alicornucopia: (Default)
Minor Characters ([personal profile] alicornucopia) wrote in [community profile] belltower2013-08-31 04:16 pm
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How To Read Effulgence

Effulgence is an RP (role play) hosted on Dreamwidth between Alicorn (me) and Pyth (a.k.a. "kappa"). We each play many characters; all of my RP accounts belong to this community, the Belltower, and kappa's can all be found at [community profile] binary_heat. The short version of what Effulgence is about is that we put alternate universe versions of Bella from my fanfiction Luminosity in a wide variety of settings, mostly fanfictional in nature, and see what happens, then cross everything over with everything else. (Luminosity is canon for Effulgence, but the reverse is optional.) Kappa also has several recurring character templates, most commonly AU versions of her oddball interpretation of the Nolanverse Joker. The start is slow - it's earthfic right up until it's not, but then it's really not. Here appears a list of the canon(s) for each world.

You may track new/resumed-after-dormancy Effulgence threads via the forum updates thread. Effulgence is similar to Incandescence, by me and a different coauthor Aestrix, and to other "glowfic", by a variety of authors. If you like any one of those things, you should probably try the others. Effulgence is by far the longest.

Content warnings: Effulgence contains rape, torture, and parental abuse; these are generally not described in gory or graphic detail (people have proven able to blink and miss two of the instances of rape; we're apparently too good at euphemisms) but definitely present. It's a pretty long work and was, at first, written without thought of public consumption, so chances are it contains some other things we're failing to think of. Proceed with caution. Basically, if you can think of a way to be mean to characters, we've done it or gleefully intend to.

The index that kappa maintains at this post will show what posts to read in what order if you intend to read the whole thing. (The early stuff is not the best part, but it is unskippably prerequisite if you plan to read it all.) Most posts have comment threads under them; kappa prefers to read them in threaded mode, where they keep drifting off to the right, and this is the only way to correctly read threads that are indexed with bullet points (read each bullet, in order, in thread mode) but many people otherwise prefer to read in "flat" (just click "flat", and the comments' left margins will all line up and they will be arranged in pages).

Most posts are marked with one or more "symbellas" - symbols that indicate which Bells appear in which threads. These are in many cases exotic characters that might not render correctly on your computer, but they shouldn't be strictly necessary to enjoy the story. A Roll Call chart of each Bell, symbella, nickname, and world is available.

Threads with a plus sign next to them are in progress, as are sections with plus signs in their subchapter listings. The "chronological order" of the last several sections relative to each other is up in the air until they interact with the core plot, and may rearrange when that occurs. Additionally, there are a few spots where reading the threads in order will involve temporal confusion because they were written concurrently without anticipating third-party readers (for instance, 14.2 and 18.1 happen together); just keep reading through these and you should be fine.

If you do not want to read all of Effulgence, or want to read it out of order, you can do this. The settings don't cross over immediately in most cases, and you can read up to the crossover point with no prerequisites (although having read the rest of Effulgence would provide enriching context, it is not plot-necessary). You are welcome to ask us how to find what sections to read, but as a general rule of thumb: if a section is the first instance of a symbella anywhere in the index, and there is only one symbella in the first of those threads, it is probably standalone. (This is not foolproof: 38.5 is the first appearance of Tab's symbella, but her introduction does rely on a crossover. A more central example would be something like section 22, which contains four threads, each of which has the same single symbella; or 28, which may be read without prerequisite until the last thread where another symbella appears.)

Due to limitations of Dreamwidth, we cannot edit any comment that has replies under it. Please don't submit notifications of typos in Effulgence unless they're on the top-level posts or the last comments in a thread. Or if you can't understand what was meant and you need clarification.

Both I and kappa are eager to hear comments on the RP. You may comment here, and ask characters questions here and receive answers in-character, and I have a forum for discussion of this work (among my others), but please don't make comments on the story threads.

A note on "canon-puncturing". Characters, as people, sometimes consume and refer to fiction. The problem is we keep adding AUs of the fiction in question, and so sometimes these are universes that characters from other universe have mentioned in the past. In the overwhelming majority of cases, this is just a lack of foresight and it is retconned insofar as it can be when we can't edit things. Please assume, for example, that when you reach the Harry Potter AU, that all previous references to Harry Potter were instead describing some equivalent but not particularly reminiscent story. The exceptions are as follows (may contain spoilers, depending on how finicky you are about spoilers):


  • The Sherlock Holmes stories (and miscellaneous adaptations thereof) exist most Earth-typical places, except for Strat's universe of origin (and at least one forthcoming world).
  • In most Earth-typical universes that do not contain actual live Matildas, the Roald Dahl book "Matilda" (but not its movie adaptation) exists. This book never coexists with a Matilda, however. (The fact that it has taken some characters such a long time to notice this is mostly poor communication on our part, although there is an adequate thread of causality covering it.)
  • We are treating Pokémon about like we treat vampires: some universes have fiction of them. Other universes have real ones (too). The details like region names, organized crime team names, and city names that we use for the Pokémon AU and are taken from the games or anime may be assumed to be replaced with comparable but not particularly reminiscent versions in the fiction about Pokémon from other worlds.
  • In some worlds ("Sunshine family" worlds) various Marvel Cinematic Universe events began to unfold, but did not complete the process. In at least one, they were cut short very early (specifically, Captain America existed but the project did not work very well and there is fictionalized media about what might have been). There are some worlds where the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe is approximately taken as canon, except our obvious changes as described.


INDEX POST: Click here to start reading.

A somewhat buggy HTML mirror of Effulgence is available. You can download an EPUB or a MOBI, more recent and suspected more complete.
shoaling_souls: Fish swimming independently but still together in a group (Default)

[personal profile] shoaling_souls 2013-09-01 01:58 am (UTC)(link)
I'm loving the RP! It's so much fun to read and I get so excited when I recognise a universe or when I catch a bit of foreshadowing.

Once a person is all caught up, the way that works best for me is to read the reading pages of the belltower and binary-heat. They're at http://belltower.dreamwidth.org/read and http://binary-heat.dreamwidth.org/read. they only go back the past two weeks, so it's good to cross-reference with the +ed threads in the index as well, because somejournals (like Carinna's teenage journal) aren't a member of either community yet so you can miss an entry if you only read it that way, and sometimes posts receive new comments several months after they were last updated. I keep track of how many comments were posted when i last read in a text file. I also keep track of which threads had a plus sign when i last read them because i know that if a plus sign disappears, there probably were new comments added that i might have missed.

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andaisq: The Ouroboros (Default)

[personal profile] andaisq 2013-09-01 05:27 am (UTC)(link)
continues to weep for joy that this is a publicly visible rp now
Edited 2013-09-01 05:28 (UTC)
shoaling_souls: Fish swimming independently but still together in a group (Default)

[personal profile] shoaling_souls 2013-09-09 05:51 pm (UTC)(link)
Can the animorphs acquire each other's morphs? Like, if trouble morphs andalite and then Andi touches him could she acquire the andalite too?

Someone should get accidentally trapped in morph form like Tobias did. They can fix it later with wish coins once they're pealed.

it would be super risky but if they could get some hork-bajir morphs that would help infiltrate the yeerks.



I think it would be really funny if the peal met the original non-luminous bella from twilight in millways. but i understand why that probably won't happen.

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shoaling_souls: Fish swimming independently but still together in a group (Default)

[personal profile] shoaling_souls 2013-09-24 02:05 am (UTC)(link)
is downside from somewhere or is it original? i tried googling but didn't have much luck

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Addy

[personal profile] phixelated 2013-10-14 08:40 pm (UTC)(link)
Despite reading all the way through to the Pokemon section, I'm still seriously confused as to why people (particularly Bellas) dislike Addy. She seems to have clear objectives and a completely reasonable attitude to magic, especially given her native power. She doesn't appear to be in conflict with the peal, is unlikely to want to actually rule anything in particular, and has a mostly academic interest in everything else.

To be quite honest, she reminds me strongly of the more interesting career academics at my university; I'd have expected the Bells, with their rational and information-based approach to things, to get along with her very well. Instead she has been limited, denied access to magic on which she may have a useful view, and essentially exists on sufferance. Why?
taste_tester: (m ~ what if I ask nicely?)

Re: Addy

[personal profile] taste_tester 2013-10-14 08:50 pm (UTC)(link)
I know! It's completely unfair. I'm really easy to manage. All I want is magic to play with, and I've been totally clear about that from the beginning, when the best way to get it was hiding from the Volturi, and when the best way to get it was working for the Volturi, and when the best way to get it was my ever-so-tender tutoring of Elspeth - from which I'd like to point out she benefited immensely - and when the best way to get it was working for the Golden Coven.

And if the best way to get magic to play with ever changes, like if I got enough accumulated power and momentum that nobody could stop me if I wanted to... oh, now you've got me daydreaming about not having to stop playing with my toys just because they're tired, or they're bored, or they want to do other things with their time ever, or they miss their magically boring friends and relatives who were in my way, or... sigh.

Anyhow, I would probably pause long enough to see if my current boss could produce a tempting counter-offer to just taking what I want with any unrestricted magical access I got hold of! Professional courtesy of sorts. Wouldn't do to let it go to my head if I got hold of just a little and I could get even more by asking nicely.

If.
shoaling_souls: Fish swimming independently but still together in a group (Default)

[personal profile] shoaling_souls 2013-10-17 03:14 am (UTC)(link)
commenting now even though it's really early to bug you about it since the journal was just created, and you'll probably remember to do it on your own later but i won't remember to check later and [personal profile] megale is not in any communities yet, so just in case you were going to forget, i am reminding you.

(is she a template?)
megale: (don't look at me)

[personal profile] megale 2013-10-17 08:59 pm (UTC)(link)
Whoopsie! Now I'm in the Belltower.

As for whether I'm a template, now, that would be telling.

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[personal profile] linkhyrule5 2013-10-19 05:22 am (UTC)(link)
So, first of all, I want a week of my life back. Will that fit on a hex or would it take a star? :P

All jokes aside, this is pretty great. I'm most amused by the complete story threads (Stella, Downside, the Pokeverse, the Animorphs verse), but the RP as a whole is pretty close to the top of the list of "things I've read this year." Watching the Bells ... /emBellish/ things is something of a treat whenever it happens, too, particularly in a world that needs optimizing like Panem. (And somehow, giving the fairytale Bell narrative-causality-sight is just appropriate, though I wonder if there's a Discworld Bell out there somewhere.)

The one thing that does bug me is - warning, I'm a YW fan so I'm biased - I feel like the Powers That Be could've gotten a more charitable reading. It seems pretty easy to interpret the metaphysics such that all the Powers but the Lone versus the Lone is a fair enough fight that everyPower's too busy fixing false vacuum collapses or whatever to worry about iodine in Africa. Of course, I don't know what you have planned, so this could just be Campbell's impression based on what little he's got.

Anyway, I'm going to go figure out how to remind myself to check pages for updates. Obviously you don't have deadlines but roughly, what's the average rate of updates per storyline per... month, say?
Edited 2013-10-19 05:26 (UTC)
pythbox: A book. (Default)

[personal profile] pythbox 2013-10-19 12:42 pm (UTC)(link)
I (Kappa) am a highly ambivalent YW fan, and you're getting my highly ambivalent reading of the YW cosmology - I don't buy it when the Powers claim to be the ultimate force of good in the worlds, because the books don't sell it to me. Of course, in a sense you're right - they are too busy battling the Lone Power to deal with iodine in Africa. But don't be surprised when it turns out that Tilly, Jellybean, and Cam find a way to fix the world without them and then disregard their input about future fixings.

We are usually always working on at least one thing. Which thing or things is not subject to prediction.

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[personal profile] modrony 2013-10-19 10:34 pm (UTC)(link)
I love this RP.
Especially Juliet & T'Mir worlds.

[personal profile] jalapeno_dude 2013-10-21 09:54 pm (UTC)(link)
...are purple and green (in the "angel of yourself" section of "who will be coming?") really the belltower (green) and binary_heat (purple) communities, or do I just not have sufficient data yet? (EDIT 10/27: still looks like this is the right classification, as far as I can tell...) If so, things might be about to get meta...

Also, for everyone who wants a good way to track the story in progress: I use ChangeDetection.com to track the "Adventures in Effulgence" index, set to send me daily emails when the page changes. It's worked very well so far. It's in the public directory at https://www.changedetection.com/log/org/dreamwidth/edgeofyourseat/2121_log.html, if anyone else wants to do the same thing.
Edited 2013-10-27 23:23 (UTC)
(reply from suspended user)

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[personal profile] linkhyrule5 2013-10-29 10:26 pm (UTC)(link)
Is there a compilation of Wellspring-Matilda threads anymore? missnicegirl has a partial list, but I can't find anything on withmypowers - or is everything in that continuum private?
withmypowers: (⑥ six impossible things)

[personal profile] withmypowers 2013-10-29 10:30 pm (UTC)(link)
The threads summarized in [personal profile] missnicegirl aren't part of Effulgence. This journal has only been used for Effulgence threads, all of which can be found in the Effulgence index.

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[personal profile] jalapeno_dude 2013-10-30 02:06 am (UTC)(link)
Was Kerron's prior experience with magic and singer blood actually depicted in a thread? If so, where? Tried some quick searches but didn't find anything.
pina_colada: (yeah?)

[personal profile] pina_colada 2013-10-30 02:08 am (UTC)(link)
I just - I see stuff people are not trying to show me. Colorshape kinda stuff. I pick up a fair amount of TMI, mostly from Mum.

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"I would make a terrifying religious fanatic."

[personal profile] jalapeno_dude 2013-12-08 01:08 am (UTC)(link)
Rereading old threads, and found this:

"Example-me isn't threatening - isn't bothering to. Example-me will go over or through you if she has to, and doesn't care because there is a higher priority." She pauses. "I would make a terrifying religious fanatic. It's probably good I'm not one."

Any plans to explore this further? I guess the Animorphs RP may be getting into this obliquely?

(Also, this paragraph from the very first chapter of Luminosity:

"What did I want? I wanted my mother, Renée, to be happy. She was the most important person to me, bar none. I also wanted her around, but when I honestly evaluated my priorities, it was more important that she be happy. If, implausibly, I had to choose between Renée being happy on Mars, and Renée being miserable living with me as she always had - I wouldn't be thrilled about it. At all. But I'd send her to Mars."

takes on a new meaning in light of the Earth/Mars RP...)

[personal profile] jalapeno_dude 2013-12-09 09:48 am (UTC)(link)
Still rereading old threads. I've got to the young-Shell Bell-in-Milliways stuff (which I think is one of the highlights of the RP, BTW...), and there's a Bell alt who's described thusly:

"There was one who only had her own inventions to work with, no magic, and she only has a country, not a whole world"

Is this a specific Bell, or just a throwaway remark? If the former, have we met this Bell yet?

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"Muffler fractal sing", etc.

[personal profile] jalapeno_dude 2013-12-11 08:10 am (UTC)(link)
So the fact that Bella says random words in her sleep is already present in Luminosity (though it's stated a little differently there). Is this something taken from Twilight, or is it new to Luminous!Bells?

(*wants to know before he starts trying to do cryptanalysis on the "random" words...*)

[personal profile] jalapeno_dude 2013-12-13 07:33 am (UTC)(link)
Next round of comments:

1. I notice that am confused by a sequence of events in the first interaction between Shell Bell and Juliet (around here. To recap, because I suspect I've read it much more recently than either of you: Shell Bell first meets Juliet immediately after minting Angela and giving her all of her high-powered coins, so she lacks a hex and thus can't immediately mint Juliet:

"Oh, oh damn, I gave Angela all my bigger coins, I don't have anything left for you - my Sherlock's not here, she went home, I can poke my head out and check for her but I think she'll be asleep -" [...] "I'll check. She might not have fallen asleep right away, but that's where Tony was when I tried to ask him if he wanted to come along to Angela's and she left before I did specifically to go see him and she can sometimes fall asleep really fast - and I only have triangles and squares and they're in the District house and the door's in the palace - and if she's asleep I can't get her without losing the door and Tony can only summon it sometimes and there's no guarantee I'll catch you on a second trip"

Sherlock turns out to be asleep, a square fails to have sufficient range to get the coins from the District house, and the matter is dropped.

But I'm confused. Why couldn't Sherlock get someone else (presumably Juliet) to hold the door open for her? Shell Bell doesn't need to spend coins to teleport, so she could go get the coins herself, or (better) go physically wake up Sherlock and get some new hexes...

Is there some rule that only people from a given world can hold the door open to that world? Otherwise I see no reason why this would not have worked. (I guess the reason could just be that it would have messed up the subsequent events in Juliet's plot, which depend strongly on her not yet having omnipotence. This is a fine reason, of course!)

2. I really like the Aegis-and-Sue-play-the-fantasy-game sequences!

[personal profile] jalapeno_dude 2013-12-13 07:34 am (UTC)(link)
(And of course by "Why couldn't Sherlock get someone else" I mean "Why couldn't Shell Bell get someone else", sorry...)

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Sherlock minus Shell Bell

[personal profile] jalapeno_dude 2013-12-15 01:10 am (UTC)(link)
1. Apropos of this, ever considered RPing the situation where Sherlock is unable to revive Shell Bell after she's assassinated by Coin?

2. I really liked though you turn your face away, especially the opening post and this speech. Maybe not quite as much as "i contain multitudes", because the stakes are a little lower here, but it's definitely one of the highlights of my reread so far.

Re: Sherlock minus Shell Bell

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"Do you know how long it's been since I've even seen a three-year-old?"

[personal profile] jalapeno_dude 2013-12-15 11:55 pm (UTC)(link)
(from here) This implies there are no/very few kids in Downside. Are they all in Upside, just not revived, something else?

Hmm, do I have anything else? Oh yeah, it's interesting which things read differently the second time around. I don't remember being particularly interested by Belle's story the first time, but I enjoyed it much more this time. And I found the whole Chelise subplot, which I distinctly remember not liking before, much more affecting this time. Maybe it's because I hadn't made the obvious Chelise=Chelsea leap? Or maybe it just reads better with the Gift threads as comparison. But the whole "I didn't want much" thing is really interesting, and now I kind of want to see more VaguelySymphathetic!Chelseas.

[personal profile] jalapeno_dude 2013-12-16 09:00 am (UTC)(link)
Are the Flashes (from Luminosity) considered canon for Effulgence? I'm particularly wondering about Flash 4, where Addy is allowed to "taste" Golden...

(prompted by this)

[personal profile] jalapeno_dude 2013-12-22 05:13 pm (UTC)(link)
I have a bunch of in-character questions about daemons, DNA, and settling prompted by this very interesting post, but it's only worth asking them if there is some "science" behind it, i.e. if I'll get an answer other than "we don't know, it's just magic." Let me know if I should proceed.

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[personal profile] jalapeno_dude 2013-12-24 07:57 am (UTC)(link)
So, in this thread Alice fails to see that Renata will mate to Nathaniel. I guess the implication is supposed to be that Alice's power is thwarted because the Joker teleports Nathaniel to a random capital site. I am confused, because I thought that Alice's power showed her possibilities, not just definite outcomes. So shouldn't Alice have seen $CAPITALNUM total visions, at least one of which showed Nathan being mated to?
Edited 2013-12-24 07:58 (UTC)
pythbox: A book. (Default)

[personal profile] pythbox 2013-12-24 01:35 pm (UTC)(link)
Alice's visions are contingent on the current state of people's decisions. If someone is going to change their mind, but is not certain to do so and hasn't yet, she doesn't necessarily see the future where they do (I'm not sure whether she gets it as one of many possibilities or just doesn't get it at all). This means that Jokers thwart her pretty thoroughly, because Jokers spend most of their time doing things they weren't likely to decide to do and didn't plan very far in advance. ~the power of whimsy~

[personal profile] jalapeno_dude 2013-12-30 03:30 am (UTC)(link)
So, question. [This one seems to make more sense OOC but feel free to answer it IC if appropriate.] The second time Jane breaks (when in Materia), Juliet (plus the others with Jarvises) can reach Milliways. Still while Jane is broken, she subsequently goes to Downside (to check on Glory). So we know she can travel to other worlds. Why, then, didn't she immediately (after visiting Milliways the first time) door to all the other Bellworlds and attempt to establish contact? We know Jarvises also sync worlds, so they could be used to re-sync times even without Jane. There would still be time loss, but since Juliet made it to Milliways well before Aegis/Amariah/Cam/Aether did, there would be less time loss than what actually ended up happening.

EDIT: It's possible I'm misremembering how forcing doors works. I had thought that you could force the door to any place you'd been before. But maybe that's just how Shell Bell's aura works, and the only reason Juliet could force the door to Downside is because she had died?
Edited 2013-12-30 03:49 (UTC)

[personal profile] jalapeno_dude 2013-12-30 03:53 am (UTC)(link)
Actually it seems like Juliet considered this but rejected it, on the grounds that there was no "urgent correspondence" between the Bells. This doesn't seem really convincing to me, both because of the (already known) possibility that timeslip could get really bad and because the inconvenience of not having access to big coins was bad enough that Juliet had to revise her plans to deal with it, so you'd think fixing it would be worth a star. But I guess that means the question should have been IC.
Edited (grammar) 2013-12-30 03:53 (UTC)

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[personal profile] jalapeno_dude 2014-01-01 06:27 am (UTC)(link)
Okay, I've moved on to the Harley/Tab/Gift storyline. I was especially looking forward to re-reading this (along with a few other things, e.g. the whole Kas has a kid by himself arc), and it's not disappointing so far.

Things I caught:
-The Burning Man reference! Clever enough that I'm not going to spoil it here. Suffice it to say it makes me happy that you guys remember your own canon that well.
-Hyperion! Well, Endymion technically, I guess. I remember really liking those books when I read them a while ago. Have both of you read it?
-Some of the alts. The easy ones are Chelsa=Chelsea, Aelise=Libby, Anneia=Anna/Eights, Corona=Joker, Sandre=Sandy/Chainsaw, Kers=Chris (Libby's aunt). Then I think Demauri=Demetri (the tracker from Luminous)

Things I couldn't figure out (and would like the answers if they're available):
-Some of the alts (assuming they actually are alts). It really feels like I ought to be able to figure out Tima, Luhan, and Amdon, but I can't seem to match them to anyone. And then Pacco and Jony and Lionara are mentioned, but I don't know if they actually are alts of people.
-The identity of the child immune to Chelsa who Aelise had killed. It feels like I should be able to figure this out, but I haven't managed it. EDIT: Oh, I guess it's this, but more details would be welcome.
-How Aelise figured out that Harley could torch. Possibly related: who the reports Aelise is getting from the orbital ring (before either Tab or Harley is there) are from, though I guess this could just be generic surveillance stuff.
-If the old man in Milliways is important. I would normally assume no, but the remark about his daughter's name seemed suspiciously specific...

More general comments on the Harley stuff pre-Gift:
-You guys do outstanding dialogue for children! (e.g. greek deities) Not something I've ever been able to manage, so I'm jealous.
-I want to call out for particular praise the parts of the history channel where Harley is talking to the various half-vampires (Lily, Lindsay, Nicole, Henry, Oliver, Parker...). A lot of the interactions in Effulgence between protagonists and tertiary characters get super-monology--Bell or whoever has long paragraphs of stuff which is responded to with "Interesting" or "Yep" or "Okay." That doesn't happen in this sequence--it feels like all of these various characters have opinions and histories and existences when they're not on stage with the protagonists. I'd happily read threads on the day-to-day exploits of these people!
Edited 2014-01-01 07:32 (UTC)

[personal profile] jalapeno_dude 2014-01-01 07:34 am (UTC)(link)
Also, is Delphi something that there is external context for?

EDIT: And I guess this conversation answers most of my template questions.
Edited 2014-01-01 07:39 (UTC)

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[personal profile] jalapeno_dude 2014-01-04 06:02 am (UTC)(link)
So, hypothetical situation (this is mostly for Pyth, I guess). Suppose that, like Pattern, Stella is killed by the van instead of merely being injured. Further suppose that she manages to make the hex first. I assume Alice would still mint himself. What does he do when a new hex fails to resurrect Stella? Does he try a star despite being warned of disastrously bad results? If so, what does he do when that wish also fails? [I'm assuming non-defanged stars fail gracefully (i.e. nothing happens) like lower-pointed coins do, but I don't actually know if that's true.] Does it occur to him to try for higher-pointed coins?

More long-term (if there is a long term, and Alice doesn't kill himself either intentionally or with stars), absent Stella I assume Libby is able to track Alice down. (This could be very easy if things like rains of jellybeans start happening). Is she a good enough people person that she and Alice can actually manage to get along? Or do one or both end up dead?
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[personal profile] pythbox 2014-01-04 01:05 pm (UTC)(link)
Jokers being Jokers, there are a lot of different ways that could play out, but they do have some common threads.

- Lots of crying

- He'll try the star at some point

- If he lives long enough he will get around to higher-pointed coins even if he is not trying to get one specifically to resurrect Bella with it

- Libby is going to be wary of him at first, because he is unusually difficult to predict and that's not a good feature in a mint. It's possible that they could work it out, and it's also possible that one of them will end up dead. Probably not both. It's likelier to be Alice who ends up dead if anyone does, but nothing is set in stone here.

- Supposing he manages to get along with Libby, whole new vistas of coin availability open up before her eyes and when they get around to trying an evil on resurrecting Stella (which they eventually will), she finds the world in much better working order than it was when she left it. (If Libby figures Alice out well enough to let him live, she's going to give him the star secret, because Jokers are safer with it than without.)

- Hahahahaha and now I've just thought of what happens in that hypothetical eventuality when Libby encounters the Joker in Milliways. Um. Thaaaaaat's going to be interesting. I'm not even getting fine detail, I just know it'd be interesting.

- Supposing they come into conflict and Alice gets her before she can get him, he probably ends up settling into the role of Whimsical Trickster God for a while. Eventually he will either figure out the star secret by himself (possibly with Lazarus's help, if he meets Lazarus) or die of not having done that. Eventually, therefore, he will probably resurrect Stella. "Eventually" might be quite a long time in this continuity branch; he doesn't think of resurrecting her as an urgent thing, time-wise or priority-wise, after he has failed to do it with any available resource once and then spent a long while being sad about it afterward.

- In that continuity branch, when Stella wakes back up she finds that Alice has probably shifted forward one Joker-phase, maybe even two, looks correspondingly older, still loves her, and has gotten very comfortable in his capricious-minor-deity role.

- and then of course if Alice gets in a fight with Libby and loses, Stella probably never wakes up at all... unless, that is, Libby someday encounters Sandy and/or Anna (so she has access to evils eventually) and (before or after that) meets Elspeth at Milliways... :D

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[personal profile] jalapeno_dude 2014-01-09 10:22 pm (UTC)(link)
Okay, time for lots of questions about Elspeth's truth-telling power!

Let's assume for the purposes of these questions that I care about the things she says deliberately, not the producing-truth-from-nowhere power, which seems like a special case.

So, it seems that a lot of possible sentences do not fall into the two categories of "statements that are both true and known by Elspeth to be true" and "statements that are both false and known by Elspeth to be false," which are the ones I definitely know to trigger reactions in people listening to her. What would the response be to:

1. Statements with a definite truth value, but one that isn't known to anyone in the conversation. ("Goldbach's conjecture follows from the standard axioms of arithmetic.", "The 10^500th digit of pi in base 10 is 6.")
2. Statements with no consistent truth value. ("This sentence is false.")
3. Statements that are false, but Elspeth believes to be true. ("My father is dead." during the period of time that Elspeth believed that.) I assume these must register as true, or Elspeth could produce-truth-from-nowhere much more often than she actually does.
4. Hearsay: "X happened." (When Elspeth only knows this because Person A told her.) Does this register as less true than "Person A told me that X happened?" Then "X happened" when Elspeth observed this firsthand?
5. Figures of speech:
5a. Hyperbole. ("Addy has pestered my mother about getting to taste her power a million times.")
5b. Metaphor. ("My mother's heart was broken when she thought my father died.")
5c. Anthropomorphism/personification. ("Metacausality wanted Harley to suffer.")
5d. Sarcasm or irony.
6. Syntactically correct but semantically meaningless statements. ("Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.")

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[personal profile] jalapeno_dude 2014-01-11 10:37 am (UTC)(link)
So, Feral turns into a thestral, and Phoenix can see him. But Feral's animagus form is like a normal thestral: he can't be seen by people who haven't seen someone die. This implies that Phoenix has seen someone die. Who? Or is this just Phoenix's opacity power at work?
Edited 2014-01-11 10:37 (UTC)
pythbox: A book. (Default)

[personal profile] pythbox 2014-01-11 01:24 pm (UTC)(link)
She saw him incinerate that guy, remember?

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