There are many examples of stories where the protagonist knowingly enters a trap, often with plans to turn it against the enemy.

But ultimately, yes, the Hood is flawed. He is, after all, a murderous archvillain who has caused a great deal of misery and suffering in service to his lofty goals.




I'm not sure Lara or anybody in the PV knows much about the other side of the particular barrier that the Wonderwall defines. Lara has come from (in our terms) another fictional reality to the fictional reality known as the Parodyverse. Other visitors have appeared from time to time, including superhroes from fictional realities we know as the Marvel and DC comics universes; there has literally been an Avengers-LL team up. Some characters have "escaped" from the Parodyverse into fictional realities of their own, for example AG's vampire children.

What none of them has done, and as far as we know cannot do, is escape from the Parodyverse to the real world, our world. We, the posters, will never encounter Al B. Harper or Yuki Shiro.

But because of the odd position of the PV at the end of the probability curve, some metatext creeps into their reality. Hence a concern amongst many of the "in the know" entities there that they are in a multiverse which has been created by and from stories, that narrative is as important a force there as the laws of physics. A few refer to "creators", those cruel beings from beyond who set up the Parodyverse as a place where heroes are tortured or ridiculed for these creators' perverse purposes. Some suspect that many of these creators have abandoned their creation, leaving the beings they placed in torment in that position forever.

The Hooded Hood has become obsessed with this. His grand folly is to try and breach the Wonderwall, but really to breach the barrier between fiction and what we define as reality, so that he can seek out the Parodyverse's creators and wreak vengeance for what they have done to him and others. You and I know that is impossible - we hope - but from the Hood's side of the storybook it seems like a grand and glorious objective.

Elsewhere on the board I was discussing the Tower of Babel with Al B. The very brief Genesis story of humanity's attempt to build a great tower that rouses God's ire and is cast down has since had all kinds of theological explanations. The one that makes most sense to me is based upon the then-current view of heaven and earth, that heaven was literally in the sky hidden behind a canvas where the stars twinkled. The builders of Babel thought that a high enough tower could reach that barrier and allow them access to the realm of God direct, perhaps even allow invasion and conquest. From our end of time we see that as being absolutely ridiculous, but to the builders of the tower it must have been a noble and lofty goal.

In Jewish legend, the Tower is destroyed by fire, flood and eathquake. In the Biblical enesis myth it is destroyed by words, or rather by lack of them. God removes from humanity the ability to communicate freely. One language becomes many, causing factions and nations, leading to distrust and war. Mankind's unified enterprise ends with mankind's fragmentation into groups who canot or will not speak to each other. The story gives us the word "babble". It is interesting that even in the real world we recognise that it is words and the stories they tell that define reality.

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And as noted in our previous conversation, the Beth/Laurie co-residency is a middle-term fix.

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It's still the best option *right now*, and remember, Faite tends to think in the right now because she can adjust it.

It's certainly a rest point for the characters for a while, as the plot focus shifts elsewhere. Next we have "where did the whispering go?" and "what prevents time travel to the time period abuout the begin?" and "what was it that the Hooded Hood was preventing up to the brief time when he was retconned away?" But those revelations must wait for another time.

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Hatty would be smart enough to warn Yuki that breaking into Schloss Schreckausen riight then would be a gift to von Zemo. Yuki would be smart enough to see it.

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She would still make the lawyer eat both pieces of paper, even if she leaves right after.

That would open her up to assault charges, to litigation about illegal use of allegedly stolen technology, to questions about her brain's mental fitness, and to demands for her expulsion from a government-sanctioned crimefighting group for actions in contravention to proper legal process. And so on. Anything she did right then would have been of value to the opposition. They were looking for grounds to launch a legal attack.

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But Yuki *is* likely to come back when no one is watching.

You have to figure that the Baroness has defences roughly equivalent to those on the Lair Mansion (minus the cosmic elements). She also knows Yuki's specs and character. By now she's probably upgraded her stronghold to exclude ghosts and Griffin, androids with light-distorting tech, micro-sized intruders, plane-shifting, and all the other stuff that Yuki amongst others has worked out to shield the LL's base.

However, what she hasn't and probably can't stop is Yuki's other skillset: asking questions. Like all criminals, the Baroness relies upon keeping her dealings somewhat secret. More, she's still on bail for a number of tied-up-in-the-courts offnces dating as far back as her takeover of the planet during the Parody War. What Yuki can do (with the enthusiastic support of Citizen Z and the less-enthusiastic input of Silicone Sally) is start shining a light on every corner of the Baroness' enterprises.

This is a long game, but it will have some effects. Von Zemo's allies will be less happy to do business with her while the spotlight is on her. Her power relies upon her criminal business holdings, so as they are crossed off one by one she is diminished. Every time she has to stifle a news story or tangle a law case she is using hard-to-replace resources. Citizen Z is literally haunting her. In this scenario Yuki investigating (and maybe hired-in help like Champagne) are the nightmare scenario.

From Yuki's POV, the best part is that there are probably people out there who would pay her to conduct that kind of case.

Of course, that kind of detective work almost inevitably leads to the villain putting out a kill order on the detective. So that's another plus from Yuki's perspective, because there's another thread to pull in the unravelling von Zemo enterprises.

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I suspect the dead worlds of the former Shee-Yar Imperium depopulated by the Carnifex are sources of significant interest to many interstellar races.

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That's probably true, but it's also highly contested. The Alliance members generally aren't willing to fight wars over resources, but only because they have so many worlds to source them from.

There's the other side of trade, buying the salvage from the scavengers. In a "find" of that magnitude it is probably a buyer's market, which is what the Traders would exploit.

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The Alliance approach would be to explore the section the part that's unguarded, and take possession of it briefly, and then leave before conflict becomes part of it. Saves a lot of money that way. If no part is unguarded, they're unlikely to fight for it.

It's also possible that they would sub-contract specific salvage collection missions, possibly even "to order" for identified clients. That's got to be a story hook for some characters.

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It's quite possible that the Hood's consortium is currently trading peacefully with the Alliance. That would be smart too, since, like I mentioned, they're reluctant to fight when trade is at stake. If the LL and its allies attack the Hood's consortium, the Alliance is most likely to defend their trade route and ignore the rest of it.

The Hood may even be, through some cutout intermediaries, one of those clients with "to order" requirements.

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Note by the way that the "Traders" novel is actually not related to the Trade Alliance, though they have a similar name. The Traders referred to in the novel name are Abe, April, etc.

Indeed. Both are useful fictional scenarios.

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Essentially the Trading Alliance was a bunch of well-behaved pirates operating under a code and generally cooperating for the sake of profit. Once they started breaking the rules and fighting, the "navy" had to step in.

Licenced pirates operating under a code with authority from a government are technically "privateers".

In the early days of British sea supremancy, Queen Elizabeth I licenced such sailors as Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Francis Drake in this way. Their licence specified that she got a 10% cut of whatever goods they "legitimately" liberated from Spanish gold ships.

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They have a very solid belief, even taught in schools, that the Trading Alliance would be nothing if it resorted to war and aggression. That their prevalent technology and comfort everywhere would have never been possible.

That makes perfect cultural sense.

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Of course, they also learn that most other societies in the galaxy are savages who fight over resources and neither profit from it nor advance.

Almost every dominant culture has its prejudices and opinions on why its society is superior to others. We all do it. It's only natural.