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

Bella

[erinflight]

How important are other people to you? You seem to be altruistic on a large scale, but not with necessarily with specific individuals? If you are selfish why do you care so much about making a better world? How far does you altruism extend?

Re: Bella

[luminous_regnant]

Selfishness leads to possessiveness leads to a desire to optimize leads to something that can be quite accurately summarized as altruism. We determine how far our resources will stretch, claim whatever we can claim with those resources, and then it's ours. If it or its contents suffer, this reflects poorly on us and is not what we had in mind when we claimed the thing in the first place. If it thrives, then everything's going according to plan.

We will be generous with specific individuals when we can, but it's usually not as efficient as other things we could be doing unless the person is personally close to us, useful towards our projects in their own right, or very cheap to help. The first because we do benefit (both directly, and in terms of our efficiency at doing things) from having a personal support system; the second for obvious reasons; and the third because it doesn't divert many resources we could be deploying to help other people more or in greater quantity.

In my world, history textbooks dwell more on my forcible conversion of the vampire population to vegetarianism - but I saved more people's lives by bankrolling a massive release of sterile male mosquitoes until the malaria-carrying species were extinct. Doing the most good does not always mean helping whoever's nearby; people who are nearby are just often more convenient to learn about and offer aid to.

Sometimes other people will acquire a level of priority that means we can't trade them off against other things calmly. In my case, I would be unable to function on a high level without Edward, so I must prioritize his safety over even things which are objectively more important because I cannot succeed at plans which calls for securing things in reverse order - and because I am selfish, and he's even more mine than my world is, and more essential to my personal happiness.

But when we want other things badly enough we can make enormous clear-minded sacrifices for them, like Sarion did.

They're still for us, just for different parts of us.