#arc 11

I'm gonna guess, based on what I know, that the Arc 11 Interludes are gonna be pretty different from 11.1 to 11.8, so probably worth doing a Arc reflection here, after having Read 11.8, but before I do the interludes.

Arc 11 is pretty good. Gives us a much closer look at just how shitty the city has gotten - very reminiscent of like... post-Katrina New Orleans... but with superpowered gangs making the recovery efforts harder.

We get to see Taylor actually starting her Warlord career, we get to see Taylor taking requests from her subjects, as it were, and actually going out on a little quest. We see how her power can give her the ability to police her zone in a way that no one else really can - the ability to see what's coming and then deal with it from a distance. Again, bug control - seems lame. Isn't. Isn't at all.

The Merchants get their moment in the sun after having been lurking uselessly at the edge of the narrative for a while... and they get wrecked by Faultline and Co who are just trying to get some Case 53 Intel. We get another hint of Cauldron... well, existing, and a sign of their supposed reach and power. It's definitely a long time for that to get a payoff, but I know we'll get it.

the Merchants as being the sort of... embrace the madness of the times kind of faction makes sense, and the way that Skiddy is deciding to try and manufacture triggers is believable - obviously people would try that - and also clearly only works on the scale that he's doing it because of the state of the Bay. And the Merchants, like the short-sighted idiots they are, have decided that they're gonna try to prolong this process, which is... a choice.

Admittedly, I didn't expect this to be Arc 11's main part - I kind of expected S9 to play a larger role, and I'm sure a blind reader coming in would be like 'where's these serial killers I'm getting teased about?, what about that end of the world shit?!'

Arc 11's first half gives us more 'Taylor fighting villains, being a less bad option' which is a regular fare to make her further descent into supervillainy more palatable to the reader but the thing is... Taylor never really becomes a Supervillain in anything but the surface? Like, yes, she does bad things, but villain is really not a great descriptor of her so far, and probably never will be. She never loses sight of her ultimately heroic goals, and she's not going like... she's not pulling a 'Knight Templar' trope, where she does so many horrible things in the name of a righteous cause, believing in her righteousness.

I am led to believe that there is a common notion in large swaths of the fandom that we aren't supposed to believe that Taylor is making good choices here. Like, good as in 'correct' or 'most effective', and Taylor is definitely a biased POV and all, but honestly, it's hard to see her being effective at what she's doing, or at what's coming, if she doesn't make them? Very few of her choices have actually made things significantly worse for much of anyone who doesn't deserve it at this point (She's hardly solely responsible for Dinah) beyond maybe Amy after the bank thing, and as with Dinah, that probably would have happened without her anyway.