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

[edgeofyourseat]

The Milliways time-pausing thing doesn't always work.

[modrony]

If it works sometimes it's still net positive with very little cost.

[pythbox]

How do you figure? First you'd have to find somebody willing to move out, then you'd have to unhook the target world from Jane. So if the pause blows up, you could lose a lot more time than you would've if you'd just left it alone.

Or did you mean no-Jane worlds? You'd lose the time it'd take you to find somebody in Milliways willing to move out of theirs, and I bet it'd be a lot.

-War

[modrony]

You got a point there. Though I do wonder if Jane-time is adjustible by taking Jane-device to speeded or slowed time. Not a good thing to experiment on granted. Did something like that happen when she lived in Aegis?

Could Shell Bell force a door to no-Jane worlds? In that case you could look for a volunteer in the target world instead. Bigger sample size and no waiting. I'd volunteer but I bet my world is Jane-able since we have internet.

[she_sells_seashells]

In theory, we could dilate time around Janepoints such that Jane synced her point to - Bell Standard Time, let's go with that - and the rest of the world followed along at a fraction of that rate, but we don't actually know how Jane's time syncing works, and if it breaks we have bigger problems than a few months going by in worlds we haven't begun to handle yet. This also wouldn't let Jane use the Internets on worlds that have them, though that's a relatively more minor concern.

People seem to have inflated ideas about what my aura can do. I can get a door from a world to Milliways whenever I want. I can get Milliways to let me door out to any world I've been to before without spending a coin to force it. And I can sometimes get a door to a world I haven't visited before, but I need something to go on. I didn't get a door to Materia. I did get a door to Rainbow, but only when I had someone on hand who had met someone from Rainbow. I can't just door to unspecified Janeless worlds.

[modrony]

What is your stance on intentional Bell duplication (possibly with duplicate significant others so they wont be lonely)

That might be another answer to the empress shortage problem.
I think I'd do this even with no alternate dimensions to look after just so one me can look after earth and others can boldly go and seek new life and new civilizations to improve in my own dimension.

It is nice to be unique but is it more nice than knowing multiple civilizations are looked after instead of one?
Is there another reason I am missing? Bellish privacy concerns?

Guess ambiguous power structure would be a problem, but I think me's would struggle more about who has to be the boss than who gets to.

Does downside catch non-human sentient life?
If it does and there is'nt any it's obviously ok to stay earth-centric.
(but it is weird if this is the case, and I'd still wonder about downside definition of sentient)

[ending_of]

Downside catches everything.

[jalapeno_dude]

Well, that's an ambiguous answer if I've ever heard one (and technically wrong, too, since Downside doesn't catch things on Syntropy).

Stella/Golden/Pattern (plus others, I guess, but you guys seem like the most likely), you did check for other sentient life in the universe, right? Given your general utilitarian motives, it seems like it wouldn't make sense to devote nearly as much time to fine-tuning Earth and humanity if there are much bigger net welfare gains to be had elsewhere first. This seems especially important now that you know they definitely exist in Syntropy.

[ending_of]

I answered in the same context implied by the question. Downside catches everything - human and otherwise, sentient and otherwise, living and otherwise - from all worlds that funnel to it.

[jalapeno_dude]

Ooh, interesting. So if something was never alive, how does Downside decide at what point in its--er, unlife--to "catch" it? That is, Downside seems to catch things at a particular moment in their history, which for humans at least corresponds to (the first?) time that they die. But if Downside also catches things that were never alive, at what particular moment in their history does it catch them?

[ending_of]

Nonliving things are retrievable from any point in their history, with potential duplication. I could fill the sky with copies of some world's Earth from every moment in its history up until the present, if I chose to. Nonlife is distinct from life in that way; relatedly, nonlife also cannot torch.

There is some automatic retrieval of nonliving things, which takes them from the moment that they are destroyed, for any obvious definition of 'destroyed'. Since duplication is not a concern, the same object may appear several times: for example, a mug in some living world might shatter, generating a copy from just before the break; then it might be repaired, and later broken again, generating a second copy from just before the second break.

[modrony]

Can bacteria be made torchable?
What about plants/insects?

[ending_of]

Unaware life of any kind cannot currently be made torchable. If I chose, I could change that. I do not so choose.

[bellfounding]

Yes, we checked for aliens. We don't have 'em. Seems they don't come by default, and the worlds that have them don't have any of the same kinds.

[she_sells_seashells]

Permanent duplication doesn't appeal to us. It's okay as a temporary problem-solving measure, but we don't want to stay that way, even with duplicate partners.