Wildbow Quotes & Sayings

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. — Wildbow

Circumstances might be hard enough that maybe you need to find the little comforts, even if they aren't good for you. — Wildbow

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. — Wildbow

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. — Wildbow

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? — Wildbow

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. — Wildbow

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

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

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. — Wildbow

He loved the idea behind the Chinese concept of guanxi. It fit in the same general category as the concepts of friends, family, acquaintances, but it was more based in business and politics. Guanxi was about being able to call up a person one hadn't seen in years and ask for a favor. To have enough people in one's debt that there was more implied leverage to use when seeking favors from others. — Wildbow

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. — Wildbow

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. — Wildbow

Plan for the worst," Grue replied, staring into the distance, "If you're right, you're prepared. If you're wrong, you're pleasantly surprised. — Wildbow

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? — Wildbow

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

We all have a monster somewhere inside us," Charlotte said. "Like I was saying about the kids. Sometimes it's aggressive, sometimes it finds other forms of attack, and other times it's a cowardly one. — Wildbow

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. — Wildbow

I might fall, but I'll come back again and again. I might falter, but I'll return with twice the fury. — Wildbow

This is all I have," he said, his voice quiet. "It's my career, my life. It's my legacy. Some have children, flesh and blood to carry on their name and their memories. I went without, for your sake, for the world's sake. I didn't have children because I wanted to save lives more than anything else, and if I made peace with that, it was because I told myself this would be my legacy. — Wildbow

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. — Wildbow

There's a difference between serving the system and enabling it. — Wildbow

I envy you, that it's so easy for you to think of things in terms of black and white. I'd like to think I'm a good person, believe it or not. Everything I've done, I did because I thought it was right at the time. In hindsight, some of the ends didn't justify the means, and sometimes there were unforseen consequences." Like Dinah. "But I don't think of myself as a bad person. — Wildbow

Everyone's the lead in their own story, Administrator. Some roles are bigger, some smaller, but none are more important, understand? — Wildbow

Newter, do you know what a devotee is?"

Newter shook his head.

"It is a slang term for someone who is attracted to people with disabilities, because of the disability. I think it is about power, attraction to someone because they are weak somehow. I think it likely that this Laura sees me as weak because of the way I look, the way I may have trouble day to day, and this is compelling to her in a similar way to how a cripple or a blind man might be to a devotee. This does not appeal to me. — Wildbow

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. — Wildbow

Rape culture is a funny thing. People gloss over some pretty shitty, creepy, wrong behavior, little brother, when they know the person in question. But you raise the reality of what they're doing, and it's a whole lot harder to shrug it off. — Wildbow

Fun fact about life or death fights between capes. You start letting your enemies make the first move, your mortality rate triples. — Wildbow

I will take this gamble and perhaps kill those people in the process. I will kill those people who can make me smile and feel more human than I am, I will grieve their deaths, and then I will take that gamble again. Because one city, however grand, is worth that chance. — Wildbow

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. — Wildbow

A chronic failing of human beings, that we so rarely looked up. — Wildbow

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. — Wildbow

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. — Wildbow

... the demons already won, a long, long time ago. They devoured the vast majority of the universe, and that's why the planets are so relatively small, compared to the sheer amount of nothingness. It's why we're so very tiny, in the grand scheme of it all.
But these things we erroneously call angels surged in strength, they spun out a complete universe from the scraps, and on select scraps, or on a select scrap, they prepared life to emerge."

Rose glanced out over the room.

"It would be easy to say that the universe is an unending repetition of creation and death. That this has happened before and it'll happen again, and this is the heartbeat of the universe. But in looking at the history of this world, both the clear history, and the one behind the curtain, something stands out. Us.

We're another force. And we're only still emerging. We're change. We're an equal to them. We just don't realize it yet. — Wildbow

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. — Wildbow

Free time is the easiest thing to sacrifice," Defiant said. "It costs you, to give it up, but there's little guilt. — Wildbow

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. — Wildbow

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. — Wildbow

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

Was he the only one who was just old enough to speak out, not yet so old and jaded that he acceded to authority over anything else?

Or was it the opposite? Was he of the age where he had the ignorance of youth coupled with the arrogance of adulthood? — Wildbow

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. — Wildbow

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

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. — Wildbow

Everyone gets what they want most," Marquis mused. "I can't think of anything more terrifying. — Wildbow

America wasn't perfect, but nothing touched by human hands could be. There was greed, corruption, selfishness, pettiness, hatred. But there were good things too. Freedoms, ideas, choices, hope and the possibility that anyone could be anything, here, if they were willing to strive for it. — Wildbow

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. — Wildbow

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. — Wildbow

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. — Wildbow

Ruins. Places built up by man, painstaking, sometimes over centuries. Layer upon layer of human experience, history, and art, represented in stone and wood and glass. Every single building had been put together with the idea of meeting some specific goal, a specific individual's tastes, filling a purpose as an institution, or being built to cater to society's tastes as a whole. Virtually every building had been a familiar place to someone, a home, a place of business. Roads had once been a part of people's daily routines, bridges a convenience that was appreciated, if rarely acknowledged. — Wildbow

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. — Wildbow

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

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. — Wildbow

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. — Wildbow

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. — Wildbow

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 — Wildbow

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

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

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. — Wildbow

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

Those types of people tended to underestimate the tenacity of the well and truly fucked up individuals of this world. — Wildbow

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