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belltower

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.

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From:

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.

Edited Date: 2013-10-21 10:29 pm (UTC)

From:

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.

From:

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?

Edited Date: 2013-10-21 10:40 pm (UTC)

From:

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.