brockton bay, meet glam

[mxglam]

It's the anniversary. Glam would very much not like to celebrate.

It’s their last day on Winslow High - they’re being transferred to Arcadia on Monday - and also their last day without a patrol schedule assigned.

And the PRT released a small announcement on its website about Glam joining the Wards. Now their wiki page doesn’t get erased, of course - they’re no longer speculative. They wonder what it’s got on them.

Comments

[mxglam]

"Okay... yeah I guess it sounds like a good first test. There's three things we're testing, right: my expectations alone, mine versus hers, and mine alone." Pause. "But actually even if other people only contribute negatively, their passive expectations definitely do contribute there, and the whole building-a-rep thing is still worth it if only to remove everyone else's negative passive expectations about me."

[thinkering]

"Only to the extent you can avoid trolls claiming you can't do anything. It demands a much more conservative approach."

[mxglam]

"No, that's not what I mean. Like, people not only don't expect a random Tinker gun to hurt Endbringers much, they expect it not to, and that definitely counts against me and is an expectation I need to work on. If I'm just a random nobody, they'll have no reason to not hold the basic expectation that I'll be ineffective."

[thinkering]

"There's kinds and kinds of ineffective. You did hurt Leviathan. You didn't kill him, but he shooed that much sooner. If backlash gets too bad you might not be able to do even that much."

[mxglam]

"Point, but I don't think backlash can get that bad? Even if people don't like me, unless they actually start believing I'm a sham they won't expect me to fail. I think. I mean, the approach is slightly different if there's literally no positive feedback from other people, I suppose, but the basic strategy of building a rep is sound."

[thinkering]

"I have bot footage of Leviathan too, by the by, they're recording by default."

[mxglam]

"Ooh, yes, that's good. Maybe I shouldn't release that as a first episode, though, could be something like a bonus one a couple of weeks away."

[thinkering]

"Sure. Tune in next week for a shot of me nailing Leviathan with this awesome gun! Include still shot of gun."

[mxglam]

They laugh. "Yeah. But in any case, we should test that. What kind of thing should I do?"

[thinkering]

"With Windflower, you mean?"

[mxglam]

"Yeah."

[thinkering]

"You still don't have much teekay with objects you haven't conjured. But she's seen you move an object once, so she won't expect it to be impossible as a general rule. We can take a baseline, set her up in another room with a robot, and go from there with you and her having various sets of information."

[mxglam]

"Okay, I'm liking that. And now I'm thinking that there's, like, some extent to which my power's restricted by my own subconscious expectations, even of stuff I'm not actually perceiving?"

[thinkering]

"Oh?"

[mxglam]

"Well, like, when I first made copy. They couldn't really see what I wasn't seeing until the ball you threw at their forehead" (air quotes) "'convinced my subconscious' that they should be able to. So there's some extent to which I'm limiting myself, which might... have some effect, here. Like, if I see non-imaginary teekay while Windflower's expecting that to happen, that might cause me to be able to do it even when there's no one else around, and it... wouldn't necessarily mean it was because of what Windflower was expecting? ...I kinda confused myself here."

[thinkering]

"For the purposes of this experiment you are not going to know for sure what Windflower's expecting."

[mxglam]

"Yeah, ignore my ramble."

[thinkering]

"How much will it throw you off if you don't have video of the room where she is?"

[mxglam]

"...some? I think the theme going on is that I need some kind of trustworthy feedback for when my power works, but I think a robot beeping around me when it does should be enough."

[thinkering]

"Okay, because it could throw things off if you were lipreading Windflower or psyching yourself up too much looking at the setting, but we're checking variance from a baseline, not absolute ability."

[mxglam]

"Mmhm. So, I have been so far unable to make a ping-pong ball that I didn't make float. Success would be me being able to remotely move it a bit?"

[thinkering]

"I was thinking have you move it 'as fast as you can' and see if that's faster when Windflower expects it."

[mxglam]

"Move stuff I can already move, then? Boots was pushing 90 and I could still keep up with him using my suit, I might break something if I send a ping-pong ball at a wall at my top speed, whatever it may be."

[thinkering]

"Maybe we should run two iterations, one with a ping pong ball you made and one with one you didn't make. Not in that order. In case we don't get usable results from the thing you didn't make at all."

[mxglam]

Nod. "So what will the actual experiments be, and what are our predictions?"