You know, when he finally clues in I'm wonder if anyone's going to ask
him how he could go so long without doing more than the most superficial
research on his primary opposition. The only thing he did was look up
boomer rampage incidents in the newspaper. Hasn't he even noticed the
goo coming out when he busts one open? What does he think that stuff
is?
They're going to say, "you're an idiot." And he's probably going to agree
with him.
Hmm...blanket suggestions. GURPS, I'd say. But it's a bit of a cop
out even if he is a charter subscriber to the Power of the Month club.
Actually, V&V. As for a cop-out... <shrug> I think a cop-out would have
been to allow him to mass mind-wipe everyone in the building -- including
Leon and Daley -- about his very existence. As it is, L&D are still
looking... and Doug's now pretty much on the run. He'll be bailing from
his apartment in chapter 9.
And as far as the "power of the month club" goes, well, it's hard to say if
you're being critical of that aspect of him or not. I'm going to assume
that you are, to some degree; I just wanted to say that one reason I'm
using Doug and his powers is that they make a super-powered protagonist in
a fic something of a participation game for the reader. I discovered long
ago that people who learn about Doug's superpower end up saying something
like, "that's *so* cool" and then spend several hours thinking up new
powers for him. So in the story I've tried to make sure that a song title
is presented first, most of the time, giving the reader a chance to figure
out what power he's going to use. I think this makes Doug's superabilities
far more fair to the reader than, say, Twister's. (No matter how much fun
Twisted Path is. I mean, who knew Twister was going to pull the "Frostfire"
attack out of his hat?)
Oh come on. What idiot programmed those boomers and neglected to give
"cause damage" a lower mission priority than "refrain from harming
humans"? For that matter why program them to inflict maximum damage as
opposed to just giving it a set of specific destruction targets? Don't
these fools realise that open ended mission parameters will inevitably
get out of control? Really, someone should report them to the SPCB.
<chuckle> Ohara is a specific personality type that I am quite familiar
with; he has the kind of "I am always right" kind of attitude that sweeps
along people even when they know better. There's no small amount of hubris
there, too. And the more stress he's under, the more likely he and his
people will make drastic mistakes and try to rationalize them away.
The side effects of that attitude should be coming to a head in chapter 9.
Assuming the text doesn't expand to the point where that gets moved into
chapter 10.
The thought occurs to me that the populace of a metahuman infested world
are going to feel the same resignation. What's the difference between
a Hulk rampage and a Boomer rampage?
Not much. Then again, I figure the people of Bosnia, the former Yugoslavia,
and Chechnya have much the same feelings toward the purely normal humans
that have been doing so much damage to their homelands for so long.
-- Bob
--
================================================================================
Bob Schroeck
http://www.eclipse.net/~rms rms@eclipse.net
================================================================================
You know, we overlooked our chance -- we
*should* have bought Hell! -- Kat
================================================================================