TwiLyghtSansSparkles

Who originally resisted pugs but then became the biggest pug lover of them all?

Yes. Yes, you may. Eeexxxxcellent.

Who wants to be Oblitipug?

….oddly enough, no.

Mind control? You wound me, Edgedancer. I did nothing but open your eyes to the adorableness of pugs. It would've happened anyway; I just sped the process along.

You presume I think too small, dear Kobold. I wish to make all Questioneers aware of the superiority of pugs. Behold, the fruition of my true master plan! Excellent. Most excellent indeed.

"All we have is pugs and jokes"? You say that like pugs aren't the most important thing in any thread.

Reading over this post: ….I realize her powers are more mind-controlling than I thought. However: If they're aware of Euphoria's powers (which, if they're required to visit her periodically, then they would be) then they would know they were being manipulated. Until we have an idea of how long it takes her to alter a vanilla's history (and I'm presuming it would take more time the farther back into their history she goes) I think it's safe to say she doesn't do this to everyone. Just those who are obviously causing trouble. Put a vanilla who hates their plantation work through Euphoria's history alteration and emotional rewriting, and they'll come out a happy little slave. How disturbing would that be to those who knew them? And how difficult would it be for their fellow slaves to keep their mouths shut and act happy so Euphoria doesn't do the same to them, submitting to her happiness-gifting and going about their days like they love life? She'd still be rewriting their surface emotions, but if they managed to keep their mouths shut and act pathetically grateful enough, they could feasibly be kept away from the worst of Euphoria's manipulations. Would her surface emotion-rewriting keep them under control? Absolutely. But unless she's able to rewrite the history of every vanilla in Corvallis in a very short period of time, then the chances of some of them secretly courting rebellion while acting outwardly happy would be better than zero. I'm not saying a rebellion during Euphoria's reign is likely; it's actually the least likely thing I can think of. But after, when the vanillas who haven't been mind-wiped are free of her false happiness? I'd say it's pretty likely.

Deleted? I thought she was a gifter, who gifted happiness. That's not deletion; that's overriding bad emotions with good ones, like an abusive dad taking his son to the carnival in an attempt to make him forget about the abuse. I'm not saying it would be easy for slaves to rebel in those conditions; with an Epic like Euphoria, she could make rebellion all but impossible. But presuming she is a happiness-gifter and not an emotion-deleter, it would be possible for resentment to exist. And once she's gone, it wouldn't take long for it to come to the surface.

1) True. But in between visits, the resentment could fester. Would it be difficult to break through? Certainly, but once Euphoria vanishes, it would all come crashing back. 2) Again, true, but in between visits, think about all the resentment that would cause. As it wears off, more resentment would begin to take its place, increasing the overall amount of resentment Euphoria would have to override on their next visit. Yes, it would be difficult to break through that, but once she's gone, all of that pent-up rage has to go somewhere. 3) That's a lot of time spent with each vanilla. Presuming she can do this in minutes also presumes she also has high-powered telepathy, plus the ability to instantly interpret all memories in seconds, plus intuitive knowledge of which memories affected which vanillas which way. A single mind is such a maze of memory and emotion that rewriting them all would be a chore. It makes more sense for Euphoria to simply rewrite recent memories, because otherwise her caseload would be overwhelming.

It's stated that her gifted happiness wears off after a period of time, though. To continue with your example, let's say that, after I've been away from this site for a few weeks, I think back to what happened and wonder why the shift was so sudden. "We were friends," I think, "so what went wrong?" Afraid to reach out to you, I decide to talk to others involved to find out what was going on during that time, and I learn that it was all part of a psychology experiment on your part. I would be hurt, yes, but the way I felt about that time would change, softening a bit, making me feel less resentful but more willing to rethink what happened, and more willing to try and figure out a way to repair the damage if possible. To use another example, let's go with bullying. A girl is bullied all through high school, and all through college, she thinks she deserved it. She picks at her memories and shows herself evidence that she brought that treatment on herself, opening herself up to similar treatment from coworkers. But say she decides to look at her memories in a different way—adjust the focus, so to speak, so it lands on the bullies and not herself. Say she sees a group of girls who targeted her for arbitrary reasons and picked on her because they could. Or say she decides to embrace whatever she was bullied for. In either case, the memories themselves don't change. The events remain the same. What changes is the way the people involved respond to them, and that change was triggered by a choice to re-examine the events and how they responded to them. In both cases, the person being manipulated manages to break free of the manipulation they were subjected to—not completely, and not entirely, but enough to realize it was manipulation. Working from those assumptions, I can easily see a vanilla being gifted happiness and resenting it the whole time. Realizing it's just there to make them feel differently about their situation, letting anger simmer whenever they start to feel anticipation toward washing feet, anger toward not only washing the feet, but the way Euphoria makes them want to do it. When you know someone is trying to make you feel a certain way, it's easier to resist that. It may not be possible to ignore it entirely, but it would be possible to resent it and allow some of your own emotions to break through Euphoria's happiness.

How does she rewrite their past? She doesn't change the events or how they responded to them at the time; she just changes how they respond to them now. Kind of like how when a three-year-old throws a rock at a window because he's trying to break the rock open, he sees it as perfectly logical at the time. Four years later, he might look back and feel ashamed that he was such an idiot. Twenty years after that, he'll look back and think he was a hilarious (if rather dumb) kid. Euphoria is just using a concentrated and artificial version of that natural change in emotional responses to memories. She isn't changing the past; she's just changing how they respond to it.

Didn't Conflux do something similar? Give energy to Enforcement officers who used it to charge fuel cells? The way I read it, she was just rewriting the way they felt about their memories in the present. Kind of like….I don't know if you've read Ella Enchanted, but it's a take on the Cinderella story where Ella is cursed with obedience. No matter what someone tells her to do, she has to do it. So one day, Lucinda (the fairy who "blessed" her with that "gift") tells her to be happy about her condition and "see it as the gift it is." Since Ella has to obey, she sees her curse as a blessing until her fairy godmother (a much less powerful fairy than Lucinda) tells her to "be however you feel about it." This allows Ella to go back to resenting her curse. I thought Euphoria's powers functioned in a similar way. They don't rewrite the past; only the present, and there's no obedience caveat. So a vanilla's resentment might be able to surface from beneath all that manipulation.

I teach Sunday school. Tomorrow is Easter, and as many people know, it's like the Christian equivalent of Super Bowl Sunday. Big day, everyone shows up, the church is expected to bring its A-game, and there's supposed to be something special for the kids. Well, the church I attend is pretty small, so I teach in tandem with one other young woman my age. We'll trade, two weeks on and two weeks off. Due to a schedule change, this week—tomorrow—was supposed to be her week to teach. I was planning to just follow her lead because 1. it's her week to plan and 2. last year, I put a lot of effort into making Easter morning special for the kids with pretty Easter baskets and an egg hunt, and she kicked me out. Took the baskets and said "I'm good, I don't need your help," presumably before taking credit for all the work I did. Well, today, it turns out she had told the pastor that it was my week, so when I told him that it was her week, it turned out we had no plan. So now I'm having to put all this stuff together at the last minute when she should've planned this out, knowing full well it was her responsibility. She tossed out an idea for a play—get the kids to act out different roles in the Easter story while she reads it, which is a good idea….but why didn't she say that on Wednesday when Pastor sent out the text? In other news, I'm quitting the Sunday school thing on Monday. I'll tell my pastor that I can teach for two more weeks, and then I'm done. I can't do this anymore.

If I could give multiple upvotes, I'd spend my entire quota on this post. I was just thinking. IRL, emotional manipulation works best when the person being manipulated is unaware of it. If, for example, someone acts wounded to make zer significant other feel guilty, then lavishes affection on them when they apologize, then it is most effective when the significant other is unaware they are being manipulated. When ze catch on to what is happening, the attempt at manipulation will partially work, but it will leave them feeling angry and resentful that zer significant other played on their emotions like that. In Corvallis, Euphoria is essentially manipulating the entire vanilla population with their knowledge. While some vanillas undoubtedly take this manipulation as a sort of drug that allows them distraction from the overall suckishness of their existence, there have to be some who take it resentfully and despise the way Euphoria uses her powers to make them feel happy about washing feet (or whatever degradation their Epic masters force on them). What if there's a rebellion brewing, made up of vanillas who want Euphoria gone, and who will be the first to seize the opportunity to revolt when Iconoclast shows up?

I'm working on a backstory Epic for one of my backstory Epics.

Progress: Page 19 of 1007 LET'S DO THIS!

It's actually the Financier who provides resources for Astoria with his multiplication powers. So if he went up against the duplication Epic in Corvallis, they'd get him shouting about heresy against Savior Zero by way of impersonating a prophet. I love the crossroads idea.

I FINALLY got my library copy of Way of Kings!

That sounds like a plan my siblings and I would come up with--regardless of the actual weakness.

I like it. I don't know if I'll join or not, but I definitely want to. Before I say goodnight, I leave you with this photo of a triple-pug head tilt:

Sounds good. And there's no timetable at the moment, and therefore no deadline as of yet , but Corvallis is shaping up to be an awesome setting. If we're going to expand, it's one of those settings that I could see being a really unique one.

We might have some new members joining soon, so what would you think of starting the Corvallis thread , but keeping the focus on areas that don't immediately involve the Queens? If not, we could figure something else out--start in a small town or another city.

All you must do is climb the summit of Mount Wannahawkaloogie and-- --nah, all you have to do is post your character bio here, get some feedback, and PM me the weakness. It looks like we'll be starting a new thread soon (???).