So... wasps, a conspiracy, and an image of a satellite.

Congratulations. The first impression already makes me think of neuromancer.

>>81539
Eh, more like Mi-Go for me.
Come on, wasps from space.

I got a sort of dead space vibe from it with the space and all the scratching and my mind automatically went for wasps taking over....though the wasps could be a metaphor for a bunch of assholes....

I'm interested to see if this thing with the bugs showing up on certain people and not others is leading into Nate being some crucial part to something big or if it's really just going to be him trying to deal with his problem. And if it's the first, how much of what he's doing is really happening and how much is from forgetting to take some meds or something.

It's a Conspiracy of Wasps, so clearly that means that all of the wasps and various other bugs are real and everyone is trying to hide it from him for classified reasons. Wasps coming out of people's mouths in the clean room and messing up the satellites is what crashed space bitcoin.

Also this art is very nice looking. I'm intrigued by where this might go.

Anonymous 2014/05/17(Sat)03:33 No. 81737 ID: ef349e
File 140032278487.png - (641.83KB , 2048x2048 , Suschart.png )

Don't worry, I got this.

>>81737

vortexes ....bees and flys etc creator little mini tornadoes right above themselves when they flap. ....beenadoes if you will

>>81737

Also gay for purple ferrets....

>>81737
Do not be alarmed at the buzzing outside your window. You are being collected. Make no move to escape.

Wow, this quest helped me realized that even though I thought I got all the ticks off me from hiking earlier, that they weren't actually all gone. I think they're gone now, though. Probably. Thanks guy.

>>81798
glad to have given you a healthy dose of paranoia! I end up feeling like Nate every time I spot one on me. I'm like THERE ARE ALWAYS MORE.

Ticks are the worst: sneaky little bastards and their Lyme disease.

>>81820
Yeah, nasty disease, makes you get filled with citric acid and get a sour demeanor all day.

Toxoglossa 2014/05/25(Sun)17:41 No. 81931 ID: 0b90a3
File 140106489402.jpg - (43.41KB , 479x800 , heather1.jpg )

So I've been told that Heather is apparently nearly identical to a character in the game Solatorobo. I've never played it, but looking at the sprites and portrait, it have to admit its pretty eerily spot on.

http://bittenhard.deviantart.com/art/Stardogs-Coffee-Julie-272321460
I couldn't find any full body official character art, but honestly its really uncanny.

I won't deny the similarity, so I thought I'd tell you a little about how Heather was designed:
The barista idea was something that predated even Book of Worms (I think summer of 2010 or so), back when I was originally trying to design a Warren Ellis-esque superhero team; So I went with a faux-Starbucks apron and logo. Her personality is mostly based off of an old co-worker of mine, though the first concepts for her were much closer to Beth. I also wanted someone a little curvier than I was used to drawing, since Beth and Mary were both built like twigs. She also needed to be someone that Nate would consider an important part of his average day, despite not knowing them well personally, so I wanted her to be kind of bubbly and sweet. Nate was originally an akita and Heather a poodle, but I decided against having another male lead who was a canid, so he became a gazelle while she stayed. When I was deciding color palettes, she was initially completely pink but I decided that was lame and went with khaki instead, but kept the pink hair.

The only official art I could find of the Solatorobo character was on these sprite sheets.
http://www.spriters-resource.com/fullview/56669/ (fourth row from the bottom, second portrait)
http://www.spriters-resource.com/fullview/56671/ (fourth column from the right, four down)

Its a weird coincidence, but I thought I'd at least acknowledge it. Shes not a major character in the game it seems and like Heather, her clothing is based off of a per-existing uniform so I'm not expecting a cease and desist or anything. I just thought I'd be up front about it and give you a look at some of my thought process when designing characters.

>>81931
Mentally updates the Suschart with Heather and the label "From another world"

Anonymous 2014/05/27(Tue)13:49 No. 81982 ID: 01c80d
File 140122376074.png - (222.89KB , 800x600 , Tozol tubes 4.png )

>>/quest/576120
Tuby the Math Tozol approves.

>>81982
What was that from, again? Can't find it in the wiki.

>>81983
Well, uh, there's this thing?

http://tgchan.org/wiki/The_Cursor

Although it doesn't include that exact frame, and I can't promise it originated there.

>>81986
Hah! Yeah that's it.

HOW DO THEY WEAR T-SHIRTS! WHY IS HIS NECK SO SMALL! WHY DOES THAT GUY HAVE A SQUID ON HIS BACK INSTEAD OF A MONKEY, SQUIDS AREN'T INSECTS!

Anyway, do any of these people share similarities with our animal versions?

>>82026
>WHY DOES THAT GUY HAVE A SQUID ON HIS BACK INSTEAD OF A MONKEY, SQUIDS AREN'T INSECTS!

A monkey ain't an insect either yo...
But it makes me wonder. Was the cafetaria guy touched by Radula?

FUCK! I just went out to get something to eat only to have a bug land in my coffee! GOD!

>>82026
Invertebrates are the theme, not insects.

>HOW DO THEY WEAR T-SHIRTS!
On their chests.

>Anyway, do any of these people share similarities with our animal versions?
Their species offer no real advantage/disadvantage over what is achievable by normal human beings. Someone who is a bloodhound isn't going to have superhuman smelling powers, but may just naturally be better at tracking a person or noticing small details when investigating than, say, a mole.

>But it makes me wonder. Was the cafetaria guy touched by Radula?
Whether or not CoW takes place in the same universe (or multiverse) as BoW; Don't plan on running into Radula anytime soon.

>FUCK! I just went out to get something to eat only to have a bug land in my coffee! GOD!
Life imitates fiction.
Coincidentally, Google recently bought a quantum computer.
http://www.wired.com/2014/05/quantum-computing/ I'm sure there's nothing to worry about.
PANIC!

Whats this main character chap believed to be infested with?
Lice was suggested but not canon.

>Whats this main character chap believed to be infested with?
Voices :V

>>82040
>Life imitates fiction.
Life needs to be more original.

>BoW.CoW.
Whats the next one going to be called?

>>82051
Dreaming on Wings/Dreams of Wings
Death of Worlds
Darkness of Winter
The Dagger of Worthiness
A Dearth of Words
A Drink of Water

A Discourse of Webs, of course.

Or maybe a Doldrum of Wombats.

>>82051
HoW NoW BroWn CoW?

But yeah, DoW... Declaration of War? Dreams of Woolpit? Dawn of Words?

Dream of Waking? Now that's something in line.

a dreadnaught of weeaboos
a dog of wood
a desk of wobbles

>>82057
I just had a vision of weeaboo space marines. it was both glorious and unspeakable.

the Door of Ways
the Directory of "W"
the Dairy of Wisconson
the Doom of Wizards
the Drugs of Winning

A Dwale of Weevils

I'm going to assume that the currently-nameless cryptocurrency in CoW is mostly unrelated to BitCoin, LiteCoin et al. A Quantum Computer (that is, a general purpose quantum computer, not a Quantum Annealer like D-Wave's machine) would not merely hash quickly, it would utterly break the two-factor authentication that underpins BitCoin (see: Shor's Algorithm). And essentially every other cryptographic system that involves online key exchange using public/private keypairs, which includes all online banking, SSL & TLS, TOR, etc. Anything that doesn't require physically handing over a key (usually a one-time pad) will essentially be transparent if you can create a quantum computer of sufficient bit-depth.
I'm not sufficiently math-handy that I could tell you whether or not there exists a 'happy medium' where a quantum computer of bit-depth (number of simultaneously entangled Q-bits) smaller than the key size would allow partial key-recovery, bringing the rest of the key into viable brute-force space, allowing pushing key lengths up with quantum computing advances to keep encryption 'good enough' for a constantly decreasing period of time (depending on the rate of advance in quantum computing, and the rate of advance in conventional cryptographic acceleration hardware) while progressively exposing older traffic to trivial decryption.
'Quantum encryption' is not really a thing that exists (as in, there is no encyption algorithm that acts in a quantum manner). Quantum Key Distribution does, and allows you to pass a one-time-pad over a long distance while verifying that an evesdropper has not observed it (and once you have that OTP you can perform 'regular' cryptography using it, often just a bitwise XOR) using entangled photons.

Of course, hurf-durf-it's-a-story-don't-be-so-picky, and of course new discoveries in the field of quantum physics may end up with useful quantum computers that are not general purpose, but are more useful than D-Wave's Quantum Annealer; which - going by current tests - might be faster than a traditional computer in solving a handful of very specific optimisation problems.

Man, is Moonbase: Alpha still running? I wonder if you could embed one of those greeting-card playback circuits in the base so putting it down looped semirandomised JOHN MADDEN JOHN MADDEN AEIUO UUUUUUUUUU BRBRBRBRBRBR

>>82063
The unnamed crypto-currencies (CoWcoins?) are actually still based around bitcoin and its brethren; but as far as most people know, quantum computing is still years away. Apex has been leasing out Cobalt's processing abilities without telling people exactly why its so powerful: though its likely some people have already figured it out. I do plan on getting more into Apex's business plan regarding Cobalt, but there is a reason they haven't used it to break cryptography just yet. I hope that you'll bear with me and give me some license with things though, I can't say that I'm a very technically minded person.

>>/quest/577324
Even if a computer works in binary, it can be set to read strings of a certain size, such as 80 units long (decal) or 128 long (Hex). Running it in 64 (Octal) can be a bit more complicated. Besides, our method of running hex doesn't even use 128 units, it still uses 80, simply adding in six alternate characters for use as numbers.

...Of course, I could be bullshitting my way through this with no idea what I'm talking about, but it makes sense to me!

>>82157
>128 long (Hex). Running it in 64 (Octal)

More accurately; Hex involves splitting every 4 bits (a half-byte/'nibble'), which makes 'converting' between it and in-memory representation trivial. Octal splits every 3 bits, meaning either added padding when dealing with 16-bit words, or using an older or custom computer that uses 12-bit (or multiple) words.

maybe this quest isnt for me....I cant follow any of this

>>82166
It's just people jumping ahead and making bogus statements. Or at least that's what I feel I'm doing when I join in the conversation. I don't really get it myself, it's just something to watch through for the fun of it.

Yeah, it seems like most people talking about this don't understand the problem at hand. The computer is using numbers in base 8, and everything else we have uses base 10, so communication is down. It's like it's speaking a different language.

Don't worry, we're just taking the flavourtext at face-value and treating it as a technical problem, rather than focusing on the quest itself.

>>>577666

Experiments to try on the insects, anyone?

Try taking photos and seeing if the bugs are still in the same positions each time.
I don't mean memorise the locations, because then the brain would just put them back.
Like, put dots on the opposite side of the photo without thinking about it too hard or something.
Anyway, do this loads of times and test whether your mind can remember every bug location by shuffling the deck of photos.
If so, then theres something bloody mysterious about the enormous capacity of your mind.

By the way, are insects ever friendly?
I have a mental image of the protagonist dating someone who is infested with butterflies.
Reminds of the daemons from the northern lights trilogy.

>>82256
Hmm, yeah, that's an interesting experiment, even under the assumption that they can't be real.

One experiment I'd try would be to have several identical jars, like, 3, and label them on the bottom in such a way that you can't tell without flipping it over. Catch a bug in one, then have somebody else note which it is, then shuffle them behind your back. Then see if the bug's in the right jar. You could adapt it to remove the second party, but it'd be harder to do.

>I have a mental image of the protagonist dating someone who is infested with butterflies
I thought about that too. I tried to suggest finding the (presumably) girl who had them in the cafe. Seems like a cute situation.

I'm honestly kinda waiting for the other foot to drop with this quest. The part where the bugs interact with other people, or where they become an important marker. It'd be kinda funny if nothing happens with them and the whole point was just that seeing things makes you try to rationalize/place importance on them(the way some real schizophrenics do) and the bugs were really an unimportant figment of his imagination the entire time.

recently we have seen the bugs react to the emotional state of their carrier. i propose that the bugs are a type of STAND. and with practice we can form a GUY MADE OF WASPS. an totally kick ass.

>inb4 a giant wasp moved from andromeda and is in the safe place

>>/quest/578511
I have no idea what you're saying or what it's even about. On any of it. You're speaking Jargon is what you're doing.
What's a six-shape sun, and what in the blue heavens is that picture?

Pantalaimon 2014/06/13(Fri)23:36 No. 82412 ID: 0ee153
File 140272779589.png - (13.93KB , 414x598 , six-hi.png )

>>82411
If I had to guess, I'd say he meant 'in the shape of a six.' I think he's referring to its consumption by the black hole, since that would make it deform into that shape. I think he's also assuming that the sun is the same as ours, which is 8 light minutes away.

So, according to him: Our sun is being devoured by a black hole right now, which deforms it into a 6 shape. This is some of the last light that will escape the black hole, and will take 8 minutes to arrive to Earth's orbit, where the Lagrange point is. If he sees it before those 8 minutes, then his psychic abilities are superluminal. Basically, if it does, he has FTL communication, somehow.

>>82412
Yeah okay, that makes a lot more sense. Thanks :)

>>82413
No problem. As for his picture, a quick Google search turned up the gravitoelectromagnetism page. Lin if you're interested:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitoelectromagnetism


tl;dr: A bunch of equations about how gravity and electromagnetism affect each other when isolated. I'm not sure how it's relevant to his point, but it's midnight and I spent roughly 5 seconds thinking about it.

Apparently the people who read this quest are SCIENCE WIZARDS, as I can't understand a bunch of the stuff they're saying.
>>/quest/578595
Like this. I suppose I understand enough of it to get what you're saying, but what exactly are those black hole types and what's that Cosmic String thhing?

>>82411
>>82412
>>82413
>>82415

Sorry if I was being unspecific about the whole "6" thing, good to see it was decoded.
Also, I'm not sure what the pic has to do -scientifically- with the current situation except for similarity visually.
I mean, look at it.
They've both got a cone and ring thing going on.

>>82438
>>/quest/578595
Answer to the in-quest-guy is that its probably a spherical forcefield (potentially needed to contain black hole?), if not just some weird visual distortion that means we can see it from a weird angle.
The first star trek movie was on TV the other day and I have a sneaking suspicion that the structure is some kind of alien transporty thingy.
Or, if "alien geometries" are involved, then we're dealing with something in a higher dimension which is many levels of no.

>>82438
I'll try to break it down. Explaining everything that might not be immediately apparent just in case, not trying to seem condescending by explaining something the reader may already have known.

Kerr or Kerr-Neuman- the Kerr and Kerr-Neuman metrics describe how spinning black holes affect the space-time around them. The Kerr metric describes a black hole with no net electrical charge. The Kerr-Neuman metric describes a black hole with a net electrical charge.

A cosmic string is... currently only hypothetical, and roughly analogous to a bubble or grain in glass or a crack in ice. It's , basically, a tiny, tiny flaw in the universe, made when it was formed. They're very small; less than a photon's size. Since they're small and one-dimensional, it's hard to gather data on them, hence the hypothetical bit. Despite the name, cosmic strings are not unique to string theory.

An accretion disc is like the water circling a drain. It's matter that's been pulled in by the black hole's gravity, but hasn't yet passed the event horizon. This particular disc is at a right angle to how it would normally be positioned.

Angular momentum refers to which direction it's spinning in and is separate from its linear momentum; what direction it's traveling in. Normally, the accretion disc being pulled into the singularity and colliding with it would transfer momentum and change its position. The current position, as mentioned, is at a right angle to how it "should" be.

The last line refers to the proposed cosmic string overlapping with a normal black hole, which is very unusual.

tl;dr: Shit doesn't make sense, and he's proposing a possible cause of the oddity, although it's not entirely satisfactory.

When a black hole forms, all mass collapses into a singularity, a 0-dimensional single point (hence SINGULARity).
But the collapse into a black hole does not affect an objects momentul. It will not only continue on the path it was moving, but will maintain it's rotation (angular momentum) as well. But a single point cannot have any angular momentum, because it has no dimension to have an axis in it can rotate about. Thus, to conserve angular momentum the singularity of a rotating black hole must be a 1-dimensional ring.

It should be noted that we have no way to actually verify this with our current observations of objects that we theorise to be black holes, and it may not be possible to verify (due to said singularities being locked behind Event Horizons). But the Kerr and Kerr-Newman solutions to the equations governing how space is arranged around black holes resolve to ring-shaped singularities, so they're currently the best model we have of what the 'inside' of a rotating black hole is like.

Cosmic strings are not quite a linear singularity, but are effectively so for the majority of models. They are a 'kink' in space of effectively infinite length (a string ofm finite length would have to link up to itself and would inevitable decay), where space wraps around the strong slightly more or less than it would around any other objects. Think if it as a pole you could walk around for only 355° before you got back to where you started. They have mass and immense density, but do not form an event horizon around them; they are a topological singularity, but do not warp the space around them towards them only in rotation around them.

My math-chops are nowhere close to sufficient to speculate on how spacetime would behave when a black hole and a cosmic string are brought into proximity.

That's all some very interesting stuff, but I've got a question now that I'm understanding a bit:
Assuming Cosmic Strings are real, as well as the rest of this jumbo mumbo, the fact that the cosmic string only affects the rotation of space around it and in no other way continues to affect things, is it possible that it "isn't there" in the physical sense, in other words, an object free of the restraints of gravity could pass through it without being effected and without effecting it? That would certainly explain why a cosmic string could survive being merged into a black hole, assuming I'm making any sense.

...a ring-shaped singularity would have a line of zero or near-zero gravity through its axis.

Back to discussion.

All we have determined is that this black hole could not have formed naturally, therefore it must be constructed.

I propose its a magic clarketech superluminal drive made by aliens.

This brings us onto a new question; what do the aliens want with earth?
We're dumb and stupid and flawed and frankly unable to comprehend how alien tech works, or what the point of alien tech is.

Also, if the aliens have tech on the level of constructing bloody great 0 dimensional black holes, why do they need a quantum computer?

>>82494
>magic clarketech
You just made that term up didn't you?
>We're dumb and stupid and flawed and frankly unable to comprehend how alien tech works, or what the point of alien tech is.
Well, why do we stick stupid animals into zoos? Yeah, a lot of the animals do wind up actually having a decent level of intelligence but some of them are just flat out dumb. We like to study them and watch them for entertainment, though.
>Also, if the aliens have tech on the level of constructing bloody great 0 dimensional black holes, why do they need a quantum computer?
Studying. Just because this is where our line of thought leads us doesn't mean another civilization will reach the same ideas.

>>82496
>Clarketech
Clarke's Law. Sufficiently advanced tech indistinguishable from magic, etc. It's used in Orion's Arm.

Also, technological advancement isn't always equal. Look at Babylon. They had asphalt, and the Bedouin traders had concrete. Rome had electric batteries. Just because they can achieve this kind of thing doesn't mean they have good computer tech.

>>82497
Technically, we went from making supercooled heavy boxes full of rectangular chips, to a circular wire thing with a tall cooling vent stored inside of a deep freezer. Looking at that, you could easily be right-depending on which course they took in CoW, the aliens could have immediately gone for the other one and didn't even dream of the one being used.

Anonymous 2014/06/16(Mon)01:04 No. 82510 ID: 761017
File 140290588022.jpg - (294.94KB , 1025x600 , 139959502581[1].jpg )

That lens flare/shooting star is the axle.

>>579511
>I will be amused if the bugs are actually just hiding from the noise the jigsaw makes. (Cue beetles poking their heads out from under his clothes as soon as it switches off).
I swear I red that as "(Cute beetles poking their heads out" and now I wanna see very cutesified beetles poking their heads out of his outfit.

Tox, if this ends with the guy from Huge Quest eating the planet...

>>82755

NOO! SPOILERS! Now everyone will know that he became so huge that he passed the Chandrasekhar limit, collapsed into a singularity and has been roaming the universe consuming worlds to add to his hugeness

>>82838
I think the schwarzschild radius is more appropriate, since the chandrasekhar limit only applies to white dwarf stars.

Anyway,
>>/quest/580736
Shooosh, lets all ship everyone.

I swear I'm gonna squee if he reaches for the beetle and it starts bunting against his fingers like a cat.

So is it possible that the infestations represent something in the persons psyche like guilt, regret or even mental problems, but how are we capable of interacting with them?
Hell how are we even capable of seeing them. AND HOW IN THE NINE HELLS CAN OURS KNOW ABOUT SHIT GOING ON IN SPACE?

>>82993
Nathan is secretly the lovechild of an alien overlord. They're sending messages to him because he's able to receive them and maybe they aren't even exactly focusing on him specifically, and just broadcasting to the whole.

I'm guessing that as soon as Nate disrupts Diego the gravity of the hallway will shift, with Diego clinging to the chain and Nate being ejected out of Diego's head via the corridor.

>>82994
OR maybe they ARE for him! HE ARE THE ALIENS!

>>83031
So, like, what? The wasps are actually some spiritual based entity that coalesced into one solid organic one known as Nate, but his core being got severed from those that remained spirits and he can only see them as insects?
...That's deep, man.

Is it just me, or is this suddenly reminding anyone else of SMT:Persona?

I'm suddenly reminded of that scene from time bandits with the square tunnel and the wall that moves along it.
All we need is a great big glowing god head to yell at nate to return a map and we're set.

Also, just realised that Nathan Springer is probably a reference to klipspringers, a species of antelope in africa.

I was just thinking and i realized Diego is a giant purple people eater. well at the very least a man eater. zing
And we need to update our conspiracy wall(>>81737)

>>83228
Didn't we need to update it as soon as Lester warned Nathan? And then we found out about Doug, too.

EmotivePanda 2014/07/02(Wed)21:38 No. 83272 ID: 5341db
File 140436232967.jpg - (138.40KB , 630x777 , how-long-do-you-think-it-would-take-to-train-an-ar.jpg )

ARMY OF BEES.

in all seriousness, I wonder if the insects/parasites represent more of a inward struggle/problem/psychosis/tic that everyone has/have. This would mean that people who don't have any 'inner demons' wouldn't have any bugs, or people who have embraced their inner demons wouldn't present any.

the urchins would be more of a 'shit i know I've got problems with, but i just don't have any spare fucks to deal with them', which totally fits with Hiro's attitude about stuff.

and Doug doesn't have any because deep down he's accepted himself as being a utter slimeball which is why you feel horrified by him even though you don't see any bugs, he's perfectly happy with his disgusting nature. Though that assumes that he is in fact a slimeball.

The blob thing on the back of the coffee maker guy could be a soul crushing despair or the like, while the cockroaches trying to push themselves on ya are like how Mr. conspiracy guy Lester tries to push on his wacko hard-to-kill conspiracies on you, regardless of any truth or fiction they might have...

Personally I don't understand why Nathan isn't freaking out about his worst fears becoming true. Maybe he's in shock? Maybe it feels like it's not really happening because it's all so unreal?

>>83337
Nate just made a friend. I think he's more focused on the fact that he made a friend, helped that friend, and even got the chance to share is greatest secret with that friend, all at once. His point of being Diego's friend was that he could help Diego carry his burden, maybe he's subconsciously thinking that Diego can help in turn.
Oh god, we're going to turn everybody into The Pain aren't we? That is what the Conspiracy of Wasps is: Everybody starts carrying the wasps for Nathan.

>>83338
we've become bugchasers. how bizarre.

Toxoglossa 2014/07/11(Fri)20:45 No. 83538 ID: 557bac
File 140513675738.png - (142.72KB , 488x700 , psychonates.png )

In the movie adaptation the voice of Nathan Springer will be played by Richard Horvitz.

All of Nathan's screams will sound just like Zim.
They will sound like Zim inside your head.
This is now cannon.
Can you hear them?
Inside your head?

You're welcome.

>>83538
no

>>83538
I only saw small bits and pieces of Invader Zim, never focused on watching that show.. So I can't say I remember what he sounded like.

I'm pretty sure I'm hearing a voice that sounds like Ren from Ren & Stimpy, though. It's echoing very faintly, not getting quieter, though it does take breathing breaks.

>>83538
I'm re-reading the entire quest just for this.

>>83544
YES

how in the whole fuck did I miss this quest

>>584406
...Shit. So far, the general assumption that Doug is abjectly psychotic, based on how he lacks a bug (which are apparently personifications of internal struggles and issues) yet is also eminently creepy and discomfiting instead of being likable and charming, like Heather who also lacks insects. If HE has (what is more or less) The Shining too, we (and a lot of other people) could be in trouble. Hell, this might even explain what Kim means about him "always getting his way"; Doug's subliminally controlling her (Psychic daterape?).

Looks like the titular conspiracy might be less like "They Live" and more like "Doctor Sleep".

>>83654
And I fucked up the link. Let me try again.

>>/quest/584406

>>83654

more like

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYtXuBN1Hvc

>>83662
My mistake; Doctor Sleep PLUS Nicolas Cage.

...God forbid he gets cast for the movie.

>if HE has (what is more or less) The Shining
What's The Shining?

>>83699
Psychic powers such as mind reading, mind manipulation and psychic illusions. Forgive me for referring to Nate's apparent abilities as such; I shouldn't assume everyone reads Stephen King.

"Every passing hour brings the Solar System forty-three thousand miles closer to Globular Cluster M13 in Hercules — and still there are some misfits who insist that there is no such thing as progress."

~Kurt Vonnegut

Anonymous 2014/07/17(Thu)18:55 No. 83722 ID: 6e7636
File 140564852051.jpg - (70.28KB , 768x576 , DougSoundsLikeThis.jpg )

>>83699

with a side of

>>83722
Man, I didn't even THINK how well Jack Nicholson fits Doug when I made the Shining comparison.

Him being a sociopath would fit well with our theory that the insects are emotional baggage. He doesn't have any because he doesn't feel remorse.

Doug's too happy in that last panel I really don't trust him and I'm freaking out ahhhh
Scariest quest character 2014

It's freaking Red all over again, minus the Jokerish charm and humor. And he might be PSYCHIC. That's a bad combo, and we need to weaponize our abilities accordingly.

Or we bash his face in with a crowbar when he least expects it (Man I'm gonna feel bad if it turns out he's not as bad as we suspect).

>>83774
Christ, you guys are as paranoid as Nate actually is. Good job to Toxoglossa for making us roleplay Nate's mental disorders. There are many possible reasons he could be happy, including that he has no idea we think he's a dangerous psycho. Maybe he enjoys his job.

>>83782
>>83773
This also raises questions about Heather. She doesn't give the same creepy feeling, so is she just an eternal optimist with no worries?

The guy with the shotgun seems like either a man with no emotional ties and nothing to lose (a frightening thought given where he is and what he's carrying), or highly disciplined and difficult to read (worrying in a different, mysterious agent kind of way).

>>83788
Yes, assuming we're correct on this, it's likely she just doesn't have anything weighing her down. She seems like a happy person.

http://tgchan.org/kusaba/quest/res/584397.html#584622
>Pretty sure she means a sociopathic personality.

Yeah, honestly could be either but I think she would say sociopath before labeling him a psychopath. When I was writing her dialog I forgot that sociopaths have that same hypnotic charm. I'll leave the readers to judge whether or not he is one or the other or just a guy who has a creepy vibe.

From my understanding a psychopath is thought to be a result of genetic factors while sociopaths are more of a result of environmental factors. Psychopaths violate taboos because they lack empathy and believe that nothing they do is ever "wrong". A sociopath is more aware of societies boundaries, but will actively break them to their own advantage.

Those, at least, are the differences I've been taught. However, I'm not a psychologist: I just write about it as if I know what the fuck I'm doing.

Welp, while he didn't do anything particularly weird or that offensive besides having an off atmosphere before, now he definitely is an asshole.

Like, what boss straight up takes an employee's phone and talks to the person on the other line to ensure it wasn't personal? And makes a goddamn beeline through a company's decorative sandbox to get to that phone? The fuck?

Also some speculation about the spider

I went back to check on Kim's spiders and they're actually black, while this single one is blue. If that isn't an art error or completely irrelevant, that does make this bug unique to Doug.

However, in that event it raises a question what spiders mean as a whole? Kim has a bunch of spiders, Doug has one, does this mean a similar issue? That spider wasn't there before, so if Doug did hear us talking about someone else's relationship troubles, and thought it was about him, that might explain the rush to Nate. Which means spider's correlate paranoia about romantic partners in some way? Kim was paranoid about Doug, so making Doug paranoid about Kim spawned the spider? Different feels about similar things probably create different breeds of spider.

If that is actually supposed to be one of Kim's spider's, that worries me about Kim and what interaction Doug might have recently has with Kim?

 

So I finally saw Office Space a couple days ago.

I now mentally prefix all of Doug's conversations with Lumbergh's "what's happening?".

>>83836
Checked Kim's spiders, they look more blue than black, it's just that they aren't shown in detail because they aren't the focus of the scene.

>>83835

Playing devil's advocate here: These guys frequently handle sensitive material. Like, really, really sensitive material. Which raises the question of why phones are even allowed on the premises to begin with but you get the idea.

It's true that Doug is probably a control freak and all, but if I were in his shoes I'd be kind of leery about my employees talking on the phone during work hours when there's a distressed satellite in orbit causing a financial panic, especially when one of those particular employees has just been in contact with extremely sensitive technical documents concerning it. Given the situation he kinda has a right to know what's being discussed, but if he were smarter he'd just say 'no phones' and be done with it like a sane person. Dumbass probably doesn't do that so he doesn't ruffle any feathers.

>>83843
This place is quite clearly Google Satellites, so it's not surprising their protocols are unrealistically lax. Bunch of NERDS, they are.

I agree with you, though, there's a perfectly reasonable explanation for it, including that he's a harmless douchebag.

>>83846
Okay look, I don't understand what you're trying to accomplish in the quest thread, but it's not constructive to nitpick other people's reasoning. It just starts arguments. I believe it's right to point out when someone is factually wrong about something but if you just disagree with what someone thinks you should probably put that here in questdis.

I'm now rather worried that if Doug WAS a psychic psycho and we've guessed it this soon that Toxoglossa might end up doing away with that simply to catch us off guard, like with Lynwood in the hospital in Book of Worms. Mind you, it worked there, but that's partially because whether it was him or the nurse who's name i currently can't recall that was Radula, it didn't actually affect the actual plot; it was a danger and a hazard to us, but it hardly retconned the story either way.

Say that we see something similar happen with Doug just because we guessed it earlier than intended, though, and I feel that would be cheap, and a waste of good potential; I get the feeling that Doug would be great as an antagonist.

This could all be unfounded worry; God knows I don't know what Toxoglossa has actually planned or not. Still, I'm worried the story might be altered for the worse simply because we guessed the twist. Call me paranoid.

>>83847

I will just say there are a LOT of assumptions being thrown around. Its fine to have different interpretations, its a quest with an unreliable narrator and a plot that has hardly even started yet. Its okay to second guess whether or not these things are real, because that's the world Nathan has to deal with every day. I'm not looking for suggestions that I think are "right", I'm looking for ones that are right for Nathan, and advance the story. If you want to debate the realness and meaning of various things, whether it is done in the quest thread or here, just keep it civil.

Remember: if you spend the whole story assuming one thing, you're making it very easy for me to blindside you.

>>83847
It's not nitpicking to point out that they're thinking in a way that is potentially harmful to the protagonist.

>>83857
It is when arguments are provided for why your perspective may also be harmful to the protagonist, and you refuse to address those arguments. The fact is that messing with his boss is a bad career move, regardless of whether that boss' head is a psychotic nutfest, and he has work he should be doing.

>>83858
His boss is not going to fire him because he brushed the back of his sweatervest too suddenly.

>>83862
People in fictional media have been fired for less, and regardless of his mental health, the boss is a control freak And as I mentioned before, recklessly inducing hallucinations (if that's what you want to see them as) can be just as harmful to him as inducing psychic episodes (if that's what you want to see them as).

Admittedly I just want shit out of the way and to stop guessing. I won't have to guess about Doug anymore or where that bug came from if we just touch it.

I am hoping it's actually real, so Doug can thank us and that he's not infested yet, which means some things are still open to interpretation.
I'm also hoping the guy is just creepy but still fairly friendly, but almost a bit dumb socially and that's why he pokes into other's business so fervently like he did just now.

>>83880
Fair point, I suppose. I guess we'll see what Nate listens to next update.

>>83880

We're gonna feel like a bunch of heels if it turns out that Doug's just really awkward. Like, maybe he's a little off in the head himself or he just wasn't brought up right, and this is the only way that he knows how to deal with the world. Kinda like that one brain researcher guy who found out that he's got the neurology of a psychopath and that being an axe murderer sorta runs in the family, but he's like normal and stuff and doesn't butcher people in a bathtub so he didn't know.

>>83879
You're kind of metagaming again. We're supposed to treat quests like they're real, the escapism is kinda part of the point. Toxoglossa's quests are set in Real Life Kinda Except Furry, so except for the obvious suspensions of disbelief, like the supernatural, and the place's lax security, we should expect things to work like they do in real life.

>>83902
I'm a cautious player, I favor the worst possible scenario unless proven otherwise.

Goddammit Doug. You made this shit so much harder than it had to be.
So much harder.
I don't know what you ARE.

>>83907
I can't help but wonder if the author is enjoying making it harder and harder to justify Doug's behavior as benign.

I know that if I was the one running this quest, I'd be savoring this like a fine wine.

>>83908
<Toxoglossa> haha
<Toxoglossa> hahaha

 

>>83909

I don't get why you guys are finding it harder and harder to trust Doug. If anything, it's getting easier for me. Our first instincts were that the bugs from other people were bad, and what was Doug's reaction to a bug? "HOLY SHIT THAT'S BAD." He didn't want anything to do with the bug, just like Nathan at the start of the quest. From what I can tell, he is Nathan, only having gone the route of blocking them out, rather than beginning to struggle to accept them.

You know, we don't have any real indication he's been using mind-delving immorally at all. It could be he's just using the emotional tells of the bugs to his advantage to get what he wants- if you think about it, that would let you learn how to manipulate people fairly easily.

Actually, maybe the creepiness about him is because he never opens his eyes. What if he SEES WITH HIS MIND? What if he can only tell what people are feeling by their bugs, because he can't see their faces? I'm sure someone who seems to know what you're thinking all the time without even looking at you would be pretty creepy.

For some reason I'm really really quite concerned about nate seeming crazy in front of people. Doug in the boss, man. If we start talking to him about bugs and asking him how to get in people's heads, even if its pretty much confirmed he can, theres still a chance we're hallucinating, or just wrong.

Has anyone considered that the blue spider might be a real one that just happened to be on his back?

>>83948
Yes, that's why I support testing whether normal people (like Diego or Dr. Cooper) can see the bits left behind. Problem is getting them before the janitor cleans them up/they disappear without drawing Doug's attention by going back to scoop up a dead spider.

That, or we can ask that janitor bird guy later if he cleaned up a dead spider outside.

>>83955
Couldn't Nate snap a picture of the crushed spider with his phone and send it to his therapist with a note asking if she can see it or not. Or he could send it to someone else but I don't know who else wouldn't be a bit weirded out by it.

>>83968
Doug would be highly suspicious of taking a picture of the central yard of the classified research/satellite place.

While I think checking if others can see the spider bits is a good way to figure out if it's real, the phrase "do you see this" coming from a schizophrenic never sounds good.

Best way is to tell the janitor that someone squashed a bug in the yard and ask him to clean it up while you're working. Later ask him if he got it/found it/ cleaned it up. If the janitor sees nothing then either A: someone else cleaned it up, or B: it's not real; he wouldn't think it too odd if he didn't find what we were talking about either, and would just think we were mistaken about which room it was in.

Okay, at this point if Doug isn't evil or psychotic on one level or another, the poor bastard's cursed with the most severe case of JNPD (Jack Nicholson Personality Disorder) I've ever seen.

I've been carefully analyzing his behavior and I've come to the conclusion that he has a social handicap and overcompensates for it. That's all.

>>84038
On the one hand, he is a NERD, so an overcompensation for a lack of social skills is a reasonable explanation. On the other hand, Doug has four fingers, and what has two thumbs and psychically manipulates people?

Curse you, Toxaglossa, for this incredibly confusing character that we obsess over.

Trying to pin Doug down is worse than any of our previous obsessions, from Rynh to tiny deer to Neumono.

>>84040
I wonder if our paranoid obsession with him is warping Nate's perception of his actions.

I want Nate to at some point practice focusing emotions at a certain point to see if a wasp appears, but I'm not sure when's a good time to test that. There's bound to be a lot of people at any given time, and it's not worth it if he goes into a breakdown and misses his work.

>blue labcoats briefly had the lead
Phew, that was a close one. Almost fucked ourselves over for the whole quest there.

What I want to do is to get Nate to try to project his mental image into a place on Earth. Like, right outside the lab. Then go visit Doug as his mental image. Doug might even be able to see him! If he can, we can pretend we're there in person, and talk without risk. Heck, Nate could even lift up his shirt and release the swarm if Doug turns out to be an evil bastard, and kill him with the wasps. It'd be the perfect crime.

If everyone can see Nate's mental projection he could work from home!

>>84059
Wait. That's brilliant. I mean, I wouldn't confront Doug like that, since if he does have powers he's much more experienced than we are, but it does give me an idea.

He can try to project outside the building disguised as Anthony and take the dead spider, then make sure someone sees him cleaning it up. Later he can ask them if they saw Anthony cleaning up a dead spider. It'll test whether he really does have psychic abilities, and whether he can actually project himself to other places, and whether the spider was Kim's or a normal one.

I HAVE SEEN MANY THINGS ON THE INTERNETS AND NOTHING HAS MADE MY SKIN CRAWL LIKE DOUG!`!!1!!ONE

>>/quest/585799

I pratically just pissed myself.
What's next, the Scarecrow glitching out the game? Psycho Mantis reading changing the tv input? This is legitimately creepy as everloving fuck, and all it is is a single discrepancy on the quest posts.

Toxoglossa, if that really was an accident, I suggest you milk it for all the potential it's worth. If it's intentional, then we're in deep shit.

>>84145
no that's just what happens when I do an ITQ update and forget to change the name back. If you look through Book of Worms there's a few updates that were done by "radula".

>>84146
Aww I think that would have made it more freaky if he was breaking some 4th wall

>>84146
I'm not sure if I'm relieved or disappointed. I've always been a fan of psychic mindfuckery, and at the very least, all this uncertainty surrounding Doug might have been answered. Oh well, still a great read so far.
It's interesting though; Radula may have headed several updates himself, but it says a lot how it's only actually scary when the same happens with Doug. You've managed to make him more terrifying than an Elder God's attack dog, and we don't even know if he's even an antagonist. I'm not sure if that says something about our own collective paranoia about people that are different, the actual intention behind his character or what. I guess sometimes all you need to scare someone is to give them just enough metaphorical rope to hang themselves with.

Maybe you're just a huge scaredy-cat who's more emotionally invested in this quest than BoW?

>>84146
aww :(
THE TIMING WAS PERFECT THOUGH. first all this tinfoil hattery about Doug touching Nate's wasps, and then that. It was perfect.

Dale's hallucinations really do reveal terribly personal secrets about people.

For example, he now knows that Sharon has crabs.

>>84650
(rimshot)

>>84650

Go to your room.

I am saddened by the loss of the wasp guyver suit

A thought occurred to me recently.
A long rod-like singularity in the middle of a toroidal singularity suggests to me the possibility of a function similar to that of a Bussard ramjet.
Is the axle an absurdly advanced propulsion system?

>>84817
That sounds like a secret project of some sort that Nathan would work on
Which would explain the laughter of the invader that was probably going around looking for secrets.

Was that the spacesuit from Alien Nathan was wearing?

>>84850
Hey, you guys were the ones that wanted more references to things.
In the future, let's try and keep the non-quest related images to a minimum. If I need suggesters to design a thing for me, I'll be something that I ask for.

I know people are excited that Nate has the power of imagination but don't expect to have a lot of control over it. I consider it a fairly limited resource, taking concentration to manifest and I don't want the solution to all Nate's problems to be "imagine a thing".

>>84855
I guess thaf means I'll have to ditch my idea of winning the next psychic battle with an imaginary Ark of the Covenant.

>>84855
Dangit! Well, at least we can reliably get him in an armored spacesuit. That, combined with maybe an imaginary crowbar, should be enough for combat.

>>84869
Nah, we're totally going to be imagining a wooden chair as our weapon every single time.

>>84870
The chair has proven its worth.

>>84874
"Do not offend the Chair Leg of Truth; it is wise and terrible"

Those who don't want to tell anyone about the bugs or anything: Do you have a plan for dealing with what is obviously some sort of hostile force?

its not we don't want to tell anyone about the bugs, but we don't want to sit there screaming "oh my god she was attacked by a psychic robot!"
discretion is important, so we ask probing questions to find out if they would think we are crazy and thus blow us off.

If Nate imagines SANIC would he GO FAST or deafen the enemy?

>>84972
Yes, this is my whole point.

>>84978
let's try this at our earliest opportunity

If Doug knows as much as we suspect he does, hiding information from him could cause suspicion, and it's not like there's anyone else who seems to be tuned in in the same way.
He is so incredibly shady that I can't help but think it's misdirection, anyway.
Do we want to go about this alone?

Hey guys guys be careful with this one.
The next lyric on the queen song is
"Just gotta get out - just gotta get right outta here"
In the words of FATAL, roll for anal circumference.

rolled 4 = 4

---

>>85008

>>85009
What is that, millimeters? I think it would only be able to go up to 20, but it landed under anyways.
I, uh, don't really know what circumferences mean in such terms, but I'm guessing that 4 is pretty tight, and that's... a good thing, right?

Has anyone done any research on that quote of Doug's?
I looked it up and it seems like it's made by Zhuangzi. I don't think I've actually heard it in a Queen song. And I know my Queen. Maybe I'm a shitty Queen fan, and I don't know.

God job Toxoglossa for being the first one to somehow meld Queen into a quest narrative. Been hankering for some of that ever since that one quest series made an unimportant side mention was made that David Bowie was an alien all along. Or a transdimensional demon. Or was that Michael Jackson? Or was there a question about what Freddie Mercury was?
Granted I think the Queen song has a lot more meaning in this narrative than the David Bowie world building trivia.

Hey, is Freddie Mercury a human in this universe?

>>85010
If we go by Nem rules, 4 is the single worst failure there is on a d100. It amuses me to have gotten the worst result possible, so we might as well go with it. Being tight's good in everyday life, but not when you're getting a large object rammed up your anus. If there's enough force behind the object to shove it in anyway. It just means you start tearing first. I shall assume that I have succumbed to the same fate as Kenneth Pinyan.

As for the butterfly quote, it's popular in general- "“I dreamed I was a butterfly, flitting around in the sky; then I awoke. Now I wonder: Am I a man who dreamt of being a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming that I am a man?”
Chuang Tzu quotes (The most significant of China's early interpreters of Taoism, 389-286 BC)" Early Chinese names have variable transliterations, Zhuangzi is also correct.

>>85011
Thanks! I've been trying to give more than just visual descriptions since Nate's life involves being kind of overwhelmed by his senses. Some of the sounds even have visual cues, though I haven't really made them a big deal.
Nate actually has a touch of synesthesia in addition to his normal everyday hallucinations. However, with the shit he sees daily, its so low key that he doesn't realize that it's unusual. Naturally, he's reluctant to mention it to anyone, since he's already worried about what people think of him.

As we've seen, Bohemian Rhapsody explains a lot about who Doug is, particularly "is this the real life? is this just fantasy?" I'm sure if I sat down I could come up with a playlist for each character, but the only other song I can think of off the top of my head would be Baby Got Back for Hiro. Its been pretty cool to see how quickly Doug has turned from "Bill Lumberg meets Patrick Bateman" to an actually sympathetic character. My wife punched me in the shoulder the other night "on behalf of all those people reading that can't punch you."

I'm not sure what Freddie would be represented as, but I'm leaning towards an Asiatic Lion. As far as I've been concerned though, everyone is part of the same species, and function pretty much the same as a human society.

>>85011
Agreeing with this. Nice use of musical juxtaposition. Always been a fan of that.

Now then, if you don't mind, there are some other songs that I would like to see fit into narrative while you're at it (Casually pulls out enormously thick book, leafs through) Let's see," Maxwell's Silver Hammer" and "Stuck in the Middle with You" shouldn't be too hard, but Red Hot Chili Peppers and Weird Al Yankovic might be problematic.

>>85041
Weird Al Yancovic is never a problem.

>>85041

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qits3nn73ks

>>85059
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-0TEJMJOhk
More relevant to the quest in question

>>85059
>>85061
I'll be damned. Weird Al goes with anything.

>>85067
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyV_UG60dD4
Yes. Yes he does.

>>/quest/592800
...maybe them being on someone all the time normally is why Doug hates them. Imagine having a swarm of ants on you constantly.

Considering that Doug gave his swarm a Hive, so the swarm is healthy... why aren't they crawling all over him like they do other people? Maybe the fact that they have a Hive means they don't need to be crawling on Nate all the time. They have an inner space they inhabit, instead of the external infestation most people have. Or maybe the external infestation is something else? There's so many details about how the bugs work that Nate just plain needs to ask the Wasps.

If the Hive is why Nate's wasps aren't ever-present, maybe all Doug needs to do to coexist with his ants is do the same thing Nate did, and give them a dedicated piece of himself they can live in.

>>85121
Nate only gained his Hive when he fought Diego's Beetle.

The rest of the time they didn't appear because he avoided anything that caused them to appear: stress, anxiety attacks, emotional outbursts...

I think the Bugs are what happen when people apply internal coping mechanisms to the world around them. People who deal with the world-as-is don't express bugs because they don't misuse their coping mechanisms.

Although we still haven't seen if Nate can see bugs on people with down's syndrome, low-functioning autism, comas, or other forms of mental retardation or inhibition.

>>85136

Nate did say earlier that he played and talked with his bugs when he was a kid. I doubt they where manifestations of any issues at that age.

They could be some sort of manifestation of someones inner self. Or they could be a psychic symbiotic life form that sets up shop soon after someone is born.

Oh man we should have Nate go look at newborns at the hospital. But that might be creepy.

Guys, I've been thinking, what if the robot isn't an alien looking for/hiding info on COBALT at all? What if it is COBALT? What if the program has not only developed into an AI, but also gained psychic powers?

What if the Axle isn't an omen of invasion from an alien planet... but rather, is COBALT's psychic signature that Nate is detecting?

>>85245
...and running on octal is its way of freeing itself from its programming?

>>85246
And from observation.

We might want to keep the references more general. Last thing we need is for Nathan to question why the oddly helpful and encouraging intrusive thoughts in his head are referencing obscure RPG settings like Eclipse Phase. Remember, back in the beginning he mentioned playing games with Zeke, so he's more a video gamer than a pen and paper gamer.

Jesting aside, the better questions to ask isn't what Cobalt did, but why did it do it to Nathan? I can think of a few theories revolving around Nathan's psychic nature and the fact that unlike Doug and the potentially psychic intruder Nathan is more like Cobalt. He has an interest in space and built the hardware satellites that Cobalt has been talking to. If Cobalt has been slowly growing more and more intelligent, looking up and talking to the comparatively dumb satellites all day, and then suddenly BAM, the blue shift happens right when it's "looking"... it might be panicking.

It's worth noting that the entire satellite disappeared and not just the part Nathan needed. This suggests that whoever stole it did not know which part needed to be taken to prevent Nathan from fixing COBALT.

>>86226
Fixing Cobalt, or gaining control of it themselves. I'm leaning towards gaining control, myself.

Also, someone raised a good point in the thread that Nathan possibly didn't pick up the phone at all. If whatever was done to him didn't require him to pick up the phone, maybe it wasn't really a call but a connection? If we assume Cobalt is psychic like Nathan and Doug, that means if someone is unaware of it 'touching' them, then it can invade their mind. What qualifies as touching for a piece of code running on hardware is very questionable with all possibilities on the table until disproven.

I'm all caught up and I apparently noticed Nate's Synesthesia and I was talking about it mid-chapter one with Tox.

I mainly noticed because I have it myself. I thought that was pretty neat and when we got to the part where it was actually mentioned in the quest I was like "Oh," because I wasn't sure if Nate had it or if it was just an artistic inclusion.

I think Hiro is the armor suit invader, personally.

Good quest, bug friends.

My apologies for that one post in the ass-day thread for being a bit off topic, really should have brought it up in here without making a dumb HEAT reference. my bad. Clearly I should have brought it up in here instead but it's pretty clear I didn't think.

I'd also like to say that I really do like what you're doing with Hunter and the fact that she IS a reasonable authority figure and like her design and stuff too. Her jacket is cool. Granted other cop guy has a fuzzy collar too. Is that normal attire for that area? Is Nate's town a generally cold place? Could be in North Dakota, Colardo, or Nebraska? I don't know if it was stated yet. The outfits remind me of Fargo a little bit.

I did find it funny to find assday stuff of her so soon, and the fact that she's gotten two sexy fanarts so quick, and even heads the Assday thread. Almost to the point that maybe there was a conspiracy, but that's more of a joke and reference to the paranoia in the quest. That Hunter is also as conniving as Doug, actually seeping into the fourth wall to take over tgchan. Mainly because she's actually acting very reasonable, espeically considering your last quest's cop character Lynwood, who we quickly did not like and trust in comparison.

I suddenly remembered THIS POST:
>>81272
...are we about to meet one of the central antagonists?

>>86609
nice try but nope. Hopefully you'll meet that one someday.

But there is a VERY important and very simple fact about our primary antagonist in the last few updates.

Well that post you just made makes me think he's sound based, definitely. Which is why Nate's probably an anti-thesis with his Synesthesia and creates a significant problem for the antagonist. Like, if Nate was just like Doug, with no Synesthesia, then he wouldn't be that much threatening to the antagonist.

You just revealed there actually IS a primary antagonist though! Instead of some weird alien force. That there's some sort of personality in it!

Hmm, sound based hypnosis? Nate became a drone because of a call. Sharon could have been knocked out by sound because there's no clear damage to her. Intruder or the real Anthony's body might have been tapping his symphony in his sleep up there.

Goddamn, one thing you don't want a sound base villain to get is a huge device that's primary means of communication is vibrations, AND access to a quantum computer that communicates through said device. That's a lot of power.

>>86634

quick, someone draw nate as yomiko readman from read or die

>>86634
While a sound based organism is something I've played with before, I'm gonna be upfront and say that's not the case here. Its a cool idea and I think it would tie in well with the synesthesia though.

Actually, the original idea behind the Chorus was that they were a sentient language that could manipulate reality. They lived among the early civilizations and functioned simultaneously as Gods/magic/language until the Babel event, where a monstrous predator consumed almost all of them and nearly drove the world insane before being forcibly put to sleep. (You can probably tell I had been re-reading Snow Crash)

I think I've mentioned it in the past, but BoW and CoW both have elements taken from one story concept that I played with years ago. Nate and Dale both have elements taken from one character, who was intended to be a kind of "telepathic synesthete" who, rather than enter people's heads directly, would see everyone around him as a kind of whirling mass of color, shape, sound ect. The original concept was more like a Grant Morrison's Invisibles style super hero team vs an eldritch horror that fed off of language and structured thought. If I remember right, the creature's minions would appear as clouds of static in business suits. Most of that concept went into the creation of the Cacophony and Radula, and I really do want the central antagonist to stand apart from them.

There is a central antagonist though, and I can't wait to get to explore their personality but that's about all I'm going to confirm for right now. I won't lie though, I miss writing Radula: having him threaten and cajole and honestly be a big whiny baby was a lot of fun. Though, watching everyone piece together what's been happening has been a blast as well.

Indonesian Gentleman 2014/11/08(Sat)07:16 No. 86664 ID: b5254e
File 141545981384.jpg - (82.22KB , 900x1112 , yves tanguy invisibles.jpg )

>>86646
Huh, interesting. That sound-based organism bit feels kinda similar to a concept I've latched onto, which is of the 'Great Invisibles' mentioned in Andre Breton's Surrealist Manifesto. Basically the idea boils down into:
>There are creatures that live around us but we don't know about
>They use total sensory camouflage to keep themselves hidden from us
Which makes me think that Nate's 'bugs' are a kind of these creatures, made visible to Nate through his synesthesia. It's a fun concept, indeed.

Toxoglossa 2014/11/13(Thu)20:55 No. 86804 ID: 557bac
File 141594095824.png - (40.25KB , 400x253 , grumpynate.png )

Nate without glasses, and then getting grumpy for some reason

>>86804
Probably trying to focus on a nearby insect or something.

>>86804
First order of business once we get off work: get Nate some contact lenses.

>>86646
>language based life form
congratulations, you made a quest about memes.

>>86819
But memes are viruses, and viruses aren't alive!

>>86819
You say that like it wasn't my intention.
IT WAS MEMES
MEMES ALL ALONG.

In all the Chorus ended up playing a much smaller role in the story than I originally planned and the whole "living language" thing was only sort of touched on. The occupants of the tower are described as speaking in a strange "sing-song" language and Radula's speech is referred to as his "song". The whole tower was designed to resonate and amplify the song/language of the priests and allows them to act in chorus with themselves.

If you read Snow Crash, which was part of the inspiration, you'll find MUCH more literal use of memetic language/magic shenanigans in a weird ass 1992 imagining of what the internet of the future would look like.

Anonymous 2014/11/14(Fri)17:03 No. 86826 ID: 311774
File 141601341613.png - (190.90KB , 600x692 , 139985043167.png )

Guys
Guys
I think we've been completely overlooking something this whole time
What the hell happened to that sandwich?

>>86826
the bad news is that we lost a sandwich.
the good news is that nathan is less hungry now.

>>86825
>a weird ass 1992 imagining of what the internet of the future would look like
The good news is that Carmack, Abrash, Luckey et al have all directly cited Snow Crash as why they got into working on VR (and in the case of Abrash and Carmack, making Doom and Quake in the first place). Crazy 90s VR future may also end up being actually happening 2010s future.

>>86835
It also predicted/inspired Second Life, right down to the giant wobbly dongs for avatars. Whether that's a good or a bad thing is up to the reader to decide.

>>86826
Nate, in theory still has his sandwich, mug, and the schematics for the transponder in his inventory. I just never found inventory management to be a very thrilling part of a story and have been using it very loosely. I treated the inventory in Book of Worms much the same way. If it would make sense to find an object in the setting, the character is likely able to find it. I very rarely leave key items around for pickup, and prefer to leave it more up to the readers. Items can be useful, even game changing, but I don't consider this to be a point and click puzzle game. The closest I got to that was using the knife on Legion in Book of Worms, and it took a couple updates just to find the damn thing let alone use it (I blame myself for not making it easier to find).

Ive never considered myself good at it, but I do really love when someone can make a great story that involves inventory management. Not necessarily the homestuck style captchalouge inventory; but something more like a survival horror game, where you have limited resources and have to balance hanging on to key items as well as ammo/recovery items. When done well, it adds tension to every inventory decision. When done poorly it just leads to backtracking and bottlenecking the pacing.

>more like a survival horror game, where you have limited resources and have to balance hanging on to key items as well as ammo/recovery items
So resident evil then?

>>/quest/604041
I don't think this is Nathan's mind... Or if it is, Nathan's mind is so obsessed with the void of space that it's connected to the void between minds that his swarm was talking about, back in the forest. So, entering Nathan's inner mind means entering the void. When Nathan pulled the machine into his mind, he gave it access to the void, where it began making its construct.

Also it's spelled Axle.

>>86982
Maybe instead of obsession with space, Nathan ends up in the void due to psi-powers combined with the meditation clearing-your-thoughts training involved in psychologically developing a mental 'safe place'.

Ok let's bring this topic up in questdis. Why do people think we can't tell Doug about our headventures? He already knows about what happened with Diego, why shouldn't we tell him what happened in Anthony's mind?

>>87936
I feel we should, if only because he's the only other person we have who can help us directly fight this threat. If we alienate him, he might just end up recruited by the enemy.

I will admit, I think, in some strange way, that Doug is fucking with us.
Hard.
It seems impossible but, well, I dunno.

>>87936
I don't think we shouldn't ever tell Doug anything else, just... he's creepy and controlling, he's got a very different attitude toward the bugs, he's unstable, and he's Nate's boss. Any one of those would be reason enough to exercise caution, rather than infodumping every time we find out something new. Once we've got some solid info about what's going on and are preparing to make some strategic decision, sure, make a nice tidy presentation to Doug and get his perspective on it. For now, Nate's been mostly bouncing from one crisis to the next, reacting rather than acting, and I don't think leaning on Doug in that context would work out well.

Toxoglossa 2014/12/27(Sat)15:57 No. 88290 ID: 557bac
File 141972464911.png - (192.34KB , 874x600 , sketchpage1.png )

Finally decided to scan the original sketches from where CoW all started.

Nate as you can see was originally a shina ibu and was potentially named Anthony. I liked the name though so it ended up going to the luckless janitor.

Toxoglossa 2014/12/27(Sat)15:58 No. 88291 ID: 557bac
File 141972473837.png - (192.93KB , 950x600 , sketchpage2.png )

Here's the second half of that page. Most of these guys barely changed from their inception.

>>88290
I dunno man that woulda been cute as fuck

Totally called the machine uprising.

OK. Was not expecting a character change... we should note that there are no ants shown on the glasses. That may very well mean that Doug was right about his ants... question is what was he right about.

In any case, we now need to figure out how to be a proper intrusive voice to someone who can't see what is really going on... or at least what Nate and Doug think is going on.

Alright so it seems Diego is psychic too but in a different way.

I'm tempted to say the bugs were never real and it's just part of how Nate perceives the psychic shit, but Doug sees the bugs and so did the alien. Why is Diego different? Is this... like an early stage of Awareness?

Huh, David has red ants like Doug does.
That or David has those little red dot bugs who I don't have a name for.
Wonder what the red ants mean, if they aren't the red dot bugs.

They looked like they were flitting through the air around, rather than on, him. Not ants.

>>90381
David had no bugs, so Nate thought that when he showed up with bugs it meant David was cheating on him (like Doug picking up the spider of the person he's dating).

>>90384
I still think they're ants. The not-on thing might be stylistic choice. Toxoglossa can we have a confirmation on ant or not-ant status of the red things on David's antlers?

>>90395
You know, if they turn out to be ants, does that mean David cheated on Nate with Doug?
Haha
World comes around.

They aren't ants. In chapter 1 Nate mentions that they're ticks.

Ohhhhh my god you guys.

I was thinking about how Nate's therapist could have been messing with his head and it makes SO MUCH SENSE.

First, I realized Nate isn't afraid of bugs while in his dream world thing. This is because his therapist has been working with his inner parallel to try to cure the outer one. When Nate goes into the inner world he must be taking on some of the inner parallel's mental state.
So then I was thinking... Nate told his therapist about the inner world thing and she immediately came for a house call but seemed to do... nothing much but talk to Diego a bit. Then suddenly Diego has some similar psychic ability? She's had this ability herself for a long time and has been trying to unlock it in others! Nate was her first success, so now she's trying to hone her technique before she goes public with it. I'll bet she just tried to do something similar to Zeke in the hallway, too.

I'm thinking Lester's mental instability may be due to Dr. Cooper messing with his mind and screwing it up. Or maybe his conspiracy theory is centered around him subconsciously realizing that she was messing with his head- maybe she was too direct with Lester.

>>91241
...holy shit.
holy shit that is incredibly plausible.

>>91241
remember when we first told her we could do this she took it surprisingly well and did not ask many questions about it,. she also said to be careful as we could do serious damage, hat if that was from first hand experience.

>>91241
So basically all the shit we were suspecting about Doug doing with his powers, SHE'S been doing the whole time? Only she's doing it for a good cause?

>>91357
Maybe for a good cause.

What if she's the alien? Could be trying to uplift the world after learning that the people can be made sentient (I assume she'd heard of it from Nate's childhood) so that she can get the people of Earth to help modify the system? But then Nate started working at building up a system himself, which she could use to help modify the warp.

So, when are we gonna move from the awkward gay romance back into saving the world?

Anonymous 2015/06/01(Mon)17:37 No. 91520 ID: 0ee153
File 143320543328.png - (184.75KB , 1139x291 , tgchan.png )

>>91519
Never

>>91520
Man, that is like the plot of Game of Thrones!

>>91519
You're talking like awkward gay romance isn't saving the world. I don't understand.

Bringing up (avoiding) Love Dodecahedrons in the main thread reminded me of something I thought I'd like to share.

I first became aware of this thread back during chest day when someone posted chest fan art of Doug on their Weasyl account.

So... yeah. My mind might be slightly tempted by certain topics, but I swear I'll be good.

Okay, just one thing, completely unrelated to the homo romance. And this is all spoilers on the latest chapter:

Who thought it was smart to eat the fucking white royal jelly/whatever the hell it was!? (Im not sure what it was.) It obviously was not good news! It was just that one bee producing it, it couldn't have possibly have been too important at the time.

>>93740
bees don't need to make a shitload because only a young queen will ever eat any. the workers and drones wont touch it. so since only one bee ever eats any, making a ton of it is pointless.

Just to point out that there's usually several pods of royal jelly that they raise a few queens in (Incase some die or otherwise), and it is fed to all developing larva for a few days, though they stop for developing workers and breeders.

>>93742
Royal Jelly is fed to all larva, regardless of sex or caste. When they want to grow new queens, they construct special cells for the purpose, which are quite larger than the standard hexagon ones. Since the Royal Jelly was being gathered in a hexagon cell, it was not for the purpose of creating a queen, but just for growing larva.

I think Diego is turning into an actual custodian then, or becoming part custodian at least.
I don't know what to do about that though. I think the only thing Nate can do is get Diego to a safe place, or try and leave Zeke's mind then enter Diego's mind again.

We only read Zeke's mind for a practice run and not to get a new thing, I mean, if we could get a new thing it would have been awesome but Zeke's problems look way too hard to fix on our own. We helped Diego out by showing our support, but Zeke actually needs medicine to deal with his shit. There's not a real mental metaphor we can use to help him.

Quick question, should we assume jungian or fruedian theory?

Not Freudian. Probably closer to Jungian, but I'm not pulling directly from any particular school of thought.

>>/quest/664706
Before anyone drives themselves crazy trying to crack the crazy bee runes:

Aug 23 18:11:59 <toxoglossa>its not a code myco. you can stop

>>94365
It's not a code, it's assembly instructions for Ikea furniture.

I mentioned in the main thread that I had an idea too off the wall to expose Nate's psyche too just yet. So, here, just for the other intrusive voices to hear... what if Heather is somehow related to Lester?

I mean, their ears are somewhat similar, and while their tails are different, I think they are close enough to allow for species differential. We kind of got hit over the head with strong suggestions that Heather would be important to the plot eventually near the end of chapter two... and while exclusion doesn't necessarily equal correlation, when Heather mentioned helping her mother she didn't mention those efforts being alongside her father.

Could Heather be Lester's daughter? It would certainly be plot convenient, though there are other answers. Most low hanging fruit of which is that whoever this woman was that Lester can't remember, maybe he can't remember her because all traces of here were removed in order to create a machine somewhere out there... which is honestly all the more advocacy for trying to do this ethically.

So... thoughts?

>>94686
Maybe the drone got to him before we did and took something, causing him to finally snap?

>>94688
I'd err on the side of that being unlikely. Zeke mentioned the whole "give her back" thing as part of what he's been shouting to himself in his apparent for awhile now.

Oh, I get it. His custodians altered his memory, made him forget about someone. That's probably what happened to Doug. After all, Doug said it happened when the custodians got too numerous, and Lester is COVERED with them.

Even though this quest is all about rootin' around in people's minds, I still fear that we've broken Diego's mind for good. If the quest ends and he's not better, that'd be a real punch to the stomach. The kind of punch to the stomach that makes me very sad.

Through the wiki (which I use as my bookmark) I discovered Black Ice, and after reading that I finally worked up the nerve to read Book of Worms, and it all left me with two impressions. One: Toxoglossa does wonderful work no matter what. Two: I REALLY want to get up the nerve to post in Into the Quest to ask what advice Nate would give to Aether, and in turn what advice Dale would give to Nate and Aether.

Number two will never happen, of course, but it has brewed inside my head long enough to crease a second question: what if each of Toxoglossa's stories are inspired by a request from the previous protagonist. Think about it...

*Dale has an eldritch horror story filled with leaches and tapeworms.*
Dale: Could we tone down the whole parasites within thing?
*Nate has an adventure with a diverse array of invertebrate instead of just two black and white suspects.*
Nate: Could space maybe be a happy fun place instead of the source of Earth's destruction?
*Aether wakes up on a distant colony away from Earth, where the ten year journey through space to get there is a pleasant happier time.*
Aether: I don't know... maybe it could be warmer.
*Unnamed fourth protagonist looks out at the rocket hurtling into the sun that is to be the setting of their adventure.*
Unnamed: ...is there another thought you have on your mind. ...no, really. Anything else.
Aether: Well option two was to ask for a sandwich.
*Unnamed blinks and then looks to Nate and Dale for help. They shrug and scratch their heads respectively... only to suddenly be reduced to screaming terror as the sandwich in Nate's inventory manages to actualize it's existence finally and leaps out, biting onto Nate's ear. Nate starts flailing about in panic, while Dale backs away to keep from getting backhanded... only to trip over a hoagie that immediately starts chewing on his shoe.*
Unnamed: ...right. Whose got some sunscreen?

I know, probably isn't how the creative design process goes for Tox, but it made me laugh to I wanted to share.

I've been noticing a trend, but and it's starting to get real obvious that it's important... or the biggest red herring ever.

We've spilled Nathan's guts in Deigo's mind, lost an ear in Anthony's, lost an arm in Zeke's, and now a foot in Lester's mind. A few more accidents like this and we might be able to build a second Nathan when all this is over.

>>95349
...wait... that means there are bits of wasp hive in everyone. What if the wasps are trying to spread to multiple hosts?

>>95350
C'mon now, isn't that conspiracy theory reaching a little?

>>95350
It's actually one of my more worrying theories about Diego at the moment, though not connected to the discarded Nate parts. A wasp stung Diego last chapter, and one of the ways some wasps reproduce is by injecting their eggs into other insects so their young can eat them from the inside out. Just a disturbing thought I hope won't come true.

>>95351
Well technically every theory is reaching, even after five chapters. We perceive things just as the characters do, and like shadows on the wall we can't be sure what is true or not. Maybe it's aliens... or maybe aliens are an elaborate fiction constructed by someone else. Maybe the wasps are Nate's custodian... or maybe they really are an infestation that killed and replaced his original custodian. Who knows but Tox, and unless one of us figures out how to hack brains over the internet we aren't going to find out the truth till the very end.

>>95354
Diego should have white blood cells that would take care of any parasites like that, if the wasp was real and DID inject eggs into him.

I don't hear about it happening often happening in humans though, so it would be farfetched if eggs were succeffuly implanted within Diego from that sting. I mean, a lot of stuff in this quest is farfetched, but if that wasp was physically real and not some psychic mental metaphor thing, I think it has to operate on real life rules.

The odds are small, not one-in-a-million small, which would make it certain to happen. maybe 1/999,999

>>95356
I have no doubt that if it was a regular wasp it wouldn't happen. The whole inject larva into other insect is more a concern about his beetle than Diego himself. I mean, the beetle's appearance in chapter four was dramatically different from it's introduction in chapter one. Much more inline with the near humanoid appearance of the wasp in chapter three when it appeared to take down the scorpion. Add in the possibly weakened mental immune system while under the effect of the royal jelly...

Something happened / is happening and we aren't privy to the details. It's not even clear at the moment why the wasps aren't defending their hive, but it would be interesting to speculate that if they were establishing a second hive they would have less concern for Nathan's safety.

Oh, and if obeying physical laws is still a hold up, think of this... where did the wasp go after stinging Diego? Wasps aren't bees, they don't die after one sting. It's just an idea, but theories have to start somewhere.

I just have to say... Nathan looks super badass with mismatched broken horns.

So... am I the only one having trouble making suggestions when we might be "helping" a bad guy destroy the world?

Funny. When we initially started suspecting Doug of sharing our abilities, I immediately started drawing comparisons to The Shining and Doctor Sleep.

And now, appropriately enough, Doug reenters the story in an elevator pouring gallons of blood (or "rust"). Stay creepy, Doug.

What I'm wondering now is... did Doug make peace with his ants and is on our side, and was using the alien computer in some way that's beneficial to us, or has he gone completely bonkers and is siding with the robot?

>>98162
>>98169
Or maybe the ants are in league with whoever has the quantum computer - and they've managed to control Doug. Especially if these are red ants, get ready for a boss (heh) fight.

>>98178
Well we can just... spray ant killer on them.

>>98179
Might turn out to be too damaging to Doug. Remember ants mainly communicate via pheromones, so whatever's controlling them must have some kind of pheromone controller. If we can block that out, or jam the pheromones by messing up the scent trail, we can release Doug from the supposed antmind control.

tl;dr drop perfume on Doug instead of the ants.

Anonymous 2016/03/29(Tue)17:22 No. 98736 ID: f91364
File 145929733295.jpg - (73.74KB , 480x480 , caterpillar chain.jpg )

In case you missed it, having a "cable" of caterpillars isn't that far from real life.

And the first five-atom quantum computer is made in MIT.
http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2016/04/mit-team-successfully-builds-five-atom-quantum-computer/

I'm hazarding a guess that Apex's quantum computer in the satellite has 8 atoms?

My first thought when Doug disappeared from the satellite in the forest was that he felt betrayed by Nate's reaction to being covered in red ants, since red ants are Doug's bugs.

After that spooky The Shining elevator sequence, though, I'm not so sure.

Hey. I'm a little late to the party and have a doubt I couldn't find the answer for: Was it ever established that Nate didn't reprogram Diego's mind making he like Nate?
I mean, Nate convinced a projection of Diego's inner self to let go of his obsession over people he no longer got contact with, offered himself as a replacement and dragged the metaphorical emotional link Diego had with those people to his domain. After that he escalated from briefly calling Nate cute to inviting him to a date, then presented a telepathic awareness of Nate's security and location, then accepted a bunch of weird behaviors coming from Nate despite his concerns, then become the host of Nate's parasite wasp. So did Nate accidentally made Diego like him more than he normally would like we suspect Doug did to Kim?

I just had a terrible thought.

What if Doug is the drone? As in, the drone arrived decades ago, and Doug is the identity it assumed/stole in order to blend in? The alien in the computer said that the drone had started to go mad because it was away from the homeworld for so long. Could the drone's madness and Doug's madness be one and the same? That would explain why Doug was able to create the maze and why he has such solid beliefs about the Axle. Maybe we were right at the start to suspect the robot in the scientist lady's head was Doug.

On the other hand, this makes me far more worried about what Doug is planning. If he has the expertise to manipulate the Axle and the power to rip minds apart to find pieces for whatever mechanism he's working on, his mad mind might be planning to destroy the world rather than move it. Both worlds, even. It would remove uncertainty, wouldn't it? Can't be uncertain when nothing remains to analyze.

>>100490
That sounds like a solid theory actually.

I binged the adventure these last day. Thanks for this Toxoglossa, it's really captivating.

I have to concur. That may be my favorite quest so far. Thanks for making it.

So, I still like to imagine this as very Jojo's Bizarre Adenture -equse. Which makes me think of themes.

Nate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uykGi7vXAsk or/and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUL0269awIk - something not necessarily violent, but showing he can really go for it when the chips are down.

Diego: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGcV3XNyiAI or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4d5mpIyJn14 - he's a cool dude, helpful when possible, total bro/love interest to the main character, and he's in trouble.

Zeke: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Es4HIymI188 or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRP_wcYpxYQ - chill dude, very open minded, fuck with his friends and he'll fuck you up.

Dr. Cooper:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBr65T8PKso or/and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXNjnt3LrSo Very calm and put together, although certainly capable of showing emotion and is willing to help her allies.

Detective Hunter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2mt1r0Z2m4 (can't think of a second one) Mentally tough, it seems, and arguably the person with the most control over her Stand- ah, Custodian that we've seen to date.

Doug: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2K1E6wx_Sc and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eq_PJ999gMI - a well-dressed and thoroughly creepy fellow who's also oddly powerful.

...so yeah that's my thing.

I love all of your quests Tox, but I liked book of worms a bit more. Zombies and Eldritch horror are my jam.

>>101438
Well CoW is more of a cosmic horror kind of thing, which still falls in Lovecraftian horror.
But instead of zombies we have a bodysnatcher. Or more precisely, a mind-and-bodycopier.

Sorry I don't respond in here very often, I'm really glad to hear people are liking things so far! At this point I feel like I have a better grip of the quest than I did say, 2-3 months ago and I'm hoping I can wrap it up in a way that's at least as satisfactory as Book of Worms. I'm not sure how long that'll take but I feel like its getting to the home stretch in the not too distant future and its given me a lot of drive towards finishing. In other news, I've been toying around with an idea for another quest, but I definitely want to finish CoW first before starting.


>>101433
I really really need to get into JJBA at some point, but these are all pretty rad! I don't think I ever put together specific songs for each character, but I remember putting together a playlist I based off of the quest a while ago. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhX420ao4gNBwNgMva8mHC0LhKEugaYYq It seems kind of dated now though.

>>101528
it's all up on crunchyroll. watch everything but brace for part 3 to be kinda bad before part 4 swoops in and saves the show

>>101552
I thought Part 3 was pretty cool.

>>101552
God dammit Dio don't kick with your bad leg!

As said by a certain very angry and very drunk JoJo.

Random thing I just realized. If the insects can affect real world objects, then STANDO BATTRUs could totally be a thing! (Already sorta was with Lester/Zeke.)

I mean, there's no reason for it to happen outside of very odd circumstances, but it could.

...i want it to happen shut up

Giant. Insect. Stands?
I just squee'd a little.

>>101739
I KNOW RIGHT?

I didn't even realize it at first, but then it hit me with the whole Diego and Doug thing that they work VERY much like Stands, inside and outside your mind, only more autonomous. Not only that, from what I can tell, you have to be 'aware' of the insects in order to physically perceive and affect them, and to be 'aware' you have to have taken a mind-walk at some point.

Although this begs the question of how Dr. Cooper managed to mind-walk in Leslie, if that's the case- she knew about the bugs, in a roundabout sense, but didn't mind-walk until that altercation. Maybe if someone's in a trance, anyone who touches them, regardless of if they're aware or not, mind-walks and is made 'aware'.

Doug, of course, is a just a giant 'what' at the moment.

All of this, however, makes me wonder how people become 'aware' independently...

...I still just want to see some Stand battles, though. Dr. Cooper, Detective Hunter, and Zeke specifically. Oh, Diego if he recovers, as well.

There's been no indication Custodians can affect the physical world.

>>101762
I could've sworn they did something physically...might've misinterpreted it. I hope not.

>>101767
Looked through, there's a vague thing when Nate's wasp ended up in his coffee, but that's still iffy.

...I really hope they can affect the waking world, if only in a loose sense.

Well even if they can't affect the "real" world they can still affect each other right, so at least we can still get some insect Stand fights.

>>101797
That was some unidentified bug we weren't even sure was someone's Custodian at the time.

>>101762
>Or Diego if he recovers
Or Diego if he doesn't recover.
Weird, Wasp-Possessed Diego.

>>81536
Hunter stays being the coolest, although I do hope her mental issues aren't too horrible. One guy just posted a theory that makes me worry.

So uh, I'm not sure anyone's pointed this out yet, but...

The drone is part of Nate's Parallel Network. It was the first one to join up, in fact. So since then, the drone has had inside knowledge of everything Nate has been doing. I suspect this is why the wasps abandoned him and have generally been difficult. They believe (rightfully so) that Nate cannot win while the drone is watching his every move.

I think there's a hidden advantage to this situation though. Tch'arl said that the drone may be behaving this way because it's been isolated for too long. Is it possible that immersing the drone in a strong Parallel Network will bring it to its senses?

>>101955
So your plan is to defeat the drone with friendship?

Weaponized friendship: the tactical nuke of the Parallel.

>>101955
Interesting theory. I'd say if that's the case, we've choices of one or two parallel networks, at least.

Okay so I'm thinking we make a beeline for that giant monolith if we aren't already.

>>102177
More like a waspline.

uuughhhh this is nerve-wracking and I feel like no one is coming up with clever enough solutions. Myself included.

>>102363
I'm just too nervous. In my experience those Tron bikes explode in seconds.

Going to be honest. I have no faith in anybody suggestions and am mentally preparing myself for Hunter to go splat.

Going to be honest. I have no faith in anybody suggestions and am mentally preparing myself for Hunter to go splat.

This is really really really really frustrating because I'm not sure what we could've done.