This was asked as a joke on the fucking Invincible Circlejerk Subreddit, and I’m really frustrated that I can’t find a single reason not to do this.
- Finds blowing up unpleasant? Her default strategy already involves dying repeatedly, and usually in ways that are far more painful and drawn-out then a point-blank explosion.
- Not enough bombs? Her power looks like it duplicates equipment, so she probably only needs the one. And even it doesn’t, surely the GDA can afford a few dozen bombs?
- Worried about collateral damage? Ok, that explains why she doesn’t use this as her immediate go-to strategy. But in cases like the Invincible War where everything nearby is already ruined and the world is at stake, it’s hard to argue a big explosion is too much of a problem.
- Bombs likely not enough to take out Guardian-level enemies? Possibly, granted, but it’s hard to imagine there’s a lot of enemies who can effortlessly shrug off a bomb detonating in their face but can be taken down with kicks. Barring some really contrived situation of the Bombgod who’s specifically immune to bombs, this is always going to help her chances.
- Ethical problems with suicide bombings as a concept? Again, her default strategy is “send waves of disposable selves until the target is overwhelmed”. It would be really odd (especially for the highly utilitarian GDA) to draw the line at including bombs in that situation.
- PR issues? Maybe if you just tied sticks of dynamite to her, but you’ve already her bloody corpses piling up in the street and are already using sci-fi explosives, a PR team should be able to workshop this. And again, even if you can’t find any way to make this appeal to the public, surely in cases like the Invincible War you can weather a bit of bad optics to stop the end of the world?
I genuinely cannot think of a reason that this would be a bad idea, and it really should be a bad idea. Please help.
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So those are all copies of her, and she’s not into that. It is one thing knowing you might die, it is a whole different thing when identical copies of your mind are being created for the specific purpose of dying.
Basically you are asking why she doesn’t sign up for a massive amount of internalized trauma, and the answer is she doesn’t want to. It is a winning strategy, but if Cecil asked her to do it regularly she’d quit the team.
She doesn’t want to die. Each clone still feels pain and experiences what it’s like to die. And the original Kate remembers each one.
Now I’m wondering why they don’t use her corpses as material for D.A. Sinclair. Or maybe they do…
A similar question was posted somewhere recently about why DupliKate isn’t just regular backed up by a van full of conventional small arms, as even a bunch of Kates with nothing but WWII vintage Sten guns looted from a museum would make her much more effective since beyond being able to make copies of herself, she’s physically normal.
My only answer to both proposals is that the Invincible universe is dominated by:
Heartlessness
Flagrant stupidity when it comes to exploiting powers
While there’s peaks of dramatic freak outs, there seems a general acceptance of horrible maiming and brutally violent death, especially when it comes to superheroes. Aside from putting on costumes and having the bare minimum needed to use their abilities (like Rex’s rather meagre selection of items to charge and throw) people with powers just seem to get thrown in to sink or swim. Nobody seems to care to equip them better and they seem to just accept that. While a certain amount of this pervades all superhero media, I find Invincible especially egregious.
The last paragraph already touches on stupidity, but it goes much farther than that. DupliKate is the lower end of power, but the same kind of idiocy applies to the Viltrumites, who are a bunch of interstellar bozos. There’s only fifty of them left, yet they still refuse to use any of their advanced tech for their heartlessly racist conquests and insist that they’ve got to send individuals out to subjugate worlds bare handed like cosmic playground bullies.
Let’s not even get into the bizarrely advanced mental limitations of Atom Eve, who can transmute matter, yet still sticks to pink force fields 90% of the time. She could have encased Conquest in a block of titanium and not spared his head, or tried any of various radioactive elements to hurt him that way while slowing him down but nooo.. she just makes the air denser.
In closing, DupliKate doesn’t get any weapons because everybody in that universe, including her, are dumb, and they don’t care.
Mostly because this show does dot focus on minmaxing and clever use of powers. If you want something like that, Worm would be better fit. More specifically Oni Lee does that.
DupliKate has superhuman strength and durability in each of her bodies… just not at some insane level like Immortal or Invincible. She can hit harder than most basic guns and bombs.
We don’t know what the limit is to her duplication; but whatever it is, she’s probably tested it and isn’t able to duplicate anything that hits harder than she does. And when it comes to just using Cecil’s advanced weapons and gear…. at that point why not deploy her as melee interference, and squads of regular troops as well? She can pickup guns if they die, sure, but a few special forces squads accompanying the heroes would be useful in any case where Kate holding guns makes sense.
Jesus dude
Cause she doesn’t want to
I honestly think that Duplikate should become the next “Donald” for Donald. They already have dying repeatedly in common; plus, her instant transfer of information would be valuable when communicating between different departments/groups.
She can be everywhere at once; I think it’s a more pragmatic use of her powers.
The thing that a lot of people seem to be missing is that Kate’s power is magic based, and thus not obliged to make sense. “Her clothes replicate, why wouldn’t any weapons she’s holding?” Because the spell isn’t meant to do that. “She could implant a bomb internally, surely in that case –” The spell isn’t meant to do that. Probably the only reason that her clothes replicate at all is because whoever cast the spell thought it would be too scandalous if the clones were running around butt naked, and put in a specific clause to maintain the target’s modesty.
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Why not use a missile if we’re talking about that kind of ordinance? She’s not super speedy afaik, the delivery mechanism when there’s an enemy on the battlefield would probably be better if it were on a projectile?
Her powers do not replicate equipment, only her clothing, I think this is somehow tied to her “hive mind” or gestalt personality since each new clone clothes’s reflect the number of clone they are.
Maybe she lacks the training to do so but since she is shown to be quite proficient with her powers I doubt she has not tried to replicate weapons in the past.
She could probably try this strategy if she made preparations, but explosions are dangerous and superheroes are always fighting in cities or dangerous research/military facilities so maybe a wave of suicide bombers is not the brightest idea.
Mostly I think they are trying to arrest not kill? Obviously when shit gets real they do kill but I think that is not the goal.
I think we have to assume that she cannot duplicate any equipment, because we’ve never seen her do so.
Suicide bombings are more of a terror tactic than a military tactic, its not like a huge upside they’re passing on
They already have Rex for this role, and rarely has it seemed like more explosions would have made a difference in any of their fights
She couldn’t just throw/shoot the bombs? In what scenario is her clones being near the bomb be important?
I think you might like a guy called Oni Lee from Worm, he also has the capabilities of becoming an immortal suicide bomber. And maybe there’s a mental toll of going in to combat and killing yourself rather than someone else doing it.
It could be that her power is limited in capacity, and duplicating equipment that contains a lot of potential energy (such as a bomb does) would consume more of her ability to duplicate.
The magic curse doesn’t duplicate more than Kate/Paul and select clothing. Why? It’s magic. I ain’t gotta explain.
Besides that, Kate shows she feels/experiences what her duplicates feel. It’s not a stretch to imagine she’s not keen on feeling explosive suicide.
Cause she’d feel it, and it would only work for a little bit before she’s hunted down
It sucks because I can imagine her brother doing this, but the show and the comic seems completly unwilling to use her for anything that isn’t sex
Why doesn’t Duplikate stop asking this question in various permutations? Is she stupid?
I might be wrong but I thought Kate could only what she was wearing and nothing else?