Talk To Glowfic Characters

[alicornucopia]

So we've started answering comments in "How To Read Effulgence" in character, and that's not really the ideal platform for those conversations. This is! You may address characters here and we may opt to answer in character. You will get a kind of loosely "backstage" out-of-continuity version of the character (in continuity proper, you cannot talk to them, since you aren't there) and if you want them at a specific (past relative to where we're writing) point in time, feel free to specify (e.g. "Addy in 1932", "Shell in her box", "the Joker while committed", "Minus right after he woke up from turning", "the alethiometer on the subject of 1207").

Any glowfic author may use this thread to receive questions.

You may also be interested in Make My Characters Talk To Each Other.

Comments

[daniel_h]

Glass, how would you react to seeing an individual or template change moiety? I think there was a Matilda who was briefly green, but I can’t find where. How surprising would finding other moieties be?

Lazarus, when you learned that ingots always beat coin, you only knew about stars. Now that you have coins literally a thousand times stronger (and, though I can’t think of any more-pain-tolerant Jokers you’re likely to meet soon, may get 11s or higher at some point), are you still sure coins can’t beat ingots ever? If so, could you please try to explain what you “see” that tells you this?

Sarion, it is my current understanding that very young elves are socially allowed to ask questions. As I have an interest in linguistics, I would be interested in the reasons your language even has a grammar for questions. The process by which elf children acquire this part of the language would also interest me. Finally, an honest assessment of my ability to politely converse with members of your species other than yourself would make good hearing.

[thaumobabble]

Seeing someone change moieties would surprise me - I'm not confident it never happens but watching it in progress, especially in someone templatey and therefore strongly moietied, would be deeply strange, and of course I don't know what moieties mean.

Finding third or further moieties would also surprise me, but not as much. I'd expect them to come from worlds we haven't visited yet - we already observe different ratios of purple and green in different worlds (most Aurum residents are green, for instance, and we haven't found anyone green in Apollo yet). So I'd be less floored to appear to check out a brand new world and find that it was full of people neither green nor purple.

[small_magics]

Very young elves can get away with asking questions, and often learn to do it from unicorns and other species, or sometimes their slightly older peers when there are two children in the same place at the same time. Question forms persist in the language because they may be used in emergencies and because we do sometimes coexist with other species who forget elven manners on occasion. Elves who are likely to encounter emergencies may actually practice asking questions, although not at anyone, so they may take advantage of the greater speed without stumbling over their etiquette.

You do not have the delicacy of a centuries-old elf, who can often elicit information while at least verbally affecting total incuriosity throughout an entire conversation, but you appear to be well above the typical standard set for human visitors.

[nonbird]

Ingots beating coins is not related to the strength of the coin. If I saw a coin that looked like it could beat an ingot, I would expect it to come from something very similar to minting that was not in fact the same thing as the minting I know about. Or at least to be different from existing coins in a way more fundamental than merely being another level up from the strongest one I've seen.

I'm sure you've noticed what happens when I try to explain what my power sees... the reason I'm so sure that ingots beat coins is because I've seen a lot of coins and mints and ingots and all of them that I've seen have had a characteristic that referred to that relationship, and it's always been referring to exactly the same thing exactly the same way.

[daniel_h]

That’s interesting. I knew the going theory was that minting was originally an ingot power with a way to spread (although that doesn’t make sense; hexes can’t instill ingot powers…), but every ingot references this relationship, even the ones that have nothing to do with coins or magic or pain? That seems to mean that the two forms of magic are more related than I thought. Do ingot powers sometimes reference each other like that (e.g., would you expect an ingot with the abiloty to cause physical injury to be reference some sort of relationship to Chris’s power)?

[daniel_h]

Future readers: It was Millie the Ghost, not Matilda, who changed moieties; I ask about this again at the top of Page 4.