#772, Learning Curve

It's starting to come together now, why Videoland broke so badly.

Also explains why people from the real world have an advantage over her - even if she was able to affect people from the world of dust and chance that way, we don't HAVE unexplained gaps in our past for her to edit, even at her full power.

This post has been edited by Zap Rowsdower on Apr 21 2012, 01:38 AM

I'm sure this has no significance to Ryan's memory troubles.

Personally, I'm most concerned by Alex's answering the limits of the Sovereign's power by saying, "Oh, she used to be pretty limited, back when she was asleep and broken," and then kinda trailing off. I mean, we know the Sovereign isn't quite so defeated as one might think* (and, looking back through the archives, I wonder if Alex speaks of her here), but I got the impression she might be in a more... benign, or at least no more dangerous state. Curious and worrying...

* I cannot for the life of me find the comic. -_- I think it might be around the time Alex says the Sovereign is fate.

This is 1 of 2 comics you might be referring to (plus it needs to have the "Lonely Cell" Tag added on as that's where the bulk of "action" happens in the comic). I'll find the other soon enough.

EDIT: Too tired. I think the relevant quote for the other comic starts with: "Well, if I had done to her what you did with me..."

This post has been edited by Sir Donald on Apr 21 2012, 06:53 AM

The funny thing is, I read that more as him PITYING the SoS. Remember (even if it doesn't come true), the prediction is that Alex will kiss her. I have a strong suspicion she has a link with his past - perhaps to Hope Keene (or Hope PoV if they're legitimately different people.)

The other one was relating to Rosa getting beaned by the treasure chest. That it was a rather direct and unsubtle manipulation of fate, and (I think) that comic concludes with Alex saying, "the Sovereign is fate".

Nope, not then. It wouldn't have made any sense then, either, because Rosa getting beaned was not in the Sovereign's best interest (as Alex himself DID state.)

Alex DID use the line "the sovereign is fate", but it wasn't then.

Found the "She is fate" line. It wasn't long after Rosa gets a chest to the head. Just long enough for Kain to butcher all of Mithral Town.*

* Give or take a Prettiest Girl therein.

The subsequent comic clarifies that it's more of a metaphor, though. Which is good (albeit not unexpected); the Cell comic after Rosa's beaning has Alex saying fate intervened to make it clear that then was not Cecil's time to die, as well as 'no one' intervened. My interpretation ties back to the notion of Videoland's "consciousness" abiding by something like narrative causality.

And I've finally found the "Well if I did what you've done..." line. It's part of an interesting discussion between Alex and his captor that may be more relevant to this than I first thought...

I was referring to the comic Gaius linked. Must not have looked closely enough, cause I did see that one.

But, what is the deal with "oh lord". Why is it so shocking that it was Kefka?
Is it because the one fighting the touched (like with the shadow king) is the one actually furthering her goals?

That seemed like the implication. Because she can control the people -around- those who are immune (or, at least, not touched), she can essentially get those who aren't touched to do exactly what she wants anyways.

Ahhah, that does make sense. I was trying to put it together myself, but couldn't put my finger on it.

It's worse than that, actually. Kefka didn't actually exist (in the sense of being a character who could influence events directly) at the beginning of that scene. But he was the only character in that entire world who would happily torment a child in order to get something he wanted. That means the Sovereign was working behind the scenes in order to cause Kefka's resurrection all along. And she did it subtly enough that nobody (not even us readers) recognized it until after the fact.

In fact, I think the only thing the Sovereign had to do directly was delay Maria from getting to the wedding - which she accomplished quite handily by an off-screen encounter with the girl. That led to Ultros kidnapping her, which split the heroes up, which led to only specific heroes encountering the child, which led to Kefka resurrecting, which led to Terra getting possessed and caused everyone to be distracted by that, which led to Kefka manipulating the child, which led to Celes being touched, which led to the world getting corrupted, which led to the girl being sent off to some other world, with at least five other characters outside of FFVI.

And all that, from the 'chance' encounter between Maria and the girl (reminds me of "for want of a nail"). Indeed, the Sovereign is very good at this. I can see why Alex is paranoid about her defeat at his hands being some even deeper plot of hers; I can see why he'd refer to her as fate. Compared to that, the intervention that saved Cecil was about as subtle as a brick through a window.

However, what I realized from this is that while the Sovereign is very, very good at manipulating fate, and foreseeing the consequences, she cannot do so perfectly (even if she were whole and awake). She only seems like she can because she can retcon things in order to change an outcome she doesn't want. For someone who claims to be able to see the future perfectly, she made a lot of obvious, dumb mistakes in her initial rampage through Videoland, such as not going straight for the Palace of Power to begin with, or wasting time in the Mushroom Kingdom, or letting Kevin get away to warn everyone what was going on.

I don't think she can perceive the actual future at all. I think she's just very, very good at predicting the future from the state of the present (which is why not being able to see Schrodinger is so critical), and she can retcon past events as needed to make the future she wants happen. In other words, she can predict where the ball will go and can have things ready to deal with potential problems before they happen, but she can't guarantee that something else won't happen instead. But she has stuff ready to help get things back on the right track even then.

For example, in retrospect, it's pretty evident now that the Sovereign retconned things in the Cecil/Edward encounter so that Kappa the Imp would be in the treasure chest that Rosa got beaned by. Because it was in the past, and hadn't been revealed, therefore it was fair game. And it got Edward back in play, rather than being stuck uselessly inside a battle where he couldn't do anything.

And that's another example of how subtle the Sovereign is. Treasure chest from the cave under Baron hitting Rosa with enough force to take out all her HP, inside another cave of all places? Very obvious fate manipulation. But who would have thought twice about Kappa being in the chest after the perfectly-rational-and-clearly-not-ridiculous exposition he gave?

I hadn't even seen it from that angle. Alex essentially stated that it was not the SoS who caused Rosa to get smacked by a treasure box, but that doesn't mean she couldn't retcon the contents of the box to something that's reasonable, but previously unstated, as an attempt at making the most of the situation.

I only just realized it as I was writing the post.

Anyway, about the only thing that would have been better for Edward (and presumably the Sovereign) would have been a chest with Phoenix Downs in it, but Alex already opened it, so she couldn't exactly retcon a second chest with Phoenix Downs in it, so having Kappa in the chest gave Edward a potential stand-in for the "battle" with Cecil.

First up, not only did the comic you quote give Alex 2 such chests with 99 PDs, but another such chest bopped Kainazzo on the noggin. Given that there were 297 Phoenix Downs that we knew of, what is there to say that there weren't 396?

Though that could be to say that the Sovereign thought that sending Edward Kappa's chest would indeed be better for her than sending him one with 99 PDs. That offers a bit of knowledge regarding her servants, and perhaps trust as well. If the latter as well, in this case, it was given rightly.

And there's some problems with your previous post as well:

*BUZZ* Edgar only sent Red Shirts after Ultros, making this less "for want of a nail" and more "in spite of a nail". Heck, the only beings affected by this "nail" were Ultros, Churpon, and perhaps Maria, who were all presumably extracated by Dalton prior to the Sorrow Waves.

Ok, here I'm going with Hanlon's Razor and hypothesizing that the Sovereign's modus operendi of destroying worlds has a little (unintended) backfire effect insofar as the warps connected to those worlds are also destroyed, necessitating her to take the Slow Path to the Palace from W&W. As for Kevin, it wasn't her fault that his daughter was concerned for her parents and had the N-Forcers ready at zero hour. Granted, that doesn't explain how she was stalled at the Mushroom Kingdom, but I wouldn't call the first "obvious". I admit that it would, however, cast doubt on the Sovereign being omniscient; though at first she described herself as essentially a (counter-)force of nature.

Although it does bring up a question: How does She know what data is malleable and what data is set? Whose frame of reference would determine what is set?

There were. You missed a third stack in Alex's inventory. So the question becomes , why not 495? Not that it matters.

Actually, there's a simpler reason. This version of Edward is so weak that he probably couldn't pick up 99 Phoenix Downs, and while I'm not completely sure, I think that you can't take partial stacks out of a treasure chest.

Actually, I was right, but it wasn't because of the Ultros thing. Strago having a heart attack upon Kefka's resurrection did, however, split them up. Same ultimate effect, different specific reason.

Thus my point. The Sovereign clearly doesn't have perfect future sight, even though she wants people to believe she does. For example, she should have been able to foresee that the warp zones would collapse (assuming you're right) if she could see the actual future. She should have been able to foresee Hope opening a warp zone to the world the Sovereign was in in order to send a rescue team. Now, admittedly, she might have gone berserk upon killing the Shadow King, and thus wouldn't have cared. But even that weakens her claim of omniscience, because she certainly should have been able to foresee that and plan accordingly.

It depends on how the the abilities and limitations of the Shard of Tears and the Mask of Tragedy work, I think. I'll have to think some on it.

I kinda wonder why this "fill-in-the-blanks" power is news to Ryan, considering that it's been mentioned before.