Having an all-powerful character who will sweep in and reverse things every time something goes horribly wrong is dramatic suicide. Let's assume this is one of those things Faite knows not to interfere with, as you say.

> ...unless the Hooded Hood is active again. This does seem a bit like one of his plots, how the timing seems too convenient. Including the timing of Liu Xi Xian having fled the mansion earlier to visit Chiaki's home, which is just barely uptown enough to be outside the destruction zone, Hatman being elsewhere, CSFB! being near indestructible because of something set up much earlier, Lara annoying the Chronicler with the Manga Shoggoth, and most likely Anna being flame resistant and radiation proof. All that stuff happening at once, it might just be a Hooded Hood plot.

There are certainly some significant timing coincidences.

> > > Good to see that Lara is still far more reasonable than the Chronicler. He's still being rude and insane-like even after she calms down and asks for a good explanation. At least Lisa will be more reasonable, which is saying a lot about the Chronicler's current state. > > From the Chronicler's persepctive Lara barged in unannounced and started interfering with his work. He doesn't owe her explanations. It's none of her business. She's a tourist poking her nose in, asking dumb questions, thinking she knows better than the locals who do this every day of their life. > Nothing annoys Lara more than being treated like an idiot when she has valid questions. She expects that kind of behavior from a non-intelligent super-villain, who believes everyone is beneath him. And she had in mind to treat him accordingly, and stop him before he does any more damage. Nothing worse than a super-villain in a position of extreme power.

Think of it like how a cop would view a well-meaning passer-by forcing their way into a crime scene to offer advice about how to investigate it, or to criticise the methods the force was using to examine the scene. The passer-by wouldn't get explanations and justifications. At best they'd be shown off the site, at worst charged with obstructing the course of justice.

> But the worse part is...(below) > ...that he didn't do anything to improve that impression. That means Lara still believes an insane man runs things in the Parodyverse and will probably file away removing him from power on her to-do list. Fortunately right now she has more important and immediate tasks to attend to (unless the two goals manage to merge, then she'd be happy for that). She might even recruit the Shoggoth to help.

I suspect the Shoggoth is more interested in preventing conflict than taking a side in it.

> That is, unless the Chronicler finally does something to convince her that he's not really so dangerous and insane, or Lisa does.

We'll cover some of the Lisa conversation, I think, but possibly not until #9 since it includes plot spoilers otherwise.

> > > Unfortunately when this is all over poor Lara is going to have to explain to the Shoggoth how human mating works so he'll stop asking. > > One sometimes wonders how much the Shoggoth does understand about human customs and how much he asks just to disconcert people. It worked to divert the clash between the Chronicler and Lara. > Lara is more patient than most people the Shoggoth might encounter. She likes helping people learn, so she actually would try to explain it carefully (and without Liu Xi's "What the hell are you talking about? That's stupid."). The part that might cause problems is if the Shoggoth understands, and begins to think that means it must be female too (see below as to why that's funny).

Well, the main (non Legion) Shoggoth often prefers three to be seperate biomasses, the main Shoggoth, his wife Sh'Ron, and their podling Cthandra.