pythbox: A book. (Default)
Pyth ([personal profile] pythbox) wrote in [community profile] belltower 2014-01-09 10:17 pm (UTC)

Remember, before the first evil was made, no one knew they existed. In order to get evils, you need someone to willingly subject themselves to ten stars' worth of pain without knowing they are going to get anything more out of it than a star.

Libby has thought of pentagoning masochism to produce more coins, but she has no examples of masochistic mints - she doesn't know how much it would help. Without that knowledge, she's not keen on doing it herself, and she isn't getting any volunteers from people she already knows and trusts. Dramatic self-modification for an uncertain payoff is not the most enticing of prospects!

It's even possible that without an example like a Joker or an Anna to go on, pentagoning masochism wouldn't work as well for her as we see it doing for other people in Effulgence. Jokers and Annas are extraordinary outliers. Libby has never met anyone who liked pain that much before; who's to say she could imagine it well enough to wish for it? She might end up limited by her own assumptions about the range of available possibilities.

Of course, it's possible she'll get around to one or both of those things someday. But it's just as plausible that she will never feel like she needs enough magic badly enough to do those kinds of experiments. Discovering evils-and-up is most likely to happen when you mint someone who is naturally inclined to play with large amounts of pain on their own time.

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