Yep. They say in the Diamond Diva episode that Bal’Teranerach first shows up in Toll of Destiny #3, and that’s the issue depicted on the incap.
Edit: Oh right, duh, almost forgot there’s also Editor’s Note 65 where they list off what’s going on with the Core Set DE incaps and outright say he screws up and releases Taranerach out of the Void.
We’ve only had two dedicated VotV Writers’ Rooms, but we’ve had a lot of episodes where we hear about his adventures. And he frequently is doing really off the wall things. In OblivAeon especially he has this whole thing of “well, I did something that worked for the moment but caused some major complications, so now I have to go figure out a way around the complications, and then that solution resulted in more complications, so now I have to…”
There’s reasons why the fandom jokes he’s Hold My Beer: The Person, and C&A have spent a fair amount of the narrative lately outright saying he screws up a lot. (Hence the vibe that it’s a retcon as opposed to simply the fandom getting a different vibe than C&A think they’re putting down, which does certainly happen sometimes.)
Then there’s the Wager Master episode where he just gets hit with the writers’ idiot ball instead, so he doesn’t get to question why an all-powerful being just took a dive in a contest and handed him a powerful-seeming artifact as a result.
And the episode states he “had a lot of trouble” with Doc Tusser and they ended up in a showdown (as Tusser was armed himself), so it wasn’t exactly a “well, I’ll just go shoot the guy” from the get-go.
So Chrono’s in-between, he doesn’t shy away from having to shoot someone if it’s him or the other person, but he objects to being expected to be a pure hitman.
I didn’t even know there was a South Park episode about this sort of thing, lol.
I was just operating on, like. If some cosmically powerful being was all “Hey let’s have a fiddle contest! Oh turns out I can’t play, welp, here you go” my reaction would just be, “…you know what, thanks I’m good, you keep it”. Just has “nope” written all over it.
Season One, Episode 10 “Damien” - Jesus and Satan get in a boxing match, which Satan blatantly throws. It’s not quite the same setup, but still an obvious con.
Yeah, which kind of goes back around to where this whole tangent began: me suggesting an episode about the Prime Wardens (and so, implicitly, AA too) actually getting a 12+ Overwhelming Success Beyond Expectations victory, as a change of pace from the usual fare.
I mean, I don’t think it would be that out of character for WM to challenge someone to a contest that he himself is terrible at (and forget to use his Singular Entity powers to win). He is a pretty comedic character. And I can totally see an issue where Guise and Wager Master both flail horribly at a contest, only for someone to remind them they could’ve been using their powers the whole time.
Though this convo was still fruitful for me in that it makes me actually want to possibly either retract Setback from the “well-intentioned bozo” category, or posit there’s a third spectrum axis we’re not considering.
As there’s arguably a distinction to be made between someone who’s incompetent primarily because the universe keeps serving up complications, and someone who primarily causes their own complications.
Setback does do some of the latter too due to being a little too naive sometimes, but people like Argent and Cosmic tend to do a lot of things to themselves.
True, but that would probably make me even more skeptical to trust something powerful made by an idiot. I’m admittedly just a very cynical person, lol.
You just know both of them have lost staring contests to the cat. Repeatedly. Guise hasn’t gotten to finish a bowl of tasty soup in years, and kitty’s got a lot more than the traditional nine lives banked up with WM at this point.
I think the term “competence” already captures what you mean. Competence is the ability to do something well. I think it’s reasonable to include knowledge of the requirements and effects of an ability under the header of competence. But having the ability doesn’t preclude failure or blockage due to poor equipment, counteraction by another party, or just plain probabalistic luck of the draw. (Or…because the writers just have it out for that character! It definitely happens.)
Setback is a weird case, because exactly what competence are we talking about? His ability to use his super-strength and resilience, or his ability to manipulate his luck powers? The latter is what really sets him apart from Kismet in my mind; she is able to intentionally effect luck changes due to her intuitive understanding of how her power works, while he just kind of bumbles into it. But does that mean he’s UNLUCKY, or incompetent at using his luck powers?
Didn’t Zhu Long pull like the exact same trick on him? Or, well, it wasn’t the same thing, as he didn’t remove Pete’s empathy, but he did mind control him into attacking his friends and turning his bad luck against others instead of himself like normal.
So Setback continues to be a weird case. He could be more competent with his powers, but that would mean intentionally harming the people around him, so he muddles about trying to mitigate having to eat his own bad luck.
Based on this bit from the second shipping episode:
Who, in-universe, is a shipper? Who’s always trying to set the other heroes up with one another and/or gossiping about who’s dating (or should be dating) whom - my bet is on Unity? That’s a pretty good bet. … As for others besides the obvious ones: Christopher suggests Haka and Adam suggests Legacy. … Haka is the type to meet two people who he thinks would be good together and then orchestrate some situation to get them together (which is kind of his way to live vicariously through others - he’s old enough that he’s kind of done with personal romantic relationships). An issue that would totally work is Unity reaching out to Haka as one of the wisest people she knows: obviously The Wraith and Bunker should be dating and just won’t acknowledge it, so help please. They do a whole thing to try to contrive that situation. It doesn’t work and they wind up mad at each other instead.
The idea of Haka and Unity sneaking around and setting up sitcom-esque wacky hijinks is just hilarious to me.
Creative Process: Wager Master messes with a villain
We see Wager Master mess with the heroes sometimes. What happens when he messes with a villain? Say he tries to teach a valuable lesson to a villain or maybe a group of villains, and it doesn’t go quite as planned? Maybe teaching humility to Baron Blade, honesty to Apostate, Tolerance/Diversity to Citizen Dawn, Empathy to Spite, Hygiene to Plague Rat? Maybe we could have Scholar on the side lines, shaking his head.
Wager Master flips the switch to Kismet’s powers and she resorts to looking for her ex for help. Setback and… Harpy (maybe? She’s pretty unpredictable) bumble into some “solution” that results in Kismet temporarily getting an alternate power source. Chaos ensues, much to Wager Master’s glee!
