when he was Captain Clarinet). Zodon likely only has the general public knowledge of them which being their public face doesn’t reveal what kind of people they actually are, plus given the hero team they’re part of failed to do the job right the first time why would Zodon trust them to fix the problem? He’s clearly a ‘if you want it done right do it yourself’ kind of person and only relies on others when he absolutely has to (like when saving alternate Omaha).
I’m also not sure he’s sadistic enough to get Tyler into that kind of trouble. This may be foolishly optimistic of me, but I think he’d be appalled if he found out just how bad the Powers are to their own son. Remember, Zodon loves his parents, deep down, and did what he could to make them happy, even though it hurt him that his presence and intellect were doing the opposite of that.
That’s an interesting point, Zodon doesn’t know about how Tyler’s parents REALLY are and his treatment of Tyler has been suggested to be a result of him thinking what he’s doing trying to get him out of the school as being in his best interest as ‘normalboy’ shouldn’t be at the school where he’s at serious risk of harm or death. If he knew the truth about Tyler’s parents odds are he’d actually be extremely sympathetic towards Tyler seeing him as being as betrayed by his parents or worse than Zodon felt about his own.
The Barry Ween chip never fails to amuse!
Never seems to work when the (nominally) bad guy tries to tell the (nominally) good guys that the dingus in their basement is about to go kablooie…
Annoyingly, Zodon has a point. If he tells them who he is, his tip gets discarded because he’s a villain-in-training. If he doesn’t tell them who he is, it gets discarded because some random tipster couldn’t possibly know what he’s talking about.
Well, when the random tipster know that you have a chaos orb in your basement, it gives them a bit of credibility, even if you’re also suspicious about their sources.
Unfortunately, with the Powers in charge, the group would probably just reinforce what they’ve been doing to contain the orb, rather than rethink their concept. After all, they think they know better than everyone else…
I wonder if their day job happens to involve being in either middle or upper management.
A – a day job? Like inferior humans? Scandalous! Their one and only occupation is to
runprotect the world from evil! [/sarcasm]But seriously, I think they live off a government grant and work as full-time supers.
I imagine Rock that the Powers maintain secret ID because that’s the accepted behavior of a hero and with it what heroes do they of course go along with it as the ‘burden’ of being a hero. Something compatible with their massive egos so that when they inevitably fail to be as humble as they think they are in behaving like ‘the little people’ people will dismiss it as part of their eccentricities rather than end up outing them.
True. He first would need to craft the fictitious persona of a psychic and maybe get a sidekick with the Trivia Master feat.
You know that’s right.
Somebody finally got the reference!
Or he could impersonate a credible authority. Ideally someone credible, but hard to verify.
Or he could enlist the help of one of the teachers, they would listen out of politeness if nothing else.
Herschel would listen out of curiosity and probably has the best chance of understanding what Zordon is talking about.
Of course Zordon probably has an ulterior motive, no point in letting an artifact of incredible power fall into lesser hands.
Just throwing some ideas out there.
Zodon’s preferred follow-up plan being ‘infiltrate hero headquarters and steal the McGuffin Device’ does sort of point to why ‘Plan A’ is off the table.
Well for reason A… It would be hard trying to fake fake or convince someone that you are a completely normal high ranking person important enough to know about the chaos orb to leave a tip they would listen too.
Reason b… It would be hard enough also ensuring that the Powers would listen to you and not dismiss your tip, rant about how they know what they are doing, or even rush forth and attack you for knowing about their chaos orb.
Reason C… Why let them keep it? You managed to get something made out of all the junk the heroes shot into space. You proven that you can out smart heroes and villains so why not steal the gum drop orb and flash the villain card as an excuse?
Huh. I wonder if making the fist out of the wrecked floor counts as “Chaotic” due to it disordering the floor further.
You made me review the origin of the balancing part of Toby’s powers: 02012012
I was under the impression that BOTH the Order AND Chaos parts of Toby’s reality warping did the balancing (Chaos if he created Order, Order if he created Chaos) but now I’m not so sure.
The logic of extracting the Chaos Sphere from him would follow the idea that only the Chaos part of his powers created the the balancing side-effect.
But, if so, shouldn’t Toby now NOT be able to do anything “disorderly” as a result?
It could be that the “chaos” orb is a chaos and order orb, it just accounts for all of the side effects of his powers. Toby and the EDL just might not completely understand what they took out of him, and thus mislabeled it. (Which could explain why Did in won’t call it a chaos orb, he’s smart enough to understand what it actually is.)
My understanding is that he doesn’t have an “order part” and “chaos part” of his powers. Whether the orb contains every backlash, or contains energy that would have gone into the backlash, is relevant. If it contains every backlash, then it’s getting more powerful whether he causes chaos or order, as whatever counterbalance his power would be compelled to do is shunted into it. If it contains chaos energy or order energy in a measure equal to what his power would have been forced to use, however, then it should actually get net energy reduced when he uses one that is less common.
In other words, if it’s storing actual chaos/order energy, then he’s probably reducing its overall power when he causes manifestations that are chaotic. Because he does orderly manifestations more often, so chaos is the one he has a “debt” to. If it’s just storing every backlash, then it’s getting stronger no matter what he does.
A third possibility that just occurred to me is that the orb only stores “chaos” he would involuntarily create. In that case, if he DOES do a “chaotic” thing, there still will be an orderly backlash.
Also, he’s a kid who goes to the same school as all the other heroes. They may not see him as a supervillain in training and much as he sees himself that way. Or he could have told Toby or Tyler, or other ps238 kids he’s worked with in the past. But his reason for not telling people is more about his perception of how people see him, than how they actually see him, do what might have worked doesn’t really matter.
I want to say Zodon should have tried an intermediary or trusted they would at least take a look, but lets be honest if this plan was at least partly the Powers and the person giving the hint didn’t pre blame someone else for the problems it caused and absolved the Powers for all responsibility there is no way the Powers would listen.
Plus, no matter what, Zodon is an instinctive showoff with a sizable inferiority complex. So of course he’s going to take the difficult route.
It is a tried and true trope that, when it comes to warnings, practically everyone is Cassandra.
For those who believe there was an easier way to do this, you’re right, but try working in the corporate world and you’ll get a hint of why this trope keeps coming up.
Meetings: None of Us Is as Dumb as All of Us.
You remind me of a story by Asimov, wherein a commonwealth of humanoids made first contact with Earth… and discovered to their shock that humanity was different from every other humanoid known, in that they grew more emotional and less rational in direct measure to the numbers in which they were gathered.
That explains Facebook and Twitter?
@zodon: Well, yeah, saying pretty much that is a tip, and probably enough for them to take another look at their containment unit.
These are Tyler’s parents. Any tip that doesn’t say they’re perfect will be ignored.
I, Zodon, have sabotaged your Toby superpower containment unit on behest of his evil clone, Tyler, in the following ways…
A. I have learned the error of my ways, mostly I live here too. Anyways here’s what you need to do to fix it.
B. Anyways if you don’t meet my demands you will never find the instructions to fix it which I have placed in the following location.
I think you just found the solution there. His parents are the exact type of morons that would eat this up.
Given their mental problems that’s one of the few ways you could actually get them to respond in a roughly predictable fashion that would work to your benefit. Unfortunately Zodon likely doesn’t know enough about the Powers to employ such a scheme since it requires enough knowledge of them to enact flaw exploitation (like he did with Ron back when he was Captain Clarinet). Zodon likely only has the general public knowledge of them which being their public face doesn’t reveal what kind of people they actually are, plus given the hero team they’re part of failed to do the job right the first time why would Zodon trust them to fix the problem? He’s clearly a ‘if you want it done right do it yourself’ kind of person and only relies on others when he absolutely has to (like when saving alternate Omaha).
I’m also not sure he’s sadistic enough to get Tyler into that kind of trouble. This may be foolishly optimistic of me, but I think he’d be appalled if he found out just how bad the Powers are to their own son. Remember, Zodon loves his parents, deep down, and did what he could to make them happy, even though it hurt him that his presence and intellect were doing the opposite of that.
That’s an interesting point, Zodon doesn’t know about how Tyler’s parents REALLY are and his treatment of Tyler has been suggested to be a result of him thinking what he’s doing trying to get him out of the school as being in his best interest as ‘normalboy’ shouldn’t be at the school where he’s at serious risk of harm or death. If he knew the truth about Tyler’s parents odds are he’d actually be extremely sympathetic towards Tyler seeing him as being as betrayed by his parents or worse than Zodon felt about his own.