2x05, "Wind-Up Boogeyman"

[Cole]

The motion has been made and seconded.
The vote is called, all in favor post "Aye".

Aye.

*holds beer up*

Ale!!!

Man. I wish I'd brought a beer to have with my lunch today. That sounds nice!

[nebula]

I've only just managed to catch up with this episode, after self-sacrificingly putting it on hold to complete an assignment.

I felt for Brady - really felt for him. I was annoyed with the rest of the team for NOT telling him about Erik -he really should have known that a teammate had suffered that kind of bereavement and I was very slightly disappointed in Sol for not making sure he knew. (although Sol is very easily forgiven).

And I read the extras this morning before I went down for breakfast - the second one made me tearful and I had to wait a moment. And being as I have been feeling fairly ambivalent about Chaz of late, that packed a serious emotional punch.

[John Campbell]

The existence of anomalous senses and other abilities that provide the anomaloid with new information - like the Chillicothe gamma's ability to see through others' eyes, or a pretty sizable chunk of Hafidha's repertoire - suggests that maybe what the host knows isn't all that important...

Although in both of those cases, those are senses that the Gamma/Whatever-Hafidha-is could extrapolate from their knowledge... unless the Chillicothe Gamma was born blind, but the scars suggest it was some trauma that caused his blindness.  Not that Im necessarily disagreeing, just saying those aren't good examples...

Mm. I don't think I made clear the distinction I was trying to draw. Hosts' anomalous abilities appear to be based on personal mythology, so it seems unlikely that they'd develop an ability that was completely outside the scope of their knowledge. (Though... did Hafidha develop her ability to see anomalous data before or after she learned about the Anomaly?) That's not what I was trying to get at, though.

The question I'm wondering about is: How dependent is the actual functioning of anomalous abilities on the host's knowledge?

Morgan Creirwy believed that she had the ability to curse people with ill fortune - and so she did. She also believed that warding magic would be effective protection against that ability, and when presented with the knowledge that Daphne had performed a warding ritual against her, Creirwy's ability did fail and turned back against her.

So is the important part here that Daphne did the warding ritual, or that Creirwy believed that Daphne had done the warding ritual? That is, can the functioning of anomalous powers be affected by things that the host doesn't know about?

As another hypothetical example, Melinda Grossman had the anomalous ability to put holes in people with a non-functional gun. What would've happened if Melinda had pointed her gun into the bushes and pulled the trigger, and, unbeknownst to her, there was someone hiding in the bushes in her line of "fire"? Would that person have gotten a hole in them? Or would Melinda have had to know they were there to shoot them? (Come to that, did it even matter where Melinda was actually pointing her gun, or did she just make holes where she thought the holes should be made?)

In this episode, though, we see both the gamma and Hafidha using anomalous abilities to discover things that they had no non-anomalous means of knowing. (They're not the only ones who do, either, but they're the ones who're actually on-topic for this thread...) The gamma uses it to see despite being blind - and is presumably seeing what's actually there, not just what he thinks should be there - and Hafidha uses it to... well, I'm not exactly clear on what her actual method is, but she can demonstrably get information that she didn't previously have using it. So it's apparent that the Anomaly can be affected by things the host doesn't know... which is not to say that it always is...

[Felicia1066]

As another hypothetical example, Melinda Grossman had the anomalous ability to put holes in people with a non-functional gun. What would've happened if Melinda had pointed her gun into the bushes and pulled the trigger, and, unbeknownst to her, there was someone hiding in the bushes in her line of "fire"? Would that person have gotten a hole in them? Or would Melinda have had to know they were there to shoot them? (Come to that, did it even matter where Melinda was actually pointing her gun, or did she just make holes where she thought the holes should be made?)

Well, for that last question, we do know that the "bullet" wounds Melinda caused had an impossibly straight trajectory, which suggests that where she thought a bullet would go mattered more than the actual angle of the gun she was pointing. That's direction/angle/trajectory, and we can't be entirely certain the same applies to location, but....

Something clearly links the abilities of anomaloids to already existing issues in their life, but it doesn't seem like they can pick and choose abilities freely. For instance, I'm pretty sure not-Lynn would've preferred to re-grow his own sight rather than stealing that of others, if he had a say in the matter.

[jimsmyth]

Mm. I don't think I made clear the distinction I was trying to draw. Hosts' anomalous abilities appear to be based on personal mythology, so it seems unlikely that they'd develop an ability that was completely outside the scope of their knowledge. (Though... did Hafidha develop her ability to see anomalous data before or after she learned about the Anomaly?) That's not what I was trying to get at, though.

The question I'm wondering about is: How dependent is the actual functioning of anomalous abilities on the host's knowledge?

Morgan Creirwy believed that she had the ability to curse people with ill fortune - and so she did. She also believed that warding magic would be effective protection against that ability, and when presented with the knowledge that Daphne had performed a warding ritual against her, Creirwy's ability did fail and turned back against her.

So is the important part here that Daphne did the warding ritual, or that Creirwy believed that Daphne had done the warding ritual? That is, can the functioning of anomalous powers be affected by things that the host doesn't know about?

As another hypothetical example, Melinda Grossman had the anomalous ability to put holes in people with a non-functional gun. What would've happened if Melinda had pointed her gun into the bushes and pulled the trigger, and, unbeknownst to her, there was someone hiding in the bushes in her line of "fire"? Would that person have gotten a hole in them? Or would Melinda have had to know they were there to shoot them? (Come to that, did it even matter where Melinda was actually pointing her gun, or did she just make holes where she thought the holes should be made?)

In this episode, though, we see both the gamma and Hafidha using anomalous abilities to discover things that they had no non-anomalous means of knowing. (They're not the only ones who do, either, but they're the ones who're actually on-topic for this thread...) The gamma uses it to see despite being blind - and is presumably seeing what's actually there, not just what he thinks should be there - and Hafidha uses it to... well, I'm not exactly clear on what her actual method is, but she can demonstrably get information that she didn't previously have using it. So it's apparent that the Anomaly can be affected by things the host doesn't know... which is not to say that it always is...

I think you're conflating two things here.

1) The gammability works according to the gamma's mythology.  In "Breathe" they were able to profile the gamma based partly on the mechanism of the deaths -- she had too much medical knowledge for make them "just stop breathing", enough to make it a more 'natural' choice than, say, choking them to death, not enough for damage to the brain/nerve structures that control breathing.  In this case, ignorance is power -- Melinda, unaware of how guns work, knows they make fatal holes in things.. so for her, they do.

2) Some gammabilities provide information the gamma would not otherwise know.  Jason Sato knew what others feared.  Hafidha knows when someone's been messing with computer files.  Not-Lynn knew what others were seeing.  While certainly 'impossible' according to when we understand of physics. it is all perfectly valid according to their mythology.


I think your question might be better stated as "how valid is the gamma's mythology when dealing with things not known to the gamma?"  If Melinda uses The Gun on someone wearing body armor under their jacket, does it stop the 'bullet'?  If Morgan Creirwy doesn't knwo about the ward, will it still work?  If not-Lynn is unaware of someone, can he steal their sight?

Another way of stating that might be to ask how pervasive a gamma's mythology is.  Can non-gammas make use of the gamma's mythology directly, or must they let the gamma know what they are doing?


2)

[dwg]

Come to that, did it even matter where Melinda was actually pointing her gun, or did she just make holes where she thought the holes should be made?

Some of the shots were clearly impossible for her to have had line of sight along the actual trajectory, so it can't have been related to pointing the gun.

I think the question could be phrased as: does the gamma's mythology created an ability with 'physics' all of its own, or is the mythology solely in the imagination, and therefore knowledge, of the gamma.

[antongarou]

Does anyone know who/what Chaz has been quoting in his "I am a monster. I am the monster who exists to oppose other monsters."  sentence?I've tried googling it and had no luck.

[Elizabeth Bear]

That's because he's not quoting accurately, but changing it for his own purposes.

The source quote is this:

"In the mirrors of many judgments my hands are the color of blood. I am a part of the evil that exists in the world and in Shadow. I sometime fancy myself an evil which exists to oppose other evils. I destroy Melkins when I find them, and on that Great Day of which prophets speak but in which they do not truly believe, on that day when the world is completely cleansed of evil, then I, too, will go down into darkness, swallowing curses. Perhaps even sooner than that, I now judge. But whatever... Until that time, I shall not wash my hands nor let them hang useless."

--Corwin, The Guns of Avalon, by Roger Zelazny

[jimsmyth]

That's because he's not quoting accurately, but changing it for his own purposes.

The source quote is this:

"In the mirrors of many judgments my hands are the color of blood. I am a part of the evil that exists in the world and in Shadow. I sometime fancy myself an evil which exists to oppose other evils. I destroy Melkins when I find them, and on that Great Day of which prophets speak but in which they do not truly believe, on that day when the world is completely cleansed of evil, then I, too, will go down into darkness, swallowing curses. Perhaps even sooner than that, I now judge. But whatever... Until that time, I shall not wash my hands nor let them hang useless."

--Corwin, The Guns of Avalon, by Roger Zelazny

Hm.  Now that you mention it, that series would have a lot to say to Chaz.  About power, about relationships with Relatives, about escape not meaning you can escape yourself, about good things lost and doomed romance and who you are and how even a villain can do good...

[Edmund Schweppe]

In the mirrors of many judgments my hands are the color of blood.

Aaaack.

[Elizabeth Bear]

In the mirrors of many judgments my hands are the color of blood.

Aaaack.

*whistles innocently*

[saoba]

In the mirrors of many judgments my hands are the color of blood.

Aaaack.

*whistles innocently*

Not buying it.

(My fandom suspects you.)

[antongarou]

That's because he's not quoting accurately, but changing it for his own purposes.

The source quote is this:

"In the mirrors of many judgments my hands are the color of blood. I am a part of the evil that exists in the world and in Shadow. I sometime fancy myself an evil which exists to oppose other evils. I destroy Melkins when I find them, and on that Great Day of which prophets speak but in which they do not truly believe, on that day when the world is completely cleansed of evil, then I, too, will go down into darkness, swallowing curses. Perhaps even sooner than that, I now judge. But whatever... Until that time, I shall not wash my hands nor let them hang useless."

--Corwin, The Guns of Avalon, by Roger Zelazny

Ah, thank you- I read the books long ago(and in Hebrew) so i didn't catch that one. Also-I think maybe Chaz makes some distinction between evil and monstrous, which is worth noting, since we see it in other places-evil is always premeditated and willful, monstrous acts are sometimes neither(see "Sugar"). Worth noting as Chaz isn't someone to use words without considering the implicatures and subtleties.

Also Edmund- remember that Chaz killed his father a few months back, and rather literally has blood on his hands. He has a huge amount of remorse for killing anyway- add in that he was probably starting to develop Stockholm Syndrome by the end and that he killed him in close quarters with aknife(so huge amount of blood), and I would classify it as "not necessarily foreshadowing".

[dwg]

Chaz killed his father

And there's a whole lot of mythology wrapped up in being a patricide.

OTOH, William Villette may have fathered Chaz, but he fell a long way short of being his dad.

[HebrewRose]

Interesting implication of "monster" as opposed to "evil" is that we embrace lovable monsters (see Sesame Street)- it's a word with some positive connotations, or at least not entirely negative.