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The Associated Worlds
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Where air movement is written about.
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Morgrim Moon 08/13/2018 10:33 AM
@Unknown sidling over to the shiny new correct channel, sadly I am going to go to bed in a few minutes and not finish it right now, but I have 'very clearly first draft and I haven't written the beginning' if you're desperate enough for a fix 😛
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Let us wait til final writing, I sad.
10:34
*say
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Reposting so I can pin it here, too:
16:53
Fanfiction policy: Well, first, I'm rather gratified to discover that I need a fanfiction policy... 1. I don't have any objection to fanfiction per se . Content-wise, however, I would like to politely request that fanfic writers write in, or respect, the spirit of the original work and characters, and somewhat less politely request, for the love of gods, spare us badly-written porn. Apart from that, feel free to enjoy yourselves. 2. If publishing it anywhere people other than you can see it, please include (a) a disclaimer that it is fanfic, (b) a link to the original Eldraeverse site, and (c) a note that it is licensed under the Creative Commons as derivative, non-commercial fiction. You also specifically grant me all rights to reuse any or all elements of it that I might wish to, such that in the event that I stumble across it on the Internet or just happen to write something similar in future, you can't sue me. 3. If talking about it here, please do so in the #fanfic channel to avoid confusion.
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@Morgrim Moon "I really can't put you back in that, it has holes in it!" made my day, that.
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Morgrim Moon 08/20/2018 4:52 AM
Thank you :D
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But overall man, solid (first) Fanfic of the Eldraeverse? Congrats, and solid man! 👍
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Morgrim Moon 08/20/2018 5:11 AM
I'm kind of surprised, honestly, I thought someone had to have done some sort of author-approved crossover by now, there's been enough "but what if" questions
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@Morgrim Moon I've been on-off playing with the idea, but I've not been finding a good hook. Something like yours works really well, but that... kinda feels about like what it could be. I suppose the "successor" to your story would be: "Uploaded Baseline 2: The Killbot Sleevin' Bagolou" 😛 That is something I could maybe take a shot at. (edited)
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Morgrim Moon 08/20/2018 8:31 AM
I am a compulsive worldbuilder, I can toss you stuff on the arboreal repto-mammal squirrelish thing the unnamed baseline is 😛 Descriptors got cut when I switched to dialogue-only fic, alas.
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Eh, from what I have fermenting in my head the revenge would be exercuted in physical nature through the power of a high-powered modular Killbot. And it be pretty revenge fantasy-ish due to the power an uploaded and connected and generally aug-enabled sophont has, but shrug I suspect he wasn't exactly shot by transophont people either? (edited)
08:33
Though, question: Ques-qe ce a splinter-shard?
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Morgrim Moon 08/20/2018 8:34 AM
That I never figured out. Maybe ordinary run of the mill piratish types? It's the Expansion Regions, there are uncivilised brigands about, and a culture that has 'established in orbit' spacetech but not interstellar is probably a decent mix of "has things worth stealing already outside the gravity well" without the "has big enough guns and defence to make this suicidal"
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fires up Scriviner
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Morgrim Moon 08/20/2018 8:36 AM
splinter-shard = close friend/family group, chosen family, the set of people who would get invited on a road trip/pay bail for the ones that went on the road trip. A smaller subset of ones shard, or clan
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Your Eldrae have a name in the drafts?
08:38
(yes, I am taking a shot at this right now.)
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Morgrim Moon 08/20/2018 8:38 AM
sadly no, I am terrible at naming things
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Darn. So am I. (edited)
08:39
Has Fantasy Name Generator an Eldrae category already?
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Morgrim Moon 08/20/2018 8:40 AM
feed canonical names into a neural net and see what comes out?
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How much effort would that be?
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or just a markov chain
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I can almost imagine myself going through the old works collecting names.
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Morgrim Moon 08/20/2018 8:41 AM
no idea, I'm a chemist not a programmer
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But to my shame, I don't think I could set up a neural net.
08:41
(and here me theoretically doing a comp-sci degree) (edited)
08:41
(well, elec eng/comp sci double. Same diff)
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A thing likely to muck up such a neural net, of course, is that eldrae names come from more'n a few different ethnic naming traditions; say, the Azikhanian Vitremarvis and Vidumarvis as compared, say, to the Selenarian Oricalcios, the Cestian Cyprium, the Ochale Tsurilen, and so forth. So you've got an interestingly disjoint set to deal with.
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@morgrimmoon#0077
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MarcusAurelius 08/20/2018 9:36 PM
Looks like the only practical solution would be for the author to drop a list of canonical but unused names.....
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Or you get fascinating messy hybrid names such as you get when several naming tradditions have to share a culture.
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Well I’m pretty sure that “Takeshi” is a given name and “Kovacs” is the guy’s surname.
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Since all the eldraeic naming tradditions are pretty far from English, and in roughly the same direction, I'm not sure anyone is gonna notice.
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MarcusAurelius 08/20/2018 9:51 PM
Except if the author ever wanted to borrow some of this as he’s entitled to, he’d have to fix the names, And I know I at least would feel better knowing I’m writing as close to canon as possible without doing a fusion with Cerebrate
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Fair enough. I mean, the kinda eldraeverse fic I'm ever going to consider writting is much more on the line of a Worm crossover than a meaningful expansion to the 'verse, so I'm not a concerned by that.
22:45
Of course, naming is always hard, so if we get a good source of cannonical names, or a good way to make new ones.
22:45
That'd be awesome.
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MarcusAurelius 08/20/2018 10:45 PM
I’m slowing discovering how much of a thing Worm is. I’m only just now working my way through it for the first time (edited)
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Ah, I haven't even read it. It's just the circles I move in have a lot of Worm-fic so I end up with a few different ideas for crossovers/alt-powers for it.
22:48
The actual thing is way way to grimdark for me.
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MarcusAurelius 08/20/2018 10:49 PM
Unless it gets way darker after the halfway point, it’s not that dark
22:49
It’s about on the level of a gritty detective show, so far
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well, uh, spoilers. But it's a story which always seemed to me to be intended to maximise the suffering of the protagonist.
22:51
And that comes across as really undesirable.
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MarcusAurelius 08/20/2018 10:52 PM
I’d say try reading the first few parts. It’s relatively quick, and should give you a good feel. I’m avoiding saying anything specific, though
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I have read like, a bit. Up to, like the undersiders meeting? I might read it eventually.
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MarcusAurelius 08/20/2018 10:53 PM
If nothing else, read the interludes because they provide a really interesting look into the world with minimal spoilers
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Uh, you heard what I said about reading a lot of fic of it.
22:53
I am quite well-acquainted with both the plot and the world-building. (edited)
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MarcusAurelius 08/20/2018 10:54 PM
Well nevermind then
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Where are you up to?
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I created a thing. It's about eldraeic funeral rituals... in a sense.
00:13
Feedback would be greatly appreciated.
00:42
Very good one, @xandeross. 👍
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Morgrim Moon 10/26/2018 11:37 AM
https://archiveofourown.org/tags/Associated%20Worlds%20Series%20-%20Alistair%20Young Well, someone that reads your works is clearly an AO3 tag wrangler 😉
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
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should I be getting a 404?
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Morgrim Moon 10/26/2018 11:55 AM
er, no
11:59
Fully formatted Fandom Category already having a disambiguation tag? That's not the automated system, someone's done that by hand.
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MarcusAurelius 10/26/2018 1:03 PM
tragically Morgrim's story appears to be the only one on that site using the tag "this is humor not angst"
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Random fanfic idea: Taylor (i.e. protagonist of Worm) gets a link to the Eldraic Transcend as her power.
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"Oh dear, your world really has some problems does it?"
00:29
I'm assuming it would assign her several therapists, and then subsquently several uplift specialists.
00:29
(I don't know how the transcend would react to that kind of anomaly, though) (edited)
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MarcusAurelius 12/18/2018 12:31 AM
Part of the reaction would be “oh , hey, that’s where greenlife and ourselves originated from”
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0111narwhalz 12/18/2018 12:32 AM
"are those Pseudoeldrae?"
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Probably.
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BizarroLand ♀ 12/18/2018 12:32 AM
Apocalypse in 10.. 9... 8
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0111narwhalz 12/18/2018 12:33 AM
"what have you done to your bandals?"
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And it makes for an interesting power to actually use.
00:33
Beyond some fascinated commities.
00:33
(I'm assuming the transcend would keep things mostly secret)
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MarcusAurelius 12/18/2018 12:34 AM
“Hey guys lets ship her a Legion, she sounds like she could use one”
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(At least until both worlds are properly connected)
00:34
I'm assuming the connection is purely mental.
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BizarroLand ♀ 12/18/2018 12:34 AM
7... 6... 5
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It's a data-pipe in her brain.
00:34
But otherwise very yes.
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MarcusAurelius 12/18/2018 12:34 AM
“May take 10-15 business centuries for delivery”
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In the short-term, what's the best stuff they can do for her?
00:35
Shipping through plans for cool post-tech is one.
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0111narwhalz 12/18/2018 12:35 AM
"Hey you should probably keep an eye out for those precursors. They seem like jerks, from the archaeological evidence."
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"Hmm. How can we turn a 21st century hardware store into a vector-drive as quickly as possible"
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MarcusAurelius 12/18/2018 12:36 AM
The problem is most of the Empire’s nice tech requires a massive pile of “build the tool to build the tool to ...” They could give her really, really good counseling though, and some fun get rich quick ideas
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Also, taylor having, like, function (post)human relationships.
00:37
Get rich quick!
00:37
Good plan!
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0111narwhalz 12/18/2018 12:37 AM
>taking an engineering exam >"ooh ooh we know this one"
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I have a mental image of her trying to badger armsmaster into letting her use tinker-tech to bootstrap herself.
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0111narwhalz 12/18/2018 12:38 AM
Would have to play it carefully, else people will get suspicious.
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I mean, if she's going down the non-powered route.
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MarcusAurelius 12/18/2018 12:38 AM
Or just sit down with Dragon, and be best buddies
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But she could just say "I have a thinker power which gives me advice and information"
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0111narwhalz 12/18/2018 12:38 AM
(incidentally I have no idea what the setting is)
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MarcusAurelius 12/18/2018 12:39 AM
Worm is an internet serial novel, I’m about a third of the way through
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It's a grim-dark superhero setting.
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0111narwhalz 12/18/2018 12:39 AM
ah, okay
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MarcusAurelius 12/18/2018 12:39 AM
It’s a very ... I don’t want to say realistic, but logically approach to superheroes
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with the grittyness and the physics-toy powers and the horrible emotional trauma.
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MarcusAurelius 12/18/2018 12:39 AM
They feel much more like a coherent whole than usual
00:40
And I’d argue it’s noble-dark, actually
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"Hey, your bully? We‘re going to basilisk the bitch."
00:40
"Just show her what comes out of this nifty algorithm."
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I mean, that seems implausible, and also not a good plan.
00:41
Like a really not-good plan.
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BizarroLand ♀ 12/18/2018 12:41 AM
Restazoni in peacazoni Earthazoni
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You do not want to be the next parahuman with a killer power.
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BizarroLand ♀ 12/18/2018 12:41 AM
Also yall do realize that in Worm the reason parahumans even exist
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MarcusAurelius 12/18/2018 12:41 AM
Because the shit that goes down in a certain chapter, yeah that amplifies it ten fold
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(Also super OOC for taylor)
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Basilisk hacks don‘t have to kill.
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(Still super OOC for taylor)
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Besides that, right to fucking self defense.
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0111narwhalz 12/18/2018 12:41 AM
ooh
00:41
can you do psychdesign via a basilisk?
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(By Eldrae standards.)
00:42
And yes. Look up YGBM hacks.
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0111narwhalz 12/18/2018 12:42 AM
so you could have a basilisk that fixes the bully
00:42
:V
00:42
Marcas, you make this hard!
00:42
There's end-of-story stuff I want to talk about.
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BizarroLand ♀ 12/18/2018 12:42 AM
Like yall realize that one thing is kind of gonna be a problem right
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Morgrim Moon 12/18/2018 12:42 AM
I mean, I could actually go ASK Worm's author if Eldraeverse is interesting and get a canonical answer from that end, but given Worm I think the answer is "bafly"
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BizarroLand ♀ 12/18/2018 12:43 AM
The You Know What
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0111narwhalz 12/18/2018 12:43 AM
uhoh, not the You Know What
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[on the nature of basilisks] And indeed, most of them don't: the leading examples are things like the Out-of-Mind textures and the Must-Have-It Box. (edited)
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MarcusAurelius 12/18/2018 12:43 AM
Y’all can go ahead, I’m gonna duck out so y’all can take about end game stuff
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BizarroLand ♀ 12/18/2018 12:43 AM
THE SHARD????
00:43
Thats a massive wrench in any of the plans to fix the world
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(The Must-Have-It Box being the only class of object which is specifically exempted from all laws concerning theft. Because everyone Must Have It.)
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0111narwhalz 12/18/2018 12:44 AM
From the name, I expect something sharp and pointy.
00:44
Does it stab people who try to make things nice?
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BizarroLand ♀ 12/18/2018 12:44 AM
Its the reason parahumans exist and well
00:44
Idk myself
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The Shard are giant alien supercomputers that give people powers.
00:44
They also give people drives to fight other people with powers.
00:44
And generally reduce san points.
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BizarroLand ♀ 12/18/2018 12:45 AM
Oh i didnt know so
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(They have vast comput power but no smarts/creativity)
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0111narwhalz 12/18/2018 12:45 AM
oh, so you mean there's another giant supercomputer network for our hypothetical giant supercomputer network to fight?
00:45
sweet
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BizarroLand ♀ 12/18/2018 12:45 AM
Another supercomputer network existing implies a greater scheme going on
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They can simulate millions of humans but still need to get humans to beat each other up to figure out how to use thier powers.
00:45
Yep!
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BizarroLand ♀ 12/18/2018 12:45 AM
Thats interesting
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The Alien entities are trying to beat entropy.
00:46
But they don't do complex/origional thought.
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0111narwhalz 12/18/2018 12:46 AM
so are the Eldrae
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BizarroLand ♀ 12/18/2018 12:46 AM
Ontoyechnology boyes
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0111narwhalz 12/18/2018 12:46 AM
maybe they would end up not fighting
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So they give thier tools to randoms dudes.
00:46
And then commit mass genocide to do analsysis.
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Transcendant: crack knuckles move aside Gentlesophs, we got this.
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They are both stupid and pretty evil.
00:46
Just powerful and alien also.
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0111narwhalz 12/18/2018 12:46 AM
Transcend: "your intentions are good but your methods are idiotic"
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Indeed.
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I'm pretty sure by eldraeic standards the Entities are perversions. Stupid perversions that lucked into an ontotechnological toybox they don't know how to properly take advantage of.
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Just to be clear: They have enough dataprocessing for "Path to victory" to be a valid power.
00:47
I.e. literally, the superpower of setting a victory condition, then being told what you need to do to achive it.
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0111narwhalz 12/18/2018 12:47 AM
oh sweet
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but are functionally sub-human in actual intelligence.
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0111narwhalz 12/18/2018 12:48 AM
so they should just set the victory condition to "reverse entropy in a closed system" and work backwards from there
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I mean, it does work by brute-force universe-simultion.
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0111narwhalz 12/18/2018 12:48 AM
…add in a couple optimization steps midway
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BizarroLand ♀ 12/18/2018 12:48 AM
I was planning on reading worm
00:49
Guess that goes ot the window now
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Eh, most of the story is still fine with this known.
00:49
Like, it's mostly just following one girl through this world.
00:49
As she beats up bigger and bigger bad-guys.
00:49
And suffers horrible trauma.
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BizarroLand ♀ 12/18/2018 12:49 AM
K
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All the magic space whale bullshit doesn't become relevant until the late late game.
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0111narwhalz 12/18/2018 12:49 AM
sounds like Fun
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It's not actually my kind of story.
00:50
I haven't even read it.
00:50
I just interact with the fandom and keep getting reced fics.
00:50
Since SV loves worm-fics.
00:50
Mostly of the form of the one I proposed; giving the protag an alternate power and seeing how she does.
00:51
Generally a better one than her canon power of "Absolute control over all bugs in a four-block radius:
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Many, many altfic powers. My first reaction on seeing the initial suggestion was 'oh god, not more of this shit.'
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0111narwhalz 12/18/2018 12:51 AM
That could be a lot of bugs.
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BizarroLand ♀ 12/18/2018 12:51 AM
Afaik worms world is on the decline because phecing parahumans keep blowing hp everything
00:52
The economy cant recover when some punks are destroying cities every saturday
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It's the ENdbringers.
00:52
The big monsters which destroy a city every three months.
00:52
And cannot be killed.
00:53
More warmachines used by the Entites to provoke conflict.
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The power also allows her to use the bugs' senses and process all of that input, so it's also basically local limited omniscience. By way of bugs.
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0111narwhalz 12/18/2018 12:53 AM
That sounds like a challenge.
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BizarroLand ♀ 12/18/2018 12:53 AM
Kaiju?
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Really nasty Kaiju.
00:53
One has total energy control in 100m ish radius.
00:53
One has continent-scale water control .
00:53
One has nigh-perfect precog and telekinesis.
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0111narwhalz 12/18/2018 12:53 AM
hey that's cheating
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And re-writes peoples brains.
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0111narwhalz 12/18/2018 12:54 AM
why does it get two
00:54
what dingus balanced this boss?
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Because it's gimmick is re-writing people's brains so that they go insane and ruin as much as possible at the worst possible moment.
00:54
And it needed both powers for that.
00:57
On the more local level, the main villains of note in the city the protag lives in are a guy who has regeneration/pryokineissi/turning into a dragon which ramp up the longer he fights.
00:57
A whole team of neonazis.
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0111narwhalz 12/18/2018 12:57 AM
…are they super-neonazis or just regular ones?
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And a guy who's power it to split the timeline in two, experince both, and the pick which one to keep at the end.
00:57
Super-neonazis.
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0111narwhalz 12/18/2018 12:57 AM
oh fun
00:57
:V
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Powers include but are not limited to: Telekinetic control of anything touched, short-duration powergranting, creating metal blades, turning into a giant wolf made of blades.
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0111narwhalz 12/18/2018 12:59 AM
Powergranting sounds like an especially dangerous one, from a plot standpoint.
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It lasts less than a minute and she has a limited list.
01:01
So it's not that broken.
01:01
But there are a lot of more dangerous powers, TBH.
01:03
On the hero's side, the best powers are probably armsmaster, who is a tinker (someone who can creat nonsensical super-tech) with a theme of efficeny, clockblocker, who can stop time for anything he touches (which is non-cancelable, lasts ~1 min but varies, and renders the object largely indestructable for duration), and vista, who can pretty freely reshape any space without a living entitiy in it.
01:05
There are a lot of kinda limited-purview powers that are broken.
01:06
I mean, then you get to eidolon, who's power is any three powers.
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0111narwhalz 12/18/2018 1:07 AM
…hopefully with a "wishing for more wishes" failsafe built in
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I think he can use any given power once, but there are so many miniscule variations on each possibility it's only a limitation in the long- run strategic sense; by the time of the story he's still incredibly powerful, but less than he was when he started out, and growing a tiny bit less capable every battle.
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Yeah, it's also limited by the fact that he's an uncreative dumbass.
01:10
He always has one slot set for flight of some kind.
01:10
And doesn't downtime tinker-tech.
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0111narwhalz 12/18/2018 1:11 AM
"the power to wipe all previously used powers"
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I think the limiting factor is actually that his shard only has a limited power supply.
01:11
It's an Eden shard.
01:12
(Eden is the entity which died, and it's death meant the living Entity, Zion, is spending all it's time mopeing, rather than getting on with rendering humanity down into data)
01:13
(Even though the god-entities are pretty dumb, there was a lot of fuckups before humanity had even a fighting chance)
01:16
So yeah! Given this is the field of play, how can the transcend/whichever individual eldrae it hires to help because named charecters are good, cheat and win? (edited)
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BizarroLand ♀ 12/18/2018 12:21 PM
From thousands of Ly away, I don't think much
12:27
@Archon They could give her counselling and tell her how to overpower or at least avoid the people giving her trouble
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I mean, yes, but ultimately it's still a superhero story, y'know? So we have to find the most narratively interesting version if The Eldrae Guide to Civilization Bootstraping on a Dollar a Day.
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BizarroLand ♀ 12/18/2018 8:58 PM
@BizarroLand ♀ Asides about Imperial captains nuking Earth aside, I'm not sure how the Eldrae would react to us, who are quite literally the mediocre prototype versions of themselves
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Did you just @ yourself?
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BizarroLand ♀ 12/18/2018 9:01 PM
meant to ping @Archon (edited)
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I think Cerebrate mentioned something about an uplifted whale going after Japanese whalers with supercavitating torpedoes.
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I can see what you mean; I think you're looking at a different genre to what I'm thinking about?
21:03
WRT to you thinking about first contact.
21:04
Whereas I'm thinking about how the eldrae's knowledge-base is a power-source.
21:04
Uh, how can I put this? It's not really about the Eldrae, exactly, so much as how "Talking to the Eldrae" can be used/abused as a superpower.
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BizarroLand ♀ 12/18/2018 9:05 PM
The Transcend seems to be more of a collective subconscious type deal than a technical repository
21:05
I'm not sure the strain of speaking to trillions of alien minds wouldn't just break Taylor in half
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There was that "Rent-A-Thought" story.
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I mean, my general assumption is that the collective subconcious would be no more damaging to her than it is for anyone else.
21:06
And that it would probably open up a chat line to a handful of individual eldrae who would be helpful.
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Well, unless she tried to integrate with it and then back out. That might be problematic.
21:07
But, just emailing the Eikones would be useful enough.
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Yeah, you get post from an Eikone, and them get it get's passed along a and bounced about until we get to someone small enough to be a charecter and not a deus ex machina.
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Nuking? No. There are far bigger asshats than humanity around in the Associated Worlds, and they haven't nuked them yet.
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The Eldrae would be hypocrites if they nuked everyone who annoyed them.
00:40
(Or at least, I feel it'd lose them the moral high ground)
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And, y'know, Earth the planet is quite interesting, assuming we haven't got done wrecking the place by then. On the other hand, there's a peculiarly apposite Douglas Adams quotation, which one might well consider appropriate if you switch the subjects around: "The ape descendant will greet him in return, but in deference to a million years of evolution he will not attempt to pick fleas off him. Earthmen are not proud of their ancestors, and never invite them round to dinner."
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Morgrim Moon 12/19/2018 12:49 AM
It would be a fascinating study opportunity comparing uplifts to the natural sophant descendents of the pre uplift species
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Also RE wrecked earth... uh, pretty sure Worm earth is rather demolished.
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I mean, depends on the time line.
03:19
At "Canon start", which, give or take 3 months is where this fic would start.
03:19
It's merely much gloomier and has a massively depressed economy.
03:19
And like 40 less medium-to-large cities.
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TIL that it was only in 2000 that, in the US, retired police and military dogs were able to be adopted. Before then, it was official policy to euthanize anydog that was old enough to retire. This has been today's entry on the "You Earthlings are fucking savages with neither honor nor loyalty - and, hell, we seriously question your capacity for empathy at this point - and it deeply shames us to share any base pairs with you" side of the balance.
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Morgrim Moon 12/19/2018 8:14 PM
What. blinks Retired service have been able to be adopted here for about a century, every since the absolute shitstorm that happened when the Light Horse had to abandon their mounts after WW1
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...there are many good things about the US, of which exactly none of them is its government. I swear, they must be selecting for Dark Kantians or something similar to explain the sheer quantity of low-grade evil they spit out every day.
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BizarroLand ♀ 12/19/2018 8:17 PM
"Knowing that cursed blood flows through my veins... it's enough to drive me MAD!"
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Fortunately, one exception was one military dog handler who fought this uphill to get it changed, although too late to save his own dog.
20:20
But even now, I learn, adopting an ex-military dog may mean paying thousands of $ for transportation back from the warzone, because, bureaucratically, being adopted makes them no longer a member of the military, and paying to bring him home would be "fraud, waste, and abuse". Or so says the Department of Defense, who I firmly intend to abandon in active war zones should I ever become planetary dictator.
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BizarroLand ♀ 12/19/2018 8:20 PM
When I look at US history, one has to become practically certain that US politicians aren't just selected for idiocy, they're actively selected for ruthlessness, duplicity, etc etc (edited)
20:21
Not going to name names.
20:23
Even as someone who tries to avoid misanthropy, I completely understand why the eldrae may want to utterly disown us from any cladistic perspective (edited)
20:26
What in US culture or the US political system gives us these endless waves of Lawful Evil types?
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Hierarchical systems in general tend to select for sociopathy.
20:46
Which makes it a shame that we need them.
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BizarroLand ♀ 12/19/2018 9:36 PM
Need?
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Enderminion 12/19/2018 9:38 PM
yes
21:39
without such a system things would be worse
21:39
but that gets into stuff which ends friendships
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[citation needed]
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Why would the eldrae even tolerate the existence of such any entropy-creating pustule as earth? I mean, they've got to have some standards.
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BizarroLand ♀ 12/19/2018 10:16 PM
That passage in that one nanofic implies there are actually quite a lot of backwards peanut shows beyond the Associated Worlds (edited)
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Wouldn't humanity's existence be a insult to eldraeic values?
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0111narwhalz 12/19/2018 10:17 PM
Because it makes more entropy to destroy them, and they might yet be enlightened? :V
22:17
Also because it's, like, really rude to commit genocide.
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BizarroLand ♀ 12/19/2018 10:18 PM
Humanity might cause a visceral offense when they realize the link between us and themselves
22:18
"Knowing that cursed blood flows through my veins... it's enough to drive me MAD!"
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Wouldn't they view humanity as a threat, if they managed to, say, start throwing RKVs around?
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0111narwhalz 12/19/2018 10:20 PM
Well, then they would engage "us" on our own merit.
22:21
i.e. "another lot of RKV-throwing hooligans"
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how would they deal with us doing that?
22:21
Same way they dealt with Litash?
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0111narwhalz 12/19/2018 10:22 PM
Probably not, considering that Litash was also to make a point.
22:22
Also strangelet weapons are illegal now, I think.
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Would the Worlds (whatever it's called) make an exception for that sort of threat?
22:26
Wouldn't RKVs be a pretty big no-no?
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0111narwhalz 12/19/2018 10:27 PM
Probably, but I don't know what the appropriate response would be.
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RKVs are Tier II prohibited weapons (i.e., planet-killers). Any civilization that uses them gets wiped off the face of the galaxy; all signatories to the Ley Accords are required to enforce this ruling. The Accords don’t strictly require that to mean wiping out the entire civilian population, but everyone involved in authorizing or executing the attack ends up dead as a minimum, and whatever’s left of the civ is going to be under a painful and deeply intrusive proctorship at best, and quite possibly back to the Paleolithic.
📌 1
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Morgrim Moon 12/19/2018 10:37 PM
Humanity does more than enough things they'd love as well as things they'd find enraging. I think we'd fall more into the "so much wasted potential" camp, at which point it's socially, economically and practicality better to offer HELP dragging the baselines up to scratch; it might take 2-3 centuries but probably no more than that, and it's definitely worth expending a single lifetime of effort for an interesting planet
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If there is one thing the whole galaxy is agreed on, it is THOU SHALT NOT FUCK WITH STAR-KILLERS, PLANET-KILLERS, ECOCIDERS (on garden worlds), OR UNCONTROLLED SELF-REPLICATING WEAPONS.
📌 1
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What do they do if they find a 'wild' planet-killer (sentient, not controlled by anyone)?
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BizarroLand ♀ 12/19/2018 10:41 PM
(insert climate change joke here)
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a la V'ger from star trek
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0111narwhalz 12/19/2018 10:42 PM
I expect they'd first neutralize it, then study it if possible, and finally destroy it if necessary.
22:43
Depending on the mechanism, neutralization might not leave much to study, but there are priorities.
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Now, as at this point in time, however, humanity are both primitives (which isn’t a sin), and barbarians (which is). But, y’know, children can eventually grow the fuck up, as it were.
22:47
Especially with a little help from the External Rectification & Clarification Ad-Hoc.
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BizarroLand ♀ 12/19/2018 10:54 PM
The who again
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The most professional of the many meddlers in other people’s civilizations.
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BizarroLand ♀ 12/19/2018 11:11 PM
What do they do exactly vis a vis the other ones? I hope this is a more interesting sociology question
23:12
We've seen foreign aid and trying to genuinely 'win the argument'
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Why are you guys so eager to see humanity destroyed for kinda boring reasons?
☝ 2
00:05
Like, we have like half of what they want, and a lot of nutjobs with more power than sense.
00:05
That puts us ahead of a lot of people.
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Good question.
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(And Litash was one of the worst interstellar slaving hubs in the entire worlds, wasn't it?) (edited)
00:06
(Not even pretending to be good people)
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I mean, seriously, as much as I am not writing HFY, I have no interest in writing HFO, either.
00:07
Or even FHO.
00:12
Heavy Fuel Oil?
00:12
I imagine you'd have a hard time writing in that
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"Humanity Fuck Off"
00:12
as opposed to "Humanity Fuck Yeah"
00:13
HFO for stupid reasons (often that we don't have enough True Communism when you dig a little) is what gets you all the kudos and the critics fawning
00:13
HFY is the simplistic reaction to that
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BizarroLand ♀ 12/20/2018 12:15 AM
@Ian Bruene ditto'd x100
00:15
Bonus points if the theme is environmentalism
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Morgrim Moon 12/20/2018 12:25 AM
You can have environmantism without it. Firmly internalise the externals and you're much of the way there.
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I dunno, how well does Heavy Fuel Oil stick to paper?
00:25
What would they think about our having acronyms for everything?
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Morgrim Moon 12/20/2018 12:26 AM
"oh, you want a coal fire station? Sure, but you foot the medical bills for every asthma sufferer in the area"
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@Morgrim Moon Yep. And that’s the main way they’ve been handling it, ‘cause it’s a lot harder to blow off externalities when you can’t just assume you’ll be dead when the bill comes due.
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I kind of want to write an Eldraeverse/Eclipse Phase crossover now
17:56
Probably like one of those Firewall chat logs speculating if the space elves are Exsurgents
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Go right ahead! I don’t have a clue what any of that means, but it sounds cool.
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BizarroLand ♀ 01/08/2019 5:58 PM
If there's any VS. Battle I actually want to see happen, it's my Tiffanians Vs. Zarp's Federation
17:59
But I won't be the one to write that for aforementioned reasons
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Well, the Federation of Parahuman species doesn’t fight many “wars” per se, the Federal Guard mostly does “police actions.”
18:25
That said a typical sub-relativistic ship can depopulate a planet in... a bit more than 16 minutes
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BizarroLand ♀ 01/08/2019 6:28 PM
A Tiffanian battleship can probably vaporize a city if it accelerates to ramming speed (edited)
18:30
A few of the anti kinetic missiles would probably be enough to destroy a planetary civ in a few seconds
18:30
(DOUDA? NISAN)
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Dump my cargo? With all due respect, Emissary, that simply was not possible. Not to impugn your knowledge of interstellar economics, but given we are still half a light-hour apart I feel obliged to…
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BizarroLand ♀ 01/08/2019 6:38 PM
Multiple kilotons at 10% c = bad day for whatever it hits
18:40
@Zarpaulek The principle in Tiffanianverse is that you can't tank hits anyways so dodge
18:40
All vessels are 100% at Propulsion on the triangle
18:43
Torchship combat is often not unlike dogfighting
18:43
except with no atmosphere
18:43
and in space
18:43
and you get the picture
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BizarroLand ♀ 01/08/2019 7:26 PM
We concluded MAD
19:26
Both polities have starships that can go fast enough to annihilate planetary technospheres.
19:28
In any event, the Tiffanians can deploy a maximum BOOM output of about 600 teratons and the Parahumans can crack planets
19:29
One of them goes extinct and the other dances a merry jig among the dustchoked ruins. 'I win, I win!' Curtains fall, applause, the end Gentlesophs, thanks for your patronage etc etc. (edited)
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Note for that epistolary EP/Eldrae crossover: Write one entry about Eldraic genetics (24/26 chromosomes)
21:15
And make some assumptions about biomorph karyotypes
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Bainbridge: Alright, Callosum, you got the sample? Callosum: It would have been better if you got me a stack or a backup, biochemistry isn’t really my specialty. Bainbridge: But you can work with this? Callosum: I’m simulating a brain structure from the genome as we speak. But there’s more here. Bainbridge: I didn’t find any convergence with TITAN tech or the Exsurgent virus. Callosum: Well that’s a relief, but that raises even more questions. Bainbridge: Such as? Callosum: Well, the first thing I noticed was the karyotype, you know that most Flats, Splicers, and Exalts have 46 chromosomes and biomorphs with significant biomods like Rusters and Aquamorphs have 48? Jake Carter: Most Rusters have 47, the corps want us to pay through the nose for our kids. Callosum: Right, and those “Genetic Service Packs” inject an artificial 48th chromosome? Jake Carter: Less a chromosome, more a bundle of genes with inhibitors to prevent DNA Polymerase from attaching so every few months you need the treatment again. When I got the cure on my birth morph they pulled some trick to copy my 47th chromosome without full mitosis. Callosum: Anyways, back on topic, this sample has 52 chromosomes, and four of them don’t look like any Terran genome my database had on file. Some of it looks more like nanobot design specs. Bainbridge: Have you spoken to Aun Bleu? She might have some insights there. (edited)
11:32
Callosum: I thought about it. But then I got into the other chromosomes and found matches in not only Homo sapiens sapiens, but H. sapiens neanderthalensis, H. heidelbergensis, and even H. denisova. Jake Carter: I thought Europeans had Neanderthal genes already? Callosum: Not these ones, some of these sequences are used to distinguish the revived Neanderthals from Splicers. But there’s a lot of material here that doesn’t have any match in known Terran life as well, so much I’m tempted to call this a neogenetic rather than transhuman. Heck, I’d hesitate to call it a primate. Bainbridge: You think it could be a hoax? Callosum: Kind of doubt it, honestly. You know anything about phylogenetics? Bainbridge: Estimation of evolutionary relationships by tracking mutations in the genome. Callosum: Close enough. Most artificial genetic modifications stand out for either the lack of divergence or a massive amount of divergence, depending on how competent the techs were. The four nanotech chromosomes are obvious recent modifications, on evolutionary timescales at least. But the rest of the genome is far, far older. Bainbridge: How old? Callosum: It’s hard to tell without more information, but from what I can see here it seems likely that whoever created this morph’s ancestors could have taken their samples from live specimens.
📌 1
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That's very EP.
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An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
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sees Zarpaulek has some EP stuff to his name Ooooouuuh, sweeet!
13:51
dives right on in
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I was a little disappointed that most of the other EP fics on AO3 were little more than porn.
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It's AO3.
14:25
Figures that's the case.
14:25
Which is sad because I also find more philosophical fics on AO3 than on FF.net.
14:25
But you have to filter the same sort of shit.
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Well, aside from their content restrictions (which in my experience aren't enforced much), FFN's sorting system is very unadaptable, just putting crossovers in a separate category from single-source fics makes some works almost impossible to find
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I might get back to that Eldraeverse/EP fic eventually
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Morgrim Moon 06/27/2019 10:02 AM
I'm idly toying with writing a followup to Heads and Tails. It'd probably be something along the lines of "eldrae is having a lot of fun hauling their primitive friend along the journey to being not-a-primitive, and the enthusiastic flailing makes it worthwhile"
👍 4
😁 4
10:08
possibly having alien deciding a reasonable medium term goal is finding an occupation so she can afford to try All The Bioshells because so many of them look like they have interesting features and ooh, what if you took this element from that one and grafted it onto that one over there... Which might presumably lead to friend pointing out that crafting custom shells is a profession, should they go look up how to enter it?
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I approve this thought.
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Morgrim Moon 06/27/2019 10:48 AM
😃
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Morgrim Moon 07/31/2019 10:55 AM
setting related question: if you've just ripped someone's brain that was not optimised, you've said it needs to be properly converted/formatted after if you want plug-and-play functionality on standard shells. Fair enough. Would someone in the Expansion Regions who has tech to mindrip their primative-and-inconveniently-dying friend have the tech for the formatting? Is it kind of an automatic part of the process? Or is that a 'swing by the clinic later' sort of thing?
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BluejayHurricane 08/01/2019 1:19 AM
And can they taste the color purple before formatting?
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@Overmind can confirm this, but I‘d hazzard that for the eldrae and empire members and their associates, a spacefaring contacted species soon becomes the field of corporate entities seeking profitable contracts with locals about biotech and noetic research and adaptation.
06:32
Given the way statistics and academica slant, you‘re probably going to find enough people to start building parsing interfaces and such.
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Morgrim Moon 08/01/2019 6:38 AM
yes, but this alien is from a culture still in the early stages of that, when the corporations are still making connections and figuring out markets and this particular market is big on the "we like your space stuff" and very distrustful of the "okay but can you PROVE these cybernetics won't eat my brain?"
06:39
so alien in question is, frankly, extremely astonished they woke up in the borrowed shell and went "...hang on I'm me, that's not how it's supposed to work"
06:39
(Eldrae adventurer was too busy being relieved at the instant acceptance of "I am still me" to facepalm at that)
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I have a better idea. Use your primitive genetically modified pet's brains to act as a bridge to the friend's brain. That way, you can rase the 'pets' without pesticides, call them 'organic', and open up to a new consumer group.
🤔 4
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Morgrim Moon 08/01/2019 6:40 AM
I have no idea what you just said
06:40
I mean, if they're a pet they're not going to eat it
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Jade Nekotenshi 08/01/2019 8:23 AM
Yep. that last phrase came out of east hyperspace
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On a sidenote, is that an established saying? Where did it come from?
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Jade Nekotenshi 08/01/2019 8:38 AM
Which, east hyperspace?
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yeah
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Jade Nekotenshi 08/01/2019 8:39 AM
It's a bit of hackish slang, I think. I heard it from a few cow-orkers many moons ago, most of whom were 30+ years older than me. I've also found a reference to it in ESR's Jargon File
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huh (edited)
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@Morgrim Moon In the modern day, the psylisp compiler software comes built into the cerebral bridge; it's all one unit. Very rarely is someone going to want a raw mind emulation rather than a proper compiled mind-state, so it makes sense to do it that way. Where it may be interesting is that someone has to have written the appropriate module for the compiler to cope with that species neural architecture, because it has to understand what it's compiling. The odds are good that, if it exists, their shipbrain or whatever will have picked it up for them when traveling to a region where that species is around, just as a routine update, but someone does have to have written one in the first place. (edited)
21:32
It's usually not a terribly difficult task unless their neural architecture is all kinds of weird. since the relevant people have had a lot of practice at this, but it does have to be done.
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0111narwhalz 08/01/2019 9:32 PM
"pylisp" makes me think of some kind of horrible amalgamate involving huge depths of nested functions, but with indentation instead of parentheses.
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Oops, missing s there.
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Morgrim Moon 08/01/2019 10:31 PM
Okay, so there's going to be a module, with at worst a flag on it reading "extensive testing not yet performed, please report any bugs to <address>"
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Yeah. And they will have done pretty solid acceptance testing for it to be published at all, so any errors are going to be weird things down in the noise, like "why does cilantro now taste good?" or "is it just me, or is red kinda... redder?" (edited)
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Morgrim Moon 08/02/2019 2:02 AM
"Can identify a camouflaged boomer more easily. Please leave that in and flag as a feature, boomers are the local apex predator"
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MarcusAurelius 08/02/2019 2:03 AM
...that’s one way to describe “civilization ender”, sure
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0111narwhalz 08/02/2019 2:13 AM
hmm neither of my internal definitions of "boomer" line up with those statements, please elaborate
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literal, maybe?
02:15
an alien apex predator which explodes
02:15
and is somehow a apex predator despite exploding
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MarcusAurelius 08/02/2019 2:16 AM
@0111narwhalz SSBN
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0111narwhalz 08/02/2019 2:16 AM
I'm afraid that acronym doesn't help much?
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i am equally confused
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MarcusAurelius 08/02/2019 2:19 AM
Submarine, nuclear, ballistic missile, aka “boomer” aka “I have more explosive firepower than every bomb dropped during WW2, and for three months at a time no one can find me”
02:19
lmao
02:19
that'd be some glitch if it helped you find submarines
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MarcusAurelius 08/02/2019 2:20 AM
It was a bad pun that I didn’t realize people wouldn’t get
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eh, its fine
02:20
we all make obscure puns
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Morgrim Moon 08/02/2019 2:53 AM
Here "boomer" is a male kangaroo, but I was thinking some carnivore sort of critter that booms like emu do
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/02/2019 3:07 AM
@MarcusAurelius I was thinking about the really obvious use of boomer
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Boomer is often used as slang for a Ballistic Missile Submarine
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Morgrim Moon 08/02/2019 11:47 AM
not here. Here it is primarily male kangaroos, secondarily any animal that makes an echoy noise and is big (so lions would probably count if we had any), but is always a living being
ℹ 3
11:47
so yes, clearly I utterly fucked up and you're having great fun laughing at my fail
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Australian submarines hunting for Boomers in the great inland sea - Emu War
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Enderminion 08/02/2019 2:29 PM
just remember to sneak the Torpedo up their Baffles, else they Shoot
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MarcusAurelius 08/02/2019 2:37 PM
Ah, the Great American strategy
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Does anyone have any good ides for transhumanism-enabled souls?
06:27
This is mostly re: crossing over with magic-systems which attach magic bullshit to the soul
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Morgrim Moon 08/05/2019 6:27 AM
more information required
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And avoiding forking-abuse on protagonist-souls while not disabling forking entirely
06:27
Or at least disabling it interestingly
06:28
Basically
06:28
We have someone with a "special soul" - a MTG color-mage or planewalker, for example
06:28
And we dump them in a high-tech world
06:28
What do we do?
06:28
Re: re-sleeving, forking, etc
06:29
Backup loading too
06:29
This is about crossover integration, mainly
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Morgrim Moon 08/05/2019 6:30 AM
I'm still not sure what you'ree trying to do. Go back a step?
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I'm trying to develop ideas with how to handle magic-systems which give protagonist-grade powersets to a small number of souls in an enviroment which allows for forking, resleeving, and mind-backups.
06:31
Or just, like
06:31
If there are literal souls
06:31
What does that do to the Eldraeverse?
06:31
How do re-sleeving or backups interact with an afterlife?
06:32
I want to avoid both weird states where something like an afterlife no longer serves it's purpose
06:32
I also want to keep reality-breaking abuse to medium levels
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0111narwhalz 08/05/2019 6:33 AM
You're asking how to reconcile continuity-based "magic" and pattern-based "tech," right?
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To some extent?
06:34
Some of the stuff is not so much continuity-based as simply naively assuming no duplication? (edited)
06:34
Alternatively, one could model a soul as a specific metaphysical material?
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0111narwhalz 08/05/2019 6:34 AM
Which is continuity-adjacent V:
06:35
You could share one soul between all executing copies, maybe?
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Plausible
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0111narwhalz 08/05/2019 6:35 AM
If you put a copy in inert storage, it has its share of your soul.
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(I had the thought that copies would gain fresh souls when they enter a soul-granting metaphysical realm)
06:36
(But that has so much abuse)
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0111narwhalz 08/05/2019 6:36 AM
It doesn't release that piece of soul until it's erased.
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And this anchors a soul to the "still-living" domain of soulness?
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0111narwhalz 08/05/2019 6:37 AM
At which point the soul fragment presumably exits, rather than redistributing.
06:37
Yeah, I guess?
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Why would it exit rather than redistributing?
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0111narwhalz 08/05/2019 6:38 AM
because possibilities for sketchy activities involving soul-ansibles
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Because that implies you could damage a soul by copy-pasting it many times?
06:38
Eh
06:38
Soul-ansibles is not a deep-seated issue
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0111narwhalz 08/05/2019 6:38 AM
although now I think about it that may be a plus :V
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Also assume that soul-stuff only transmits data at C
06:38
like the speed of sound in soul =< C
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0111narwhalz 08/05/2019 6:39 AM
mhm
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Which leads to sketchy shit if you have a shared mana-pool?
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0111narwhalz 08/05/2019 6:39 AM
Can you trap soul fragments in black holes?
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... I suppose?
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0111narwhalz 08/05/2019 6:40 AM
Consider also what a soul actually means here.
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Are souls subject to gravity?
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0111narwhalz 08/05/2019 6:41 AM
GR would have us believe that pretty much everything that exists in space is affected by gravity.
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"Spiritual Reservoir with secondary cognition/memory functions and plug-ins for magical stuff"
06:41
Souls tend to remain in place relative to planets
06:41
Despite intangibility
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0111narwhalz 08/05/2019 6:42 AM
Can you provision your soul fragments, or is it always shared equally/proportionally to some other quantity?
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Morgrim Moon 08/05/2019 6:42 AM
you could add in consequences for letting your soulparts get too far from each other
06:42
That just nerfs forking weirdly
06:43
Though
06:43
Why don't people over-fork massively?
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Morgrim Moon 08/05/2019 6:43 AM
if you're looking at it from a game/setting balance perspective, it's the counter balance to the soul-bound powers
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Like, normal non-magic people
06:43
Eh
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Morgrim Moon 08/05/2019 6:43 AM
because you still have to PAY for everything your fork has
06:43
like bodies
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I mean, yeah
06:43
I was going to have them all share a resource-pool
06:43
Probably split in size proportional to your fragment (edited)
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0111narwhalz 08/05/2019 6:44 AM
If your mana pool is shared between your whole soul, you need to wait for mana to "flow" from a distant fragment to the one you're actually trying to use.
06:44
So only the mana in the local fragment+mana regen (edited)
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Morgrim Moon 08/05/2019 6:44 AM
and since you're re-merging soon - otherwise it's not a fork, it's a form of reproduction - you can't get extra resources by forking heavily
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Is topical
06:44
Hmm
06:44
Point
06:44
Divergence
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Morgrim Moon 08/05/2019 6:45 AM
you're gonna need some sort of either sharing-of-experience for soul pieces, or consquences for splitting for too long, or again you're going to have twinning
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0111narwhalz 08/05/2019 6:45 AM
If you diverge too far, your soul fragments start to desynchronize, and mana flow becomes obstructed.
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We can just model this by saying "Ties between soul-fragments weaken while forked as divergence occurs - each heals to a full soul as a gradual process in divergance"
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Morgrim Moon 08/05/2019 6:46 AM
then you've got a way of duplicating the rare powers
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Hmm, yeah
06:46
But it's slow
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Morgrim Moon 08/05/2019 6:46 AM
so is sex
06:46
I don't care if the powers are heritable vis sex (edited)
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Morgrim Moon 08/05/2019 6:46 AM
meaning, unless these powers are heritable, you now have a GUARANTEED method of spreading them
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Depending on how the powers actually work
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Morgrim Moon 08/05/2019 6:47 AM
and that's going to inevitably lead to ruling dynasties
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0111narwhalz 08/05/2019 6:47 AM
As the mana flow gets choked off, maybe the limiting factor of split souls also chokes and you get fragments that don't "know" they're not supposed to be full souls.
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Soul-mutilation and re-growth probably alters soul-linked powersets
06:47
Though we're talking about abstracts over a dozen possible magic systems here
06:47
So it's all complicated
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0111narwhalz 08/05/2019 6:47 AM
hmm, you could have an "aspect" system
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Also this system probably won't globalise
06:48
And the existence of realistically modeled protagonist-grade power-sets in historical contexts probably leads to weird ruling factions anyway (edited)
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0111narwhalz 08/05/2019 6:49 AM
You can shuffle aspects around between fragments—subject to the speed of light, of course—but you have to conserve them.
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Like magical organs?
06:49
Possible
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0111narwhalz 08/05/2019 6:49 AM
yeah pretty much
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(I suspect there'd be a bunch of teething problems in the re-growth process also)
06:50
(Since souls aren't really meant to re-grow >50% of thier mass)
06:50
(Even in perfect conditions and with life-support from the rest of the mass)
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0111narwhalz 08/05/2019 6:50 AM
If you split too far, you run out of aspects and the fragments go "hollow" and can't regenerate mana.
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Depends what you mean by mana
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0111narwhalz 08/05/2019 6:51 AM
Is the magic system limited by a consumable magical resource?
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Shrug
06:51
I'm not picking a specific setting
06:52
But also most non-video-game settings with a consumable magical resource have specific metaphysics and regeneration methods surrounding it
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0111narwhalz 08/05/2019 6:52 AM
It's probably not limited by physical resources, or it wouldn't be tied so tightly to the soul.
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Lots of them are!
06:52
MTG implies magic is mostly drawn from connection with lands?
06:52
At least mechanically - I haven't read the books
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0111narwhalz 08/05/2019 6:53 AM
It could be limited by the soul in a "featureset" kind of way.
06:53
Souls can exert magical influence in a certain number of distinct ways, and if you don't have that tool you can't use it.
06:53
But it doesn't consume anything.
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That's another possbility
06:54
But I'm not writing my own magic-system here
06:54
I'm building a toolkit for integrating existing ones
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0111narwhalz 08/05/2019 6:55 AM
If it expends a magical resource that normally regenerates over time, call it mana and proceed.
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I mean, yeah
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0111narwhalz 08/05/2019 6:55 AM
V:
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But also what about all the other resources?
06:55
How many magic systems actually do it that way?
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0111narwhalz 08/05/2019 6:56 AM
Physical resources are physical resources—no need to change anything.
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0111narwhalz 08/05/2019 6:56 AM
Connections to gods might still be squishy.
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Yeah, and specific-invocation systems are mostly dependent on the specific invocation (edited)
06:57
Hmm
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0111narwhalz 08/05/2019 6:57 AM
as one might have guessed by the term used
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I wonder how this would interact with the weirder Forging use-cases
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0111narwhalz 08/05/2019 6:57 AM
"Forging" non sequitor
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(The magic-system used in the Emperor's Soul)
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0111narwhalz 08/05/2019 6:57 AM
well now it's just a null reference
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(Allowing for the editing of the history of a object or person by use of a carefully milled stamp, assuming the person making/using it meets certain metaphysical requirements)
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0111narwhalz 08/05/2019 6:58 AM
sounds like an editorial time machine to me
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It's more limited
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0111narwhalz 08/05/2019 6:59 AM
oh good, it has brakes
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Specifically in the sense that it overwrites a target with a alternate version
06:59
Not history in general
06:59
So you get replaced with "You, but you learned martial arts instead of forging" (edited)
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0111narwhalz 08/05/2019 6:59 AM
blankets over atom bombs
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But the world stays the same
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0111narwhalz 08/05/2019 7:00 AM
That implies unsettling things about how history works.
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It's not a time-machine?
07:01
It's a editing-mechanism which involves re-writing backstory
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0111narwhalz 08/05/2019 7:01 AM
Though I guess one murder and/or suicide is better than literally all of them.
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It's also temporary?
07:01
And fairly identity-conservartive
07:01
And also editing humans is at the upper limit of compelexity the system can handle
07:02
It's mostly for, well, forging - making an object into a more useful fake
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0111narwhalz 08/05/2019 7:02 AM
It would definitely be regarded as ethically questionable, with the highest raised eyebrows available, by the eldrae.
07:02
They have those mental overlays?
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0111narwhalz 08/05/2019 7:02 AM
I mean, psychdesign.
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It's basically a way of doing that with a artistic rock
07:03
(Though actually)
07:03
(Modern milling techniques would be a massive boon)
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0111narwhalz 08/05/2019 7:03 AM
But also concerningly close to "we unmade this person and then remade them almost the same but not quite"
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(Since the main limiting feature is resolution on a structurally sound level)
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0111narwhalz 08/05/2019 7:03 AM
nanoscale machining V:
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I mean
07:04
I don't think they'd have an issue with you useing it on yourself
07:04
And using it on someone else is a nigh-impossible task
07:04
(The plot of the story is just 100% about someone trying to do that)
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0111narwhalz 08/05/2019 7:05 AM
Using psychedesign on someone else against their consent is a Bad, so maybe they're already well-equipped.
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Yeah, I don't think they'd encounter novel moral ground here
07:05
It's just a really weird psyche-design vector
07:05
That mostly works on vases
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0111narwhalz 08/05/2019 7:06 AM
man I'm glad something can improve the psychology of those vases
07:07
Does the one executing the magic have to be the one to make the stamp?
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Anyone can use the stamp once made
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0111narwhalz 08/05/2019 7:08 AM
Is it a matter of "putting oneself into one's art" or "you can pick any old one off the shelf and it'll work if you work?"
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Making them?
07:09
It's a matter of really heavy circumstantial work, mostly
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0111narwhalz 08/05/2019 7:09 AM
That is, does the magic actually happen during the making or the using, or both?
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You need to understand fairly comprehensively the change being made and make a stamp custom to that single change
07:09
shrugs
07:09
We don't get that much detail on the metaphysics
07:09
I could speculate?
07:10
But it'd be rampant speculation
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Speaking for myself and the 'verse, since the logos is already a weird quantum/subquantum phenomenon, and since I'm already using a NLHV quantum interpretation, it is easy enough to define the soul as another nonlocal quantum phenomenon, shared between all instances. Except not, because each one has all of it; it's the class and they're the instances, not copies.
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The maker is the one who needs to meet the metaphysical criteron
07:10
@Overmind the problem with stuff like that is resource management
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0111narwhalz 08/05/2019 7:11 AM
For what it's worth, I have a magic system which is almost purely pattern-theory.
07:11
(I haven't yet worked out what "willpower" actually is)
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I need good reasons for $munchkin to not copy-paste themselves a thousand times for magic buffs
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Afterlives are messy, but maybe that is what happens when your instance-count falls to zero and the Big Garbage Collector In The Sky runs.
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0111narwhalz 08/05/2019 7:12 AM
But basically, anyone can draw the fancy patterns—you need someone with the right mind for doing magic to compel its execution.
07:13
some people say the world will end in fire, some in ice I say it will end in segfaults
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The same good reasons why they shouldn't copy themselves a thousand times for punch buffs, whatever those are.
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"Keeping the narrative scope personal"
07:14
(Also, what are those reasons?)
07:14
(Why doesn't the empire fork it's best warrior 10 million times rather than putting up with anything less?)
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simple
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Morgrim Moon 08/05/2019 7:14 AM
again, funding it. And you can only punch with so many hands at once
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predictability
07:14
"oh hey, its this guy again. Just dodge left, he always aims from the right"
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(Because the problem with a giant fork army is that if you know how to defeat one of it, you know how to defeat all of it.)
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Okay, fork the best 0.1% 1000 times each
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same issue
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You know what I mean
07:15
Really no
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even two identicals in combat is potentially 1 less soldier
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0111narwhalz 08/05/2019 7:15 AM
If a non-mage wants to use magic, a mage has to "bind" the pattern to permanently activate it.
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This really isn't a big enough issue
07:16
How often does a soldier get taken out by a hack like that?
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on that small of a scale its probably not a huge issue, but with reasonable numbers of copies it probably still is
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Okay, on a economic front?
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I think what we are saying here is that there can easily be plenty of in-universe reasons why massive-self-duplication, much like turning into a giant snake, never helps.
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exactly
07:16
was just about to bring that up
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0111narwhalz 08/05/2019 7:16 AM
The "copies are predictable" thing seems contra to the nondeterminism thing.
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but it doesn't play well with a protagonist
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Yeah, and I'm trying to extract them from you
07:17
So that I can cite them during munchkin-times
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And in the 'verse: every time it's been tried . The fork-army thing is the sort of thing that shows up in cliched movies.
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(Esp since any one imperial has a much bigger incentive to fork massively)
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"copy yourself 1,000 times and they're all just as magical" can be defeated if they all have the same magical weakness that can be rapidly exploited
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0111narwhalz 08/05/2019 7:17 AM
>it makes you look like the worst kind of narcissist
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The key point there
07:17
Is that if there's just one of you
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the problem is, if the protagonist does that, that means the protagonist has a massive weakness. inherently.
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You still get defeated if that weakness gets exploited
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exactly yeah
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And you don't get the benefits of e.g. all the other wins you rack up
07:18
Or to shoot the guy a hundred times while he's exploiting the weakness on fork #302
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0111narwhalz 08/05/2019 7:18 AM
scads of identical mind-clones? foolish
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i mean, if the weakness is a virulent meme that spreads over communication channels, you don't need to exploit it more than once
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The problem I'm mostly having with considering the problems of massive forking is that I'm having real trouble trying to come up with any problems that I might best solve by massive forking.
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0111narwhalz 08/05/2019 7:19 AM
no forking? risky
07:19
a couple of low-divergence forks? responsible
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If you make a net profit on action in a unit of time and have time-limited needs then you fork to speed progress and resource acquisition? (edited)
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yeah, multiple forks with a small amount of divergence could be useful for approaching the same problem from slightly different angles, and for brainpower multiplication; you can work on the multiple aspects of the same problem simultaneously
07:20
i mean, there are people who do self groupminds right?
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Or more relevantly on a hundred different problems in a hundred different places (edited)
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that too
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Then cash them all in
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0111narwhalz 08/05/2019 7:21 AM
like an ensemble of hurricane foretracks, you can examine where you're going as an aggregate person, and reinforce the version you like best
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i could see doing that in combat if you're between a rock and a hard place; having a exploitable army with initiative might be better than 100 bio drones
07:21
but you wouldn't want to make a habit of it
07:22
or on a large scale. The larger, the riskier.
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Yeah. For three or nine or 27 forks, maybe. If it goes much beyond that, why am I not building an automated factory of some kind? Also, bear in mind, I get to cash in less than if I distributed my sophonce around, because there's more of me. I don't get to collect 1000 x the profit; all of me gets to collect the same profit each, and none of me is going to agree that I'm the me who should benefit more from the arrangement.
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It's narratively terrible so, but I want arguments which work on $munchkin, esp if he's got reality-hopping powers which mean he has a lot of low-hanging fruit that needs exploited (edited)
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oooh, what if having multiple forks lets you do exploit testing that is impossible or impractical with a single copy of the same magic soul
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Say there are 100 settings, each with a magic system
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if there's communication between them, you could have sorta like uhh, race condition-ish stuff
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You send three forks to work on getting access to each
07:23
Then merge and share knowledge
07:24
Leading to crossover benifits as the details of magic systems interact
07:24
see every planeswalker multicrossover ever (edited)
07:25
In general nigh-perfect co-operation gets you a lot of edge benifits
07:25
As does parallelization
07:25
There's stuff a hundred people working in concert can do which one never could
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i agree its useful in non-combat, i'm just trying to think a way around "protagonist forks self 1,000 times, every copy is just as strong, bing bang boom the evil guy is punched by 1,000 space fists of doom at once"
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0111narwhalz 08/05/2019 7:25 AM
maybe forking is just this setting's benefit?
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without also giving them weaknesses solo
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(Outcompete a rival for example)
07:25
I want vastening to be this setting's benefit (edited)
07:26
Full transhumanism is a big enough deal
07:26
That I want to nerf forking
07:26
Also forking is just bad for the story
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0111narwhalz 08/05/2019 7:26 AM
They're kind of similar.
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It means I need to keep track of X threads through every real-time
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0111narwhalz 08/05/2019 7:26 AM
Vastening is serial, forking is parallel.
07:27
Both is just stupid expensive.
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They are! But Vastening is less of an issue because I still only need to care about one protagonist POV
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the mental and forking capabilities are the biggest benefit, but i'd say there's some other major stuff as well; Diamondoid bones, artifical muscles, and catch-a-bullet fast reflexes, anyone?
07:27
It's a big deal! (edited)
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0111narwhalz 08/05/2019 7:27 AM
So you choose vastening, because it makes a better story, and backfill circumstances and in-story logic.
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Forking is more story-breaking than balance-breaking
07:28
yup!
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Morgrim Moon 08/05/2019 7:28 AM
there's always the meta option. "For reasons of GM sanity, forking is limited to 4 instances at any one time. And you still have to buy a body for each"
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i mean, if that was a option, i'd pretty much take that immediately in addition to anything else. Hardly any downside, really; even if you don't expect to need it, it's still nice to have.
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I don't project money to be an issue
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0111narwhalz 08/05/2019 7:28 AM
This character has, I presume, finite resources.
07:28
SILLY IDEA
07:28
what if
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How much do the eldrae pay for "I will teach you magic"?
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Morgrim Moon 08/05/2019 7:28 AM
I've found that if you've got powergaming players, they respond a lot better to a firm "no because I say so for a reasonable reason" than in-game reasons
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so what if, since magic souls are instances of the same thing
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Not really players here (edited)
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they're all the same nonlocal variables
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Just writing
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when you cast spell X
07:29
any fork
07:29
with the same variable
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0111narwhalz 08/05/2019 7:29 AM
oh no
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But I don't want to back-fill with bad answers
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it comes out of every instance
07:29
identically.
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So I"m looking for good answers
07:29
That's terrible
07:29
And also broken
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if fork A is in combat, and casts fireball
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specifically broken
07:29
Also janky
07:30
I dislike janky
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fork B, who was sitting down and reading, suddenly burns a bunch of books
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Also def doesn't impact all magic systems
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fair enough
07:30
but i feel like it'd still work for being broken, but also impractical in many-fork situations
07:31
go ahead, copy yourself 1,000 times and then trying to figure out firing lines with no friendly fire
07:31
good luck
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Use magic without casting lines?
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make it all relative?
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Use a small magical warning and then an artifact which puts all but the combat-forks in a hardened shell (edited)
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the spell that surround the bad guy in a poison field also poisons a thousand other spots with the same offset from other forks
07:32
a warning spell goes off for all of them if any one is triggered
07:32
etc
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How much do the eldrae pay for "I will teach you magic"? Amusingly enough, I have needed to answer this question for the Advancedverse. The answer is: all of it.
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No surprised!
07:33
(I had another plot-idea in my head)
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high-level applied ontotech is pretty damned useful
07:33
the hard part is proving that, yes, you really have super fancy ontotech
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(Which is a wormfic where the alt-power is "Taylor gets a direct line to the transcend in her head - gets a rapid-uplift manual and a thereapist assigned)
07:33
(That one's metaphysically much simpler)
07:34
Shrug?
07:34
Telepathy is pretty neat!
07:34
Conservation-violation can be proven fairly easily
07:34
(If you can get energy from elsewhere, that's nearly as interesting)
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that's a big deal
07:35
conservation-violation means "hey, we just fixed entropy!"
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Fuck yeah!
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that's like, their #1 goal
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It is!
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that's worth all the money right there
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Which is why it makes "How much money do you have" a non-issue in this reality
07:36
Because you have all of it
07:36
Or whatever percentage of it you can have and have the economy still be meaningfull
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that also means that, depending on the situation, you have practically unlimited manpower and resources
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you could buy out a entire mercenary company
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I'd be going with the Ignition rules and saying you can only summon between universes if you have a personal connection
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yeah, if all you have is a multiversal phone, that makes things much more difficult
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i.e. they're a named charecter with non-trivial screen-time
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Morgrim Moon 08/05/2019 7:38 AM
I spent too long trying to work out what the rocket science book Ignition! had to do with alternate universes
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My brains default inter-universe bullshit is MTG planeswalking
07:38
To be clear
07:38
No, the SV quest Ignition
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but at the same time, you can tell your contact to hire as many people as necessary to figure it out and then work out a way to make a bootstraping cornucopia from local materials
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So for the "has magic, will travel" idea, you can get between universes
07:39
As can a select group of your close companions
07:39
define "close companion"
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So much more, you hire the best eldrae first-in soph as your bodyguard
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can your friend plug in a moon brain before they leave?
07:39
and take it with them?
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"Named character with positive relationship and multiple pages screen-time"
07:40
I suspect costs increase in scope with such things
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fair point
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So yes, but it costs all the mana
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i don't suppose the transcend can bootstrap from a fragment?
07:40
if it gets forewarning, at least?
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I imagine it can, but also needs infrastructure (edited)
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i mean, if nothing else Eldrae have nanotech in their blood in most instances
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But yes, dump it on a modern-setting and it rules the internet v. quickly
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bootstrapping to a cornucopia should be possible
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Or keep one in your backpack as you shift?
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is that allowed?
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You keep clothes and gear, yes (edited)
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And yes, it can. Fractally self-similar, with little resurrection seeds planted everywhere.
07:43
that reminds me of something i kinda wanted to ask about
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It's a multistellar god-brain. It is not only OP, it is also totally hax.
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is the Transcend not expanding its centralized processing because of technical limitations, or because it's big enough that expanding wouldn't give any significant advantages
07:44
iirc it stopped at one dyson swarm, right?
07:44
in addition to the massively distributed fragments, which are still growing with the empire itself
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I assumed it was building distributed sub-stations
07:45
And upgrading the swarm constantly
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because depending on what magic does, it might just let the Transcend get a bit more strongly godlike
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Which magic systems do the Eldrae want access to most?
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Still working on that swarm at a steady pace, in addition to ongoing construction of synapse moons and unity spires to meet demand. But it just doesn't feel the need to grow any faster than it is, apparently.
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Can't scare the little people too much
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"All of them, of course. We can pick and choose from the hundreds of settings ourselves, thank you very much."
07:47
i mean, these are the guys with no choice fatigue
07:47
they can absolutely walk into a candy store, and pick the one candy that they want the most
07:48
Again, narrative limitations suggest one should stick to <10 settings
07:48
So interesting picks are important!
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i'd have to know the setting to try and pick for them
07:48
but uhh
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Yeah, so picking settings is the point
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look for stuff that's, for one, automatable/industrializable
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The ones that don't mind having the shit scienced out of them.
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I'd be using the PGTE setting
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it's no good if you have to have sophs do absolutely everything and it doesn't scale well
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Because I'm a PGTE nerd (edited)
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'Cause, yeah, that's gonna happen.
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also, yeah
07:49
before even that, it all has to be scienceable at all
07:50
so avoid ones that react violently to that sorta stuff
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It's ... well, travel is hard? I'm assuming the protagonist is probably nigh-unique
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like... Worm sort does that, right?
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Since this is power-fantasy par excellence
07:50
shrug
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people with powers are selected for fighting and stuff, and if they try to use it for practical societal benefits the power-giver gets angry
07:50
haven't read Worm tbh
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Yeah, but that's a specific mental effect
07:51
In general the worm powers are v. scienceable
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ah, ok
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As the notional products of science
07:51
The power-givers are just fucking with the heads of the recipients
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another one to avoid would be uhh
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As part of a massive science-project
07:51
Worm is also a interesting choice because it's well-explored
07:52
Also
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settings with powerful gods that react badly to someone too clever/strong in fear of usurping them or w/e
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I don't actually care if the Eldrae fuck up
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having to also fight the gods would be really impractical
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I'm looking for interesting, not "make the eldrae happy"
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So having them deal with anti-intuitve magic
07:52
In the manner of Worth The Candle
07:52
Would be funny
07:53
though you also gotta be careful
07:53
cause sometimes, magic systems have big exploits the author didn't think of
07:53
the Eldrae will think of it.
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That is, in fact the point of this kind of fanfic?
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i mean
07:53
i guess i'm saying
07:53
"make sure that it's interesting"
07:53
and
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It's about exploitation and crossover abuse to undercut plot and give people a happy ending
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"make sure they can't bootstrap themselves into god in less than a hour"
07:54
"because that wouldn't be very interesting"
07:54
"to us, anyway."
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I am aware of the trivial failure-modes of this fiction
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Morgrim Moon 08/05/2019 7:54 AM
I've had fun using the Morrowind magic system with other settings. Because Alteration and Mysticism in particular are fun to explore the mental side of. (Alteration you have to hold contradictory ideas in your mind and simultaneously believe in both. Mental illnesses are almost a given in the true masters of it.)
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(I also belive that if vast power is mechanically interesting then character interactions and fuck-the-plot moments can carry a story a good long way)
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also, i guess keep in mind that if the Eldrae can, they absolutely will prepare for a trip into the vast unknown
07:55
meaning at bare minimum, a backpack cornucopia and as much technical database as they can carry
07:55
But this is trivial abuse compared to, like "You brought a Solar Exalted to the party"
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fair enough
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Nah, you just brought an Alchemical.
07:57
...or possibly what would happen if Autochthon saw the Infernals and was all, "hold my beer! I can improve on this!"
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I'm assuming for now that the Eldrae are suffciently inhuman so as to be invalid exaltation targets (edited)
07:58
And getting Autochthon to whip up something custom is a long-term project
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i wonder how quickly a backpack can bootstrap to a factory-scale cornucopia on a typical earthlike (Eliéra-like) planetary surface
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Depends how good the feedstock is?
08:00
Hours to weeks
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well, it's a Eliéra-like planet, so however good that sort of surface is with feedstock
08:00
you'd probably need to search a fair bit for the rarer stuff, certainly
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Almost certainly, but given just how much I drew on Alchemicals and Infernals when building the modern, transcendent soul-structure, the effect may be much the same.
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Why would you use the rocks as feedstock?
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since a lot of it tends to sink inconveniently deep
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When you can go shopping?
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speed, probably
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We have very different definitions of speed
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if its fast enough, it might actually be faster to just pick up ores and shove them in until it can do the shoving itself
08:01
maybe shop for the rarer elements
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Depends on a lot of stuff and exactly what the local rock is
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but carbon, aluminum, etc, all pretty common
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Since geology is not uniform
08:01
power supply man
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this is true
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Do you know how much energy it takes to extract ambitent power?
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"I brought my thorium reactor backpack."
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I mean, yes
08:03
\s/power/aluminium
08:03
IDK why my brain did that
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yeah aluminum is kinda a pain
08:03
it really doesn't want to let go of that oxygen
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That said
08:04
I need to go to be if I don't want to be sleep deprived during important classes tomorrow!
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alright, cya then
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Thank you for all the useful information!
08:05
And listening to me talk about my terrible power-fantasy ideas
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yeah, working this stuff out is nice
08:05
also tbh i really want to read some... longer fiction about the Eldrae
08:06
everything i've seen has been a couple of paragraphs at most, even the Epistolary Experiment was sort of a bunch of different viewpoints at once
08:07
microfiction is great for getting a lot of details to put together a setting, but having a single character that does things over a extended period of writing does wonders for characterization as well
08:07
there was that uhhh... the one where a ship crashed and left a soph in a The Martian (in SPACE! SPACE-space!) situation, which was really nice (edited)
08:09
so i'd definitely be interested in reading that fanfic when you write it
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You mean Darkness Within?
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sdschildberg 08/05/2019 8:43 AM
Something where there it isnt just someones inner monoluge ft. A fresh fork
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yep, Darkness Within
10:39
that was nice, but yeah you're right, interaction between characters would be even better
11:53
i just kinda realized something
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sdschildberg 08/05/2019 11:54 AM
Xenofiction writing is best tested by writing charecter interactions
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enhanced physical abilities such as reflexes and strength. honed mental clarity, concentration, and willpower. fighting the good fight against hilariously evil people, always being sure to never give in themselves and to remain righteous. follow a pseudo-religion which incorporates some metaphysical aspects with demonstrably real things. can speak to the dead/ascended, either cause they stop being dead, or because they're in the transcend's acenstor-afterlife thingy Oh, and they can also move stuff with their brain
12:03
the Eldrae are basically Jedi
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Nah, weren’t the Jedi pretty much pacifists?
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The Jedi are an absurd semi-military monastic order
18:49
Trying to model them as a actual insitution gets really problematic
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pretty much
20:54
i wouldn't say the Eldrae are actually all that much like them or organized like them or actually do things like them
20:55
but when you compare them on a point-by-point basis there's a lot of similarities
20:55
which is kinda funny
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sdschildberg 08/05/2019 8:59 PM
Eldrae with monofilimant/orichalcium/BuInno lighsaber proof sword vs jedi/sith
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The Jedi seem to be some sort of mish-mash of samurai and Taoist mystics.
21:00
With continually evolving powers
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sdschildberg 08/05/2019 9:00 PM
Evolution that can be out-evolved by eldrae
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The telekinesis didn’t appear until “Empire Strikes Back” did it?
21:01
And pretty sure we hadn’t seen astral projection before
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the force is also all over the place as far as "strength" goes
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sdschildberg 08/05/2019 9:03 PM
Even magic must evolve with its users
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iirc at some points in the movies, Luke can barely pull a lightsaber to him
21:03
and at the other end of the scale, in one of the books Vader pulls a star destroyer out of the sky
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0111narwhalz 08/05/2019 9:03 PM
maybe he's just bad at that
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fair point
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Luke is a untrained hick who's only in charge because everyone else is dead, no?
23:15
So it's unsurprising that he's not very good at the thing which vader is a. the messiah of, and b. has been training nigh-exclusivly for decades
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sdschildberg 08/05/2019 11:17 PM
Luke was also upside down in an ice cave of a predator. Not ideal conditions to use powers you only trainded for like 15 mins
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By a guy who is known to be a terrible teacher, objectively speaking
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(Looking at the Worm TV tropes page - damn, but that univere is fucked up. The kind of fucked up where the question I imagine they might be wanting an answer to is "So... explain to me again why we want to get any of this on us?" Maybe even, "So... explain to me again why this place isn't the poster-planet for CASE GODHAMMER test strikes?")
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Morgrim Moon 08/06/2019 12:52 AM
Spoilers, but it's because it's the territory of a malicious AI. The Empire would be very keen on killing an AI whose hobby is "what new and interesting ways can I make my captive sophants feel hope only to crush it at the last minute?"
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True. Although it still seems very likely to draw the response of "Things to do Tuesday: figure out how to fire CASE GODHAMMER off at right angles to reality."
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(Also, one shivers to imagine the deployment of the traditional Imperial-culture response to bullying on a world that's not used to it.)
01:06
Suppose I'd best read this now. Any copies out there in a reasonable e-book format?
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 1:07 AM
(I get reminded of that Trevor Moore MV about bullying. Man, but that's peer-norming to the max.)
01:07
@Overmind It's chapter-by-chapter on Wildbow's blog
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Yeah, but I was hoping for a more convenient-to-read format.
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 1:09 AM
Also, what would that response be? (I fear this one's too obvious.) (edited)
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In the absence of a proper legal system, it starts with highly painful and intructive examples, then escalates from there.
01:13
Mélith is all about paying your debts. So, y'know, imagine that our hypothetical antagonists here have made the mistake of picking on, say, Tywin Lannister.
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 1:13 AM
I mean, I would probably refrain from giving harassers any lasting injury or agonizing pain but, well. There's a wide area beneath those lines. (edited)
01:15
And swirlies, in case y'all didn't know, can drown the ones undergoing them, and it's something people can be prosecuted for. There's that.
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Where that sort of thing is concerned, the Imperial legal system would merely point out that there is one law that applies to everybody, and thus if you happened to respond by squishing their head so hard their brain squirted out their ears, well, them's the risks they take in attempting a battery, now isn't it? (edited)
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 1:18 AM
(Oh, and isn't it just too bad that the retaliatory kick busted up Jerk Jock's kneecap so badly he'll never play sportsball again? What a cryin' shame.) (edited)
01:18
(Career-ending is not exactly the same region as crippling..)
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Honestly, I wonder how many incidents in the Worlds involve some kid in the Empire sending their outworld pen-pal a recipe for a readily concealable algetic whip.
01:20
("Pain is very educational!")
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 1:20 AM
Indeed.
01:22
I'm pretty sure there are some injuries that don't actually limit your function but make it too dangerous to continue playing, say, football.
01:23
(Somewhere in the distance, a pained voice yells, "you did that on purpose! you bastaaaa...")
01:26
Like -- I don't know, a low-thickness rotator cuff injury.
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That works for people who favor a proportionate response doctrine.
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 1:28 AM
(Oh, he'll play again -- eventually -- but his hopes of going pro are up in smoke now.)
01:28
(Lost practice time and all that.)
01:29
And in the Worlds, the scope of injuries that are crippling is probably miniscule, it occurs to me.
01:30
But this aside is already too long. No, I don't think there's any place where you can read Worm in one uninterrupted sitting, sadly. (edited)
01:31
I mean, it's almost three times as long as War And Peace, but y'all get what I mean.
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Yeah, but the thing is in context, the trouble is that if you're getting advice from the Imperially/eldraeic-acculturated in your head, you're getting it from people who really don't subscribe to the notion of proportionate response - rather, they prefer the sort of response that makes it painfully clear that they're willing to escalate to levels you aren't, and that should they have to do this again , it's going to end even less well.
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 1:32 AM
So...
01:33
Someone came up with the idea of using Taylor's power to control... lice. as a means of getting back.
01:34
Because didn't y'all know Pthirus p. is an insect? You do know
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So their way of looking at things is that if someone beats you up, you send 'em to the hospital as a example to the rest.
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 1:36 AM
Of course, if Taylor actually tried to defend herself on school grounds it'd probably be punished because the school are beyond cartoonishly incompetent and into Idiot Ball territory, but...
01:37
It's trillions of eldrae, they can figure out a way to send Madison and co. to the ER without anyone on Earth noticing Taylor did it.
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Morgrim Moon 08/06/2019 1:38 AM
I think there might be, I'll ask Wildbow next time I see them. Not that they're around much right now
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Well, yeah. It doesn't work well with human cultures and expectations, and rapidly escalates into a single-handed war on everyone in the world for failing ethics 101. And for the latter - well, this is where you really want to modify things for local culture to avoid trouble.
01:40
You know under old-style Icelandic law what made killing someone murder is not the actual killing, but rather covering it up? You were supposed to call at the next several homes you came across and announce that you'd done it, and why.
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 1:41 AM
Some kind of tailored basilisk hack, maybe? Giving a high-schooler a heart palpitation through Fist of the North Star-esque screwery might make people realize Taylor's triggered and, though inaccurate, that she's using her power for 'revenge'.
01:41
As in, make their muscles spasm randomly etc.
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Local attitudes have a similar dose of "Now behold this! This is the price of fucking with me , and I always pay my debts ."
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 1:42 AM
"oh no, you have lent me some pain, here it is with interest"
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 1:42 AM
(Huh. I would've framed it as s collecting on a debt owed to you.)
01:43
I remember that from the TV show Vikings
01:43
They explained also that there was an exception if you thought the house's inhabitants were buddy with the person you killed and it only counted for the first x houses
01:45
Oh, and the eldrae are going to hate Emma
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(There are a variety of ways to handle this, certainly, and I'll be interested to see how @Archon does so, but in terms of their culture, it's strongly adapted to the notion of "I do not care to lie, or to hide my actions. If my words were not true, I would not speak them, and if my actions were not right, I would not do them." In the antique Earth vernacular, throw down a gauntlet. In the modern, "come at me, bro".)
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 1:48 AM
How it's handled might be a mix, because this is trillions of sophonts whispering in Taylor's ear
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 1:48 AM
I feel like the first step would be to reduce that to maybe a hundred at the most
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 1:48 AM
Most people will barely meet 10,000 sophonts over the course of their lives.
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(As you can imagine, this makes in-'verse superhero comics somewhat different. Secret identities aren't much of a trope - although unlike movie!Stark, they take the precaution of installing point-defense systems before publishing their address.)
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 1:50 AM
From the... relatively lowliest folks? Botbosses? to Directorate staff and possibly beyond (edited)
01:51
People will have the good sense not to whisper classified stuff into her mind, but the algetic whip is looking pretty likely. (edited)
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If the Transcend is talking to you at an individual level, you're almost certainly talking to a single expediter or coadjutor created specifically for the conversation in question. It avoids the whole "terminal case of godshatter" problem. (edited)
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 1:52 AM
It's still the consensus of trillions, so there might be very exotic combat techniques in there
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Given that the Transcend almost certainly counts as a certainty-level persuasive communicator, it can probably break them just by talking .
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 1:54 AM
Like, "hit pressure point A with your thumb and she'll be in serious but not crippling pain."
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And not in any sort of exotic basilisk-hack way, either. Just good, old-fashioned inserting psychological crowbars into psychological cracks.
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 1:54 AM
It's a fun idea
01:55
Especially since a ring of girls shouting insults surrounds her at one point
01:55
Delivering a vicious armor-piercing comeback would be amazing
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 1:55 AM
delivering such a comeback to every jab
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 1:56 AM
They might realize she triggered, but think it's as a mind-reader of some kind (edited)
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Anyway. I sleep now, and will argue about Jedi in the morning. Goodnight, folks.
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 1:57 AM
oh man
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 1:57 AM
Night.
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 1:57 AM
what would it be like to mind-read her
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 1:57 AM
I do not envy the telepath who does that in this fic.
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 1:58 AM
Would you read the others, or just the one side of the phone?
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 1:59 AM
There's just a normal teenage girl's mind... but there's this giant THING in it, giving her instructions.
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 2:00 AM
There's this opening, and she talks to it, and you can kind of hear muffled thoughts coming from it?
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 2:01 AM
Or just a quiet, bizarre voice from nowhere whispering eldritch secrets
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There are no "true" telepaths in worm's setting
02:05
As a concession to the entities letting people belive they are not deterministic, I belive
02:06
In general Worm powers are notionally the product of hypertech, limiting certain kinds of power
02:07
@Overmind secret identities are a big deal in worm and worm fanon! (edited)
02:07
They're a de-escalation technique
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 2:07 AM
@0111narwhalz Oh, and the inevitable response from Jock's parents? "He had such a bright future whaaahhaaahhaaa"
02:07
"Well, maybe he should have thought of that before assaulting someone."
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i.e. "As long as you don't go after us in our house, we won't murder your parents"
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 2:08 AM
"[anecdotal][disputed][individual research?]"
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In general , I think the Eldrae have to tone down thier ideals in the name of not getting thier only window dead fast
02:09
Also
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 2:09 AM
(from the marginally less godlike version, in which Our Hero merely has a link to the entirety of the eldraeic Wikipedia)
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@all of you
02:09
Worm is pretty clear that Taylor could exact all the pointless suffering on her bullies she wanted, the problem is that she can't get them to stop bullying her
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 2:10 AM
You know she could give them crabs right
02:10
As in
02:10
literal crabs
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 2:10 AM
but crabs are crustaceans
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Attacking high-schoolers makes you a villain
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 2:10 AM
didn't you say something about insects?
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She can control anthropods
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 2:10 AM
I'm trying to say pubic lice, man
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The limit is nervous system complexity (edited)
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 2:11 AM
She doesn't need to exact some gory revenge, she just needs to make it too inconvenient to keep harassing her and that can be done many ways
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Not really
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 2:11 AM
then don't say "literal crabs"
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(OOC, Sophie is a Ward, which makes any weird nigh-supernatural bad luck on her subject to investigation)
02:12
(For the same reason all the other authority-related stuff comes down on her side)
02:12
Shrug
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 2:12 AM
Pubic lice aren't supernatural
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We discussed worm end-game spoilers (edited)
02:13
Ones bad enough to make Emma give up her trauma?
02:13
This isn't a hobby, it's pathological
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Yeah, by human standards, but in this AU, she's got a voice in her head that - while it now knows about them - thinks they're ridiculous and counterproductive.
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Howso?
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 2:13 AM
@Archon If violence won't work then the transcend can probably find someway to brainfuck Sophia, Madison and Emma into not harassing Taylor anymore
02:14
Several reasons
02:14
Firstly being limited bandwidth
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 2:14 AM
It's literally trillions of people some of whom know eldritch secrets dangit
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Solve your problems the hard way (edited)
02:14
More relevently
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And which has enough computing power to suck up her relevant memories, crunch through the analysis, and spit out individuallt-tailored breaking statements.
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 2:15 AM
@Overmind Exactly. Armor-piercing, devastating counterhits to all jabs
02:15
And not just verbally, physically, too. Until endbringers.
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The problem is not the transcend
02:15
The problem is the bandwidth is "Emotionally traumatized teen" (edited)
02:16
That's not a great medium for data harvesting or action-generation
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(Howso counterproductive?)
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(Well, both)
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 2:16 AM
If she won't do it herself the collective summation of all therapists in the Empire can give her a pep talk
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I think as a secondary concern
02:17
Also, I don't feel like giving taylor infinite resources really works
02:17
The Empire has other shit going on (edited)
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 2:17 AM
(I wonder how long it is until "howso" becomes an actual single word)
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 2:17 AM
Then you shouldn't have given her a brain-link to the Transcend
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 2:17 AM
There's a difference between "infinite" and "arbitrarily large"
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I think
02:17
My point is
02:17
That certain things should not be triviality
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 2:18 AM
There are probably at least millions of people who can spare the time to motivate her, even just 15 mins
02:18
And the kaeth probably have combat tips if it comes to physical confrontation
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That saying "Oh X is trivial, ignore that"
02:18
Misses the point of why this is interesting
02:18
(Also really, why deal with the bullies at all when you can test out and get a real job?)
02:18
(Much simpler)
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 2:19 AM
Yeah, but I don't think that's an option for American teens in 2011
02:19
I was homeschooled, but the legality of such arrangements is questionable at best
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 2:19 AM
"what have you always wanted to do? yeah we can make that happen"
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The worm fanon is quite stable on assuming it is
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 2:19 AM
So the bullies have to be dealt with
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(Any cultural standards that prevent you from defending yourself against attackers are badwrong cultural standards, and the big T will be delighted to help with bypassing, subvrting, confronting and ignoring them.)
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So shrug
02:19
Okay
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i mean, I feel like "someone in another universe just got a transcend fragment" is the sort of thing that will have people investing boatloads of time, money, and effort, with the expected return being potential access to a entirely new universe
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 2:20 AM
@Archon I mean, there are countless forensic specialists, criminal justice lawyers, and other LEO specialists in the Transcend surely
02:20
I feel like this is getting unnecessarily adversarial (edited)
02:20
Specifically
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 2:20 AM
"hey you ever wanted to learn about the nature of spacetime itself? yeah we want to too"
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 2:20 AM
I just feel like you don't understand how huge eldraeverse really is
02:21
and how many people live in the Empire of the Star alone.
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I think you miss my point
02:21
WHich is that the size of the skill-pool is irrelevent
02:21
Because dealing with the local is interesting
02:21
Uh
02:21
More topically
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i mean, the transcend fragment is basically a ansible back to the Eldraeverse, right? (edited)
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 2:21 AM
They've been at the enhancement game for millenia, their skills are probably far beyond what we would call top-class
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I FUCKING GET THAT
02:22
I'm sorry
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 2:22 AM
Maybe just make it a mindlink to a certain individual eldrae (edited)
02:22
fuck, capitalization
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But the size and quality of the skillpool is obvious and uninteresting
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 2:22 AM
That way the overpoweredness is constrained
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I don't even know what kind of point I or you are trying to make
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the problem is, you're giving her a direct link to a weakly godlike benevolet superintelligence right here
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 2:23 AM
^
02:23
that.
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you'd be surprised just how easily local "problems" can be solved by such a being
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 2:23 AM
^^
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I ... have limits on what I consider the sane limits of cognition, mostly re: deriving the full nature of the local space from the sense-data of a random teenager
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To clarify: I'm not advocating for infinite resources, or even for the Transcend to see this as more than a hobby project, resource-allocation-wise. And I don't want to be adversarial - I'm just wanting to clarify the cultural affect of the solutions it might have to offer.
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 2:24 AM
It might be interesting to consider, instead of a link, a then-isolated fork setting up shop.
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it has a ansible in her head
02:24
it's not necessarily relying on her perceptions
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 2:24 AM
You're literally linking her into the heart and soul of trillions. One broken person is like a drop in the Great Lakes
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Okay, no
02:24
On like six levels
02:24
Firstly
02:25
Any power-set that deletes the protagonist is a bad power-set unless that's your main tension
02:25
A communications line is not perfect
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you say that, but weakly godlike...
02:25
do not underestimate the big brains
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 2:25 AM
Then you shouldn't have linked her into the Transcend, fer cryin' out loud
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they can figure out how a human teenager works.
02:26
it's not a unsolvable mystery
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weakly godlike is not omniscient
02:26
I'm not even arguing she won't recover
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The weakly in weakly godlike is there for a reason, folks.
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its pretty close, and what exactly do we need omniscience for, here?
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But you fuckers seem to think that she'll get better with a snap of your fingers
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better from what
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And it's really annoying
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i haven't read Worm
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 2:26 AM
There's a difference between "weakly godlike intelligence can do everything" and "weakly godlike intelligence can break whatever physical laws you please, including information theory"
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ALL THE FUCKING TRAUMATIC BULLSHIT WE"RE ARGUING ABOUT
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 2:27 AM
I still stand by my statement that it'd be better to restrict the ansible into maybe one eldrae
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...I don't.
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oh, she just needs some rehab?
02:27
@Overmind can the transcend-links function as a mindstate upload/download? Even if you can't quite do the whole thing at once?
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 2:27 AM
That way the line is more intermittent and determined by what that other soph is doing at the time and restricted to what resources that soph can bring to bear
02:28
which is more comprehensible and easier to write
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The whole point here is that when taylor gets her powers, she's spent several years being majorlied bullied to the point of actual torture by her best friend
02:28
And the authorities do nothing because of political bullshit
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 2:28 AM
remote psychdesign on a slightly unfamiliar unformatted meatbrain through a single channel is probably not a common thing
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That's what we're dealing with when we say "Bullies"
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i mean yes, but on the other hand, weakly godlike intelligence with the expertise of millions of professionals. There's no doubt at all they could fix that sort of trauma. None. They can put brains back together after they've been hacked apart and used as missile guidance, some selective voluntary memory editing and mental restructuring is nothing
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And link bandwidth doesn't matter because meat-brains were not intended for write-access
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so the question becomes "can they do a incremental update over the ansible connection to her brain"
02:29
and i'd figure that they can
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So they have to make her better the slow way
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It all depends on the exact parameters of the link, which we don't know. Communication-only, full-bandwidth, something in between... it doesn't matter what a standard gnostic interlink can do, because this isn't one.
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 2:30 AM
They can do that to mindstate vectors, not raw evolved meatbrains.
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hmm, fair point
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They have to make her better the hard way
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 2:30 AM
Yeah, you haven't defined your terms here. What kind of linkage is this exactly?
02:30
If it's morse code at a few hertz, yeah
02:30
Or just text.
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By fixing her life and giving her therapy
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write access into a meatbrain is rather less trivial
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I'm saying the data-limit is her ability to conciously process it
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 2:30 AM
I got the idea that it was roughly equivalent to an audio channel.
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Format unspecificied
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 2:31 AM
Just a feeling/thought in her head?
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well, no, its not quite still that limited
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 2:31 AM
Couple kilobit.
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The bandwidth goes up if/when she's vastened
02:31
But she needs to bootstrap a upload-and-vectorisation system on this end first
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 2:31 AM
Not familiar with that word.
02:31
Vastened.
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they can still remotely manipulate things, adjusting the surrounding chaotic system to push natural neurological change in the right direction, if nothing else
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 2:32 AM
They can't do that if they don't have sufficient information.
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it'd require a lot of processing power and probably a lot of simulated Taylors, but they can ask permission
02:32
and i think that they'd think this is a fairly big deal; the first, and thus far only, contact with another universe is pretty big
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"vastened" = low-hanging-fruit-intelligence-increase-augmentation
02:33
Like, yeah, she'll get better fast
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 2:33 AM
Okay, so the overload might harm her.
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In months or years rather than decades
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 2:33 AM
That means it's a large amount of information that can be sent.
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 2:33 AM
We know people aren't deterministic, so you can't even just make a bunch of copies until you get one that's exactly right.
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Worm people are deterministic
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 2:33 AM
Can she send back information consciously or is it always-on?
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i'm still not convinced that they can't do this sort of manipulation with just a comm line; it's just closer to chaotic system manipulation than anything else
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 2:34 AM
How do you manipulate a chaotic system if you don't have information about the system?
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One of the Worm people has the powerset of being given the path needed to achive any stated goal, unless it involves one of the manually-blocked entities she's not supposed to fuck with.
02:34
Yeah
02:34
You don't
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I don't disagree with any of your points there, @Archon, but its notion of what a fixed life looks like is, I'm pretty certain, at considerable variance to anything a human might come up with.
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you don't need perfect systems to do probabilistic manipulation
02:34
it'd just be slower
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 2:34 AM
By the very definition of a chaotic system, approximate beginning conditions don't determine approximate ending conditions.
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 2:35 AM
So you need pretty damn good information.
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okay, let me describe what i'm thinking here
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You might be mis-using chaotic here
02:35
Or mis-thinking it
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but with a example that is, in itself, extreme and not practically possible
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Like, yeah, she'll get better fast - In months or years rather than decades
02:36
This again
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 2:36 AM
That's fine. But,
02:36
I still stand by the idea you need to define what this link is exactly
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(As a secondary concern)
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 2:36 AM
If we don't know the bandwidth, we obviously don't know the limit
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(I don't feel like the transcend has carte-blanche to re-write brains, even if it could)
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 2:37 AM
If she doesn't get instant godshatter from reading trillions of minds, we can assume the limit is fairly low by our standards.
02:37
Even by our standards, that is
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(That's the kind of thing that renegade got murdered from)
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(Also, really, its perspective would change a lot if it noted that thisnwas a deterministic universe. Dealing with people vs. dealing with meat-machines is a whole different set of protocols.)
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The bandwitdth is controlled
02:37
She's not plugged into the core
02:37
She just has a comm channel
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 2:38 AM
To what degree? If it can overload her with excess information, I'd say there's a lot of bandwidth to work from. And is this link mutual?
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Link is bi-directional
02:38
But also it doesn't have to use the full bandwidth, you know?
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 2:38 AM
So they have access to at least some of the information from her mind directly
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say you have a planet; and you want it to rain on a particular continent. The only input you have is the on/off switch for a desk fan on that continent, and the only output you have is a grainy webcam. The absolute upper computational bound for figuring out how to make it rain is "simulate every possible combination of atoms that would produce that webcam output, and run those simulations forward for every possible combination of input on the lightbulb. Pick the input combination that makes it rain, and plug that in. Estimated computing power required: basically ∞
02:39
that's the upper bound
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For one thing, the Transcend won't nonconsensually overwrite people's brains. But meat-automata aren't people.
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 2:39 AM
Is there raw sense data to work with?
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I object to that on many levels
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 2:39 AM
>Transcend installs a logos
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if you have smaller chaotic systems, some intelligent good-enough solutions, and broader acceptable outcomes, you can probably trim that from "ridiculous" to "okay, but renting those servers is gonna get costly"
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And also "Setting X is morally irrelevant" is weird and stupid
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that's what i'm suggesting
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 2:40 AM
Can we focus on one thing at a time, please?
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 2:40 AM
>every part of the AI overlords goes haywire because she is now nondeterministic
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I suspect it's still simpler on many levels to the the therapy the regular way buggy
02:40
I mean
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simpler, possibly
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Yeah, I'm assuming the Eldrae are outside thier simulation parameters
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 2:41 AM
@0111narwhalz Oh, you're talking about the Shard
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(I could not do that, BTW)
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but its not guaranteed to work, and its not necessarily faster. It all depends on how important this is considered to be by everyone on the other side, and how much they're willing to invest
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 2:41 AM
Yeah, they'll be fucked up when they realize she's no longer a predictable function
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(Just assume the eldrae are lower-layer than the entities)
02:41
(And that they're wrong about how Logos work on a higher level)
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 2:42 AM
overlords go "wait what the fuck why is this grain of sand here instead of there we need to rm -f this perturbating influence"
02:42
They are ...
02:42
Not engaging in executive function
02:42
Let's say
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 2:42 AM
Beep, setting assumption broken.
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 2:43 AM
The gist I got is that they're based on an arbitrarily powerful brute-force search of possibilities.
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i really ought to read Worm; i'm kinda skeptical about this determinism
02:43
not that it can't be true
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 2:43 AM
@Buggy I stopped just after Taylor joined the Undersiders
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This is true!
02:43
I haven't read worm
02:43
It's not good
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 2:44 AM
To map inputs to outputs in such a system, you need a certain amount of determinism.
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It has lots of good fanfic
02:44
ALso
02:44
Actually
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but rather that you got somethingy really funky going on, if the people who are running the simulation forward are trying to manipulate it; if they're even within the lightcone of what they're trying to manipulate, shit gets horribly recursive
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 2:44 AM
^
02:44
At any rate I want to say.
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They're not!
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oh, okay
02:44
all good then
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The Shards are in the next universe over
02:45
Or rather, several thousand next universes over
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 2:45 AM
If the system is 100% deterministic, you can know your perturbations.
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 2:45 AM
You put them there, after all.
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Assumption question: If people aren't deterministic, how do you simulate them?
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Just sayin’, this is one of those places best avoided for the sake of smooth fusion. It’s not like the Transcend is going to go around mashing up deterministic universes for spork-raws, but it does see it as more like taking a hammer to a clock rather than anything else. You can’t violate the sophont rights of a non-sophont.
02:46
Probabilistically and statistically, depending on numbers.
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People seemed real big into the idea that the transcend could perfectly or nigh-perfectly manipulate people
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 2:46 AM
"hey you look an awful lot like a sophont, we could just make that happen"
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"technically non deterministic" is not at all the same thing as "not probabilistically predictable within reasonable error"
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"Hey, you act like a sophont in every way except for some low-level maths, isn't that weird"
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not everyone exercises their logos all that much
02:47
especially those who aren't aware it exists
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 2:47 AM
@Archon So she has some fairly high by human consciousness standards information coming from the Transcend. This is her half of a mutual linkage to the Transcend as well, so it has access to some of the information in her mind. Do I have this right?
02:47
Probably only information she deliberately "sends" at it
02:47
Which can include e.g. sense-data
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The Transcend can hit multiple-nines accuracy with its simulations. Impossipoints are rare , because people act mostly like themselves.
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sure you can't perfectly predict them, but we threw out the concept of perfect prediction as soon as we started trying to reasonably manipulate chaotic systems; everything here is probabilistic and naught with reasonable approximations and best guesses
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 2:48 AM
^
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 2:48 AM
And Buggy: In your desk fan and webcam scenario, consider that there are multiple identical outputs for wildly dissimilar internal states.
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 2:49 AM
There's probably going to be an uneasy back-and-forth as the Transcend notices this small irregularity and oh my god it's an (almost-) sophont
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that's why you have to go probabilistic, even with deterministic simulations, because your feedback is imperfect and incomplete
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So what I'm getting from this is that since you can, to the level of human+planetary resolution perfectly manipulate things
02:49
With sufficient computation power
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 2:49 AM
When you have only [bandwidth] * [observation time] possible outputs, you can't tell the difference between two internal states which are dissimilar.
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 2:49 AM
And a lot of uneasiness on Taylor's part
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also ideally you'd trim the phase space down to "actually has anything remotely resembling a planet on the other side, unless it's really unlikely for some reason"
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So we can just assume the Path To Victory is doing that?
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well, wait
02:50
i guess in this scenario
02:50
you're also assuming you have various other sources of knowledge
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And let Worm be non-deterministic in the special way it needs for the transcend to consider it morally relevant
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like "I know what a planet looks like" (edited)
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 2:51 AM
The crucial point is that, by the very nature of chaotic systems, two states that look the same are not necessarily likely to evolve to other states in a similar way.
02:51
Chaotic systems are defined by the way they don't map smoothly and continuously.
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well, you aren't trying to get it to "rain" specifically; you can't tell if it rains
02:51
you're trying to get the webcam to show you a picture of it raining
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 2:51 AM
If the Transcend only reads the information Taylor (pseudo-) chooses it to have, this restricts the Hax potential
02:52
Weakly godlike, remember. It does not have Write access. (edited)
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 2:52 AM
Yes, but let us take an example in the opposite direction, of hilarious oversimplification.
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I’d have no issue with that.
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 2:53 AM
@Overmind With what, specifically? There were a lot of statements made in the past three minutes X_X
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@Archon ‘s last.
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 2:53 AM
Okay then
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 2:53 AM
If you have a black box which transforms one eight bit number to another eight bit number, based on its internal state, how do you get it to output the number you want?
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 2:54 AM
I mostly want to understand this link.
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hmmm, fair point
02:54
you can't
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 2:54 AM
I haven't gotten to the part where we see how Taylor triggered. Was it lockers?
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 2:54 AM
If the black box contains a stateless function, it's easy.
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the problem is you have no information about the internal state at all
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Taylor triggered by being locked in a locker which had been filled for over two week prior with "rotting used feminine hygiene products" for at least 12 and possibly more hours
02:55
Uh
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so yes, with infinite computation you can say "try every state, pick the input that outputs the right number for the most possible states"
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Should I put a content warning spoiler on that
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 2:55 AM
If the black box contains a function like "sum with the other eight-bit number in my accumulator," and you know that's the function, it's possible to examine the black box and determine the current internal state.
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 2:56 AM
It doesn't phase me much, but it would certainly be shocking to experience that, and then suddenly have a link to something in your head..
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 2:56 AM
However, that function maps every input and output pair to a single internal state.
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but now i see the problem; by simulating infinite probable states with equal weighting, you simulate a much, much larger series of improbable states
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 2:56 AM
@0111narwhalz Y'all here discussing probability manipulation and I'm just tryna see what Taylor would be seeing in this scenario T_T
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 2:57 AM
There are other things you can fill that black box with that do not necessarily fulfill that map.
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 2:57 AM
Read access with very limited Write, yes?
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 2:57 AM
Because it is only required that internal state and input map to a single output, not the other way around.
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I will note that being limited to only deliberately-communicated data may limit the goodies the big T is willing to hand out, due to obvs. unknown-unknowns trust issues. On the other hand, it’s very good at data analysis, and the therapy process should let it build an excellent persona model.
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Could we maybe calve off the probablity manipulation talk to another channel?
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 2:58 AM
@Overmind How long would it take the Transcend to notice the tiny linkage to her brain? Probably nanosecs, if we're being serious, but I just wanted Authorial Confirmation (edited)
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 2:58 AM
sure, which channel would you suggest?
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#technicalities ?
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 2:58 AM
okay
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Nano, probably.
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 2:59 AM
A sub-sub-function is assigned to understand what this anomaly is and the mystery begins.
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 2:59 AM
"hey a device was just plugged in we need to investigate this for security reasons"
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When it is determined that the anomaly needs a therapist approximately three minutes later
02:59
One is hired
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 2:59 AM
Exactly
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(Related to that, on that mind-reading thing way back when - anyone who tries to read her mind and push through that link is in for a world of pain. The Virtual Immunity does not like uninvited guests.)
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It does not
03:00
But also that's not a power I think anyone in worm has
03:01
Closest is write-only mind-control, I think
03:01
(There is a villain whose power basically lets him re-write people's value system)
03:01
(He's horrible )
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 3:01 AM
It would take them a little while to understand what they're seeing, but maybe 10 seconds into the Locker Incident and they'd start to realize this is a soph being tortured
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Depends what they get from taylor
03:02
But yes
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 3:02 AM
I, for one, welcome our value-revising overlord
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really no
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 3:02 AM
Did taylor notice she had triggered right away?
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I belive not
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 3:02 AM
This is important
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I'm not sure the moment is shown on screen
03:02
But also
03:02
People don't seem to?
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 3:02 AM
(the joke is that my values were already overwritten :V)
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(I know)
03:03
(But also the dude is ... really fucking creepy)
03:03
(Strictly speaking, his power is emotion-manipulation)
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 3:03 AM
At first, then, she'd be agonized and alone, of course, for about like 15 seconds.
03:03
Then the Transcend uses its limited capacity to unilaterally send information, in the form of a brief message.
03:04
"You are not alone" or something
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(His son is incapable of fear due to those bits of his brain being burnt out)
03:04
(He has lots of wives, and lots of children))
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 3:04 AM
(Ick.)
03:05
And our story begins. That's how I'd start this off.
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(It's fortunate that triggers run in the family and that you tend to get powers that are "what you need" according to an alien super-brain with no creativity, minimal understanding of humanity and the desire to make you fight other humans)
03:05
(Well)
03:06
(It means his kids are mostly immune to his power)
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 3:06 AM
(yikes)
03:06
But anyway, there's an opener for you
03:06
Hmm
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 3:06 AM
"You're not alone, we're with you, hang on."
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How easily can the transcend do "pass out now"
03:07
Because really
03:07
(Probably not)
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 3:07 AM
they'll just nerdsnipe you
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 3:07 AM
?
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 3:07 AM
whisper the kind of thought that makes it impossible to think of anything else
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 3:07 AM
Who?
03:07
Were the bullies with her the entire time?
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I assume narwhalz's "they" is the transcend
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 3:08 AM
@0111narwhalz "Hello we are aliens extraterrestrial life is a thing that exists"
03:08
Boom, mind blown
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 3:08 AM
yes, that is true
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 3:08 AM
Show her pictures of the Eldraeverse if she doesn't believe it
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I don't think bodies are real big into letting people ignore "Your flesh is full of holes filled with biohazard"
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 3:10 AM
I don't know. This depends on how much the Transcend can Write into Taylor
03:10
They might be able to send distracting hallucinations
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Depends on the link. With a full gnostic interlink, it’d be easy. If they had full sensory bandwidth, while there are probably basilisks that could do the job, it’d be easier to whip up a pleasant virtuality for the meantime.
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It's ... plausible
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 3:10 AM
Or just being there might help by itself.
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But also the kind of thing which probably means taylor is going to assume that she went nuts
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 3:10 AM
"You're not alone! We're with you!"
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(To be fair)
03:11
(She probably would do that anyway)
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 3:11 AM
I'm supposing the bandwidth is thin enough that they can only give her the equivalent of an LSD trip, say
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 3:11 AM
"we need you to think a lot of varied things so that we can map your psyche"
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 3:12 AM
That might fit.
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Yeah, sure
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(Well, arguing about insanity and metaphysics will help pass the time nicely.)
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Would you do that if someone asked you to?
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 3:12 AM
I think just being a calming voice is the best approach.
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Probably
03:13
There's not much to make this not a traumatic moment
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 3:13 AM
"hey can you do 'happy?'" "…" "no that's angry we already have that one"
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 3:13 AM
They could speak with a firm, but soothing voice ala morgan freeman
03:14
"You're not alone. We're right there. Just do the thing and you can talk back to us."
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(“You’re not insane. You are, on the other hand, hallucinating. We suggest continuing to hallucinate for the moment, because as far as we can tell, right now, your reality sucks. We are continuing to monitor, and will turn it off again when that changes.”)
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 3:15 AM
Y'all know she can Write back to some extent right
03:15
Or send information back.
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(To be honest, there's a part of me which says taylor would insist they turn it off immediately)
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 3:16 AM
"I mean sure, you do you"
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 3:16 AM
What could taylor see if she used Read on her end?
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(Because "Enduring terrible shit through nigh-suicidal self-hate and stubborn pride" is her starting personality)
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(Well, that’s a starting point for an interesting conversation.)
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 3:18 AM
Does power usage always require a voluntary force of will on the parahuman's part in Worm?
03:18
I can't recall
03:18
There are passive/automatic/involuntary powers
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 3:18 AM
Then she might Read into the Transcend inadvertently and they can probably send her some comforting image through it
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Dinah can't, for example, ever refuse to use her power to predict the answer to a valid question
03:19
(Which sucks since her "My brain is melting" pain threshold is in the single-digits of answered questions)
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 3:20 AM
I actually think there's some potential for a heartwarming moment if you pull the trigger off correctly
03:20
In the middle of one of the worst things a person could experience, a little voice reassures the girl she is not alone in this after all and etc
03:21
Just, like
03:21
All the other shit
03:21
But yeah
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 3:22 AM
They could, on the other hand, just wait until she got back out and wasn't being clobbered by the horrific experience
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Unlikely.
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 3:22 AM
@Overmind ?
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That'd be mean, but makes first contact smoother
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 3:22 AM
Yeah, on second thought, just saying "You're not alone!" is probably better
03:22
Even if it's all they say for a while
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That’s also probably not something that needs to be said in words.
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 3:26 AM
Something that's in the phase-space of "just hang on the cavalry is coming" at any rate, or something man
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But then we can get onto more interesting stuff, I think
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 3:26 AM
I think Cerebrate's talking about, instead of "hey you're not alone," just [reassuring presence]
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One of the most basic functions of the soul-shard is the perpetual certainty that 1.75 trillion fellow sophs and God trust you, are trustworthy by you, cherish you and have your back. That’s right down in the earliest primary functionality.
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I think that'd give me a headache
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Now, this isn’t a soul-shard, obviously, but it does mean that it has, so to speak, experience in this area.
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That's a magnitude
03:28
But yeah
03:28
Def valid
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 3:30 AM
Then [moderate sense that someone's coming don't worry, help is on its way]? (edited)
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Well, it’s not like you think about it all the time, or anything. It’s just there, in the background, present whenever it’s needed.
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 3:30 AM
You get bonus points if you reference the Cavalry trope archon xD
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I don't get any points for referencing tropes (edited)
03:32
(I've been reading a fic whose author cannot help but namecheck every trope they use)
03:32
(in the authors notes)
03:32
(ANd it's just a little grating)
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(Although if you happen to be working up a good sense of self-hatred or some such, it will be a bit more in the foreground, disagreeing with you in a way that’s really hard to argue with.)
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 3:32 AM
(Ok dX)
03:33
So just a vague sense that [The Cavalry are coming hold your ground], shut up? (edited)
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I think I prefer the universal trust thing more
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(Because you can’t not know that it’s not lying.)
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Esp since the cavalry aren't really coming
03:33
In a material sense
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 3:34 AM
It's not literal, but that suits me fine
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Still
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 3:34 AM
Just something, anything that signals compassion as well as presence
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the perpetual certainty that 1.75 trillion fellow sophs and God trust you, are trustworthy by you, cherish you and have your back.
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 3:35 AM
The equivalent of holding someone's hand during a... difficult surgery or when they're dying
03:35
Oh yeah that could be pretty transcendental as an experience depending on the bandwidth of the Write that the Transcend can use (edited)
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Probably not that strong
03:36
See previous things about being a specific data-channel not a brain-overwrite
03:36
But yeah!
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 3:37 AM
Being a near-average teenager who probably doesn't meditate and the like it'd probably be enough to overwhelm even the sense that rotten used tampons are everywhere
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Maybe
03:38
Lessen it at least some
03:38
That said
03:38
Can we move on?
03:38
This is getting a bit repeditive
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 3:38 AM
Next scene, perhaps? After she gets out?
03:38
Which is her waking up in the hospital, I feel
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 3:39 AM
but which hospital?
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 3:39 AM
the one in brockton bay?
03:39
or did she live elsewhere at that time
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 3:39 AM
the place for people with broken bones, or the place for people with broken minds?
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 3:39 AM
OOOOOOFFFF
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She lived in brockton bay
03:39
...
03:39
The one for people with blood poisoning
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 3:40 AM
okay just making sure she didn't end up in the loony bin already
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(Medical emergencies take priority over psychological ones)
03:40
How would she do that?
03:40
The timeline is "get locked in locker" "Meet god" "pass out"
03:40
Why would she end up in a psychiatric hospital?
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 3:41 AM
Yeah, she wouldn't, that claim has been retracted.
03:41
But yes
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 3:41 AM
So she wakes up in the hospital bed only to realize that feeling still isn't gone
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I belive the typical fanon at this point is to assume that Pancea heals her
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 3:42 AM
hey she might've been out for a while after spouting some crazy shit ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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It takes quite a lot to have someone involuntarily commited
03:42
(Also medical trumps mental)
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 3:43 AM
And that it's whispering to her
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So she wakes up, probably to sleeping father (Who also has depression)
03:43
(re: dead wife)
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 3:43 AM
yeah i read that far
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(Also dead industry of employment)
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 3:43 AM
(eh)
03:44
"Hey, we're still here. Your reality isn't a torture chamber anymore, that's a big improvement."
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 3:44 AM
No, the Big Tee
03:44
You're going back to that
03:45
I was still stuck on trying to explain how Danny's life is also suffering
03:45
But yeah
03:45
At this point I feel we should examine short-term goals
03:46
Getting out of the high school is high
03:47
Possibly out of her entire life
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 3:47 AM
Passively observing her interaction with the world for a few seconds can probably be handled by a minor sub-subroutine
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Dealing with bullies, possibly
03:47
Passive observation is trivial
03:47
The big point is the "wait, superpowers are real" hiccup
03:48
I want to note the OOC goal of the Undersiders not dying (edited)
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 3:48 AM
Undersiders?
03:48
Them
03:48
Because they're some of the more developed and interesting chars in the setting
03:49
(They're villains, but mostly pretty sympathetic ones)
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I note in passing that while it may be the lowest of the archai, the Transcend has an entire submind which functions as the Scheming To Make People’s Lives Better Through Subtle Suggestions department.
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 3:49 AM
^
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"Subtle" is probably unneeded in this case
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 3:50 AM
I mean, she knows something like superpowers exist, being in contact with an alien godling isn't an entirely outside context problem (edited)
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For her, no
03:51
(Plus TBH)
03:51
(I assume by this point that they've got a person on the other line)
03:51
(For relatability purposes)
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 3:52 AM
They can also read some of her mindstate outside what she consciously sends
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Maybe?
03:52
Nonetheless
03:52
I do think they will be shocked by the whole superpowers thing
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 3:52 AM
So gathering basic intelligence shouldn't be so difficult if that's possible
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And moreso as they hit the higher tiers
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 3:53 AM
And it could serve to relate to her if they have something reasonably human-seeming on the other end
03:53
In story
03:53
Also, like
03:53
I want eldrae-side named charecters
03:54
But yes
03:54
Hmm
03:54
How much tech bootstrapping can we do in two months without getting outed as a tinker?
03:54
Not much, I don't think
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 3:55 AM
For one, Tinker items only work in the presence of their creator right (edited)
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They work anywhere
03:56
But they're universally maintenance-heavy and can only be "understood" by the creator (edited)
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 3:56 AM
Welp
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They follow all the implausibilities of technology except the bit where they aren't
03:56
Well, I mean, yes, taylor clearly isn't a "real" tinker
03:57
But her trying to bootstrap herself is pretty symptomatic of being a tinker
03:57
And the gangs are real into recruiting tinkers for the force-multiplier
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 3:59 AM
The first thing the big T would do is, after the appropriate Historical Trauma and analyzing Worm!Earth, is probably...
03:59
>Have her take the GED and possibly help her cheat on it
04:00
>Start therapy course
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>can we beat the economy?
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:00 AM
>jesus christ this is a barbarian planet ok
04:00
>how do we deal with these endbringers?
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(The answer is ... no, because the Number Man is already doing that)
04:01
Hmm
04:01
How quickly do you think the Transcend sees throw the various layers of mind-game (edited)
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:01 AM
>Help her chart routes that avoid the evil trio in the meantime
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>like just not going to school
04:02
>nope nope nope
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:02 AM
>Also provide preliminary analyses as to how to avoid their shenanigans in the brief timespan before she takes the GED
04:02
>Provide alibi for suspiciously fast turnaround
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... She's known to be a excellent student if not for all the torture?
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:03 AM
Okay fair enough
04:04
>Possibly finagle way into a Pell grant to get into college because holy fuck is this place a mess
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She says "Yeah, that was when I was bullied - before that, you can see noted that I could have skipped up two grades etc etc, so I took a month off to study back up"
04:04
Maybe
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:04 AM
The locker happened when she was, like, already a teen right
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:04 AM
Jesus
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Midway through the second year of high-school, I think
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:05 AM
The Transcend might not be paying that much attention to the economy at any rate
04:05
The most important thing is getting her the hell out of that dead-end town
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:05 AM
Minus is she will never meet the Undersiders
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I don't think she'll leave town
04:05
Because I'm not writing new heros
04:06
And also she's pretty patriotic
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:06 AM
Okay, so maybe Brockton Bay has a college
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What do we want a college degree for?
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:06 AM
A job that pays decently in the post-Recession US economy
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Shrug
04:06
Sufficent genius covers many sins in that respect
04:07
Also you've gotta think about taylor
04:07
her first goal is, at this stage "Become a superhero"
04:07
With the unwritten sub-goal of dying nobly (edited)
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:08 AM
"whoa whoa whoa, you've got to chill"
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(Someone once described Worm as a series of cases of taylor failing to commit suicide by supervillain in increasingly explosive ways)
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 4:08 AM
T: "oh hey that's co—wait, you don't have backups?"
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She's not consciously suicidal
04:08
To be clear
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:09 AM
The T can probably finagle her some work in the Bay that isn't too close to any of the bad parts of town and pays a living wage
04:09
It's not that hard a problem
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Again
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:09 AM
Even for a human
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Decisions which avoid the plot and the PCs are boring
04:09
I want to keep the undersiders alive, for example
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:10 AM
"Okay, so you want to become a superhero, then...?" whisper whisper whisper...
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Joining the wards is the "obvious" choice
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:10 AM
She didn't want to take it
04:10
Cause they were too supervised
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Yeah! But she's in a better state, has a more support-focused power, and has someone giving her sensible advice
04:11
So she's more likely to think about it for a while
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:11 AM
First things first are to get her to understand that she shouldn't destroy herself and the like
04:11
The therapy will be amazing, yes, but it will also come steeped in eldraeic ideas about virtue
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(the bug-control thing can go straight onto the battlefield)
04:12
(This can't)
04:12
... I wonder what QA is thinking right now
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:13 AM
I wonder what the current record is for bootstrapping in eldraeland
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Whatever it is
04:13
This will have to be much slower, because as I said, you have to be subtle
04:13
And participate in an economy
04:13
Hmm
04:13
Can we by-pass the Lung fight entirely
04:13
Say, for example
04:14
Tattletale noticed someone clearly getting directions from outside her perception
04:14
And decides to follow up
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:14 AM
Thing is, though, even beginning to build things like nanobots and lasers is already in the territory of highly specialized organizations in our real world
04:14
Which Worm is based on
04:14
To me, the best boot-strapping path is to get access to Armsy's workshop
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:14 AM
Okay, so step one may be to get her noticed.
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And use his tools
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:15 AM
No no no
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(Dragon is maybe better)
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:15 AM
The first thing is to find a villain Taylor can take on at her current skill level
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What, Alabaster or something
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:15 AM
Okay, okay. We probably can't sidestep the Lung fight entirely
04:16
But with a decent military advisor sitting in on her combats she should dominate most opponents that don't have inhuman weight or physical characteristics, like the Azn BBs
04:16
Fighting is a lot of muscle memory
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:16 AM
Yeah
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I don't think she'd be reasonably able to fight more than one thug at a time
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:17 AM
Maybe get her some ex-Legion instructor
04:17
If that's required to stop her totally flaking out
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She would not flake out of a training program
04:17
(She did her best in canon)
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:17 AM
The eldrae have had literally 7000+ years of experience in martial arts, they can probably teach her a thing or two right
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(But her best wasn't great)
04:17
In the long-term
04:18
But two months of marital arts
04:18
Even really good martial arts
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:18 AM
I don't know how long ago the locker incident was vis a vis the story starting
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Is still not superhuman
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:18 AM
Remind me
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Two months, approx before her first outting
04:18
Main limiting factor on that to her was her suit
04:19
Why no wards?
04:19
At least a consideration is interesting
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:19 AM
She can probably join them, yes, but without bootstrapping she won't be able to prove she's parahuman
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Because I want to have the transcend poke the Protectorate's long-game (edited)
04:19
shrug Thinkers exist
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:19 AM
They'd need to give her access to, say, a tinker's workshop as you said and that's a longshot
04:19
Oh
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"You can do 16-digit math in your head" is a known powerset
04:20
See e.g. Tattletale, Number Man, Contessa
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:20 AM
Have her appear to solve a relativistic physics problem in a minute flat
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Lots of powers are purely informational
04:20
Yup
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:20 AM
That'll distinguish her
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Have her supply the next bit of relativity
04:20
(It's okay if she looks confused, it's also normal for thinker powers to be non-holsitic in improvements) (edited)
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:21 AM
If Worm physics is like ours then the eldrae can easily give her some easily-confirmable tidbit of information that scientists do not know yet
04:21
Do this a few times till everyone's won over
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I will assume for simplicity that the Entity Ontotech would be theoretically achievable for the eldrae given time
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:22 AM
If she can talk someone into letting her into a workshop, that would be perfect
04:22
I'm not relying on it though
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The entities still massively overwhelm the empire in that respect
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 4:22 AM
>casually dropping world-shattering hints about the nature of reality
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:22 AM
No, nothing big
04:22
Just, like, the spin of the Higgs boson or something
04:22
Or the graviton
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I mean, she can just claim to be a tinker who needs someone else's workshop to start working
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:23 AM
She can legitimately cite not having the resources I suppose
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Tinker's are also known to have stupid restrictions on what they can make
04:23
Or just lie and claim her power is, like "No tools"
04:23
Or something stupid like that
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:23 AM
She is impoverished.
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(There's a guy in town whose tinker power is "Anything, once")
04:24
That said!
04:24
Do you guys know the Protectorate long-game?
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:24 AM
Nnnnope
04:24
And I'm going to read Worm anyway
04:24
So drop that intel on us (edited)
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:24 AM
Lay it on me
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Oh, sure
04:24
(That was "do you need an explanation" not "do you care about spoilers")
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:24 AM
Former
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The protectorate is not super interested in short-term good deeds as a objective
04:25
Management is setting policy to maximise the amount of parahumans capable of particpating in world-saving activities like endbringer fights
04:26
Even if they're villains
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:26 AM
@0111narwhalz just like, tell some CERN guys the exact spin of the higgs boson or how to detect gravitons
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When was CERN built?
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:26 AM
2008
04:26
So just in time
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They don't have it then
04:26
Or at least
04:26
I doubt they do
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:26 AM
LHC was started in 2008 or 2009
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Since their economy has been tanking for 20 years
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:27 AM
oh
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And cities keep getting smashed
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:27 AM
So there's no ISS?
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VERY NOPE
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:27 AM
Any big absences?
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Simurgh kills anything like a space program
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:27 AM
Who or what is Simurgh?
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Endbringer: Powers are nigh-perfect precog+atom resolution telekinesis
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:28 AM
Oh and unlike the others he's always out there
04:28
I get it
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Convention is to code her as female
04:28
They're all always around
04:28
She's in orbit
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 4:28 AM
CERN is in Switzerland, innit?
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Behemoth is in the core
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:28 AM
On the Swiss-French border
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Leviathan is in the sea
04:29
They just only attack periodically
04:29
And then go away
04:29
They're all pulling thier punches massively
04:29
Since the point is the manipulate society and maximize parahuman combat (edited)
04:29
Not to destroy us all
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:29 AM
Okay, so the short-term objective is to get Taylor to a tinkering station
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I have to go for a few
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:30 AM
Can she science the shit into at least some basic drexler-machines
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I'll be back soon
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:30 AM
ok
04:30
I mean, the Transcend are intimately familiar with most every class of nanotech that the eldrae have built and have tried to build
04:32
They can also probably assign someone to give her expert advice while she's trying to bootstrap
04:33
"Our order of business is to deal with these 'Endbringers.'"
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 4:33 AM
you know they have people for bootstrapping
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:33 AM
"But first, start by reshaping this molybdenum here to.."
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Okay back
04:33
But have food
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:34 AM
@0111narwhalz I'm pretty sure they can tell ms. hebert how to build, say, a high-energy XFEL
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So I will be terse
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:34 AM
Food In Hand, got it
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But yeah
04:35
With sufficent time and resources bootstrapping is v. easy
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:35 AM
What are the physical dimensions of the Endbringers? Their mobility?
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12-20ft tall
04:35
quite mobile
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:35 AM
Oh, and they're humanoid?
04:35
I wasn't really expecting that
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More-or-less
04:36
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:36 AM
Oh, is that fanart? Cool.
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Behemoth, Leviathan and Simurgh
04:36
It appears to be, yes
04:37
(Powers are energy manipluation, hydrokinesis for the first two)
04:37
(On a anti-city and anti-small continent scale respectively)
04:38
(This is while they're pulling thier punches)
04:38
(Simurgh re-writes your brain in the worst possible way)
04:39
(But pulls her punches by being slow, detectable and range-limited about it)
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:40 AM
So, nobody's tried nuking them yet?
04:40
I'm surprised
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Scion stops nukes
04:40
But also they're nigh-indestructable
04:41
Specifcally, the density of each layer of thier skin doubles, as does toughness
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:41 AM
Okay, first things first
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They have no vital organs except thier central core
04:41
They have never been truely defeated, only wounded enough that they decided to leave
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 4:43 AM
Eye-in-the-Flame: "ooh we think we might have something for those"
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:43 AM
Graser time (edited)
04:43
Operation Yashima time >:)
04:44
And yes I just watched evangelion
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 4:44 AM
"finally a purpose for the antimatter grenade-firing machine gun"
04:45
"wait, you don't have a Cirys swarm yet so your amat is measured in atoms? shit"
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:45 AM
@0111narwhalz it's graser time bb
04:45
or at least, the most fuckoff-powerful laser modern tech can create
04:45
and power.
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I'm not sure if any application of sufficent energy is enough to actually kill them
04:46
(I'm genuinely unsure)
04:46
And def the final boss cannot be hurt by conventional weapons
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 4:46 AM
I mean, if you pump enough into them it'll make it a moot point anyway.
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By taking out the planet?
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:46 AM
...heh...
04:46
although
04:47
Basically, Operation Tashima
04:47
which is: next time the Big Evils attack, get the cool BFG and just train it on them as long as possible
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 4:47 AM
or by ablating their front surface until they leave forever, whichever comes first
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:47 AM
with modern tracking it should be possible to hold a lock on them
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 4:48 AM
(what's Earth escape velocity? 13km/s?)
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:48 AM
(14 iirc)
04:48
no, 11.2 km/s
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 4:49 AM
But there's also the possibility that the response to you pulling out the big dak is not "oh no we're defeated" but instead a LEVEL UP and a release of some brakes.
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This is canon
04:50
Killing a Endbringer gets you two more with worse powers
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:50 AM
Damn, like a hydra
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 4:50 AM
LIMITER DISABLED
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:50 AM
@Archon how exactly does simurgh brainfuck people
04:50
dont tell me if its pure nightmare fuel
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 4:51 AM
Where's the fire of mythological cautery?
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precog+atom-level telekinesis to predict the worse possible moment in the future for you to become evil (edited)
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:51 AM
oh shit
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And write your brain so you end up then and there
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 4:52 AM
man, for being invulnerable engines of destruction these guys sure do enjoy their subtlety
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They're here to make our lives worse!
04:53
(Note)
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:53 AM
@0111narwhalz The eldraeic reply is probably along the lines of, "I won't give up... never!"
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(That she is pulling punches by making the re-writing process slow and detectable)
04:53
(As a mental "scream")
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 4:54 AM
"we could rewrite you to just always have a bad day forever, and we could do it to everyone else too, but instead we'll just do one targeted rewrite"
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(So you can prevent it by getting out of her "range") (edited)
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:54 AM
Like Ariel or whatever that angel was toward the end of Evangelion
04:54
That shone a light on Asuka and made her relive her mom dying
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also, wait
04:54
doesn't she just sort of
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 4:54 AM
So is there a cost to their interactions?
04:54
the moment Taylor contacts the Transcend?
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 4:54 AM
Why are they being so economical with them?
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:54 AM
@Buggy no
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There are several outcomes there (edited)
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:55 AM
she doesn't godshatter because it's restricted-bandwidth, remember
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no, not Taylor
04:55
i mean the mind-rewriter
04:55
she relies on precog based on perfect determinism
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We decided to change that
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Wormverse is not deterministc in this context
04:55
So that the transcend considers them people
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that's a plus
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They're using the same brute-force
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ah, okay
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OTOH Simurgh possibly has more computation than Transcend
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 4:56 AM
hmm it could be time loopy precog, maybe
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(technically we just sort of worked out that you can create determinism in the Eldraeverse in the other channel)
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:56 AM
where?
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technicalities channel
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 4:56 AM
We worked out that you can fix specific outcomes.
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:56 AM
ok
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 4:57 AM
Not necessarily that you can pick those outcomes, though.
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basically, as we see it, stable time loops force a segment of the future to become perfectly known and deterministic, and for the "fuzzy" values of determinism that most people use, the relative level of determinism of everything surrounding it decreases the further away it is casually
04:58
so you basically get a 'spike' of determinism surrounding one piece of information (and technically kinda the time machine that sent it) at a known point in the future
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 4:59 AM
You've locked the event of feeding the future end with your information.
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and how exactly that spike is picked is complicated, but its most likely the most-likely possible outcome of the overall chaotic system at that exact point in space-time
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 4:59 AM
no plx
04:59
@0111narwhalz back to lasering the big evil dudes and dudettes
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but you can constrain it
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@BizarroLand ♀ yes please
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 5:00 AM
I feel like that's the first thing they'd try at least
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So also topical to this
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by manipulating the chaotic system at the current time to limit possibilities
05:00
They'd have seen Legend's attempts
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for instance, telling the time machine to not sent the message unless certain conditions are met
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 5:00 AM
How to bring this to bear on this setting, for example the "plan guy:"
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Those are pretty conclusive that lasers are not enough
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or verifying the message on recieving, thus limiting the possible recieved messages
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 5:01 AM
How powerful is legend?
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Probably number two in the world?
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 5:01 AM
ok
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 5:01 AM
1. Get a plan out of an oracle. 2. Execute the plan. 3. If it worked, retransmit.
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Number one if you consider skill
05:01
But Eidolon is just too bullshit (edited)
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so, wouldn't this be a good way for Simurgh to work?
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... no, not really?
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using time loops a-la the transcend?
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Her powers are all about nigh-perfect manipulation
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 5:02 AM
The only way this works is if either 1. you got a random plan or 2. you got the right plan.
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it means that simurgh doesn't have to have ridiculous brute-force computation
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She has that
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that's the thing, you can make this perfect manipulation
05:02
if you design it right, you can absolutely force a certain outcome in the future
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The Entities have several thousand solar systems worth of Computronium (edited)
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completely invariably
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 5:03 AM
Perfect manipulation is a different problem from perfect knowledge of what you need to manipulate.
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But she's known to work differently
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oh, ok
05:03
nvm then, wasn't aware of that
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her control vector is telekinesis
05:03
Not probability manipulation
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 5:03 AM
So Operation Yashima-ing them is off the table
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K-kill won't solve the problem
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 5:04 AM
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Plus, the real problem is Zion
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 5:04 AM
spoilersssz
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Not the endbringers
05:04
Hey
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 5:04 AM
ok whatever
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 5:04 AM
I should probably just read more of the story
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You're solving the world a level of spoilers down
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 5:04 AM
You can't beat them by becoming more powerful than them, Bizarro
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how much are they expecting to face another weakly-godlike intelligence?
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I don't have time to wait for you to read the story :)
05:04
Nontrivially
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 5:04 AM
Then tell me about Zion
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But they are a headless snake
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 5:05 AM
You must be cleverer than them.
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The transcend is *smarter * than zion
05:05
But has less ontotech and less computation power
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because you have a attack vector there, if they aren't expecting to have to defend themselves against a memetic/basilisk attack cooked up by the transcend, as opposed to what humans can do
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Same goal, actually
05:06
Worm deep-lore time
05:06
The Entities are trying to stop entropy
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 5:06 AM
mumble mumble chlorocruorin
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They're vast hyper-tech multi-universe space-whales
05:06
They have lots of the best tech and universes of computronium for each pair (edited)
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 5:06 AM
"it's a shame their eternity is not one worth having"
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But they're incapable of creativity
05:07
And generally pretty stupid
05:07
To the point of probably not being sophont
05:07
(Except maybe broadcast and QA, and maybe Eden)
05:07
(And maybe simurgh?)
05:07
(OKay, no)
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 5:07 AM
Should be noted that clever algorithms can make orders of magnitude of difference in runtime, even in simple problems.
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(That's a lot of fanon)
05:08
Yup (edited)
05:08
But the point here
05:08
Is that motivation-wise
05:08
The idea the entities have is to get new ideas by giving bits of tech (i.e. super-powers) to mortals (edited)
05:08
And putting them under a lot of preasure
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so what i'm hearing here
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And seeing if they come up with anything novel (edited)
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is that there needs to be a frank negotiation between two weakly-godlike intelligences here
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 5:09 AM
If T's algorithms are cleverer enough, its mere solar system of computronium might be able to outperform a universe of theirs.
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Well, maybe
05:09
But there are several reasons not
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the Transcend more-or-less has the same ish goals
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First is
05:09
Um
05:09
I'm going to be using several terms here
05:09
So note that thinker=eden, warrior=zion
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 5:10 AM
"ill means poison all ends"
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When they were coming toward earth and humankind
05:10
Eden crashed
05:10
This was probably cross-entity sabotage by an entity refered to as abbadon, but that's outside the scope of the story
05:11
The Thinker, as her name suggests, was the smart on of the couple
05:11
So now the Warrior is moping around mourning his dead wife, and trying to contiune the cycle without her
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 5:11 AM
I imagine the Transcend will feel more like the military officers in the first episode of Evangelion them
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And generally fucking it up
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 5:11 AM
"It's a DEMON!"
05:12
For about a millisecond before they set about trying to onto-cheat
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(This is all far outside the knowledge of all-but-one person as of story start)
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 5:12 AM
(also like 99% this contact would be a SKYSHOCK)
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Yeah, that's one of the reasons I'm interested in it! (edited)
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 5:12 AM
👏 is the story still interesting even knowing this
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 5:12 AM
because im picking it up again
05:12
it's just as good, as far as I know
05:13
But also I just don't think it's a good story?
05:13
Most of the story is street-to-city level
05:13
Though it escalates rapidly
05:13
"rapidly"
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 5:14 AM
BLUE, maybe fears of it leading to COLORLESS.
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But yeah! None of this is obvious from the ground!
05:14
None of it at all!
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 5:14 AM
That's how it is in real life
05:14
We had no fuckin clue about orbits and planets when we first looked up and saw stars that wandered
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But my point is
05:15
That it will take a good deal of plot for the transcend to learn any of this
05:15
But yeah
05:15
To move down a level
05:16
Zion's seat-of-conciousness has been moping and crudely imitating humankind
05:16
The entities sub-divide into specialised "shards"
05:16
One power ~= one shard
05:16
One of the v. stupid things zion has been doing is giving out shards he really shouldn't be as powers
05:17
Like the one's specialized for central co-ordination, or the ones powering his anti-entity weapons (edited)
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 5:17 AM
BLUE first for sure, then they see an Endbringer and go "woah where the hell did that thing come from" followed by "wait if it can do that we need to make sure it doesn't come here and break our stuff, because apparently you can get from there to here" followed by "it came from where?" and an upgrade to COLORLESS
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Yeah, plausible
05:18
That said
05:18
If the Transcend can kill one entity
05:18
They will be able to harvest enough to kill the rest
05:18
Because they have the whole "Meaningful ability to generate original thoughts" edge
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 5:18 AM
one Entity which has, as you've said, given its anti-Entity defenses away
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*weapons
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 5:19 AM
it's the perfect target
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And they have been nerfed down into a reasonable superpower
05:19
The person who has them ... why, would certainly wouldn't think they had a anti-entity weapon
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 5:19 AM
@0111narwhalz It'll probably come after the failed not-Operation Yashima
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Also specific shards can be reasoned with, I think - they're not trivally in favor of the boss despite substantial shackles
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 5:20 AM
"wouldn't think they had an anti-entity weapon" inb4 inexplicable aptitude for cheesemaking
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(There's a popular headcanon that this is also true of Simurgh, BTW)
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 5:22 AM
If the shards are embodiments of ideals, eikone style, you can flow around them freely.
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Not really?
05:22
They're planet-sized bits of single-purpose machinery
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 5:22 AM
If you are adaptable enough, anyway.
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There are some which have jobs
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planet-sized in another universe?
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And some which are just specialised to specific kinds of reaserch
05:23
Yeah
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because i'm confused as to how that fits in your skull
05:23
ah ok
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They're bodies are all on alternate earths
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 5:23 AM
Because if you aren't contra to their concept, they won't have to do anything about you.
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They just have a bit in your skull to pick up the power-use requests
05:23
That's def valid!
05:23
Most of them are only privy to low-level directives
05:24
So as long as you abide by those, they don't give a fuck
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 5:24 AM
All this spoilery stuff will have to come after the big fight against one of those monsters however
05:24
Nobody knows this on the ground
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(Which are general "give people powers and make them fight")
05:24
"Get data"
05:24
Yup!
05:24
As in canon, that
05:25
... well
05:25
Depends what cauldron does
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 5:25 AM
If you cooperate with their goals, it may be that you could even extract assistance from them.
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I don't know how Contessa would react to a new blind spot
05:25
Yes
05:25
The assistance is "they make your powers better"
05:26
People think this is just stress making you better at using them (edited)
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 5:26 AM
What about shards that aren't strictly speaking "yours?"
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v. hard to talk to
05:26
Also these things
05:26
There are like two of them which are smart enough to negoitate with
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 5:26 AM
I'm still pretty sure the warmind types are going to react badly when their first plan to laser an EB to death fails
05:26
Or at least there will be some serious recalculation going on
05:26
Though really
05:27
If they trust a reasonable source on this stuff (edited)
05:27
They will know a laser isn't enough for a kill from the get-go
05:27
Enough to drive one off, maybe!
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 5:27 AM
On the other hand, they'll also go "hmm and that's why we reach for the backstab, not the frontal assault"
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Which is enough!
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 5:28 AM
Okay
05:28
Will the EB give up even if there are few casualties?
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Depends
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 5:28 AM
It might still be seen as a huge win for Taylor if she saves a city from one of those kaiju
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Yes, unless they have a secondary directive
05:28
Which they often do and are good at hiding
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 5:28 AM
If their goal is "extract maximum anguish" they might even throw a few fights now and then.
05:29
It's "extract maximum number of fights in the next century or so" strictly speaking
05:29
Well
05:29
Maximum number of "high-stakes conflicts forcing creative solutions from humans"
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 5:30 AM
Their objective isn't anguish per se
05:30
it doesn't seem like
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But it helps!
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 5:30 AM
it's just that putting your life on the line constantly is not the best situation for people mentally
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They deliberately de-stabilize you mentally (edited)
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 5:31 AM
T: hey guys we have a huge amount of creativity over here if you want to hire some
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By taking the most traumatised people they can find and filling them with a need to fight
05:31
maybe on a functional entity if you want to negotiate with genocidal whales
05:31
But Zion is not in a talking mood
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 5:32 AM
oh yeah, the genocide thing
05:33
doesn't exactly put eldrae in a talking mood either
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They've killed many many planets
05:33
And like I said
05:33
Only barely sophont
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 5:33 AM
Hey, you figure their hulls are baryonic? V:
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Zion gets fast-talked by a homeless guy
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 5:34 AM
@0111narwhalz Some will probably be all like IF IT BLEEDS WE CAN KILL IT
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 5:34 AM
A CALYX HOLLOW might be able to eat them.
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They're not local to one universe
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 5:35 AM
hmm, that is indeed problematic
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And very distributed
05:35
(To be fair)
05:35
(You just need to kill the right couple of shards)
05:35
(To get rid of what little guiding intellect they have left)
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 5:36 AM
Is there such a thing as "neighboring" universes?
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Howso?
05:36
We don't get any mechanical detail into the universe-travel
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 5:36 AM
Some concept of adjacency
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But there are several parahumans with universe-travel related powers
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 5:37 AM
Do universes map straight on all four spacetime, or are there distortions?
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shrug
05:37
How would we tell?
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 5:38 AM
I know these aren't necessarily answerable, but I feel like it'd be important for a transuniversal weapon.
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We don't, as far as I know, get that much detail
05:38
Since all of our bullshit on the subject is mediated through granted superpowers
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 5:39 AM
The difference between "universes as branes" and "universes as one-hot vectors" could be very important.
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shrug (edited)
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 5:40 AM
(ultimately, if it's Unwritten, you can write it, but it's kinda interesting to me)
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What would be the implication?
05:40
(Also I'm not letting T invent new ontotech just because they need it more now)
05:40
(They're going to have to find the same lynchpins as everyone else)
05:40
(Assuming I ever get that far)
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 5:41 AM
If it's the branes, there's a notion of fourspace, and of adjacency, distance, and so on.
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(Defeating certain villains permanently puts off the apocalypse long enough that we can have a nice long slice-of-life and she's not obligated to learn any of this until she has no option)
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 5:42 AM
If it's the one-hot vector, those notions don't apply, and you have to target each one individually.
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There's maybe some notion of distance? Since Clairvoyant does have a max range
05:42
But that might be a limit on his power
05:42
Or a processing limit
05:43
Or something
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 5:43 AM
Allows him to see other universes, or other points on the same universe?
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His power is limited to the earths atmosphere but he can only see a limited number of alternate earths
05:45
Lots though
05:45
And he can grant this to others
05:45
Which he did with a LOS portal-maker
05:45
For inter-universe travel
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 5:45 AM
ah
05:46
That could be a nonspatial distance too.
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shrug
05:46
It's not important
05:46
Really
05:46
Esp since I doubt I could ever run a story that far
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 5:46 AM
probably not important but it's fun to think about anyway
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I prefer to use Earth Bet as a sandbox on the street and city level + murdering the Slaughterhouse 9
05:47
... well, maybe not bonesaw
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 5:48 AM
huh, did they pick up four new members at some point?
05:48
runs
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What?
05:49
(I mean, they have a pretty fluid member list if you're making an actual comment on canon)
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 5:49 AM
Slaughterhouse 7
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 5:49 AM
Slaughterhouse Five
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 5:49 AM
Sounds cooler
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What's that a reference to?
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 5:49 AM
Also not a blatant Kurt reference
05:49
Kurt whatshisface uhhhhhhh
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 5:49 AM
I could repeat the title but I suspect it wouldn't help
05:49
Vonnegut
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 5:49 AM
Kurt Vonnegut
05:49
fuck ninjaed
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shrugs
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 5:50 AM
I've been making a lot of shitty jokes nobody's gotten lately >.>
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S9 - very evil
05:50
They're essentially a road-trip of murder
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 5:50 AM
S5 - surprisingly not on fire, given the neighborhood
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I'm sure bizzaro caught that reference
05:51
But I did not
05:51
Do you want to start scheming murder of the S9?
05:51
It's a solvable problem!
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 5:52 AM
no idea who's who or what's what, so I doubt I'd be much help
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All but two of them are vulnerable to kinetic energy!
05:52
I'll explain
05:52
Leader: Jack Slash (edited)
05:52
Power is blade projection
05:52
Well,
05:53
His obvious power
05:53
His subtle power is that his Shard is the only shard with social skills, and keeps asking other shards to help him
05:53
So he has unnatural charisma v. parahumans, and is way too good at avoiding anything which could kill him
05:54
(as long as the thing is parahuman in source)
05:54
He's how they keep getting new members
05:54
Otherwise "Join the slaughterhouse 9, we cause pain and suffering and are kill-on-sight the world over" would be a pretty ineffective pitch
05:55
Bonesaw is redeemable
05:55
She's the best biotinker in town
05:55
Horrible abominations, power-manipulation, augmentation
05:55
You name it, if it involves unethical surgery she can do it (edited)
05:56
She's also about 11 and her moral system consists 90% of jack slash's bullshit
05:56
(as a rule the younger you get your powers the stronger they are, and she triggered at, like, 6)
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 5:56 AM
rm -rf that shit
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She's redeemable! And also pretty key to the combo which saved the world in canon
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 5:57 AM
V:
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 5:58 AM
Eh, small potatoes. Just hit the right pressure point. Physical violence is easy.
05:58
What's not so easy will be sciencing the endgame stuff.
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Her internal biology does not closely resemble anything science can touch
05:59
Kill Jack Slash and adopt her is my recommendation
05:59
Preferably without telling her you killed her dad
05:59
Also she has super-plagues set to release if she dies? (edited)
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 6:00 AM
Let's have a scene referencing these convos with four eldrae or human scientists agonizing over how the bullshit space whale hax works
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 6:00 AM
I admit I didn't read most of that profile
06:00
Cus I'm reading again now thanks to y'all
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Fair enough...
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 6:02 AM
(I like the idea of Our Hero being subsumed into an eyestalk of the Transcend and turning into a journalist, even if it's out of character as described)
06:02
(maybe the enthusiasm for this strange world is infectious, I dunno)
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Eh, Fan!taylor is kind of a puppet for whatever personality you like
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 6:02 AM
I really don't think the Transcend are up for subverting other people's volition
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Since really, you get to influence her massively during some of her most formative moments
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 6:02 AM
yeah that's what I meant
06:03
Maybe it's enough to be all "holy shit what tell us more"
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 6:04 AM
I mean, Taylor's story will certainly transfix some part of the eldraeic population in the meantime
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Short-term, her goals are mostly selfish
06:04
Medium-term, she's after that + endbringers, fallen, and S9
06:04
Long-term entities become a big enough deal
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 6:04 AM
Her dad might be suspicious if her depression gets replaced with a nearly unshakable self-confidence though
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Her dad wasn't paying enough attention to notice the depression
06:05
So no
06:05
(Depression! It makes you a bad parent!)
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 6:05 AM
He might rationalize that she got over it or somthing idk
06:05
I don't really care about Mr. Hebert really
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(Also single-parenting while trying to singlehandedly run a industry)
06:07
General fan-assumptions is that he'll rationalize essentially anything short of a confession or actual evidence (edited)
06:07
Esp with an actual excuse
06:07
Like "I got a job and a degree"
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 6:08 AM
If she turns into an implacably confident woman that doesn't take shit then what?
06:08
Oh, he'll just think she grew up and pat himself on the back
06:08
idc
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Then she takes after her mother
06:08
+that
06:09
He probably won't pat himself on the back
06:09
Post-locker he's aware he's not a great parent. It'll be more like sigh with relief that he didn't fuck up that badly
06:10
implacably confident woman that doesn't take shit Is a pretty good description of her mum by the way - she was canonically the lieutenant of a major villain prior to meeting him
06:11
But yeah
06:11
Danny isn't hard to sideline
06:12
Oh! He has to know for her to become a ward
06:12
But otherwise
06:12
Which is good because he's tedious
06:12
Well
06:12
If @BizarroLand ♀ is off reading the actual thing
06:13
Then I don't really have anyone to talk to
06:13
So I'm going to turn in a bit early and try and pay down some of that sleep debt
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Flipping back to roughly where I fell asleep, I note that no-one in the 'verse has ever heard of the "Reed Richards Is Useless" trope, and also believes firmly that while wealth may not solve all problems, it's a fully general way to make solving them easier . And make life more comfortable in the meantime. So the Transcend's approach may run less along the "degree and a job" lines than the "here are some our-public-domain ideas that, if sent to your patent office, should be irresistible to people who will pay giant heaps of cashy money to use them; this should in turn make your various goals all substantially easier to achieve". Also may help with the workshop-access deal.
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As a side note, given a rough look at the Endbringers, it would seem that the obvious target/main problem here is their extrauniversal link. That isn't directly ontotechable now, but it is a major subject of research. Well, not jamming an existing one, but that could maybe get moved up the priority list some. And, hey, a free bonus is the ability to designate that particular branch of the research tree PROJECT BRANEFUCK.
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/06/2019 12:55 PM
It's not like the T will know this at the start
12:56
It'll probably take some historical study or a failed Operation Yashima-analogue to make them realize they can't just dakka away the Endbringers
12:58
@Archon I have been intelligence-gathering in toughSF, and it appears than with modern tech the best weaponized laser we could do is some kind of green laser
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does "bomb-pumped x-ray laser" count as a laser here?
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You know, there's already a fanfic with a very similar premise as what's been discussed, except instead of a mental link to the Transcend it's a mental (and low bandwidth physical) link to a very lost Bolo: https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/for-the-honor-of-the-regiment-worm-bolo-crossover.48714/page-48#post-11090386
There is a part of mind that wonders what would happen if Retief showed up at some point.
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No idea what that is
21:13
"with modern tech" is an absurd limitation - you have both hyper-tech data and tinkers/non-tinkers with useful powers
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 9:14 PM
But would those powers still work when you're explicitly bringing them to bear against the tools of the ones who gave them to you?
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Fuck yes
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 9:15 PM
We know at least one such power—the superplan guy—doesn't.
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Have you been paying attention?
21:15
The shards have a directive "Fight other superpowers"
21:15
And follow that even when it's actively counterproductive
21:15
(As a secondary concern)
21:15
(How do you think they won in canon?)
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 9:16 PM
by trickery, presumably, because they can't become more powerful
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A bunch of powers are hard-coded to not work on specific targets
21:16
But they're all known exceptions - shards can't edit what power they grant under normal circumstances
21:17
(The big one that comes up a lot is no pre-cog/mindcontrol/other trivial win-buttons on endbringers) (edited)
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 9:18 PM
actually there's a perfectly reasonable mechanical reason that precog too close to the thing that's doing the precogitation shouldn't work
21:18
no real requirement for blacklists there
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I mean, there is a blacklist
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 9:19 PM
sure of course
21:19
And it's necessary for other things.
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Path To Victory is the one case we do see of a power being edited to nerf it
21:19
(It's an exception in a lot of ways)
21:19
(And it's boss isn't around anymore)
21:20
But yeah
21:20
The game-winning involved abusing a combo of like six really nasty powers + a world-shattering war from memory
21:20
Haven't read it so I'm not certain
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 9:22 PM
(it fascinates me how much of an authority you seem to be on a thing you haven't read :V)
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(It's terrible and bleak, it has lots of good fanfic)
21:23
(The worldbuilding is really good, so it is the default playground for "I have a cool superpower" ideas in certain circles of the internet)
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From what I recall, Scion was bullied until he just stopped fighting using illusions of his dead partner.
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Unsurprising
21:27
But yeah
21:27
Scion fight is uninteresting to me TBH
21:28
Because it's pretty, uh, deep-future stuff
21:28
And I'm pretty sure it wouldn't happen on the same scope if you killed Jack
21:28
And, well
21:28
He dies to a sniper rifle, if the shooter isn't a parahuman
21:29
(Which is a relevent point - is Taylor a parahuman?)
21:29
(Is another misguided attempt by QA to give her friends?)
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0111narwhalz 08/06/2019 9:36 PM
quality assurance should've worked a little harder :V
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@BizarroLand ♀ You know that no-one goes through all that training at the Imperial War College just to hit them with overwhelming force, right? They do that so they can carefully study the enemy in all of its forms and aspects in order to deliver a precise, highly calculated blow to the exact right spot. (With, admittedly, overwhelming force. But sometimes you just can't do transbranial surgery without an annihilation-pumped caedometric shaped-charge.) (edited)
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On another note, @Archon , I suspect it may be a lot easier to get close to what you want per the above if the contact is mediated through "the project team working on an experimental transbrane probe/communication device" rather than "the Transcend".
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I suspect that will be correct, yes
01:47
That annoys me for thematic reasons
01:47
(Of course, the device they have only works if someone on the other side is also using the same tech)
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0111narwhalz 08/07/2019 1:48 AM
"…huh, it seems to have landed inside someone's head."
01:49
"hey sorry this almost never happens"
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Well, it's still contact with the Transcend. It just avoids the difficult handwaving to get around the problems of having a direct hardline to God. (edited)
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though, the problem is that they can always hand the phone over
01:53
but i guess it's still not technically a transcend shard in her head
01:54
which is probably rather more significant than a fancy internal telephone
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0111narwhalz 08/07/2019 1:55 AM
I think placing a firm technical limit on the bandwidth would be a good way to prevent the readers doing what we did at first.
01:55
("why doesn't T just solve all the problems?")
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I am pretty certain @Archon does not want a soul-shard in her head, because that comes with a whole lot of attached constraints and abilities which would break the story horribly.
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yeah, i wouldn't recommend it
01:56
it'd be a short story, to be sure
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Firstly, I never said soul-shard
02:33
Secondly
02:34
I do want T to solve all the problems
02:34
That's the point of the story
02:34
I just want them to do it at human speed
02:34
Not dubious-at-best space-magic speed
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In short, very similar to the various (Doylist, not Watsonian) reasons why the Transcend is not, by and large, a direct player in its own 'verse.
02:39
It works much better as a god-verb quietly bending the universe around it in various subtle and still mostly subtle ways than actually climbing down from Olympus and tossing lightning bolts about. Metaphorically speaking.
02:39
I still default to saying it's the connection medium
02:40
Because that's what a god does
02:40
(And also because I don't see how to keep it out)
02:40
It hands the actual story-work mostly off to interested individuals
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If it's the aforementioned experimental transbrane probe team, that doesn't contradict the Transcend doing^Warranging the connecting in any necessary way. The submind of strangely convenient coincidences loves this sort of thing. (edited)
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What, "Experimental transbrane probe is telephone box to unrelated transbrane anomaly"?
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(People from outside who study these things point at the simply uncanny frequency of people just happening to be in the right place at the right time for the right thing to happen in the Empire -- to which said submind smiles enigmatically and says nothing.) I'm confident it could find a way to see that that particular project ran right into an unexpected success first time out, yeah.
02:47
Hell, given that time synchronization between universes is a matter of picking arbitrary time-like points on n-dimensional objects, and that it uses acausal oracles in its core processing, it's entirely possible that it started that project after finding out what the outcome will be-was.
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I'd say it's quite canny, not uncanny
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Heh.
02:52
Weirds the unaccustomed out when life actually starts behaving narratively, though. Everyone knows that people only accidentally fall into a meet-cute in front of the perfect romantic sunset which becomes a lifelong relationship in movies. That's not the way it's supposed to happen in real life. ...there, it's Tuesday. (Also, every other day, because the moon-sized god-brain is literally the best possible yenta.)
02:54
(I feel that the application of collective consciousness to running a knows-you-better-than-you-do-based dating service for its components is distinctly underused in SF. And coincidence is far too important to be left to chance.)
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Yeah, and I'm very okay with that kind of stuff from the transcend
02:58
The problem is the people saying that T should be able to trivially solve every problem with brute-force computation, and that therefore there's no story
02:59
There are ways around that, without actually sidelining T.
02:59
Mostly of the form of "The optimium solution to the problem is getting our local contact a therapist and an uplift consultant"
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On one hand, even if it were left out entirely, it’s hard to imagine that having access even over a narrow link to shittons of computation isn’t going to be quite useful. On the other hand, it’s by no means applicable to all problems. Even locally, while it’s theoretically possible to edit and recompile someone’s mind into the Captain Awesomepants version of themselves and overwrite them with it, that’s a huge violation of their selfness and the Transcend’d never do it.
03:08
And likewise, all the computation in the world won’t help you unless there are sensors and effectors on site and someone who understands them. And preferably who can make all the meaningful on-the-spot choices with them.
03:09
Or, to tl;dr this: what you said.
03:11
(And even that aside, it would so hate to break its millennia-long record of never having to ASSUME DIRECT CONTROL.)
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Yeah. So the medium term is "How quickly can we bum-rush having a functional upload system"
03:12
For a bunch of reasons
03:13
I have the idea stuck in my head that once Taylor is an uploaded she'll be able to handle much larger bandwidths
03:13
(Specifically, enough to move mind-states from verse to verse. Slowly)
03:14
(Enough to get the other major characters to have bodies in the plane of interest, not enough to bring an army accross)
03:14
(Probably, like ~24ish hours of disabling access per mindstate vector?)
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The initial upload systems there were based off resolution-enhanced NMRI machines, so given a current-tech MRI to start with and a decent workshop, I wouldn’t say replicating the base tech’d be too hard.
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That sounds plausible. You needs trustworthy people to watch you while you upload
03:17
... And I suspect residual forks might be an issue?
03:17
Would that be destructive?
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Those are a copy, not a wipe. They just snapshot brain structure and encode it.
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(You also have to hope there isn't a leviathan attack during the process :) )
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It’s usually a good idea to drug yourself unconscious during the process to reduce the brain-structure version of motion blur. 😃
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Because, uh. If we have taylor uploading non-destructively
03:19
With the intent of vastening and/or getting a few months sped-up therapy on the other side
03:19
What do you do with the old one?
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Hm.
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(Also, for the sake of clarity, I think all forks will have the link? It's known that AIs can have super-powers, and that's how they work if they're not shackled to all hell and back)
03:21
(Which the only sophont AI in the setting is)
03:21
(Speaking of which, we need to rescue her at some point)
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Well - thinking in terms of their ethics, anyway - you are allowed to keep your body ‘on ice’ and then destructively write yourself back into it, as it’s all you and you can make decisions like that for yourself. Of course, that’s a whole other tech.
03:22
(Makes sense to me.)
03:24
Treating it as the mind version of a git clone/edit/git push operation, effectively. Although building something that can download to meat is a much bigger deal.
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I'll get back to this later, Ive got a game of exalted to run
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Although if that doesn’t have to be immediate, I’m sure they can provide a copy of a book on building the tools to build the tools.
03:25
Righto. G’night.
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Goodnight!
03:27
(Noone appear to be here yet)
03:28
The problem is really, if you've got the material for re-downloading into a meat-body, you've probably got the stuff for another, better, body, with more processing space, as well?
03:29
Like, the real argument for re-downloading is just doing something with it
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Hm. I may have a way around that. Although this is late-night bull-session grade, fair warning... ...for super-crude downloading, how about using high-res transcranial magnetic stimulation, etc., to entrain the brain’s neural network to think identically to the upload’s?
03:34
I’m thinking this is likely to be slow, crude, and probably about as much fun to experience as a month-long bad LSD trip atop a schizoid episode, but for a one-off that doesn’t create much else except for a desire not to repeat it, it might work.
03:36
It just gets you back in your old world in a position to start doing something with those expanded faculties. (Building a better cerebral bridge, for a start.)
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... is "find bonesaw and tell her 'hey can you replace my brain with this laptop'" an option
06:48
(the answer is very no, but still)
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Enderminion 08/07/2019 9:52 AM
I'd totally do it if being threatened with a large bladed implement
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Morgrim Moon 08/07/2019 10:09 AM
@Overmind Alright so full fic is being slow, but I had a snippet of conversation in mind so consider this a nanofic follow up to Heads and Tails. --- [in conversation with the Insurance Agent] "Sorry. I'm still adjusting to bipedalism." "If the way you're piloting that shell wasn't enough, the way you're using Trade with eldraeic attitudinals would give it away." "My species... uh. My original species? Baseline? I'm not sure how this works linguistically? But we can't do variable pitch vocally, that portion of language is all gestural. Or attitudinals in writing. It's the only part of your language that makes perfect sense." "Meaning they're still learning how to do it natively. And constantly practicing inflections in the shower, along with other sonics." "You have mouthparts that can produce musical tones, do you not see how wonderous this is?" "I am going to buy you a beginner singing lessons. It's not even a gift, it's enlightened self interest. Or possibly self defence." "I'm still learning Imperial culture. If I asked nicely and explained why, do you think her parents would show me video of the first time she attempted to climb a tree?" "You might be new here, but I think you're gonna integrate just fine." ---
😂 6
👍 7
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Morgrim Moon 08/07/2019 11:11 AM
(the "I understand why you're terrible at singing, never having the ability to practice it, but you're terrible at it and I'm getting you lessons out of self defence" bit is what I couldn't get out of my head)
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Jade Nekotenshi 08/07/2019 11:18 AM
What's great to me is that I've heard people make that joke before, so to see it played straight is just hilarious!
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Morgrim Moon 08/07/2019 6:53 PM
It's still friendly teasing here, just with an undernote of deep truth. XD And hey, Imperial culture (or possibly just eldrae culture, I'm not sure) says that a well rounded soph is supposed to have two art skills, one to entertain and one to make gifts. If she's still genuinely fascinated with playing with sounds after a few lessons that works great as an 'art to entertain', it's a native perspective that probably gives interesting results.
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Quick side-note for @Archon on terminology I was reminded of this morning, seeing as while I think the term has been mentioned occasionally, it's never come up directly in canon: When thinking of therapy and suchlike, in the 'verse, what we call psychiatry and psychology goes by the name of iatropsychics, practiced by iatropsychists.
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Oh, neat!
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Jade Nekotenshi 08/08/2019 12:54 PM
I ought to have said ha-ha-only-serious rather than straight, true enough.
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BizarroLand ♀ 08/08/2019 3:48 PM
I do have a couple of 'ideas' for superpowers floating around in my head, but one of them doesn't fit the Wormverse rules and the other is too similar to one that exists
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Enderminion 08/08/2019 9:22 PM
the Soviet Union is a pretty good Superpower
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Until the Red Army can’t afford to mobilize and stop its’ republics from fighting each other
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Enderminion 08/08/2019 9:26 PM
is that a reference to the 92 coup attempt?
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I thought it was ‘91?
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john dougan(his grace/his grace) 08/08/2019 11:57 PM
The Soviet Union as Superpower: “Bulgaria with nuclear missiles”
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Missiles in Cuba!
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I think the classic quote was "Upper Volta with missiles" 😛
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john dougan(his grace/his grace) 08/09/2019 12:21 AM
Could be. I got it that way from Jerry Pournelle.
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@xandeross I've been trying to read that BOLO fic you linked
03:24
And it's an excellent what not to do
03:25
(That writer has a tendency to describe every conversation reacting to an event from every possible set of people, resulting in long sequences where he goes over every lot of people learning something happened and reacting to it more-or-less the same. I love thier ideas but their writing is so tedious)
03:28
(It's the writing equivalent of explaining my degree to every ones of my friends and relatives)
05:40
Assuming you can write flawless code with zero thinking required
05:40
What's the quickest way to get a piece of software out of your head and onto paper?
05:41
Do you try and write a program specifically for low charecter-count, and what does a large program optimised for such look like?
05:41
Incredibly hostile variable names I suspect
05:42
(though you're not immune to typos)
05:42
(So you can't be too hostile)
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You would probably write a program which decompresses and runs some other data you can write down more densely
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Got a typo-resistant data format lying around?
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i think you'd want to write your own compiler before anything
05:52
and design everything for minimum character counts and max typing speed
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Depends how big the job is
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Morgrim Moon 08/10/2019 5:52 AM
depending on what sort of program you're writing one of those graphic "drop in pieces" non-languages might be faster
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The software for an uploading machine is the archetype here
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depending on just how much thought you're putting in to it, it might be better to partially automate it or even have a sort of self-writing seed algorithm thingy
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But generically we're talking about efficent generation of software to run the hardware during your bootstrapping marathon
05:54
True, but information density+typos make that troublesome
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ah, typos are a issue?
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You have a alien brain supplying the perfect code
05:54
It still travels via your brain and eyes
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You could do typo resistance with some sort of error correction thing.
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yeah that's what i was thinking
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Line-by-line checksums?
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if you design it very well, it could make typos obvious or difficult
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Depends on the frequency of errors you expect.
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Morgrim Moon 08/10/2019 5:55 AM
in this case, does taking slightly longer to type it really matter? The limiting factor is still comprehenion, not touch typing sped
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is the limiting factor comprehension?
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well, comprehension in the sense of word-comprehension
05:56
Have you tried transcribing line noise by hand?
05:56
good point
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Or dense numerals
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then something like this wouldn't be more efficient +[-[<<[+[--->]-[<<<]]]>>>-]>-.---.>..>.<<<<-.<+.>>>>>.>.<<.<-.
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Morgrim Moon 08/10/2019 5:56 AM
yeah. I can type in numbers faster than I can process them by listening/reading them off a sheet of paper
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(that's "hello world" in 'brainfuck')
05:57
well in that situation
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Because you have to think "+" types plus "[" types square bracket
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you don't want maximal density, necessarily
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You want efficent use of the human bandwidth
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you might even want a compiler that associates a lot of different words with various operations or whole functions
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You want the best combination of non-typoing and density.
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exactly yeah
05:57
humans are a lot better at comprehending words quickly
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Which means words probably
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i still think seed-algorithm is the way to go, though
05:58
just a question of how you put it in
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I mean, to some extent, yeah
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it doesn't have to be full self-modifying AI or anything ridiculous like that
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But there are compressibility limits, I think
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possibly, but compression can get pretty impressive when you put in enough work
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True, true
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iirc the record for text is like, 7x compression
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(Plus we also need actually good algorithms because we're going to be running on minimum-viable hardware)
06:00
so we have a uhhh
06:00
(searching)
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We're trying to skip several hundred years of tech development in two months with a shoe-string budget.
06:00
(But god is giving us a cheat-sheet)
06:03
Uploading is a key milestone, since at that point we get like four different kinds of speed-ups
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(still searching)
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(i swear when i find this it's going to be relevant)
06:40
i can't find it
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[Search timeout after 41 minutes]
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there was a story about a AI that sent a person to another universe, where he basically built up to a seed AI from sticks and rocks over the course of decades
06:41
and i thought it'd be relevant
06:42
buuuut i can't find it, and i can't find where i found it either
06:44
(he didn't make it out of sticks and rocks. He basically went all one-man industrial revolution. He had a lot of practice.)
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Tattletale: You don't want Taylor to die Tattletale: And I don't want Taylor to die Tattletale: So now we gotta make sure Taylor doesn't want Taylor to die. Imp: Fantastic plan, but have you met...
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Morgrim Moon 08/15/2019 9:22 AM
thing I'm tempted to work in to fanfic-in-progress: alien hearing about how hard it is to go bioshells and protesting that actually they're okay with second hand shells as long as the previous owner vacated it willingly Because they're now assuming they're hideously expensive things, but cottoned on to the implications of that
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And out on the Periphery, they'd be right.
09:24
(Reason #2463 for getting out of the "Emerging Markets" category as soon as you can.)
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sdschildberg 08/15/2019 9:34 AM
Before someone starts raiding mourges for working shells
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Morgrim Moon 08/15/2019 9:34 AM
there's not going to be a lot of market for bioshells in their home system for a generation or two, the culture is firmly of the opinion that things-that-die are supposed to die and that trying to live forever tends to result in "and I must scream" scenarios. Which is fixable but will take a few decades. (Hence why the eldrae adventure was so pleased at their friend's "okay I feel horribly dysmorphic but I'm still me this is fixable" sudden acceptance of pattern identity theory, as opposed to previous dubious maybes) The first person to figure out that immortegans will be sellable as long as you market them as "you won't degenerate with age and can pick when you want to die" is going to make... well. Emerging Market, there's not really bank to make, but they'll save a LOT of souls and that's probably its own reward (edited)
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sdschildberg 08/15/2019 9:36 AM
The fact thats there might be a big red “I wanna demonitize myself” button would make immortogens easier on the noobs
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Morgrim Moon 08/15/2019 9:37 AM
de-monitise, or demon-itize? I'm confused what you're meaning
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sdschildberg 08/15/2019 9:38 AM
De-montise, another term for death
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Morgrim Moon 08/15/2019 9:38 AM
ahh
09:38
that seemed to be the context but I'd not heard of that euphamism before
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Can't say I have, either.
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Morgrim Moon 08/15/2019 9:39 AM
(also I do way too much background stuff for relatively short fics. >.> I've got huge chunks of biology and culture for a critter who's so far purely spoken dialogue)
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(Welcome to the club. I find the only answer is to write more of 'em. 😃 )
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sdschildberg 08/15/2019 9:41 AM
Sidenote: i would not be suprised of our use of Die for things like videogames and devices running out of battery would come across as odd over there
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Morgrim Moon 08/15/2019 9:41 AM
I think they'd get it fairly fast. Running out of energy = running out of life makes sense when you're all on a time limit
09:42
maybe find it morbid/bad taste
09:42
but so much human black humour falls into that category. "Understandable reaction to entropy based on historic context and probably baked in by now"
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I think the local metaphor for running out of battery is likely to be sleep/unconsciousness-based. After all, you can recharge 'em and be back up and running, so they're obviously not metaphorically dead . Silly humans.
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Morgrim Moon 08/15/2019 9:43 AM
True, but the metaphor originated before we could recharge batteries
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(Well, except for that one human-god hybrid who resurrected himself, but that would imply that humans think machines are gods. Well, that would explain a few things...)
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Morgrim Moon 08/15/2019 9:44 AM
granted, this might be regional, but "go flat" is more common than "die" here in aus
09:44
now I'm wondering where THAT came from. Flatlining?
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sdschildberg 08/15/2019 9:45 AM
Tires?
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Morgrim Moon 08/15/2019 9:47 AM
"This use of flat for an electric battery was first used in 1951 according to the OED (sense 9c). The others related senses are: 9a) wanting in energy and spirit (1604); 9b) depressed, dull or inactive trade (1831); and 9d) a drink that has lost its flavour or sharpness (1617)."
09:48
not having much lucky finding why flat ended up meaning "wanting in spirit", but that seems like it would be an acceptable metaphor.
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Probably affect-related.
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Morgrim Moon 08/15/2019 9:49 AM
fun note: in parts of australia flopping down on a surface like a couch or a bed, particularly face down, is called "being flat" or "going flat". eg "Today was exhausting, I'm going to go be flat now." Note, not in the sense of sleeping. So it's a fun dual meaning: I am horizontal and flat, and I have run out of energy and am flat.
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Morgrim Moon 08/15/2019 10:01 AM
thinking of it, species wouldn't have any sincere objection to raiding the morgue as long as the surviving friends/family were adequately compensated (once science has proven that there is definitely not a trace of original person left); they're remarkably pragmatic about using corpses for useful purposes. Recycling is good! Between that, their spatial awareness and comfort in low and later micro G (home planet is actually home moon around gas giant), reasonable radiation resistance (again, gas giant) and that they are already space faring-ish and comfortable getting out of their own gravity well, they have such nice potential as future galactic citizens! Just a few nasty and persistent memes to deal with first. At least they no longer think eldrae adventurers are invading to eat them. And were willing to listen when the eldrae insisted the kaeth adventures weren't there to eat them EITHER, even if that one took a little longer
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@Overmind @o11o1 The Skypath Punishment is a form of execution used by the Vile Born Imperium for starship navigators. The execution consists of taking the victim to a complex and high radiation star system, where they are placed in a small manuvering pod with limited supplies. Their "goal" is to rendezvous with a Reprieve Station, requiring multiple precise gravity assists through the system to achieve. The pod's supplies are sized so that this can only be accomplished if the navigator makes no mistakes, otherwise they will die through lack of breathing medium, radiation exposure, or simply running out of remass and being unable to rendezvous and dock.
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Vile Born Imperium ...whookay?
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Belchar’s World, Battle of: The Battle of Belchar’s World – a term referring to Fourth Belchar’s, 6882 – while in most respects another of the minor squabbles endemic …
12:07
"Skypath" came from o11o1's typo of "Skybath" in that post. I simply riffed off of that and what was in the post
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@Unknown They come from a region of space with a, shall we say, unfavorable radiation environment. They call themselves that because they see themselves as having literally risen from the filth of their own corruption, etc., etc.
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0111narwhalz 09/14/2019 12:32 PM
sound like lovely people
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They seem quite confident in themselves, who wouldn't after triumphing an unfavourable radiation environment? (edited)
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Random hypothetical post-Earth-contact scene:
13:30
INT. SHABBY BUILDING - EVENING. It is clear that this shabby building houses a dog-fighting ring. ASSHOLES hang around, being assholes. SUDDENLY, a horse-sized dogbot, the FANGTHANE 80, enters through the nearest wall.
13:31
13:31
Bits of wall fly everywhere. The LEADER of the ASSHOLES yelps in panic, and falls over. Assorted puddles form on the ground. Some assholes attempt to run away, but all the doors are locked, and the hole in the wall is blocked by a giant mechanical ass. The FANGTHANE 80 leans down into the LEADER's face, showing all its shiny metal teeth. FANGTHANE 80: Woof , motherfucker. FADE TO BLACK.
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sdschildberg 09/25/2019 1:32 PM
Is #probequest a form of fanfic 🤔
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Seriously, @Overmind . You need to write a canon first contact. Stop restricting these awesome ideas to fanfic of your own universe :V
👍 3
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sdschildberg 09/25/2019 2:04 PM
Too much uncanny valley for both sides Also too high a chance of poly ticks unless you do what #probequest kind of did and drag the timeline for terran development far enough ahead to make it less of an issue
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Yeah. Literally no way to do it without it turning into the worst kind of message fiction. I know; I tried.
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Nah, all you’d have to do is say “everyone bad” instead of “orange man bad”.
14:05
:V
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Doggo. (edited)
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Or "humans bad, eldrae awesome"?
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“Humans need uplift.”
14:06
No, WAIT.
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Pett robot doggo
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BRILLIANT IDEA
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sdschildberg 09/25/2019 2:06 PM
Pet robodog
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There's too much humans-bad fiction out there already.
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That's a dar-bandal in a cybershell, right?
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I dunno.
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(It's a depressing genre and I don't want to write it.)
14:07
Probably, yes.
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Didn't you also suggest something about a war-whale torpedoing a Japanese whaler?
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How about "Human is smart" type of genre?
14:08
that an't Star Trek
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First Contact taking place, say, tomorrow, BUT Eldraeverse as fiction exists. We shit our pants and so do the Eldrae. Fun times all around.
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(shudders)
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@Unknown The Martian maybe
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sdschildberg 09/25/2019 2:08 PM
You have to first write essentially a firmSF story about how mankind got here and what were doing than cross it over
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Star trek
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Would pushing the point of contact backwards work? (edited)
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Seems likely. Direct action tends to be a thing.
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Eldrae x Roman Empire crossover fic yes
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Reminder: species names are not capitalized.
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Because humans bad SF is more convenient to write
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Say Point of Contact circa 1800?
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@Unknown it was the first word in a sentence
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Unknown command.
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And most of these asshole human stories seem to be set in America
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Or maybe that's just author place of living
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sdschildberg 09/25/2019 2:09 PM
Because making the MC special is a common thing to do, better than the rest and all
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Keyboard malfunction
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"Humans are bastards" is kind of endemic to furry literature, I know a guy who writes stories about uplifts from the future going back in time and conquering Earth in various alternate past time periods.
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Fucking furries
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Set in Europe circa 1800?
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Why I wrote humans off twice in my universe.
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Some of us humans aren't dumb or bad
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sdschildberg 09/25/2019 2:10 PM
ST also shows the logical extension: humans can get better
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>Implying Tron isn’t dumb or bad
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heyyy (edited)
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@KAL_9000 sorry, don't like furries.
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FSVO "get better".
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FSVO?
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You don’t or I don’t? I’m not a furry, but I don’t hate them.
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"For Some Values Of"
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I don't really care for the suits. They tend towards uncanny valley imo.
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I am undecided on becoming aligned with the furries (edited)
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"Aligned"?
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Is @Zarpaulek a furry? I could never tell.
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Becoming one (edited)
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@KAL_9000 Was the avatar not obvious enough?
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sdschildberg 09/25/2019 2:13 PM
But the idea of optimism for the future as an alternative to “humans bad” still stands as a good idea, right?
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What's it like being a furry? That's my burning question
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Some people have anime girl avatars and aren’t anime girls :V
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Not that different from being an anime fan except most of the content is "fan" created.
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@Unknown like being any other soph, I imagine
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sdschildberg 09/25/2019 2:14 PM
Things get better-fic, in a way
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And there's probably more alcohol at the cons.
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Yeah, but in this scenario, the optimism has to be perceived as optimism.
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Some of them seem to be OK people, if posting occasionally odd comments like "birdbirdbirdbird"
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Birb
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If your characters are looking at it (ST) as basically "like Brave New World, only somewhat more dystopian"...
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Is schlock dystopian?
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implying BNW wasn’t dystopian enough
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Seems like an average day world, just far in the future
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Schlock is schlock
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I thought Brave New World was a consumerist-corporatist dystopia?
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sdschildberg 09/25/2019 2:16 PM
It was more the idea of the better angels of our nature winning out, which can be adapted to any belief
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Schlock Mercenary depends on the polity.
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And also hawt green alien wahmen
14:17
That are inexplicably attracted to a human male
14:17
ST fanfic idea: Green-skinned alien space babe is a Kerbal
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It's CRINGE
14:18
the green trope
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“Several people are typing”
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sdschildberg 09/25/2019 2:21 PM
Optimism that things can get better, that we can get our crap together, can be adapted to whatever the author thinks is something worth being optimistic about
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Well, by an eldrae-culture fiction standard, the Schlockverse is considerably more utopian than ST from TNG onwards. The latter (given the assorted horrors in their 21st-century backstory) looks like humanity ran away from 1984 and murdered most of the interesting parts of the human spirit in the process, ending up in a culturally-spartan technologically-stagnant space-communism version of BNW . So, y'know, I get the whole better angels of our nature idea - but no-one there would look at it that way. They'd look at it as a cautionary tale about how a culture can geld itself in every possible way.
14:23
I mean, it certainly has more problems, but the ST-verse comes across as having got rid of its vices by also purging all of its virtues in favor of painting everyone's souls in a lovely shade of beige, forever and a day.
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sdschildberg 09/25/2019 2:24 PM
I was more writing from a meta angle, about Just the idea of writing a tale of “things got better”, and I was mentioning trek as Gene wrote it explicitly for what he saw as optimism.
14:26
Its the natural escape for anyone who wants a change; write a vision of what comes after
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Yeah, fair enough. I do like that it tried/tries to be optimistic (and TOS, I believe, comes closest to achieving that), but TNG+ I can't but think of as a demonstration that aiming at a target is no guarantee of hitting it. (edited)
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sdschildberg 09/25/2019 2:27 PM
DS9 fully admits that things can miss, part of the reason people like it
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Hey, TNG gave us the Borg and Q. And Voyager and Enterprise gave us nevermind
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sdschildberg 09/25/2019 2:28 PM
The alternative to “things got better” is worldbuilding people who were good from the start
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well, the eldrae sorta got handed goodness, if you want to put it like that
14:36
the big ol' spacedragons scooped up some humans, said "well this is all wrong", and shifted things about
14:36
but on the other hand, not quite
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“big ol’ spacedraogns” Best precursor hot take
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I think it makes a more plausible to have a setting that is moderately optimistic, but slightly dystopian
14:37
a balance
14:37
bad stuff happens, but people will learn
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As all things should be
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and things will get better
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because they actually sorta took the vulcan route, because they started off extremely emotional and counquered it
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not "Cyberpunk-corporate-land-where-chromeboys-fight-other-gangs-because-it's-hekking-useful/fun" (edited)
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sdschildberg 09/25/2019 2:38 PM
Thats what ENT and mabye DS9 should have been
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Not even beige: it's all haze grey.
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Several people are typing
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(also, TNG is way behind on AI rights. FFS, they had to argue that Data was a person in a court of law)
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I think it's kinda about convenience and sellability to the author: Who doesn't like a good dystopian read from time-to-time?
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Yeah... That'll be a problem.
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Goodness? Oh, my, no. The legacy of the trakelpanis trakoras aman was more along the lines of a near-terminal case of MY WILL BE DONE.
14:39
Who doesn't like a good dystopian read from time-to-time? Me.
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well, sorry, i should say
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and also me
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they weren't given goodness
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On Earth as it is in heaven.
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they had badness removed
14:40
badness being, yknow, a lot of human-y bits
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Give us this day our daily bread,
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Hey! humans are ok
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and they sorta tried to replace it with slave-race-ness, except they died off and it turned out pretty good in the long run
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@Unknown Not all of them. (edited)
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sdschildberg 09/25/2019 2:40 PM
Dystopia is depressing And utopias can always have holes found in it by people who don’t buy into the authors idea of one
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a number of them at least
14:40
to be more precise
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Arguably, they had stupid removed. Which prevents a lot of accidental badness, but does very little to prevent deliberate badness. That's how you get Renegades.
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a lot of that, yeah
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@Unknown within delta of 0%
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i also see it as, say...
14:41
they had consistentness added
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Star Trek very much seems like a dystopia, giving their draconian ban on all genetic engineering and their "genetic mod bad" attitude
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none of the logic that the Eldrae use is really, necessarily, alien
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Reminder: species names are not capitalized.
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I think their logic is relatable
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but most people just don't... think of it
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several people are typing
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like, lemme give a example i thought of from something i was reading
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sdschildberg 09/25/2019 2:42 PM
Again, utopia requires the viewer to buy in, to suspend disbelief that it could work
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so i've been reading through Worm, and part way through there's this huge disaster and people have to evacuate to shelters
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The earliest iterations of the Fundamental Contract were founded in "This is the discipline that we need in order to not destroy everything ."
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Utopia's point is that it is a thing that can't really happen
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and the rule for that is "don't bring too much stuff or big pets or such"
14:42
and people bring too much stuff and big pets and stuff
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at least not in the form we can all appreciate
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and that's exactly what you expect
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FALC seems like a nightmare idea to me
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Actually, you know what would really be horrifying for the eldrae? The Giver. No free will at all.
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Fully Automated Luxury Communism
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DEATH IS A PREFERABLE ALTERNATIVE TO COMMUNISM.
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Even the fully automated luxury kind.
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sdschildberg 09/25/2019 2:43 PM
trek did FALC first
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and it's not that, if you sat down with the average person and talked about it, they'd say "okay, yeah, good point, if everyones doing it becomes a problem, and i shouldn't have really brought all that stuff"
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Decadence implies lack of will to work, which implies willingness to die
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the problem is, they didn't start wit hthat
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anyone here read The Giver?
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I have heard of it
14:44
eesh
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Nope. Look at people's quarters in ST: they're very bare, almost spartan.
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the twins bit
14:44
omg
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Ain't no Luxury in their FAC.
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they didn't stop and think "wait shit i shouldn't be ignoring these reasonable rules here" when it was happening
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now THAT's a zap of "don't look at the workings supporting this thing"
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they can follow the logic and even agree with it just fine, it just doesn't come up at all in the first place
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The Givers ending? unlikely
14:45
they died of hypothermia
14:45
sorry for spoilers
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the eldrae's biggest strength, as i see it, is that they do
14:45
they stop, they work it out, they think things through
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@Overmind have you read The Giver?
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and they manage to be reasonably fast about it and not stall everything to a halt
14:46
part of that is better and more consistent critical thinking skills and other general intelligence, but part of it is... something else
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(I actually have a piece in the works describing what poverty looks like the CEZ, and it looks disturbingly like that: people who've crammed all the possessions they can bear to part with back into the fabricators because their "replicator ration"-equivalent sucks.)
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CEZ?
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One man's heaven is another man's hell
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central economic zone
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FALC is hell to me
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Core Economic Zone.
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oh, my bad
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No, just its tropes. Which were enough, and more than enough.
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actually, that's a question i wanted to ask
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Does anyone have any first contact fanfics to recommend?
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compared to your typical cornucopia, how much bulkier is the addon that lets you feed in misc junk or raw materials like dirt or ore and turn it into stuff
14:48
assuming you don't care all that much about speed or efficiency
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It takes a high temperature heat generator to atomize the components
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so, big?
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Notably a fusion torch or nuke-pumped laser
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because i was reading the Friendship is Sufficiently Advanced fiction, and i was thinking that while she brought a cornucopia, she didn't have anything beyond the feedstore stores that survived the crash
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the higher power density, the merrier
14:49
(until you get to antimatter, of course)
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it... really doesn't take a nuke pumped laser to atomize small quantities of material
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if you don't want it to be 1: big 2: faster than a snail not in a hurry
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a small laser would suffice... and heat might not even be the best way to do it; not all feedstocks are raw elements
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at least industrial types
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iirc a commercial-scale model is mentioned as being large-room size
14:50
or something to that effect
14:50
but i'm more curious about what the widget you make when you're stranded but you have a working fusion reactor and cornucopia
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Side thought: I wonder if we will ever get 2x2x2 or even 1x3 metre crate sized fusion reactors in the future?
14:51
something we can install in a house and power everything with (edited)
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If shlock is to believed (and the defunct page on it was pretty convincing), you could fit it in a backpack
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1 metre cubed
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a fusion reactor, that is
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Yeah, among the first things on the out-of-the-fabber list (given that she can salvage one of the existing power reactors) is a proper nanosource.
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nanosource?
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You can - with considerable additional wear and tear - run a cornucopia on what's called "raw-grade feedstock", basically any matter suitably pulverized and suspended in water, but it's hell on efficiency and energy consuption, hard to get elements in poportion, produces lots of ware material, etc., etc.
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Another side thought: Is there such a thing as "nanosauce"?
14:53
(sauce with nanosubstance within it)
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oh yeah, they use nanobots anywhere its convenient
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I guess there are some who savour such tastes
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one given example is bath salts with it
14:54
there's probably some sauces with nanos, for exotic effect
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A standard commercial cornucopia, on the other hand, runs on standard-grade (either green or gray) feedstock, which comes to you down a utility pipe, and the waste from which is sent back the same way for reprocessing. Gray, optimized for basic mechanosynthetic applications, contains water, long-chained alcohols, sulphur and nitrogen compounds primarily, with a suspension of iron and copper oxides, heavy metals, silicates, acetates, and prefabricated molecular components, including nanograins of common, reusable industrial plastics, ceramics, and alloys. Green, contrariwise, is for biosynthetic applications.
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14:56
(There are also specialized industrial- and prime-grade feedstocks tailored for specific applications, but those are part of what make autofacs more effective, not something you use at home.)
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14:56
The nanosource is the beginning of this process.
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any good fanfic recs?
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I wonder if there is a gun that takes in feedstock and rapidly manufactures it into inert slugs for firing fast enough to be intaked and converted several ten times a second?
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Doubtful.
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a dirtgun
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Typically, you've got a vaguely organic-looking industrial building that breathes in air, sucks up water from a convenient river, and accepts deliveries of all sorts of different metals and other elements in ingot form, often fresh from the recycler next door; it chews through all of these and pumps out fresh feedstock into the lines.
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"For the farmer who wants rid of pests, but doesn't have the buck to buy cartridges"
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That's one dirt-poor farmer.
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sdschildberg 09/25/2019 2:59 PM
Dirt turret for the scale that justifies a convertor Aka a dirturret
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There is a solar-powered field weapon that compiles diamondoid flechettes from atmospheric CO2, carbon organizers being some of the lowest-tech nanoconstructors around. That said, this is a ridiculously inefficient way to do things, and so only really useful if you expect to be completely cut off from any kind of resupply. We're in deep, deep SERE territory at this point.
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SERE?
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Smart users will use it periodically to shoot their enemies in the head and steal their, better, guns.
15:02
Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) is a program, best known by its military acronym, that provides U.S. military personnel, U.S. Department of Defense civilians, and private military contractors with training in evading capture, survival skills, and the military...
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sdschildberg 09/25/2019 3:02 PM
So a Crappy Starter Pistol with realistically infinite ammo Got it
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Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) is a program, best known by its military acronym, that provides U.S. military personnel, U.S. Department of Defense civilians, and private military contractors with training in evading capture, survival skills, and the military code of conduct.
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Okay.
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and a painfully slow reload
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Unless you can stock up on flechettes.
15:03
Then reload won't be as big of a deal.
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this is true
15:04
though really, its kinda a "You'll never have to use this. Probably. Hopefully." gun
15:04
a gun for a situation that really shouldn't ever occur, but might anyway
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What about a slugthrower pistol that just fires a bullet?
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low tech but it would work
15:18
it'd be like using a flintlock in modern times
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An M1911 is a practical pistol invented in the early 20th century (edited)
15:19
first invented in 1911
15:19
still used today
15:22
Even the US police forces use it to this day
15:22
Many civilians find it patriotic and straightforward to use
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sdschildberg 09/25/2019 3:23 PM
But when everyones a cyborg, it be like using a bow and arrow and dagger. Useful but only if you work it
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I think a survival shotgun type of weapon would be more versatile in the variety of ammunition it could use (edited)
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And yet it needs support. The point of this survival weapon is that it doesn’t.
15:33
Your simplest possible black-powder slugthrower requires access to carbon, sulphur, potassium nitrate, some kind of soft metal, and at least simple tools. Or else once you run out of ammunition... you have a stick.
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True
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Or a paperweight.
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Assuming you have access to paper.
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I kind of suspected some eldrae made that "ammo from air" gun solely to mess with polities that restrict weaponry.
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I think it was mentioned in Core War or something that that was a result.
16:15
First there was the Adaptech Adventurer’s Pistol, and that was bad for those us who believe in trying to exert some sort of control over the proliferation of arms in our countries. Usually yo…
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Morgrim Moon 11/07/2019 6:23 PM
weird musings: if you're assisting or an asset of Imperial Intelligence Services, and shit hits the fan, we know they'll try to extract you. And if you don't have a vector stack they'll do this via removing your head. Fair enough, this meshes nicely with "nobody gets left behind" eldrae mentality.
18:27
I'm kinda thinking of some species with a culture that has historically used beheading for certain purposes, and so it has Connotations. Ones that someone may have forgotten to put in the briefing. So poor asset is trying to psyche self up, agent tries the "look we want your mindstate this is momentary extreme unpleasantness I give you my word we're gonna bring you back", and asset snaps back that sure and they trust the agent, that's not the problem; tell me how hard would it be for an Imperial if they were told they had a choice between death or rescue, but rescue required a public vidfeed of them kneeling.
18:28
Presumably this is when a sensible agent goes oh, makes note to update the briefing, and says they have something to burn the body
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sdschildberg 11/07/2019 6:29 PM
Oh yeah, thats the local horrifying idea: kneeling
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Huh, that seems to be a legitimate problem.
18:30
(Though not sure how directly the tie betweeen kneeling and the specific symbology is there?)
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sdschildberg 11/07/2019 6:30 PM
Kneeling shows submission
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Morgrim Moon 11/07/2019 6:30 PM
I was thinking something along the lines of historically beheading = massive social disgrace, only done to [insert local taboo]
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Kneeling is a big taboo for the eldrae, due to their big SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS wank
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Morgrim Moon 11/07/2019 6:31 PM
so in our culture, having your corpse found like that with no obvious reason for it would have everyone and their dog convinced you were a multiple child rapist or something
18:32
Precise reason is less important than the implications of "oh shit our bug out method just slammed into a major culture clash"
18:33
one that's fixable - hello mindripper knives - but in this particular instance requiring time and/or tools they don't actually have
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Really, it's one example of the general case. While the very condensed guide to court etiquette sums it up as "do not under any circumstances kneel; it is an insult that will kill you", the courteous and cautious visitor would do well to avoid any and all signs of obeisance, and in judging this, note that the 45-degree bow is considered sufficient formal respect for emperors and gods. The runér really, really hate it when you appear to confuse them with the korásan .
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What happens if you trip and fall on your face?
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Someone helps you up and you feel really, really embarrassed.
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Okay.
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it's the intent behind the gesture, not the gesture itself
17:01
doing something that incidentally looks like a kneeling or a excessive bow, etc, is fine so long as they're clear on that, and tripping would definitely clearly not be a intentional gesture
17:02
(though I imagine there might still be a bit of distaste for anything along the lines of "local cultural gesture that looks like kneeling but is just a display of polite respect, not obeisance")
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Could I have some feedback on this story (It is a WiP)?
10:25
Create a new document and edit with others at the same time -- from your computer, phone or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Docs to edit Word files. Free from Google.
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BluejayHurricane 12/10/2019 11:07 AM
What are you going for here?
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I'm not totally sure yoet.
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BluejayHurricane 12/10/2019 11:07 AM
If horror, than the reader knows the monster too quickly.
11:09
If exploratory fiction, then the protagonist knows too much.
11:12
Consider who should know what. Information flow control is your friend here.
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Okay.
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BluejayHurricane 12/10/2019 11:18 AM
On the plus side, you are capturing other really well. For someone trying to dream (and presumably sleep) as little as possible, that’s really important. People don’t think right when they’re tired.
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Fanfic idea:
18:15
Eldrae scout ship crash-lands on uninhabited planet in uncharted star system. Mark Watney has a new roommate.
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sdschildberg 12/10/2019 6:23 PM
You’d think that a NASA that can make contact with Mark would see the pion drive, not to mention radio noise.
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Ah, but can they do anything about it?
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Morgrim Moon 12/10/2019 6:26 PM
send lots and lots of radio transmittions to the Imperial Exploratory Service vessel coming to rescue its scout?
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sdschildberg 12/10/2019 6:27 PM
Other than outfitting Ares 3 for contact with an unknown alien, not much. Think the mars mission in the opening cutscene from Destiny.
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Morgrim Moon 12/10/2019 6:27 PM
Honestly, I don't think the timeline would work, because it might take 2 years to get a Mars mission there (assuming poor alignment) but the green star will be visible way before that, and I doubt we'd be doing a manned mission to Mars if a lighthugger is backing into the system
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i guess you'd need Space Magic to teleport the scout to Mars after the storm for the timeline to work
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Jade Nekotenshi 12/10/2019 6:30 PM
Wrinkle - there's a stargate in-system already.
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Morgrim Moon 12/10/2019 6:31 PM
if one invokes some sort of wormhole or other way of sidestepping that, you've got an eldrae who is doing a lot of gleeful WTFing (much like in the MLP crossover) because signs will strongly point to Psudeoeldrae Archae. But yep survival is important, and here is the local equiv of a scout, it seems? And trying to survive too. We can team up here. Civilisation is throwing efforts into rescue? Great! They're not hopeless! Now, can I hook up my cornucopia to your feedstock while we attempt to figure out linguistics...
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Jade Nekotenshi 12/10/2019 6:32 PM
It's a precursor gate, the other end of which is somewhere just off the ass-end of Imperial/League space
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sdschildberg 12/10/2019 6:32 PM
And mars<<<the alien megastructure in terms of intrest
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Jade Nekotenshi 12/10/2019 6:34 PM
Sure, but who says we can see the stargate? (Or that the Imperial scout knows there's a civilization on the other side)
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Morgrim Moon 12/10/2019 6:34 PM
from Whatley and honestly NASA's perspective, they're not going to think "alien race uplifted from Homo Erectus", they're going to think "future-human has fallen back in time SOMEHOW" because that is, by our current understanding, honestly more physics-friendly.
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sdschildberg 12/10/2019 6:35 PM
Or just “alien”.
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Morgrim Moon 12/10/2019 6:35 PM
same body plan and biochemistry compatibility issues
18:35
and, you know, recognising things like 'dog'
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There are no bandals on Mars, tho
18:36
So would that even come up?
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sdschildberg 12/10/2019 6:39 PM
The only reasonable way for near future human to meet <SETTINGTIME> eldrae is if someone goes through a xenotech gate.
18:40
And the Precursors had to nick Homo Erectus somehow
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Didn't the Precursors have bullshit free-flight FTL?
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Also keep in mind that The Martian semi-canonically takes place in The Expanse-verse.
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sdschildberg 12/10/2019 6:42 PM
Replace alien FTL object A with paleotech FTL object B.
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James Holden meets the eldrae might be pretty interesting too.
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0111narwhalz 12/10/2019 6:44 PM
via the protomolecule gate thingy?
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Ares III lands in 2035
18:45
The Expanse takes place in 23XX
18:45
Bit of a time difference :V
18:45
(for the Holden thing, though I guess a separate Expanse fic would fix that)
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sdschildberg 12/10/2019 6:46 PM
It is the only sane way to get that verse to make contact with the Worlds without ripping the early plot to shreds
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0111narwhalz 12/10/2019 6:46 PM
>wormholes
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Yeah makes sense
18:47
so wait the Precursors created the protomolecule?
18:47
(not the Expanse Precursors, the Eldrae Precursors :V)
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I think Eldraeverse has multiple Precursors.
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It'd be the same Precursors that built Eliera and kidnapped Homo erectus
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0111narwhalz 12/10/2019 6:49 PM
Hermes is mysteriously lost with all hands on the return path, going through a strangely open wormhole in free space, and time-displacing it 300 years into Expanse mainline—where suddenly a green star appears in the skies of one of the gated worlds.
18:49
For maximum (???)
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Yeah, the galaxy is very old, and there have been lots of previous inhabitants. Most of whom have disappeared under mysterious Fermi circumstances.
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@Overmind As Supreme God of the Eldraeverse, do you have any thoughts on the crossover idea?
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0111narwhalz 12/10/2019 6:51 PM
we already know Cerebrate's opinion on eldrae meeting humans :V
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Maybe I should revive that EP crossover I wrote one quick entry for.
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In general, true, but perhaps it would go over better with First Contact being with someone like Watney, who is... pretty eldrae, if we're being honest
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i do kinda feel like a eldrae joining forces with him would make things trivial
19:01
unless they basically showed up completely naked
19:02
a cornucopia or even a uhhh, whatever the handheld mini-tool thing is called, would make that situation near-trivial
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Alternate Expanse contact opportunity: Hello, Mormons!
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0111narwhalz 12/10/2019 7:04 PM
hm, that'd be an… interesting segment of humanity
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Even worse than the general humans
19:05
You'd have to somehow get the Nauvoo to get finished and not hijacked
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(Eh, maybe not completely trivial with just a nanolathe, but having a handy-dandy colony design library sure does simplify things a bit. Still gonna be a decent struggle at the start to get a local industrial base up and running, but by the time Ares 4 gets there, it's at least possible that they'd be arriving at Watney International Starport, Markopolis, Mars.)
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You'd also need to somehow get the Mormons to not devolve into religious sects and kill each other in holy wars during the transit
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i think the biggest difference would be early on; with the sheer amount of macgyvering necessary to work around the limited parts and the fact that if it's broken it can't be replaced
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And have them survive whatever's at Tau Ceti
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Mormons have their weirdnesses, but in general, I find them to be a pleasantly low-asshole chunk of humanity.
19:07
And I was thinking encounter-in-transit.
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@Overmind My family is Mormon
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Aside from the child-marrying splinter sects.
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Trust me
19:07
They put on a nice veneer
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a tool that could, for example, pretty easily repair Sojourner would be a big difference
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But they're pretty awful once you get to know them
19:08
Like the screaming at gay people and an even more extreme version of Reality Denial Syndrome common to all religious sects
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in fairness, it's 2,300
19:09
consider how much other religious or political groups can change over the course of 300 years
19:11
i don't recall seeing all that much characterization of how the Mormons actually behave 2,300 aside from being firm about wanting their umptillion-dollar space ship finished, and later returned at all, which is perfectly reasonable when talking about umptillion-dollar spaceships
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They didn't have much coverage in the books, just know they commissioned the biggest spaceship built by mankind and they formed a human chain to try and prevent its' commandeering.
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a human chain?
19:12
huh, i don't think that got into the tv series
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That was basically the only time they appeared on screen in the books.
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Alternatively, one could go with "the Freedom's Seed COG quietly leaks improved habtech to those bits of the OPA that seem more interested in bettering the Belt than punishing the Inners".
19:15
Or, at least, who understand that living well is the best revenge, especially when they have to come to you hat in hand to ask if they can maybe please have some of that shiny belt-tech.
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sdschildberg 12/10/2019 7:15 PM
The fact that there are Aliens mucking about in the sol system would have interesting effects once it leaks.
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the eldrae don't really do 'leaks', though
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sdschildberg 12/10/2019 7:17 PM
“Leaks” as in distributes with minimal effect for maximum impact
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did you just go up against Word of God?
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no i mean
19:18
sorry i was trying to find the article
19:18
SOP is to make first-contact very not quietly
19:18
being quiet and subtle generally gives the wrong impression after all
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I thought they had a word for "gifts that fundamentally disrupt society"
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Oh, making First Contact is generally done very not quietly.
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Freedom Seed COG might quietly leak things, but by the time they're in a position to do so the entire system would be aware of first contact
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What happens after first contact is a whole other issue.
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Maybe help finish the Martian terraforming project in exchange for OPA recognition?
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Not sure they could do that in time to stop the exodus.
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Which may include doing lunch with Fred Johnson and explaining regretfully that it could never be official policy to leave a briefcase full of all sorts of handy schematics and a tech prototype of a fabricator core, exactly like this one, say, lying around where some interested party might get hold of it, obviously. That would be wrong. But. y'know, accidents do sometimes happen, and there's not much you can do about those. My, is that the time? Really must dash. Got my coat, got my hat, bye! (edited)
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sdschildberg 12/10/2019 7:22 PM
Officiall Unofficial policy
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for me, it gets a little difficult to picture what happens after first contact
19:24
because the going policy is basically free trade
19:24
and cornucopias are not exactly expensive, especially if you settle for a copyright-expired old model
19:24
and they can self replicate
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sdschildberg 12/10/2019 7:25 PM
“aliens roll up” is kinda a major black swan, which starts having effects with the first green star.
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this is true
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sdschildberg 12/10/2019 7:26 PM
Maybe the apparent threat would bring unity, allowing mankind to define itself as one tribe. Maybe it would cause the cursed diplomatic situation to crumble.
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possibly all of the above at the same time
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In an unstable tripolar situation like that, it's generally considered lucky if the sight of incoming lighthugger doesn't cause everyone to start a war with everyone else.
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The threat of the Protomolecule seems unable to unite humanity for longer than five minutes.
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and the protomolecule was, arguably, more significant than distant-green-dot first contact
19:27
what with nearly throwing a giant asteroid at a inhabited planet
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0111narwhalz 12/10/2019 7:27 PM
pale blue dot, meet pale green dot
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and then throwing it at a uninhabited planet instead at ludicrous speeds
19:28
and then the giant thingy floating off of Venus' surface
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And the whole eating the population of a small planet.
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0111narwhalz 12/10/2019 7:28 PM
with attached "physics? feh!" side effects
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Now, if I were to pick a starting point for this crossover, I might set it, say, shortly after Cibola Burn . You could go back to any time after Abaddon's Gate , really, but let's let humanity start playing with the gate-builder tech and becoming interstellar first.
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oh and don't forget the part where someone tried to investigate and it took apart the entire ship like a master watchmaker disassembling a watch, on camera
19:29
in mid air (edited)
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Through one of those rings in gate-space is an already populated system. Where some lovely mad scientists working for Probable Technologies, ICC, were answering the question "what happens if we introduce this blue Precursor goo to a mile-long can of instant primordial soup mix".
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i like watching more than reading, so i haven't seen past the latest season of the tv series
19:30
which ended at the gates being unlocked, whichever book that is
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Yeah, that's basically the end of Abaddon's Gate , in book terms.
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Or the instant inertial dampening it inflicted on that kid who tried threading the needle
19:31
Cibola Burn is what Amazon's about to cover.
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oh yeah, it perfectly stopped his ship, intact, but not quite him
19:31
the precursors ought to have touched up the software a bit there tbh
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Cue sudden caution from everyone as a case of mutual "are you the people who built this thing?" kicks in.
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though in fairness i guess that if you're making a self-replicating seed that can basically create a entire portal gate from a drop of seed material then "inertial dampening in edge-case scenarios after gate is built" is pretty far down the list of priorities (edited)
19:37
(also yeah, that's a diplomatic landmine right there; you do not want to be confused for the neglectful precursors who almost just intentionally a entire star system) (edited)
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I want a Muv-Luv crossover, not so much for happy BETA extermination (Murderbots! The problem can be solved by a few dozen division of murderbots! Yay!) but utter exasperation of Eldrae upon political... septic tank with live munitions inside. I lack words to describe how... insane politics in Muv-Luv are for a species in war of extermination against shitty von-neumann swarm.
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Jade Nekotenshi 12/31/2019 10:56 AM
I'd sorta be interested in seeing "Galactica wanders into Imperial space", though I can't decide if that'd be more interesting with old!BSG or new!BSG
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“Excuse me, sir, do you have a moment to discuss the practical applications of space fighters?”
11:01
(But yeah, could be interesting.)
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New!BSG you have the issue of humanoid Cylons.
11:25
Also, no aliens there.
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“Oh, look, there is life in the Perseus Barren Region.”
11:27
“...really dumb life, granted, but still...”
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Inevitable plot twist: humanoid Cylons are essentially nanocyborgs. So is virtually everyone from a top-tier-tech polity in the Worlds.
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BizarroLand ♀ 12/31/2019 11:40 AM
hahhaha
11:40
oh boy
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Morgrim Moon 12/31/2019 11:40 AM
IN: We are going to stop this almost-post-sophs from exterminating these near-baselines just on principal. And then we'll see if both of them need classifying as part of the League of Tribal Chiefdoms, that's sadly all too common in this sort of mess
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(First-order consequence: freakin’ hand-held medical diagnostic tools function as perfect Cylon detectors, because they have to do so to function. Contrariwise...)
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sdschildberg 12/31/2019 11:43 AM
“Medical aid” might help in stopping the cylons, who did do a mass terror bombardment on a garden world IIRC
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Morgrim Moon 12/31/2019 11:44 AM
just... randomly thinking about it, wouldn't an ordinary set of scales also function as a crude cylon-detection device? There's no way their extensive cybernetics have the same density as visrea
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Ain't new!BSG everyone are nanocyborgs of various levels of hacked on later time addons due to whole cyclic nature? So you got dormant ten thousand years nanocyborg system roughly patched over and hacked with five thousand year old nanocyborg systems roughly hacked and patched over with twenty year old nanocyborg system in bioCylon? And only difference is in some they are active and in some they are just there. (edited)
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Jade Nekotenshi 12/31/2019 12:41 PM
My favorite crossover by far, though, has to be with MLP:FIM. (Friendship is Sufficiently Advanced, specifically, but there's a few other ways it could work that would have similar energy - there was a bit on FIMFiction about the first interstellar journey from Equestria that, as I recall, petered out right as they discovered some kind of alien stargate. That would be a solid jumping-off point too.) The two 'verses just have such similar energy.
12:49
Can't wait for more
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@Jade Nekotenshi I know a fic that had ponies on a lightsail until they reached a gate that brought them into a crossover with the author’s furry verse
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Jade Nekotenshi 12/31/2019 1:24 PM
I'm shocked I've never seen an MLP/Chakona Space crossover, all things considered. (That said, CS is Trek with the serial numbers encrypted with some schoolbook cipher and meowing, so...)
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That's the fic I was talking about, actually
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Jade Nekotenshi 12/31/2019 1:25 PM
Hah!
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The Anomaly was a star in the Equestrian night sky that was unlike all the others in the heavens. Advances in science and magic had only deepened the mystery. Finally it was decided to send a starship to learn what they could. This is their story.
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I really need to get more written on that. It's just that I also need to get into the right headspace to write it, which is annoyingly difficult when my depression is kicking my ass.
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Jade Nekotenshi 12/31/2019 1:28 PM
Ouch, yeah, I know that pain 😦
13:28
(This would be why Moonway Chronicles has stalled out for me ATM too :/ )
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(Also have a blog post to write on certain AUness bits in re S9, although in fairness, history is already jumping the tracks and crashing through station walls by the time the fic will have caught up to the end of S3.)
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@Morgrim Moon They don't seem to have extensive cybernetics in any way that can be detected with the naked eye or Colonial-grade medical tech - as Cavil complains, they seem to be made to a ridiculously human pattern - so I don't think their weight is likely to be all that far out of the normal range. (I note for reference that eldrae [nanocyborgs] do weigh more than one might expect, due to things like denser bones stived through with strengthening C-allotropes, but the Cylon humanoids don't appear to have capabilities notably beyond baseline humanity. Some transsophonts they.)
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Jade Nekotenshi 12/31/2019 2:28 PM
Way too optimized for passing as baseline, I'd think.
14:29
Carbon for bone reinforcement? Didn't think of that one!
14:30
(Some of the durability augmentations used in Rising Star use zirconium for bone reinforcement which I thought of due to biocompatibility. OF course, that's way the hell denser than bone usually is, so...)
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As for bombardments of garden worlds: I note first that the Cylons either use very clean nukes, or else suck at saturation bombardments. Not only does ancient "Earth" still have a functioning biosphere, but it doesn't even appear to be more irradiated than, say, the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Not saying you want to open an orphanage there, but it's nowhere close to deadly, never mind ecocidal. Meanwhile, the Cylons (and the resistance) are both extensively active on Caprica post-bombardment, with no discernable signs of radiation poisoning or a particle winter going on. And the Cylons are supposed to be particularly affected by radiation (which we learn at Ragnar Anchorage). So while they've broken the hell out of the Conventions of Civilized Warfare (the reciprocal part of the Ley Accords), they're nowhere near a Chapter I violation. (edited)
14:39
So we've got, on the one hand, "attempted genocide" versus on the other hand, "enslaved entire race". Ain't no-one coming out of this comparison looking good, even once the task force turns up and delivers a brief sermon on "why you should keep your war out of our territorial space, kthx".
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Jade Nekotenshi 12/31/2019 2:43 PM
Yeah, no. old!BSG might have the Colonials looking a little more favorable, though.
14:44
(that said, old!BSG had the big plot hole of, err, how exactly did that Cylon attack kill more than a few thousand? they were strafing with cannon that didn't even seem to hit as hard as modern 40mm cannon. Can certainly kill some people, but, err, genocide? Hm.)
14:45
New!BSG was really trying to be grey-vs-grey, though.
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The alpha baseline uses C-allotropes mostly because carbon is something that you're not going to be short of as a nanocyte inside a carbon-based organism.
14:56
Now, if you get a retrofitted bone weave, like the sort of thing that comes with the military-basic package, that veneers your bones with titanium-nanotube composite.
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Jade Nekotenshi 12/31/2019 2:56 PM
Ahhh, that makes good sense.
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But that's not in the default, because having a bone weave (usually accompanied by the muscle and skin equivalents) tends to readily show up on medical scans, and even to some extent to the naked eye.
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Jade Nekotenshi 12/31/2019 2:58 PM
RS bio-mods are more often surgical; rather crude by comparison, but it's also a comparatively new technology. (So you'd get permanently implanted reinforcing elements, rather than grown-in-situ ones produced by nanocytes; the latter is experimental stuff for humans, even if some xenosophs use it routinely.)
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My parahumans use titanium bone reinforcement specifically because it's bio-neutral. And they were originally bioroids built for zero-g.
14:59
Osteoclasts can't dissolve it.
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(In the #shardverses, something similar is my explanation for pegasus crash resistance. It's a lot easier to withstand that sort of thing when your skeleton is made of advanced carbon-composite materials.)
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That's why I went with the titanium for the bone weaves. Although they come with their own... nanoosteo[c|b]lasts, since nothing says ow like a bone weave that no longer fits your bones.
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BizarroLand ♀ 12/31/2019 4:36 PM
Same, same, same.
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sdschildberg 12/31/2019 4:38 PM
the real question: is there a hopebright, or acceptably close, property that is not marketed to kids?
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looks at server name
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sdschildberg 12/31/2019 4:39 PM
Crossing something over with itself ain't much of a cross over maybe the culture series.
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Jade Nekotenshi 12/31/2019 4:49 PM
Hmm, in a sense.
16:49
Though I think if the Culture and the Empire ever met, there would be, err... fireworks.
16:50
Ah, you mean a non-kids setting that would cross over with the Eldraeverse in an interesting way... Hmmm. Gotta ponder that. I'd think so, but I don't know what specifically off the top of my head.
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Culture meeting the Empire would definitely be... interesting
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They can ignore each other very huffily. (Special Circumstances vs. ISS, fight!)
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not as revolting as, say, the Empire ending up in WH40K certainly, but while they're peaceful and quite nice, it'd probably also be a bit of creeping horror once they realize that most of the population are glorified pets
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MarcusAurelius 01/01/2020 7:59 PM
Schlock Mercenary might actually turn out well, I feel like Petey and the Eikones would probably get along decently
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i think so too, though Schlock has always confused me a bit
04:07
I like it, but it just seems like while some tech is really well thought out, others are much less so
04:09
(You have tactically competent sub-soph AI, Big Cornucopias, and advanced robotics, yet 99% of soldiers are sophs in suits?)
04:09
of course, in part that's because they wouldn't have much of a story without that stuff
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You need some valve to bring soph numbers of aggressive kind down. Plus, we were shown that sometimes even Petey doesn't get stuff people think first.
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Y'know, it occurs to me that if you're looking for a crossover possibility in which humans get to look good and there's a decent-to-high probability of alliance against a common enemy, there's always Stargate SG-1 et. al. (Just don't let Senator Kinsey talk.)
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0111narwhalz 01/05/2020 2:29 PM
I'm not sure the eldrae are inclined to let politicians talk in any case… :V
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MarcusAurelius 01/06/2020 1:57 AM
They will make Thor’s interrupt scene look like child’s play
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Trying to reconcile Mother of Learning metaphysics with eldraeverse forking/uploading; they have physiologically nesserary souls and while they have forking, it's not available to mortal magi for divinity reasons . Not sure how to reconcile crossovering, even in the context of a multicross with lots of smoothing; this is an extension of previous problems plus someone with esp unhelpful detailing
17:38
Possible option would be to import fallen London soul lore; souls are divine recorders and grant magic but aren't actually physiologically needed except in as much as humans in mol are in a high-magic environment; this means I have two totally different solutions for soul-meat brain reconciliation in the same notional space, since I also want MTG, and magic in general keys to personhood in a way that meat brain theory doesn't like. It would be an insult to eldraeverse as a setting to take anti-transhumanist positions on its setting though...
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sdschildberg 04/18/2020 3:20 PM
Other warning lables Slow Burn Romance hazard Poorly done smut Readerfic is a self insert w name filed off (edited)
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So, what has become of FiSA?
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BizarroLand ♀ 07/02/2020 5:41 PM
?
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Friendship is Sufficiently Advanced, the last crossover which has fallen by the wayside in favor of the Worm crossover
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BizarroLand ♀ 07/02/2020 5:45 PM
ayyyyy
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It fell into some abeyance due to extreme difficulty in finding a good enough mood to write it.
17:49
(It’s hard to write ponies and think the world sucks at the same time. At least for me.)
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0111narwhalz 07/02/2020 10:33 PM
…can you drive that in reverse?
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Remember all those MLP fanfics about Twilight angsting over immortality? https://goodmorningcelestia.tumblr.com/post/88214804584/if-she-was-immortal-i-suspect-timing-would-be
If she was immortal I suspect timing would be everything.
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Revising badfic bingo entries: "Their tongues battled for dominance. This didn't last for long, because one of the tongues in question brought a fucking laser ."
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laser tongues sounds like a bit of a weird fetish
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Morgrim Moon 09/03/2020 9:19 AM
I''m toying with making a thread on the Discourse just for paragraph-long dialogue fics. >.> I keep getting ideas at work and then sitting on them trying to beat them into something coherent
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0111narwhalz 09/03/2020 9:20 AM
doit
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This is a most welcome use of the Discourse.
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BluejayHurricane 09/09/2020 9:16 PM
There’s a joke to be made somewhere about the perpetual twilight that the Bay Area has been experiencing today, and Nightmare Moon returning. Somewhere.
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*lockheed martin prototype aircraft darkening the sun *
02:11
*LLNR accidentally making a black hole *
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Morgrim Moon 09/18/2021 10:50 PM
This is not fanfic but it's not other worlds and came closest in my mind for "I am doing a thing that is an interpretation of another thing".
💯 1
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0111narwhalz 09/18/2021 10:51 PM
nice slu—wait no, that's a bird innit
22:51
or a… human heart?
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Morgrim Moon 09/18/2021 10:52 PM
(I am attempting the "make a thing. Look, now you have a thing" anti-nihilism strategy right now)
22:53
...also the first person who correctly guesses what it is gets a shitty doodle of an animal of their choosing, to be delivered something in the next 7 days
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0111narwhalz 09/18/2021 10:54 PM
…yeah, sorry, my guesses are slug, cardinal, and human heart that's the best you're gonna get out of me
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Morgrim Moon 09/18/2021 10:54 PM
I'll decide later if offer is still valid after posting final piece XD
22:54
I may add more WIP
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BluejayHurricane 09/18/2021 10:57 PM
It doesn’t have the right shape of be a barnacle, even a young one.
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0111narwhalz 09/18/2021 10:58 PM
I'm unsure how embroidery "works." Do you do each color entirely?
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BluejayHurricane 09/18/2021 11:09 PM
Maybe some type of mushroom?
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hmm... the description makes me think that its a rendition of a specific animal, as in, not just a species but a particular picture
23:38
from there, my mind jumps to "it's a embroidered meme"
23:39
buuut, i'm not having too much luck isolating it... hmm
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0111narwhalz
I'm unsure how embroidery "works." Do you do each color entirely?
Morgrim Moon 09/18/2021 11:55 PM
Usually you use thread precut to workable lengths. You'll use that colour to embroider either until you run out of accessible areas of that colour or the thread runs out
23:55
Then you decide if you have enough in the area to cut a thread of the same colour or to swap to a different one
23:56
It's why larger pieces tend to progress in "chunks"
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0111narwhalz 09/18/2021 11:56 PM
I suppose that makes sense.
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Morgrim Moon 09/18/2021 11:58 PM
The grey tone that is at the bottom was recently reused up the top. I was not going to try counting to add it earlier, being even a single square off means unlocking SO MUCH
23:58
Everything tends to be measured relatively to the rest
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0111narwhalz 09/19/2021 12:00 AM
…gray?
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Morgrim Moon 09/19/2021 12:01 AM
There's two close shades of grayish fawn and two shades of green in the bottom part. Even without colour blindness they're not the easiest to pick out in that photo.
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0111narwhalz 09/19/2021 12:01 AM
…huh.
00:01
I see green, black, and brown.
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Morgrim Moon 09/19/2021 12:02 AM
The top is many browns right now
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0111narwhalz 09/19/2021 12:03 AM
The top is bright red and maybe a red-brown?
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Morgrim Moon 09/19/2021 12:03 AM
No reds. One brown is reddish brown
00:03
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0111narwhalz 09/19/2021 12:03 AM
Although now that I'm looking closer… the "red-brown" might be the same thread I was calling "black."
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Morgrim Moon 09/19/2021 12:04 AM
Okay that photo is terrible
00:04
The room light is too dim and yellow
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0111narwhalz 09/19/2021 12:05 AM
no reds
it looks like the red of a cardinal to me
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Morgrim Moon 09/19/2021 12:05 AM
That is a really interesting colour shift
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0111narwhalz 09/19/2021 12:05 AM
this is weird because I don't usually see reds more saturated than ground-truth
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Morgrim Moon 09/19/2021 12:06 AM
Brain compensation? It's really close to the deep browns that certain colourblindnesses see when looking at red?
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0111narwhalz 09/19/2021 12:07 AM
It could be.
00:07
Even now it looks that way, and that's unusual in itself. Usually my perception changes after looking at something ambiguous.
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0111narwhalz 09/19/2021 2:26 AM
Checking in again, "bright red" is now green. This has been your colorweird episode for the day.
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stop playing with your dials all day
06:46
no wonder they say masturbation causes blindness
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Morgrim Moon 09/19/2021 8:00 AM
💯 5
08:02
Hopefully it's more obvious now
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the thing that doesnt exist in austria
08:18
:D
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oooh it was incomplete
08:54
that makes a lot more sense now
08:55
i thought the last picture was complete, so the little splotch of color at the top meant it was something with partially white fur that matched the background (edited)
08:56
looks pretty good; it captures the details well
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Jade Nekotenshi 09/19/2021 9:16 AM
Wow, I'm bad at pattern-matching, I didn't even begin to get a wallaby out of the WIP photo, but now it's blindingly obvious. Nice work!
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when you know it its obvious, but with only the partial one with no context....
09:46
also: pixel art grandma style
09:46
:D
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Special crack fanfic suggestion: A diplonought appears one day over Fuji-san. Having rediscovered the planet in question after centuries have passed, the Empire’s official representatives have come to deliver thanks and gifts to the people who took such good care of Princess Kaguya. Hilarity ensues.
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Man, I wish this was the sort of thing I had the gift for writing, because you could have so much fun with this concept.
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Hell with the crack fanfic idea. From now on, the officially unofficial position on human-contact fanfic in this 'verse is that the as-yet-unwritten-by-someone "A Diplonought Appears Over Fuji-san" is tritocanonical. Namely, that first (well, technically second) contact occurred when a special mission finally tracked down the world and part of the world which took such good care of Princess Kaguya ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tale_of_the_Bamboo_Cutter ) after her tragic unguided-wormhole accident, and have come to deliver thanks and gifts accordingly. Hilarity ensues. Points will be awarded for kawaisa and shameless abuse of anime tropes that also conforms to existing canon, with special extra points for finding an excuse to create Space Battleship Yamato. (And since this is a friendshipfic, points obviously deducted for human abuse. The grim darkness of the whenever should be quietly taken out and space-magicked to death offscreen.)
The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter (Japanese: 竹取物語, Hepburn: Taketori Monogatari) is a monogatari (fictional prose narrative) containing elements of Japanese folklore. Written by an unknown author in the late 9th or early 10th century during the Heian period, it is considered the oldest surviving work in the monogatari form. The story details the lif...
Overmind pinned a message to this channel. 07/04/2022 10:22 AM
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Bonus: both cultures have shapeshifting trickster foxes. Double bonus: the Mythologae Immanentization Initiative discovers yōkai...
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Morgrim Moon 07/04/2022 10:37 AM
I am amused that THIS is how we learn that foxes were part of the greenlife transfer 😛
😁 2
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Of course, they have literal trickster foxes. (Exarchs of Úlmiríën, eikone of rogues, shapeshifters, trickery, epiphanies and unwonted revelations, and sudden paradigm shifts.)
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Overmind
Bonus: both cultures have shapeshifting trickster foxes. Double bonus: the Mythologae Immanentization Initiative discovers yōkai...
Okay, now I’m intrigued.
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Super extra plot bonus idea: turns out Japanese kitsune are also real, and the kitsune on both sides arranged the whole thing for the lulz.
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Morgrim Moon 07/04/2022 11:10 AM
presumably if the greenlife came from many parts of Earth - and it looks like it did - the Precursors were there and poking around for quite a while. Meaning there's likely to be a few artefacts around. You can handwave a lot of weirdness with a Precursor artefact or two.
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What exactly is an "Exarch"?
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0111narwhalz 07/04/2022 12:03 PM
two columns with a pile of rubble between them
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Zarpaulek
What exactly is an "Exarch"?
Like angels, but with more diversity. If an eikone or other archai needs a high-level minion, it compiles an exarch.
12:05
(Mythology is responsible for a lot of creative exarch designs.)
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Overmind
Bonus: both cultures have shapeshifting trickster foxes. Double bonus: the Mythologae Immanentization Initiative discovers yōkai...
BizarroLand ♀ 07/04/2022 12:54 PM
Weretigers are a thing in Chinese mythology...
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And in Dungeons and Dragons!
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For the black comedy version of this, incidentally, have the visitors have brought along an honest-to-First-Lord space battleship Yamato as a gift. Well, BVG, but details. Picture this gift being accepted with exquisite politeness - I mean, you can’t say no, she’s a present - while in the background there is much oh shit oh fuck as first their government, and then everyone else’s, reacts to this sudden promotion to the top of the local force availability ladder, and beyond.
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Hopefully it doesn’t get too misused… I mean, Japan has rules in place governing the military forces that it is allowed to have (and IIRC possibly how they may use them?), but a starship is well outside of the parameters of those rules.
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Also: “In deference to traditional naming conventions, we will be redesignating her a ‘star destroyer’”.
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They may be moderately less likely to misuse it than certain other governments. Any of Russia, China, or the USA, I would not trust at all with such power.
18:19
Japan… IDK enough to say…
18:20
Probably not great, but also probably not likely to immediately start using it against their neighbors/political enemies?
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Since this is a black comedy version, half the fun is watching Japan - who are mostly pretty committed to their non-militarism and general peacefulness these days - deal with unexpectedly being handed the role of “able to kick planetary butt”.
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Tassadar
Hopefully it doesn’t get too misused… I mean, Japan has rules in place governing the military forces that it is allowed to have (and IIRC possibly how they may use them?), but a starship is well outside of the parameters of those rules.
BizarroLand ♀ 07/04/2022 6:21 PM
Japan explicitly can't declare war anymore
18:22
But if they were handed the greatest military power in the world you bet your ass they'd stretch the fuck out of Article 8
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Hence, why they are less likely to immediately use it against enemies. Probably just call it ‘policing actions’ or whatever.
18:23
Also it shoots any prospect of nuclear deterrence, at least for Japan, in the balls, so you get the fun repercussions of that.
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Honestly, I could see the US being all “So, dear ally, dear friends, maybe you could police action support some of our police actions? Pretty please?”
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BizarroLand ♀ 07/04/2022 6:25 PM
PRC would be a lot less enthusiastic about starting shit
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They could take the Kuril Islands and dare Russia to do anything about it. Might even be able to take Sakhalin, especially if the space battleship is equipped to deal with insurrections… Which would also be rather more unpleasant than anything that modern militaries have access to.
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At which point, well, what’s the Japanese for “We regretfully must decline the opportunity to stick our dick in that hornet convention, but thank you for asking.”
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Or pointedly ask if the US wants them to make a ‘territorial claim’ on the Greater Asian Co-prosperity Sphere mark two, Space Battleship Boogaloo. (edited)
18:27
(probably mangled the term)
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Man, the Axis ruined all the good terms.
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IIRC, they’re rather more shameless about what they did in WWII than, say, Germany. Depending on who’s in charge, they might see fit to rectify the victory that was ‘stolen’ from them.
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But, yeah, I think it plays best from the black comedy aspect if so far as they're concerned, they really don't want to use it for military purposes and would prefer to use it to support JAXA missions and support other civilian applications of the new bigger available universe -- it's just that no-one else really believes it.
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And maybe there’s one person who vocally very much does, and who gets all of the attention while having no actual say in the matter? Say, someone who grew up during or after WWII, while the Japanese defeat was still fresh in everyone’s minds?
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From the US being all "hey, wanna fight some terrorism", to Russia being all, "oh, hey, have these islands back, our bad". (And the surviving right-wing militarists, who as I understand it do exist as something of a disfavored minority, being slapped down hard with a chorus of "seriously, we just got a free ticket to INTERSTELLAR SPACE and you want to blow it on THIS SHIT?")
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(They presumably argue that they can have their cake and eat it too, before being reminded of the fact that this is one. Ship. Of a class of which the Empire of the Star has hundreds if not thousands of. Ergo, they can very much take the ship away if they do something which sufficiently displeases them.)
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Now, if you want to bring in some WWII stuff, you could imagine the PRC trying to solve their Taiwan problem without pleasing Taiwan by offering it to its former historical owners. Which generates epic levels of DO NOT WANT from everyone not the PRC.
18:38
“You can’t bribe people with countries! Especially when they aren’t your country in the first place!”
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Or the Norks trying to do the same with South Korea? The operative word being ‘trying’, of course.
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Not sure the Norks have that good a grip on reality.
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Overmind
From the US being all "hey, wanna fight some terrorism", to Russia being all, "oh, hey, have these islands back, our bad". (And the surviving right-wing militarists, who as I understand it do exist as something of a disfavored minority, being slapped down hard with a chorus of "seriously, we just got a free ticket to INTERSTELLAR SPACE and you want to blow it on THIS SHIT?")
Just gotta hope that one of said right-wing militarists is not in charge, of course.
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Overmind
From the US being all "hey, wanna fight some terrorism", to Russia being all, "oh, hey, have these islands back, our bad". (And the surviving right-wing militarists, who as I understand it do exist as something of a disfavored minority, being slapped down hard with a chorus of "seriously, we just got a free ticket to INTERSTELLAR SPACE and you want to blow it on THIS SHIT?")
BizarroLand ♀ 07/04/2022 6:43 PM
I predict a depressingly huge amount of people would be "it's all the debbil anyway space es not reel lul" or "meeeehhh there isn't anything worth grabbing in interstellar space anyway"
18:43
fools, the lot of them
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“The Empire of the Star is a hoax made up to contaminate our precious bodily fluids!”
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BizarroLand ♀ 07/04/2022 6:44 PM
I have an even lower opinion of the human race than our host, somehow
18:44
Despite me being the younger one
18:44
He has commented on this.
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My first assumption was that Japan would go Greater Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere Two: Space Battleship Boogaloo, so make of that what you will…
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Yeah, I don’t think the popular will would support Going There Again.
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“But this time we’ll win! I promise!”
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Which is not to say that people won’t be taking a certain vicarious pleasure in the way that having a space battleship tends to resolve those annoying little international disputes in your favor.
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Don’t they have, like, shrines to a number of WWII war criminals ‘heroes’, that such figures as the PM have visited and do visit?
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Tassadar
Don’t they have, like, shrines to a number of WWII war criminals ‘heroes’, that such figures as the PM have visited and do visit?
BizarroLand ♀ 07/04/2022 6:52 PM
there was no big reckoning with japanese warcrimes because of the nukes
18:52
no denazification
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(“Oh, those islands! Never heard of them. Key’s under the mat.”)
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BizarroLand ♀ 07/04/2022 6:52 PM
the Allies let the unit 731 guys off almost unpunished
18:52
stuff like that
18:53
people still unironically believe the IJA were noble latter-day samurai
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And that’s the problem. Now that they have a trump card up their sleeve, why wouldn’t they have another go at ‘greatness’? (edited)
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More because of the Soviets, Ithink. The 731 guys were let off because we wanted to Paperclip their knowledge into the US bioweapons program.
18:56
As for the shrines - you’re talking about Yasukuni, which is controversial even there, but which also isn’t quite as simple as that.
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How do they teach about WWII in schools in Japan?
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BizarroLand ♀ 07/04/2022 6:57 PM
ay
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Yasukuni enshrines all Japanese war dead, ever. So, y’know, hard to disavow that entirely.
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BizarroLand ♀ 07/04/2022 6:57 PM
my internet had a derp
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Do they have ‘lost causers’ to the same degree, or possibly even more due to how relatively recent it was, as the USA?
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The problem is that at one point, some very dubious militarists managed to get a number of people on the war crimes list enshrined there, and, well, theologically speaking as I understand the Shinto, there isn’t actually a way to unenshrine them because everyone enshrined there is merged into the one collective kami .
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Is it at ‘The Americans and the Communists stole our rightful glory and victory from us’ levels of indoctrination? (edited)
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BizarroLand ♀ 07/04/2022 7:00 PM
Nah
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Well, that’s something good, at least?
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BizarroLand ♀ 07/04/2022 7:01 PM
Like nobody has an urge to re-fight WWII
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So their children aren’t indoctrinated into believing that their victory in WWII was stolen by the evil americans and communists (at least not anymore)?
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BizarroLand ♀
Like nobody has an urge to re-fight WWII
Not unless they feel that they have an unbeatable advantage, no? Also, given the number of people in the USA who seem to want to re-fight the ACW, I find that less than reassuring. (edited)
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Morgrim Moon 07/04/2022 7:02 PM
there's a respectable level of "nuclear weapons were cheating, they didn't actually defeat us" mixed with "...but maybe some people went a little too far, and cooperation is actually so much nicer, and we do NOT ever want to take on the entire planet simultaneously"
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Incidentally, while I know nothing about IJA fanboys, if the cross-section of IJN stans represented by translated Kantai Collection fanfic is anything to go by, they aren’t fans of the war .
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I dunno, with the Space Battleship Yamato, could they take on the rest of the world and win?
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Tassadar
So their children aren’t indoctrinated into believing that their victory in WWII was stolen by the evil americans and communists (at least not anymore)?
BizarroLand ♀ 07/04/2022 7:05 PM
It's more that there's some stuff that isn't talked about and the world outside east asia mostly ignores (edited)
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My take is that they could wipe everyone else out, but I’m not convinced that it would be able to entirely neuter the nuclear strike(s) that would be levied in response, at least not from orbit.
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Morgrim Moon 07/04/2022 7:05 PM
no. They could take on the whole world and come to a mutual loss, but Japan is not self-sustaining in the modern era and would not be able to build infrastructure fast enough on 'newly conquered' territory
19:05
even putting the nuke question aside
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Also, you need an army to hold territory.
19:08
But in any case, we’re assuming for the purposes of this bit of ficspace that this thing, it does not happen, because the Assassins of Grimdarkness paid it a visit in chapter -1 and chopped it in half with the O-dachi of “fuck this gloomy shit”.
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Aren’t there, like, nanoswarms and stuff that the Empire uses for COIN (insofar as they conduct such on the ground)?
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Also, you’re assuming the battleship would cooperate.
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Morgrim Moon 07/04/2022 7:11 PM
<Japan> We have formally acknowledged the personhood of our new battleship, and have invited her to the conference. What were you saying about 'forced action'?
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I was assuming that Japan would want to put a crew aboard as soon as such can be trained, as I don’t think that any Earth polities would take well to such a powerful weapon in their arsenal being operated by ’outsiders’.
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I mean, the Empire knows how to create warship minds that are loyal to the Empire and the Contract and the Charter, over and above any specific people and institutions.
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Either from a security standpoint or a ‘connotation of incompetence’ standpoint.
19:14
Both of which would not be risks with the Empire, but…
19:14
I don’t expect any Earth polities to truly trust the Empire for a very long time.
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Yamato is thus perfectly loyal to Japan, and will be disinclined to acquiesce to requests to commit national spiritual suicide. In the limiting case, this may involve delivering the traditional protest of a samurai handed orders they cannot obey by committing battleship-seppuku. (edited)
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I would say at least until the First Contact passes out of living memory, but given immortagens… That changes things a lot.
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Morgrim Moon 07/04/2022 7:17 PM
a few decades for people to grow comfortable is probably a standard timeline for newer contacts. The Empire thinks in century scales
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Overmind
Yamato is thus perfectly loyal to Japan, and will be disinclined to acquiesce to requests to commit national spiritual suicide. In the limiting case, this may involve delivering the traditional protest of a samurai handed orders they cannot obey by committing battleship-seppuku. (edited)
Which would presumably be rather unpleasant to anyone aboard the ship or in orbit around Earth. Depending on the method, it may also be rather unpleasant for everyone on earth, particularly if such an event generates an EMP.
19:19
Antimatter Seppuku would be rather… Violent I would think.
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Morgrim Moon 07/04/2022 7:21 PM
traditional seppuku was a multi-step, ritualised process that took at least a day. Not, like, an impromptu blastrange thing
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Honestly, I would be tempted to write in an early scene in which battleship meets emperor, this is discussed, and the latter is quite pleased that he doesn’t have to worry about militarist idiots trying to start the next war.
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I thought it was mostly stabbing self in stomach, but IDRK. That’s one of the more common portrayals IIRC?
19:22
I do know that it does not involve number puzzles, but little else besides. (edited)
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Morgrim Moon 07/04/2022 7:28 PM
it's ritual suicide, very heavy on the 'ritual'. And in many ways sort of a... hm. "Human sacrifice" has the wrong sort of gloss. But in many cases a political decision. Either one person dies to make a point, or one person dies to satisfy a grudge, and everyone else is now permitted to compromise or yield without honour or pride getting in the way. Although it being the ultimate "no, I refuse to follow your disgraceful order" is the version that made it to pop culture, along with the whole "we think you are entitled to a pistol with one round in it" thing.
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BizarroLand ♀ 07/04/2022 7:29 PM
don't some forms of seppuku basically involve letting someone else behead you
19:29
like reaching for a flower symbolically
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Morgrim Moon
it's ritual suicide, very heavy on the 'ritual'. And in many ways sort of a... hm. "Human sacrifice" has the wrong sort of gloss. But in many cases a political decision. Either one person dies to make a point, or one person dies to satisfy a grudge, and everyone else is now permitted to compromise or yield without honour or pride getting in the way. Although it being the ultimate "no, I refuse to follow your disgraceful order" is the version that made it to pop culture, along with the whole "we think you are entitled to a pistol with one round in it" thing.
Yeah, not so many "refuse to follow that order" seppukus more, "I'm sorry I committed that crime against you my lord, please don't kill my family too." (edited)
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Morgrim Moon 07/04/2022 7:29 PM
but in the old traditional version, you basically start the funeral before the deceased is actually deceased, and it flows into it.
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Well, both are canonically attested.
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BizarroLand ♀
don't some forms of seppuku basically involve letting someone else behead you
That was if the suicidee didn't scream while gutting himself. A mercy kill for facing your death with dignity
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BizarroLand ♀
like reaching for a flower symbolically
Morgrim Moon 07/04/2022 7:31 PM
originally: the person doing it had to disembowl themselves, but if they were honourable someone could finish them off afterwards. Traditionally with their own katana. This evolved into "you can behead them as soon as they cut themselves", to "you can do it as soon as they unsheath the blade", to "when they reach for it", increasingly rituallised as time went on
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Zarpaulek
That was if the suicidee didn't scream while gutting himself. A mercy kill for facing your death with dignity
BizarroLand ♀ 07/04/2022 7:33 PM
Like you stab yourself and you trust another person to not let you feel the pain is how it was put to me
19:34
also iirc being a second was a whole thing because you have to let the head still be a little attached (edited)
19:34
don't just send it sailing off
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I remember a Battletech novel where the Draconis Combine made mechwarriors captured by the enemy commit seppuku, and the second could finish them off with a gun if they didn't know how to use a sword.
19:36
Jamie Wolf found the whole thing rather appalling, being from a culture that adopts captured warriors into their own clan.
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BizarroLand ♀ 07/04/2022 7:36 PM
BattleTech sounds so stupid from the perspective of far away
19:37
The Clans are kinda supposed to be the good guys but they're diehard eugenicists who despise non-military vocations (edited)
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Which Clans? I can see an argument for Clan Wolf being "good guys" but Clan Smoke Jaguar?
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BizarroLand ♀ 07/04/2022 7:40 PM
All of them innit?
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Zarpaulek
Which Clans? I can see an argument for Clan Wolf being "good guys" but Clan Smoke Jaguar?
BizarroLand ♀ 07/04/2022 7:43 PM
Aren't they all rigid caste societies?
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They are, but some have a bit better press than others.
19:44
Mostly the ones that occasionally allow "Freebirths" to become warriors like Clan Wolf.
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BizarroLand ♀ 07/04/2022 7:44 PM
They have free love but your life is extremely controlled and you don't get to own property
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Well, generally ALL clans are fairly hard-caste societies. Some have gotten somewhat softer since their initial creation (Ghost Bear mostly)
19:58
the main difference is in how brutal the inter-caste pressure and how much the ruling warrior caste sees fit to make sure that They Are In Charge.
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So, Eldraeverse kitsune, you thinking more of a shapeshifting nanobot colony or a memetic possession?
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Xveers
Well, generally ALL clans are fairly hard-caste societies. Some have gotten somewhat softer since their initial creation (Ghost Bear mostly)
Ghost Bear's the one that adopted the crown prince of one of the minor powers or something, right?
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Yeah. They're one that has traditionally been more "family oriented" as a clan (their tradition being founded by a husband/wife). They adopted the prince of Rasalhague into their forces. They're also one of the clans that's a lot LESS brutal to their lower castes as a result)
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I think that maybe the precursors left some mechal elementals on Earth, but over the millennia most of them have been killed or dispersed into smaller entities. Some of them forming symbiotic relationships with human hosts that get complicated by memetic organisms that they might carry from host to host.
20:28
Princess Kaguya might have carried a few nanobot colonies that were able to bolster some of the local kami. At least for a while.
20:30
I'll note that there's no visible kitsune in The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, but Tamamo-no-Mae's antics in the imperial court are said to have been just over two hundred years after the former tale was first told.
20:34
I also got an illustrated encyclopedia of yokai recently, and something I noted with yokai that possessed humans was that there was usually a physical creature squirming around inside the victim's body, or at least their clothes.
20:35
Fortunately the cute little sleeve foxes are far away from the tapeworm yokai in the book.
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Zarpaulek
I'll note that there's no visible kitsune in The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, but Tamamo-no-Mae's antics in the imperial court are said to have been just over two hundred years after the former tale was first told.
And the Sessho-seki she was imprisoned in broke recently.
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Square
And the Sessho-seki she was imprisoned in broke recently.
Again
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Just hide as very fox-like cat
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Zarpaulek
So, Eldraeverse kitsune, you thinking more of a shapeshifting nanobot colony or a memetic possession?
Closer to the former, but being able to produce bodies that are both shapeshifters and flawlessly biological is exactly the sort of bullshit that the Transcend ought to be able to pull off.
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Zarpaulek
Fortunately the cute little sleeve foxes are far away from the tapeworm yokai in the book.
Shudder. Yes, much more a fan of the sleeve foxes.
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And now I’m wondering if Eliera foxes look more like maned wolves
12:33
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Very cat.exe in dog hardware
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Morgrim Moon 10/16/2022 9:18 AM
@Overmind I'm linking this here because it's as much a comment on your setting as it is on my fanfic that borrowed your setting. https://archiveofourown.org/comments/585277851
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
09:18
and I'm feeling weird about it, since that's one of the authors of several major GURPs books.
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GURPs books that include sci-fi stuff relating to pattern identity?
12:23
it's the mark of a good author to be able to convincingly write stuff you disagree with
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Morgrim Moon 10/16/2022 12:40 PM
apparently he did Steampunk, Fantasy, Low-Tech and Supers. 3/4 of those could potentially invoke pattern identity
12:40
(and he did some more minor books, but those are the 'core' ones)
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BizarroLand ♀ 10/16/2022 3:04 PM
@Morgrim Moon A SJG writer actually shows up on AO3? Wow
15:06
And what are the odds he'd read your fic?
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I'd think it wouldn't be legally advisable for writers in major companies to visit AO3.
16:40
And I'm not just saying this because of that erotic Transhuman Space fanfic I wrote
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BizarroLand ♀ 10/16/2022 4:59 PM
omegaLUL
16:59
@Zarpaulek Nah, his company doesn't publish fiction often so he's probably okay (edited)
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at worst GURPS has little bits of one-off or single-book story art snippets
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BluejayHurricane 10/16/2022 5:01 PM
And frankly, I suspect textual literature is a lot less susceptible to the problems TV has
17:04
Where (at least until recently), people didn’t have the time and money to differentiate on the visual part of the medium, and there were only so many good stories fit for 30 or 45 minutes.
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Morgrim Moon
and I'm feeling weird about it, since that's one of the authors of several major GURPs books.
Awesome. I had much the same reaction when my Timeo Eldraeos omake got a comment from Marcus Rowland, of Forgotten Futures fame and also some GURPS books.
13:02
(Incidentally, if you haven't seen it, his worldbuilding of Kipling's Aerial Board of Control SFnal future is very nifty.)
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john dougan(his grace/his grace) 10/18/2022 4:48 PM
Once there was The People...
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Terror gave it birth…
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john dougan(his grace/his grace) 10/18/2022 10:45 PM
Once there was The People and it made a Hell of Earth...
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Earth arose and crushed it. Listen, O ye slain...
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john dougan(his grace/his grace) 10/18/2022 11:09 PM
Once there was The People--it shall never be again!
23:09
Commonwealth anarchist handshake
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BizarroLand ♀ 10/18/2022 11:09 PM
sometimes I wanted to hate Kipling, but the man who wrote As Easy As ABC couldn't have been all bad
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About time I tweeted that again, and conveniently, it's election season. For which it is forever apposite.
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doctorcatfish 10/19/2022 11:14 PM
Here is naught unproven; here is naught to learn…
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Another excellent choice.
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I had a thought that faerie realm stories with time dilation could be inspired by yokels hitching rides with relativists.
13:20
The "crumbling to dust" upon returning part might be a nano-dissassembler suicide device.
13:25
In particular in "Urashima and the Tortoise Turtle" Urashima is given a box his sea princess bride warns him not to open and after seeing that all his friends and family on the surface have died of old age he opens it, hoping that it would lead him back to the sea kingdom. Maybe that was some kind of destructive farcaster? (edited)
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Okay, so anyone contemplating writing a Star Trek crossover fanfic should do one with The Orville instead. The universe has most of the same good points and a refreshing lack of sticks up its butt.
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BizarroLand ♀ 03/02/2023 8:04 PM
why
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Because of that.
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BluejayHurricane 03/02/2023 8:08 PM
So How Did They Not See This Coming: Innovations in Spandex-Assisted Wedgies by C. Sargas et. al is off the table, then?
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Crack is an exception, because crack is always an exception.
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