FeatherWriter

Session #27, go go go!

I know, I'm aware. It's just been something that's been talked about a bit. I didn't mean to seem critical, guys. Light knows I'm not alowed to complain about other people getting rep! I've tended to come down on the side of, let people have their fun and throw rep around, but there are a few people who are concerned.

Peter, you just get more and more awesome. Works with Brandon? Linguistics degree? FMA fan? Likes Frozen? And now MLP too? I just don't think I can handle all of this! (But no seriously, you're super cool and I kinda want to be you when I grow up, oops, awkward confession time.)

Note to self: Don't read Quiver's reactions while in class. You will grin like a moron and the professor will KNOW something is up. OOPS. Scene 1 I will deifinitely have to tell Ellie that she made you spit take twice. She will be so pleased. (I've said it before and I'll say it again, but the way Ellie writes Seiko is fantastic and I am so jealous of everything because she's amazing.) Miranda completely and absolutely loathes the Kaiju. This came out most in the cult, but it's definitely still a thing. Fun fact: part of fiVe's senseless loathing of Sylvie is an extention of the way that Miranda loathes the Kaiju. So that's fun. Ehehe, Sylvie and her tech. Some things never change. And I was rather surprised at Miranda's plan as well. It's a bit of an interesting parallel. Sylvie infiltrated the cult last Act, and now they were going to have fiVe try to infiltrate Valentina's systems. It didn't work out, but there's some interesting set up there. Re: Fallout. Obviously there was quite a bit of fallout with the crew (as Seiko and Katie both attack Sylvie immediately) and the others are extremely disapproving of what Sylvie has done, but you might have realized that fiVe is... quite a bit less upset about this than the rest of them. And that's kind of the thing. fiVe and Sylvie have both seen Sylvie using the override code as inevitable. I mean, like Sylvie says, this is exactly the kind of situation for which it was designed. fiVe is far more surprised that she's managed to go this long without Sylvie shutting her down, and in a way, she's kind of pushing the envelope: "How far can I push Sylvie toward the edge before she snaps and uses it?" Meanwhile Sylvie thinks that she really does have every right to use that code but she promised she wouldn't and everyone else seems to think it would be a terrible thing if she did. Despite everyone else thinking that fiVe is in the right with her choice to be her own person, fiVe and Sylvie are both kind of in agreement that it isn't. fiVe sees herself as a rebel and a rule breaker. She thinks that the "right thing" to do would be to go back to Sylvie, but... she doesn't want to do the right thing anymore. She wants to be selfish. She was so sure that when other people found out about her they would say that Sylvie is right and that she should go back. The fact that they all took her side and think Sylvie's totally in the wrong is both surprising and satisfying to fiVe. She feels like she's pulled a con over everyone without even meaning to, and she's going to enjoy it while it lasts. Scene 2 Character drama and conflict... yep. You're definitely going to like this arc. Heh, I've had to split up the original Session 27 into two separate sessions because it was like... 86 pages long and 37,840 words before editing. Even split up, that's still two sessions which are INCREDIBLY long. And the reason why? Character conflict. Lots of one-on-one conversations happening simultaneously between characters, and that throws the length out a lot. Yeah, fiVe's relationship with Sylvie is a hard thing to put into terms. Is she a daughter or a sister? I think Zhu would probably say "daughter" as she tends to treat Vee like she's Sylvie's (possibly abused but not really) daughter, and encourages Vee to think of fiVe as a sister. There just isn't really a good relationship word out there for it, though. Of course, Sylvie would use this to argue that fiVe is herself and trying to explain it with other terms is obviously going to be difficult. (I think the word "liminal" tends to be used to talk about "conscious" actions. As opposed to "subliminal" which would be "subconscious." But I understand your meaning!) Scene 3 EHEHEHEHEHE. You don't even know how close I was to tacking on the Drift to this session. SO CLOSE. Emma and I wrote it in between the two sessions, so I really could have, but I like it better at the beginning of the next one. I actually had to edit in quite a bit of what Sylvie was doing with the secretive plan thing. It was something that I decided about halfway into the conversation that she'd done and so I added some things in to reflect that. I distinctly remember telling Gavin privately about halfway through that: "Hey I just decided that Sylvie totally lied about how long is left until fiVe can be reactivated. K? I'm gonna do a thing, watch." I'm glad that she reads as somewhat sinister, because I wanted the reader to be worried that she had some terrible plan up her sleeves, but really she doesn't have any nefarious hopes for this little situation. She realizes she's on VERY thin ice and is about to lose everything with this crew, so she's strategizing to help fix things. So, she and Vee go to work. Vee wakes fiVe up as soon as the override period is up as a gesture of goodwill, and then Vee convinces fiVe to stay silent as they listen in. Sylvie knows that this group needs to talk things through and work through these issues, and she wants fiVe to hear this happening. Sylvie wants to make amends with the crew and with fiVe, and she managed to pull off this little situation to make that work. Ah, poor Seiko. As Ellie has said, he could be seen as selfish because he puts his priorities (his sisters) above everything else, and then gets upset when others do not also hold those priorities above all. It's worth noting that fiVe's texts here are... not completely genuine. They're what she's actually thinking, of course, but she probably wouldn't have just sent them on her own. She realizes that Seiko is going to not be happy with the situation and is going to try to talk Miranda out of it, so she sends off texts to try to counteract what he's doing. Fight fire with fire; fight Seiko with Seiko. Awwwww.. writing compliments. *blushes* I really do love writing fiVe. She's so fascinating. And I will try my hardest to get Session #27 up soon, (though most of the really interesting interpersonal stuff has now been separated off into Session #28). You'll get to see the Drift at least though, and some of the aftermath of that! Should be a fun ride!

Ah, you're reminding me how much I really liked this show, Quiver! Fluttershy is probably my favorite, and the one that I empathized with the most. I share a lot of my philosophy with her in how to interact with other people, and I share a lot of her flaws -- especially being willing to let other people hurt me for fear of being mean in return to them. As such, her episodes tend to be my favorite. If you're looking for a more "epic" scope story with actual villians, I'd recommend the season openers and finales. (Some of them, at least.) I think Lauren Faust wanted a more adventure-style show, with the Mane 6 off fighting evil with the power of friendship and the Elements of Harmony (which may or may not have been mentioned in those two episodes.) Each of the Mane 6 is linked to one of the Elements and they're pretty powerful magical artifacts. The beginnings and ends of seasons tend to try to recapture this more adventurous genre, rather than the slice-of-life style of the other episodes. Season one's two-part opener has the girls facing off against Nightmare Moon, Season Two's opener brings in Discord, an emissary of the power of Chaos itself. Season 3 introduces Queen Chrysalis, who attempts to take over one of the northern kingdoms. Luna is adorable and WE VERY MUCH ENJOY EPISODES WITH HER IN THEM! Woooooonnaaaaaa. (Ehehe, don't tell Gavin. Ze's a major Pinkie Pie fan. I'm pretty sure Pinkie piVe would be too much!)

Yeah, the Sanderson Elimination has definitely skewed things rep-wise. Pretty much everyone who has participated has experienced a huge jump in rep, but that's just something that happens in a system like this. Maybe not a flaw of the system per se, but certainly a quirk.

No worries, no obligation! I just wanted to hear what you were thinking if you had!

I swear I'll be doing Cosmere stuff again once WoR comes out, but until then... Session #26 is up! If there's any of the other Feathertips or Blades still following this topic, I'd love to hear from you guys again. I know Malliw was thinking about possibly starting Scroungers, did that ever happen?

I've seen the first three seasons, and I agree with your analysis Quiver! MLP is really great at taking complex story elements (fears over identity/self-doubt/things like that) and working them into an easily understandable, but still accurate presentation. I love the animation, like you've said. It's just very easy on the eyes and engaging to watch. ((I feel like Sylvie could learn a lesson from watching this episode. Who would have thought that making a bunch of copies of yourself would turn out badly, huh?)) I"m interested to see if you keep with it!

Pfft. It's my own silly fault for not posting anything worth talking about. Whoops. Been writing too much Scroungers and not enough Shallarin, right? However, I can tell you all that I've got a project planned for when Words of Radiance comes out! That should be a good thing for you all!

Scene 1 Yeah, there's actually quite a few similarities between Miranda and Sylvie, which they're slowly starting to realize. Sylvie's software, Miranda's hardware. They're both VERY protective of their tech as well. Scene 2 I'll point out that the comment about big houses was meant to be a bit of a hint toward Sylvie's early backstory, which hasn't come up in canon much. And even though Seiko had just texted, Sylvie's not about to trust any footsteps in the hall until she sees who it is. Scene 3 I SWEAR, I totally came up with my only-semi-trustworthy dark-haired young female hacker who is brought on as a secret member for a powerful government organization BEFORE Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. started airing! I'm actually kinda surprised by how similiar to Sylvie Skye is sometimes, because I definitely didn't mean to draw a parallel there. Scene 4 TITLE DROP. Yep. Couldn't pass up the opportunity to throw it down, right? Yeah, Seiko and Sylvie are starting to get better toward each other, and their teasing's pretty good natured there for a little while, but then she gets upset by the comment about changing clothes and we're kinda back to square one. She's still very sore about being ostracized, and anything that singles her out against the group is something she's going react against. Ahahaha, Sylvie? Dancing? It'd be horrendous. Especially in those heels. Scene 5 *Rooftop cultist may or may not do a thing* Scene 6 Emmalyn, (who plays Eleanor), did a drawing of Seiko's outfit a little while back when we were playing! That can be found over here! We are the coolest campaign because we have so much awesome art, I swear. Sylvie's feeling pretty suspicious of Avery at this point. There's discrepancies in xer story certainly... Scene 7 Hehe, Eleanor's faking drunk here! It's an act. She's wouldn't actually drink on the job (I hope). As for Miranda and Seiko... they've had some time together now that he's returned. Miranda's not denying that she really cares about him, even if he's not ready to commit to anything. (Don't mind me crying over here, I've just got Advanced Hydrophobia in my eye.) Ooh, not recognizing the name "Yegorov"? I can refresh, though the beginning of the next session might jog your memory. From Session 10 Pt. 1 I decided to pull him into Sylvie's backstory as well, and he shows up when she's in the piloting academy, being an absolute jerk. AND THEN GAVIN FANCAST TOM HIDDLESTON FOR HIM AND EVERYTHING WENT DOWNHILL FROM THERE. However, in an act against hirself, ze then decided to fancast Valentia as Natalie Dormer, so now there's two very attractive looking Yegorovs running around to terrorize both gynephiles and androphiles alike.

I need to see Despicable Me 2... I feel like I saw it once, but I don't remember much. Thanks, on the reveal shift. You're the best, Gav. It's funny. I don't even really want to know for myself... I want to know so that I can make the transcripts complete! *transcriber feels* Though I'm a bit curious about such a secretive reveal! Aaaaaaaand, I've gotten over my inhibitions and went ahead and did Session 25. Because why not, right? I've left a space for the missing scene, so that I'll have somewhere to put it when I do finally receive it!

Well... this would be a little different. This is going to be more like if... instead of showing you the scenes with Miranda where she talks about her exoskeleton, I wouldn't be able to show anything until the reveal happened in Session 20 as she's infiltrating the cult. That was the first "secret scene" that I wasn't privy to while it happened, but they decided to let me in on what was happening even before the payoff reveal two Acts later. I mean, the format thus far is that I've really wanted this to be objective, and if things are happening to other characters, I've wanted to show that. (If I hadn't, I probably would have done a limited viewpoint from Sylvie's perspective.) I mean, I'm probably making a bigger deal out of this than it should be, but I guess it just feels strange to me to publish these with canon elements between characters missing. There's going to be scenes that are happening in time with the rest that I just can't show you because I don't have them. Trust me, if there was a way that I could somehow publish these with the secrets in them for you guys, but hide them from myself, I'd do it in a heartbeat. You guys aren't players, and you shouldn't have to be limited by my personal viewpoint. If I am going to go ahead and continue to publish these, I will most likely go back and add the scenes in where they're supposed to go when they get revealed. I mean, they're not flashbacks the way the others are, so saving them for interludes wouldn't really make sense. Other readers who start later than you guys should be able to go back and read it the way it's supposed to be read, so I'm going to do that. The last time we really had an extended secret sequence, it was Sylvie's in the cult. And I was the one privy to those secrets, so it was no big deal to put them in where they're supposed to go in that series. If say, one of the other players were the transcriber, in that situation, they might have had to go on, just following the main team and then... as soon as they met back up with Sylvie, I could release all the scenes of what she's been up to alone. I just... there's going to be holes here guys. And as soon as I'm able to plug these holes, I'm going to do so. Which means you'll be getting some scenes out of sequence, but there's not too much I can do about that, unless I decided to wait until I can do it correctly. I... still need to think about this I guess. IDK why it's bothering me so much.

Okay first things first: a question to those following the story. (Which at the moment I would guess is probably Quiver and Joe). So, while transcribing the latest session, I ran into a secret scene, AKA, I have a note in the text that there was a scene going on between some of the other players that was not made public to me and the rest of the group. Normally, before this, I would simply ask for a copy of what happened "off-screen" so to speak, and would then incorproate this. However, this current scene and sequence has been requested to stay secret until its reveal happens for the players. So... I won't get access to it for an indefinite amount of time. This leaves me with a bit of a dilema, which I'm consulting you guys on. I could continue to upload and transcribe chapters without the secret scenes and put them in later when I get them, OR I could pause for a little while in hopes that the secret is revealed and its build up is unhidden. What would you guys prefer? I'm... really hesitant to upload chapters with holes... but we're only about halfway through Act 3 right now, and I have no idea when the set up might be right for them to unveil this secret plotting. Maybe Act 4, I've been told. I'll get y'all's opinions on thsi though, since you're the readers. ANYWAY ONTO RESPONDING Scene 1 Well, it's Scroungers, so "terrible things happening" is preeetty much a given. I'm glad you're picking up on Sylvie's isolation here. This is a bit of a theme with her. She didn't realize that companionship was really something to be missed and thought she was fine on her own. Mike is kinda helping break her out of that a little bit, and she's realizing that maybe being on good terms with her teammates and having friends is something she wants... and is something that's currently out of reach at her present level of ostracization. Mike is somewhat starting to take a bit of the place that Vee has had thus far, though I'm not sure that's a bad thing. Relationships with real people are a step in the right direction for her, but I think you're right. This could very easily simply turn into a replacement obsession. We'll have to watch her on that. Seiko really does seem to be trying to bridge the gap, which is an interesting initiative on his part. Sylvie's somewhat receptive to it, but she really is starting to be hurt by eveyone using her last name, especially Eleanor or Katie, whom she has known for a while. It's something that's really starting to nag at her, and hearing people call her by her last name alone is going to get to her in the sessions to come. (Heh, there is someone on the team who calls her by her first name at this point, though, and that would be fiVe, who calls her "Sylvia" to her face, and "Mansen" behind her back.) Scene 2 I really do like this scene, yep. I'll applaud Katie's levelheadedness here. Sylvie's being rather disrespectful in her anger, and Katie doesn't let it devolve into a fight. They both manage to stay somewhat civil even as they're talking about very emotionally charged topics. Katie is feeling a lot closer and more protective of fiVe and even though Sylvie is outwardly behaving, the fact that she still doesn't recognize fiVe's independence and doesn't agree with the decision of the group is a source of tension. Scene 3 Yeah, Shatterdomes are dang impressive. I mean, you've seen how big the Jaegers are in the trailers, so you can imagine that a building large enough to house them, is going to be quite a sight to see as well. You and I think a lot alike, Quiver, because I'll say that I thought about that one paragraph with Avery's pronouns quite a bit as well. I really thought about whether or not there was a way that I could rearrange things so that xe reveals xer pronouns before the narrative uses them, but... it just wasn't feasible. I could have tried to pull it off with a neutral "they" prounoun, or tried to describe Avery as having a nonbinary appearance but, eventually I decided not to mess with it. For one, this story is technically told with an omniscient narrator, so it isn't totally breaking convention to have the narration know something that the characters don't. For the other, misgendering someone from an objective viewpoint is a big deal, even unintentionally. I don't think your question was homophobic, but I can tell you that I certainly would not have had the narration use male or female pronouns with Avery before being revealed, because that would have been pretty rude towards xem. In the end, I decided Gavin's going to be the expert on using enby pronouns correctly and inoffensively and I'd leave it the way ze wrote it. And yeah, Avery's a cutie. That reminds me, now that xe's been introduced, I can go ahead and reblog the portrait that Ellie drew of xem. (Glad you noticed the scar. I'll keep hush about that for now.)

Been a little while, but Act 3 is ready to start! For those interested, Session 24 is now up!

That could certainly work as well, cem!

I was just wondering about that! I know in the French version changes the spelling of Breeze to Brise, and Spook to "Spectre" but I wasn't totally sure. I suppose we only need pronunciations on names that aren't actually words. So... most of the Returned probably wouldn't need them either.

(rih-NAH-rin) would be my best attempt at the transliteration, Weiry. At this point, we might want a page dedicated to pronunciation actually. So we could put an IPA vestion/"regular spelling" version, with a click-through to the full pronunciation page. That page would be where I would put things like Brandon's policy on pronunciations, descriptions of linguistic heritage and similarity for each world, differences between in-world and out-of-world pronunciation, and maybe lists of pronunciations for major words and characters from each book? If not, I'd say that most common, out-of-world pronunciation should go at the top, with in-world pronunciation down in Trivia.

[ˈjas·nɐ]? That works. Peter has so much good insight in correcting all my silly incorrect pronunciations. Hmm, Kholin with an [x]? I like it! I tend to use [kʰoˈlɪn] when I'm trying and [koˈlɪn] when I'm being lazy but the [xoˈlɪn] is a really cool way to say it. I was thinking about mocking up some Scadrian pronunciations if we were interested, but that's a very subjective field. Basically the pronunciations that I would use for "in-world" are the ones I use when I'm reading my French copy of Mistborn. Be wary: My French IPA is much less polished than my English IPA though... Kelsier: English ['kɛl·si·ɚ] vs. Scadrian ['kɛl·si·e] Vin: English [vɪn] vs. Scadrian [vɛ̃] Breeze (Brise): English [briz] vs. Scadrian [bʀiz]

If y'all need some help with IPA, I could give it a shot. My IPA fu is... fairly strong? I could also work on some Scadrial pronunciations if we wanted to give the in-world attempt as well, since I speak French pretty well. Not sure if the website would support it, but I could try to record pronunciations as well? I've got a few names on hand that I wrote up for the other thread: Renarin: [ɹɜn·ˈa·ɹɪn] Adolin: [ˈeɪ·do·lɪn] Shallan: [ʃə·ˈlɑn] Jasnah: [ˈjaz·nə]

Well, Sylvie is not good at people. VERY not good. She's not a good judge of "this is flirty" or "If I suggest this, it means this." So sometimes she moves too slowly and backs off, and... other times she just says things she's thinking without thinking that they're really significant. So... she's not relaxed, so much as... kinda oblivious? Like, she offered to kiss him at Zhu's party, and then realized that no, that's a terrible idea, Sylvie, don't do that and backed out of it. Same with not realizing "Do you want to get coffee" was a flirty thing at first. So, she's not totally grasping that asking to see his place kinda... means something. She's just thinking "I like sparring with him, and I've been in my apartment for a year and a half. I'll make a friendly suggestion that we try his place next time." I'm thinking Vee probably pointed it out to her later and she got mortified that she suggested that. Because Sylvie getting embarrassed about Mike is amusing to me. He's just so smooth, and she's so not, unless she does it unintentionally, and even then she probably takes it too far. Beyond that... she really likes him. There's an aspect I haven't really gotten to explore yet, but Sylvie hasn't ever really had people in her life who care about her. She doesn't know what family's like or what it's like to have best friends. She's always been on her own and told herself that she's fine like that. She thinks: "I don't understand people, so I'm just gonna do my own thing." Then, suddenly there's someone who's kind and seems to care about her and is giving her human contact and will spar with her and keeps catching her when she faints... and she's kinda realizing that this is something she kinda really wants.

fiVe's Drifts: Heh, fun fact: The Seiko Drift was played out before the Miranda Drift, was, but I figured chronological order was probably better here. Ellie and I ran through the Seiko one a few weeks before I ran the Miranda one with Emma. I just figured putting them in chronological order would be best. Also, the only reason there's a break is because we realized Miranda would need to steal a Pons and that would take time. There was no need for that with the Seiko Drift, so, well, we didn't have one. *shrug* Yeah, fiVe misses Sylvie for a very, very long time. Part of what originally sparked her loathing was the idea that was searching for Sylvie a lot longer than Sylvie was searching for her (because Sylvie thought she was dead, whereas fiVe thought Sylvie was still alive.) Yep, you can see a lot of the formation of her philosophy here. She's very interesting, but it's still fun to play with her dialogue. Sylvie and Vee will say very similar things to what she says here in the current arc, and I love that I get to play with that. Faint of Heart spar I'm just a total sucker for being able to RP cute shippy scenes, and Gavin writes Mike so wonderfully I can't help but love these kinds of scenes. And Sylvie needs some happy in her life. And in this kind of situation, Vee tends to function like the meddlesome best friend who thinks she has extra right to be meddlesome. She's not the one who actually has to deal with the nervousness of talking to Mike and doing the thing... so she's more willing to shove Sylvie into it for her own good. (And Sylvie really does want to do this, deep down. She's just nervous.) Vee tends to be very good at getting Sylvie to do things she needs to do but doesn't want to. It's easy to be the responsible one when you're not actually the one who has to do things. Hehe. Sylvie and Vee bicker amicably like this a lot when they're alone. It's been a staple of their relationship since the very beginning. The very first prologue in Vulcan Specter has this kind of lighthearted talk between Sylvie, Vee, and fiVe (back when those two are V1 and V2 still). It's just not something that comes out unless Sylvie and Vee are in a good mood though.

@Joe It'd be very, very difficult for anyone other than Sylvie to do code surgery on the AiVees just because that's how she designed it to be. I mean, this is her mind and her memories, and she doesn't want anyone to be able to mess with that. The programming code is filled with all kinds of little traps and triggers and Sylvie's really the only person who's able to navigate it. I mean, she could try to tell Miranda or someone else how to get in there and change the code, but it's so complicated and dangerous that A.) she could definitely trick them into doing whatever she wanted with it, since that person wouldn't really be able to understand what they were doing, B.) if they messed up at all, it could be fatal to the AiVee, and C.) she wouldn't tell anyone how to get past it in the first place because she's not comfortable with anyone else having that info. It's definitely possible to fix fiVe's damage like that, going into the code and sorting the memories without Drifting, though Drifting tends to be faster than doing it manually. It's also possible to change the way that the AiVees operate in regards to Drift partners and memory but... Sylvie's the only one who could do it. Vee trusts her to do so—she lets Sylvie makes edits to Vee's programming quite often, such as changing her override code after she found out that Seiko and Miranda knew the old one. fiVe does not trust her and does not think there is anyone else who would be capable of navigating her code well enough to let them try. Yeah, I probably misspoke. Temp memory and processors are what are needed, you're right (though I'm guessing that the servers have better specs in this department than the tablets as well.) In regards to the memory stuff... well, the idea is that Vee doesn't remember things any better than Sylvie does... she remembers them exactly the same way. I'm not sure exactly how that translates to file storage and such... but seeing as human memories get fuzzier as time goes on, I'd say there's a good chance that there's some kind of memory conservation going on there too. The files get compressed to a smaller filesize to make room maybe? IDK. I'm... not quite smart enough to know exactly what I'm talking about. And on that note, I'll say thanks for asking me about this stuff, because you're making me waaaay more knowledgeable about this topic. If I'm supposed to be writing a techie, it helps to get feedback from people like you who actually know what they're talking about! @Quiver Yeaaaah, I warned you about the shipping, didn't I? Backcompat is going to continue to be a major relationship that's developing here, partially because it's interesting, partially because it's a very popular relationship among readers/players.... and partially because I've recently been manipulated into loving them together by Ellie drawing me unfairly attractive art of the two of them, ugh. Aaaanyway, moving on. Speaking of Ellie: her drunk Seiko is awesome. He's just so sweet, which is not something I usually get to say about Seiko. Miranda's good to get him out of there before he does something truly stupid though, since he nearly slipped up and told Sylvie about his sisters, oops. You know... I think we still need a good ship name for Katie/Zhu. That's rather atrocious that we don't have one yet. I will have to talk to the group and see if we can't come up with something. (The Mike/Sylvie ship name would be "Faint of Heart" in case you were wondering, heheh.) I'm pretty sure there's no more symbolism to the undercut aside from: Gavin finds them very appealing (and quite a few of the others do too) and Heather decided to make it a bit of a reveal that Katie had gotten one. And yes, that's the first in-canon reference to Zhu's status as trans, I'm pretty sure. We all celebrated it going canon! I think... Eleanor's father tried to get in contact with her once after she started working for the PPDC maybe? She definitely shut him down and said that if he ever tried to contact her again she'd have him arrested, if I recall correctly. Emmalyn would know more... Good news and bad news: The last little bit of writing that's published is a Sylvie/Mike scene (so it's pretty shippy) but it's the last interlude, so good news is we'll be back to full sessions pretty soon!

Well, perhaps the latest additions might help. Well, the first one might. The latter one probably not so much. We've got a backstory log of fiVe's Drifts with both Seiko and Miranda here and then a scene of Mike and Sylvie sparring for the first time. Also, just for fun, there's a photoset of some of the Scroungers' outfits for Zhu's potluck. The ladies at least! Okay, so... let's talk some more AiVees. I think I understood most of what you said this time? First of all, the AiVee's tablets are definitely not consumer-grade. That would be Sylvie getting special access to very expensive, very high-end tablet hardware. In fact, she kinda awkwardly remarks to fiVe at the party that fiVe still has the same tablet as before, to which fiVe responds: “Tablets that can run neural simulation OS’s are difficult to come by and this one is functional.” She's right. Getting a replacement would be ludicrously difficult and super expensive. Vee and fiVe both have pretty good permanent wireless capability and they tend to stay on their desktop whenever they can. Vee switches to Tranquility's servers only when she needs to specifically access Tranquility's systems, or if they're going to be out far on the open water where a wireless connection would be much slower. (See: on the first mission fiVe had to stay in her tablet, because she didn't have servers on Tranq the way Vee did.) When Vee and fiVe are accessing the comms, most of the time, they do so remotely over the internet (the same way that Zhu does.) They're going to stay on their own servers as often as possible. Sylvie's laptop would really only be in emergencies and the tablets are for when they don't have another option or if they're not expecting to have to actually do things. Like... at Zhu's potluck. How do the memories work? Well, the way I've been picturing it is like this: When Sylvie first designed Syl-V, she created a program that will record her own memories in the Drift and will then accept those memories as her own. So, Sylvie spent a long, long time Drifting with this program in order to get her entire memory bank in there. I tend to think of these as files that are organized in a manner that she an access them quickly, and Syl-V has a very good retrieval system to remember them. For all intents and purposes, she remembers "her" life about as well as a human would remember theirs. When Sylvie and Vee "sync" that's Vee recording the new memories and adding them to her database. (And Sylvie taking in Vee's personality and new memories as her own as well.) These memories affect, but are separate from the "personality" side of the programming. There's things that the AiVees "know" rather than "remember". This affects how they act and react to things as well as allowing them to interpret their relationships with other people. So, just because fiVe has trouble remembering specific things about Seiko's history doesn't mean she forgets who he is when she sees him. (Also it's worth noting that fiVe's "original" memories, the memories which are from her and her alone, are not affected by the majority of the damage.) So how does the damage work? Well, as you can see in the first Drift log that just got posted, Miranda messed her code up pretty awfully at first (though she undoes quite a bit of this). Miranda rearranges things in the code (which makes it non-functional) but beyond that, by hacking her way in, she gives fiVe quite a bit of corruption. Sylvie's not about to let people mess with her programs without her permission, so the AiVees have lots of failsafes that will auto-corrupt their damage if people try to access it. This is why fiVe hasn't been able to get her override code changed or have someone else fix her memory damage -- Sylvie's the only one who could do it without tripping all the traps, so to speak. This is also why fiVe hasn't restricted her access to the memory files. She can't. Sylvie intentionally programmed the AIs not to be able to mess with their programming. (She has seen too many sci-fi movies with rogue AIs to give them that kind of power over themselves.) Miranda roots around, does quite a bit of damage, then realizes that fiVe's alive and tries to undo it. (She's mostly successful.) However... she then thinks that perhaps Drifting with fiVe might fix her... which is the real problem. See, fiVe's memories overwrite when she's in the Drift. Her programming can't tell that her partner ISN'T Sylvie and starts recording what she sees and designating it part of her memory bank. What ends up happening then is when fiVe goes to try to remember something, that nice organization system for her memories that she had is cluttered with memories that don't match, that don't fit. So she ends up getting these overlapping memories, pulling up multiple files at once that cancel over each other and don't make sense and cause her quite a bit of pain as she tries to sort through them. Her first attempt at describing the Vulcan Specter incident to Miranda is a good example of this. She tries to remember "What happened that night" and she ends up getting both her memories, Sylvie's memories, and Miranda's memories of that night, all jumbled together in a way that doesn't make any sense. When she wakes up after that she remembers "I don't have the person I need to have" and gets a jumble of the fact that she's separated from Sylvie mixed with Miranda's memory of not having Jason there with her. I'm... not entirely sure I follow what you mean about forking. You mean run simultaneous versions of herself at once, doing different things? Well Vee's a good multi-tasker. When she's got the hard-drive power for it, she can run all kinds of processes and subprocesses at the same time. Back when Vee was new, she often forked off into multiple runs. Sylvie mentions this at the very beginning in her prologue, she's used to having multiple Vees out and about doing things, adn then when they're done, they all sync back up and come together again. After they lost fiVe however... they got scared. Sylvie and Vee decided that simultaneous runs were to be avoided at all costs, because the risk of being separated was too scary. They don't want to lose another version the way they lost fiVe. (I'm not entirely sure if that's what you were talking about, but I tried?)