Wildbow Quotes

This was it. Finally, everyone was working together.

Emotions were a drug with their own side effects, ebbs and flows.

It was a fear that was all too easy to fall into when one's focus was too narrow. To be caught up in an environment, facing down a relentless torrent of negative experiences. Even the minor things added up, if you couldn't step back to look at things in perspective.

I was swiftly losing faith in humanity. Not that I had much to spare.

If I've picked up on anything over the last few months of wearing a costume, it's that humans are stronger than you'd expect," I said. It was as much to myself as to Sundancer. "We can endure a hell of a lot of punishment before we break, and even after we're broken, we tend to keep on going. Could be physical punishment: getting stabbed, getting scarred, broken bones. Could be mental: losing a loved one, being tortured, even the way I feel like breaking down and crying over the fact that just about every other member of my team is probably fucked, but I'm holding myself together? Humans can put up with a hell of a lot.

Looking at this stuff, hearing you describe it all, I'm starting to think that maybe we'll destroy ourselves in the end. Infighting, stupidity, revenge, all of that. Humanity will clean up whatever members of humanity Scion leaves alive, or leave us too screwed up to bounce back.

Let's say you're playing chess against someone who's got more pieces on the board and decades more experience than we do. How do you win?"

"You don't," Rose said. "Unless you cheat."

"We already tried cheating," I said. "Getting him in trouble, risking his job. He's apparently planning a response tonight."

"Change the game, then," Rose said.

"Again, we tried that. There's no winning. Not really. So what I'm proposing is pretty simple."

"Do tell," Rose said. "Also, you do know that we're being followed?"

"We're surrounded," I said. "But she wants to deal badly enough that she'll hear us out before she murders us. Nevermind that. Our analogy here. I'm proposing the pigeon strategy. Knock over all of the pieces, shit on the board, and then strut around like we're the victors.

Being a parent, there's always that niggling fear, that notion that maybe one day your child will realize you're not all-knowing, not all-powerful. That they don't really have to do anything you say. But you spend years growing up together, parent and child, as a parent you get accustomed to acting like you're in power, believing it as much as your daughter does. For some, for most, that confidence gets worn down after the child hits adolescence, and the parent changes from being one of the most important figures in their child's life to being an embarrassment.

At this stage, it was only man. Only change, carrying the world from one state to another. In time, there would be more to be done, and the changes would not be so easy. He would go to war and he would die.

His day had passed. Things would change, they would find ruin, and the ruins would settle.

There was no emotional at this, no concern, no anxiety. It simply was.

Counting coup?" Leister asked. He was the sole subordinate that Vantage had brought along. Rime, by contrast, had brought Usher and Arbiter from her team. Prefab from San Diego had shown up as well.

I explained, "The term came from the Native Americans' style of warfare. In a fight, one person makes a risky, successful play against the other side showing their prowess. They gain reputation, the other side loses some. All it is, though, is a game. A way to train and make sure you're up to snuff against the real threats without losing anything.

You can't succeed like that. It's always easier to attack than to defend. Defending, you have to devote attention to anticipating the enemy, you can't devote too much planning to any one aspect of the defense. You can be creative when attacking. It's why villains tend to win more than they lose. Most of the time, they get to make the first move. They get to rob a bank, and the heroes have to react, to guard.

I don't think this looks easy at all. Going down any road labeled 'death' has to be the easier road.

Limitations foster creativity. Tell an artist to paint anything, and he may struggle, but tell him to create something specific, in a set amount of time, for a certain audience, and these constraints might well push him to produce something he might never have come up with on his own. We grow and evolve by testing ourselves. That's my personal philosophy.

The Fool in the Tarot deck frequently depicted a boy with a dog at his heels, staring at the sky while he walked blithely off a cliff, burdened only by a bundle on a stick. The diabolist had admitted a relationship to the card.

No single detail was quite right, but much as something might appear similar if one were to unfocus their vision…

The young diabolist walked with the sparrow at his shoulder, eyes on the windows without looking through the windows, walking forward as if he were afraid to stop. His burden here was the gas containers.

No, he was burdened not just by the gas containers, but by some notion of responsibility.

A man, when facing death, aspires to finish what he started.

What had the custodian of the Thorburn estate started? What drove him?

She knew he sought to do good and to vanquish evil, and she could surmise that both good acts and the existence of evil had touched him deeply.

The Fool card was akin to the ace. Depending on the game being played, it was often the lowest card or the highest. Valueless or highly valued. Powerless or powerful.

It all depended on context. He sought to kill the demon, and he would either catastrophically fail or succeed.

This Fool sought to slay the metaphorical dragon. He felt his own mortality, which was quite possibly her fault, in part, and now he rushed to finish the task he'd set for himself. To better the world.

Hero The Fool

Take away what they gave me, what they made me into, every place I really know, the people I love and the people I hate, and I'm not sure what's left

Stupid things, in the end. Nonsensical. But stupid, nonsensical things were sometimes the most important.

I like to think people are stronger than they appear at first glance. Perhaps the same goes for cities as well?

In retrospect, it might not have been the most brilliant idea to taunt the primeval engine of entropy and destruction.

But people were stupid. A chronic condition of our society, that so many people somehow thought they were special, the exception to the rule. In this panicked crowd, every rule was being broken.

You're doing that crazy mastermind thing again," Cuff said.
"Which crazy mastermind thing?"
"Where you talk to the other masterminds and one of you leaves something unsaid, and the other knows what that thing is without asking

I like to imagine the impact I've made on the world. What possible realities am I pruning, what events am I setting in motion, each time I take a life? If the flap of a butterfly's wing can alter the course of a hurricane, what am I doing when I take a human life? The life of a person who interacts with dozens of people every day, who would have a career, romance, children?

I know I sound a little crazy when I say that, but really, you get a glimpse of these bugs as they go about their lives, almost mechanical in how they follow their instincts, you see them breeding, eating, building nests, and dying, and you see how they just saturate every aspect of our existence, in the air, the dark corners, the insides of the walls, they eat our dead. I can't sense them, but there're skin mites all over our bodies and in our eyelashes… I guess it takes me out of myself when I think about it, reminds me that we're only one part of this vast system, we're cogs in the universe, in our own way. Seeing the little details makes me feel like the big problems aren't so personal, they aren't as overwhelming.

You realize how small you are in the grand scheme of things. We're not really the rulers of this planet, we're just tenants, and it's the small stuff, the bacteria and insects and the plant matter that really runs it all. Even the big stuff, the nasty, scary stuff, it's all pretty small in the grand scheme of things, isn't it?

Death is inevitable. Life is too. Even if Scion succeeds, there will be some who remain, because they hid well enough, because they aren't interesting or different enough to kill. Life, death, a binary.

Like actors taking a role in a play. We wear our human faces and harbor our dramas and fantasies, but it's the same individuals playing the parts, as the play starts anew on a different stage, with different faces and forms. If it all goes well, a figure from the crowd joins the stage for the plays that follow, and the roles are refined.

…And you're acting like I should be able to read something in your silence. The problem is that speech needs periods of silence to be intelligible, to separate the words and keep it from being a steady drone of noise. To frame it. The opposite is true. To find the meaning in what's left unsaid, we need words to punctuate it.

It's easy enough to keep something moving, but getting it going in the first place is hard. That's the thing about second chances and fresh starts. It's a (re)start. You gotta get things moving all over again, the second time around.

Threats is the wrong word," she said. "But English is a limited language in some ways. There's really no word to articulate what I mean. A threat with a measure of inevitability to it. A promise? Too feeble. People break promises too often. A curse? A malediction? Too… magical. An oath? The connotations are wrong. When I say I'll do something, I make it happen.

Everyone likes the manipulative assholes after they've had a chance to do their manipulating.

That's the funny thing about pity, Saint. It's condescending by default.

I slept, but it was less like parking a car and more like running one into a ditch.

She's confident in her abilities. But that's not where I hit her. It's called dissonance. You believe one thing deeply enough that it's central to your identity. Then something, me, steps in to challenge that belief. It's a hell of a leap of faith to go from believing something and understanding how much of the world works, to saying 'I don't know'. Some deny, and you can get stupid-as-hell behaviors from those who see something plain as day but deny it because it conflicts with something they believe. Some get angry, some distract themselves until they can figure out how to deal with it… but very few will turn around and throw themselves headlong into more questions. More dissonance.

Theo scratched the animal under the collar, and watched it crane its head to one side, enjoying the contact.
It helped, oddly enough. Having contact with another living creature without all of the issues and hassles of dealing with people. No judgement, no worries, just… this. Being alone without being alone.

Groups of people who take up the entire sidewalk so you have to step onto the road to go around them are a definite pet peeve of mine. Oblivious people who block the entire sidewalk and walk slowly enough that you're forced to dawdle, yet fast enough that you can't walk around them? They make me fantasize about bringing swarms of bees down on their heads. Not that I would actually do it, of course.

This is my fate, I thought, a little deliriously. I die getting monologued to by a supervillain.

This isn't a duality. I'm not one of the Balfour Academy soldiers, drinking a potion to become virile, ugly, and monstrously strong. There isn't a lever inside me that determines which of me you're talking to at once. A knife can cut or stab. The label doesn't change. It's still a knife.

Another possibility is that it really is just me lying to myself, but that lie will become truth over time. People all over this city feign confidence, and that becomes something concrete. You can become the mask you wear on a day-to-day basis.

I looked at Hayle.

"I'm yours, you're right. I started with you, you end with me," the voice said.

"I wonder who you are, then," Hayle said. "Because I'm not positive you're Sylvester."

"I'm not. I'm every monster I've ever fought. Every enemy I've defeated. I'm Sylvester and I'm not. I'm the Noble that Sylvester will become."

A frown creased the space between his eyes. "The Noble you describe sounds like a monstrous one."

"Isn't it?" the voice asked. "What a mistake you've made."

We stuck a knife between his ribs, and swiftly backed away, bringing the knife with us, so the wound could bleed freely, air escaping his lungs.

Shouldn't a catastrophe like this be met with rain? An overcast sky? It didn't seem right that things were so quiet, so calm, the day so tranquil when so many people had died, lost loved ones or suffered serious injury.

No, let's be fair," I said. "Being a villain's an option."

"You did not say that," Fox-mask said, incredulous, "It's not an option at all."

The girl in blue looked at Mrs. Yamada, "Ex-villain's corrupting the kids, and you're not stopping her?"

Mrs. Yamada was frowning at me.

"I'm going somewhere with this, honest," I said.

"If you're sure," she said. "I can stop you at any time."

"You can."

I looked at the gathered kids. A few of the less successful butterfly catchers had drifted away and approached.

"I always hated the speeches when I was in school, the preaching in auditoriums, the one-note message. Stuff like saying drugs are bad. It's wrong. Drugs are fantastic."

"Um," Fox-mask said.

Mrs. Yamada was glaring at me, but she hadn't interrupted.

"People wouldn't do them if they weren't. They make you feel good, make your day brighter, give you energy-"

"Weaver," Mrs. Yamada cut in.

"-until they don't," I said. "People hear the message that drugs are bad, that they'll ruin your life if you do them once. And then you find out that isn't exactly true because your friends did it and turned out okay, or you wind up trying something and you're fine. So you try them, try them again. It isn't a mind-shattering moment of horrible when you try that first drug. Or so I hear. It's subtle, it creeps up on you, and you never really get a good, conv

Then I think about how you went out, and I think… you know, it doesn't balance out. One selfless deed, after all the shit you did? No. But that's your cross to bear, not mine. I don't believe in an afterlife or anything like that, but, well, I guess that's the mark you left. When we die, all that's left are the memories, the place we take in people's hearts.

Coil held firmly to the philosophy that one couldn't be too paranoid. Every moment of every day was a delicate balancing act, anticipating any number of unseen threats from every possible angle, whether he was speaking with his subordinates or simply rising to meet the day.

I felt the back of my neck crawl. The crawling reached around to the corners of my jaw, then up to my temple, and across my cheeks.

I reached up to touch it. Splinters, small fingers, hooks. Scraping at my fingertips, gouging. Slowly reaching for my eyes, reaching for my remaining flesh.

Tiny, like the legs of spiders, pincers, fish hooks, they stabbed and set themselves into the flesh that remained, around my mouth, near my eyes, at my forehead. Then they stopped. Waited.

Asking. Offering. A deal with the devil, metaphorically speaking.

Give up your face if you truly want wings. Give up your eyes.

I could hear the dragon screech, not all that far away. This crisis I faced was removed from a very large, very real crisis that threatened people and Others I cared a great deal about.

Do it, and you can fly. Fly, and you might be able to do something to save them.

I wasn't religious. Didn't believe in a higher power. Mundane government was crappy enough, the idea of a divine one simultaneously scared me and made me want to laugh. As a consequence, when I thought of a soul, I was thinking more about some collection of the abstract parts of the mind that covered a person's mental and emotional well-being, their psyche and the defining aspects of their personality. A more religious view of the soul would probably add up to a rough equivalent.

Why were the people who clung so fiercely to the notions of right and wrong the very same individuals that had the worst grasp of what they meant?

I'd later read up on it, because understanding something meant being able to handle it, and my problems back then had been ones I could understand. The effect was a result of the mind's idleness. We only really saw a little bit of what we looked at, and our brain worked constantly to fill in the gaps and unimportant spaces with its best guesses. In a dimly lit room, with the mind focused on the steady, hypnotic repetition, the brain would fill in spaces with the only reference points available to it, taking from features in its field of view to patch together the face. Fear, imagination and the recently-told scary story of having one's entrails ripped out through their mouth did the rest.

The mind was an amazing thing, but it had limits and weaknesses. I'd been taking in too much even before I added the clairvoyant.

My hands were paralyzed, one wrapped around the handle of the Hyena's sword, spikes sticking through the flesh and out the back of hand, thumb and fingers, too painful for me to let go of it. The other hand was tangled by the locket and the cord that surrounded the imp's book, fingers bent back out of position. When I moved, it had been a jerky, frustrated movement, the length of the sword, the pain, and the weight of the sword and book all frustrating my attempts to interact with the world.

My arms were cracked open like a hard plastic doll, and all that was within were feathers of mixed, dull colors, sticking to one another. I couldn't move fast enough to catch up to anyone. I was too tired, too gaunt, an old man in a young-looking body, and the objects bound to my hands were too awkward to allow me to open doors easily or even walk through a crowded area without banging them on something.

I couldn't close my eyes, because something black and monstrous slithered beneath the surface every time I did. When I breathed, it was like I was having the heart attack again. The air I spent was air that I couldn't replenish by any means. I was deflating, losing substance.

There was nothing to do but stand there, too tired to move, arms spread like I was crucified, or a bird in mid-flight, staring at Rose and her gathered summonings, with Pauz perched on her shoulder. I somehow knew that words would cost me more of that vital substance than I could affo

Money was the blood of civilized society, its currents running through everything and everyone. Where money was insufficient, things withered. People starved, sickened and died, constructions eroded, even ideas perished. Where funds were plentiful, the same things blossomed with new life.
And money was, in the end, little more than the product of collective imagination. A slip of paper or a coin had no value beyond that of the material it was fashioned of. It only took on a life of its own when people as a whole collectively agreed that certain papers and coins were worth something.
Only then did people bleed and die for it. For a fantasy, a faith given form in hard, concrete numbers.
Then again, much of society was built on a series of shared delusions. Clothing was little more than scraps of particular materials with particular geometries, but people clung to the idea of fashion. Style. Good and bad fashion was another belief system, one which all members of a culture were indoctrinated into. Breaking certain conventions didn't only challenge the aesthetic sensibilities of others, but it challenged their sense of self. It reminded them, subconsciously, of the very pretendings they clung to.
Only those with power could stand against society's tides, flaunt the collective's 'safe' aesthetic. When one had enough power, others couldn't rise against them and safely say something calculated to reduce their own dissonance and remind the offending party of the u

It hurts," I said. "It hurts so much it makes me feel like there's nothing else. After, I feel like less of a person. More like I'm a piece of metal, thrust into the fire, over and over."

"And they're hammering you into shape?"

"No," I confessed. "Mostly, I get to hold the hammer. There's that, at least.

Things become a great deal easier once you realize how temporary it all is.

Life's not fair. It's not even, not balanced, not right. Why should relationships between people be any different? There's always going to be an imbalance in power. The other person might have a higher social standing, they might have money, or more social graces. Isn't it better to stop stressing about quid pro quo and just do what you want or what you can?

People are suffering all around the world. We ignore what's happening elsewhere every second of every day, focusing only on our country, our city, our neighborhood, or on the people we see daily. We only really care about the pain and unhappiness of our loved ones, our friends and families, because we couldn't stay sane if we tried to support and save everyone. Nobody could try to do anything like that, except maybe Scion. I'm applying that concept to a smaller scale. My family and my team, they take priority, and they take priority in that order.

If you've decided who you want to be," Glenn said, "Accept all of it. The good, the bad, the ambiguous. Vulnerabilities and strengths. The anger, that's part of it. The fear for people you care about, that's a strength too. Doesn't feel very good while you're experiencing it, but it's a well you can tap. And with luck, knowing who you are means not having to waste time and effort on putting up a facade. Maybe that extra time and effort you have at your disposal will make the difference.

Humans crave knowledge. It's a defining element in our species. Something we don't see in animals in that same way, something we don't see in Scion, unless it's a craving that takes a very different form in execution.

You want to neuter us," Director Tagg said. "Stop us from policing the criminals who run this city."
"As my client put it, Director, we're hoping to free you to focus your efforts on real targets.

I don't think humanity is noble," I said. "Not in the least. It's not just or fair on an intrinsic level. It's not even good. But I kind of hoped we'd go out fighting the other guy.

Can you live without charm, intimidation, or some form of influence over others? Without making others do your bidding on some level? You flirt, they react one way or another. Everything is manipulation.

A huge pet peeve of mine: being asked to arrive for a specific time, then being made to wait. Fifteen minutes was just about my limit of my patience.

On this violent, brutish little planet of ours, it's the survivors who wind up the strongest ones of all.

Oh, how small we were, in the grand scheme of it all.

Our planet was but a speck in the midst of the milky way galaxy, which was a speck in the midst of the known universe. We were fighting to save it, and yet it could disappear without anyone in the nearest solar system even noticing.

Small, insignificant. Little more than ants before a giant.

Or perhaps the distinction between the two wasn't so fine, between the man-made monster and the man made monster.

My continued employment supercedes death. It's a... consequence of dealing with beings that operate in the very deepest workings of reality.

When you're in that position, sometimes the only people willing to extend those second chances to you are the people who need them.

Then I wish you a good day," Accord said. He managed to make it sound like fuck you, the way people in the Victorian era might have.

You're not a killer,"Calvert said.

"No…" I replied. I couldn't see, so I screwed my eyes closed, felt the moisture of tears threatening to spill forth. I took in a deep breath.

"…But I suppose, in a roundabout way, you made me into one," I finished. I aimed the gun and fired.

Would you rather be a slave in heaven or a free man in hell?

And… that's the last we have in our actual records. […] There's been more in the last week, I take it?"
"More assault and battery," I said, feeling a touch weary. "Whatever charges come up with the thing at school. I sort of arranged to have a psychopath kill herself. Um. However you'd charge putting maggots in someone's eyeballs. I self-defense.

But you shouldn't forget. The little stuff. Even a handshake? That's something special. Meaningful. Value it, even if you get it every day.

Not a trace of emotion on her face. Not a flicker of a change in expression. Did she not care, or was she wearing an exceptional mask?
Funny, just how easily those masks came to people. Costumes were nothing in the grand scheme of things. Cloth or kevlar, spider silk or steel. It was the false faces we wore, the layers of defenses, the lies we told ourselves, that formed the real barriers between us and the hostile world around us.

It was funny how nature reclaimed this world in its own way. It was silly to say humans were destroying the environment; we were simply changing it. Nature would persevere until the world was a barren wasteland.

People didn't want to disturb norms. If one looked like they fit into the greater scheme of things, then it took a kind of courage to step away from the herd and stand out, challenging that.

The pig prank involved letting three pigs into a school after hours, each painted with a big number on their sides; one, two and four, respectively. The idea was that the people who had to find and capture the pigs would spend ages trying to find the third.

Popular culture has twisted it, but popular culture has twisted madness in general. They make it funny, they romanticize it, or they make it exaggerated. But true mental illness is nothing to laugh at. I stayed in the Birdcage for some time, I've seen scary things, and I've become numb to a great deal, but going mad is perhaps the scariest.

We are a wretched, petty species, and we have been given power to destroy ourselves with.