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

Re: Some random questions

[thisvorlunatic]

Okay, I'll give this a shot...

Imagine that you are, somehow, a mint who can make high-level coins out of mild boredom or some other trivially inconvenient state of mind. You are set for miracles. Never will you be in danger of having less magic than you need.

Now, think of someone you know who is just incredibly, loathsomely annoying. If you don't know such a person, imagine one. The sort of person where just knowing you're going to have to interact with them in any capacity drains all the fun out of your day.

Suppose that this person is part of a smallish minority population who can - let's see, you're human, right - who can fly by flapping their elbows. Out of all those people, it's the annoying one specifically who is also graced with the ability to distribute this power.

Now, you're capable of assigning yourself any flight power you like with miracle magic - dozens of them, if you choose - you could shapeshift into a hundred different kinds of flying animal, you could give yourself levitation, you could spontaneously manifest jetpacks at need, you could invent those amazing-sounding wings my alt Sable found in her adventures. You are replete with potential flight powers.

But the specific power of flight by elbow-flapping can only be acquired by going to the Most Annoying Person in the World and asking politely, then enduring their thinly veiled contempt while they put on a show of welcoming you to the community of elbow-flappers, whereupon for at least a decade afterward they will be contacting you regularly to remind you how great it is to be an elbow-flapper, sigh loudly, and rhetorically ask what took you so long in a sanctimoniously pitying tone.

I hope this metaphor has been enlightening.

Re: Some random questions

[daniel_h]

Yeah, that does make a lot more sense. You aren't just beating Draconic, you're also beating all the lizards who believe it. I can see why the minor additional ability of flight-in-natural-form-by-wingflapping wouldn’t be enough to put up with the Dragon Council or individual dragons when you also have the ability to fly with shapeshifting, wizardry, and/or tools even before you became a mint. Do I understand that correctly?

Re: Some random questions

[thisvorlunatic]

Yeah, I think you've got it. Glad I could clear that up.

Re: Some random questions

[daniel_h]

Having thought about it some more since my last reply, I have a minor comment about this and two further questions.

First, the comment. Most of the metaphor was quite useful, but there is one thing that has been bugging me. I would be so bad at minting if coins were made out of boredom. As soon as I made a coin I would stop being bored because I had magic. This would eventually wear off, but it couldn't do it quickly because that would require me to get used to having coins, which I couldn't do while generating them so slowly.

Now, for the first question. Suppose that, before becoming a mint yourself, you heard that Lazarus had made a bunch of unusuals and uniques. I imagine that when he came by to unshren you and Finnah, you would have asked about that; you've said several times that you wanted more form choices. From my understanding of the magic involved, it would be impossible to have an unusual or unique shren; given the choice between "unique dragon" and "shren", which would you have chosen? I suppose Lazarus could also have offered you a shapeshifting power unrelated to your species, but for all I know such a power would have weird interactions with your existing forms. You could probably have designed a suitable power yourself eventually, but at this point you didn't know you'd become a mint and Lazarus was busy curing all the other shrens.

Finally, Lazarus did not give any of the baby shrens a choice about whether to become dragons or not, and given the circumstances this was probably the right choice (even if you would trust 20-year-old dragonishes with such a big question, speed was probably more important in this case). Suppose that for some reason you were given the choice of turning into a dragon or not when you were partly through a 20-year course of esu. Would your answer have been different in that case?

Re: Some random questions

[thisvorlunatic]

Re: the comment, yeah, I anticipated something like that, which is why I added "or some other trivially inconvenient state of mind".

Interestingly enough, I'd have to double-check with Lazarus but from my current understanding of the theory involved it is possible to have a unique shren, the same way you get a shren parunia.

Given I'd be, one, a baby, and two, partly through a 20-year course of esu... I'd say it depends. If it was after I invented the word e'sisaak but before things got really bad, I bet I'd be stubborn. If it was while things were in the middle of getting really bad, it would depend what mood they caught me in. If it was after things had definitely gotten really bad, I'd probably stick it out just because I was constantly living in the victory-at-any-cost state of mind at that point.

But if I did decide to give up shrenhood as a baby, it would probably take me only a few more decades to figure out that I regretted it. Whether or not I'd regret it enough to change back... I really couldn't say.