Nasuverse Let's talk about FRO!

Sunder the Gold · Aug 10, 2014

daniel_gudman said:

It wouldn't work anyway, would it? Because the "dead" characters are actually alive, manifested in new bodies somewhere else on Aincrad.

Assuming that a "live" player had a corpse to work with, they could succeed in bringing it back to life (like Rin did with Shirou), but the game isn't going to log the "dead" back into that avatar. Or Kayaba could lock it from doing that after a "dead' player has been approached by Yui.

Once Yui appears, the "dead" player is unavailable, and maybe Cardinal creates an NPC to run the resurrected avatar.

wakshazi · Aug 10, 2014

What Rin used was not resurrection, it was resuscitation. Big difference. What she effectively did was repair the heart and use magic to preform standard medical procedures. If something has bee dead for a while brain damage will start to be a problem. The christian term resurrection refers to a guy who came back after he had been dead three days, so a bit different medically speaking.

If a player figures out how to do that, and cardinal has the necessary level of biological detail implemented, kabaya might implement a "waiting period" for first aid. That level of detail is far in the future if happening at all. At least in game time. Also remember Rin said she would be a shoe in to the clocktower if people knew what she did with shirou. It was apparently rather challenging and used one of her very powerful gems. So we probably won't see people pulling that off anytime soon.

Olivebirdy · Aug 10, 2014

Ok, new topic. what do you guys think Grimlock's priorities are? What would Clocktower mage want?

He wants to seal Kayaba, he wants all players dead, to preserve the 'mysteries', and he wants to reach the Root, if possible.

Grimlock as a person loves Griselda, probably, it's hard to tell, aaaand, that's it.

By the way I loved the line: "From that time forward his sleep was untroubled by nightmares, because he no longer allowed himself to have any dreams."

...Yay! I got a [Gold Star]!

daniel_gudman · Aug 11, 2014

Olivebirdy said:

Star count is a function of post count, specifically, order of magnitude.
1 star: 1-9 posts
2 stars: 10-99 posts
3 starts: 100-999 posts
4 stars: 1,000-9,999 posts
5 stars: 10,000-99,999 posts
we don't have any members with post counts up in 6 figures.

You won't be surprised to know that zb1 is far-and-away in the lead; he's got like 37k posts when I write this, with second place going to my old nemesis Raine (although that guy isn't active any more) with about 29,460 posts. Third place is everyone's friend Paul, with 19k or so.

Also the default title changes from "Purist Lurker" to "Lurker" when you hit 10 posts; 3 stars is "Newbie" and 4 stars+ is "Member", although you can make that a custom title whenever you want over in your control panel.

ANYWAY
re: Grimlock
There's a lot of spoilers in the idea thread if you don't mind them.
Both the Chapter Plan where I lay out what I'm going to be working on and solicit feedback in the planning phase; and he's come up in discussion.
Those are spoilers, though.

Hmm, I haven't updated the content index in the Idea thread OP for a while, I should probably do that soon.

Well, if you want to guess where I'm going without spoilers go for it though; it would be interesting to see what kind of foreshadowing people are seeing in here.

Olivebirdy · Aug 11, 2014

I'm going to stay here where it's safe. I'm afraid of being attacked by wild spoilers.

Why don't mages want more researchers? What is the 'sweet spot' to have the most research and the least amount of power loss?

Daniel, when going through the chapters pointing out typos and stuff, there is one type of mistake that you make, that is not like you're making a mistake, it's that you don't recognize it as a problem.
"This is a grammar mistake." He said.
"This is not," she said.

I could start pointing it out, but it would not help if it's not recogized as a typo.

Revlid · Aug 11, 2014

So, first post! Came across F/RO by way of having Mr. Gudman on my fanfiction.net alerts after busting a gut at his Naruto stuff. Hugely enjoyable, had no idea why it kept updating in five-chapter chunks. Eventually got led here. Now everything is ruined for everyone.

One thing I'm wondering is approximately when this story takes place? The Fifth Heaven's Feel takes place ~2004, while the Sword Art Online incident takes place in 2022. Is the former shifted forward (not much difference, just fancier phones) or the latter shifted backward (suddenly, VR from nowhere)? Or is there a compromise of some sort (bearing in mind that an even split would give a setting date of... last year)?

...

Another thing that comes to mind is the Moon Cell (also called the Eye of God), a vast tower-supercomputer of photonic crystals built 4.6 billion years ago, around which the Moon itself appears to have formed. Its sole purpose is to record any and all information on Earth with all-observing sweeps separated by intervals of nanoseconds. It was discovered sometime in the 21st century by probes owned by the Harway family, who used advanced technology and thaumaturgic principles to harness it, producing a perfect VR replica of the Holy Grail War sustained by multiple reality marbles. Through this fantasy they hoped to reach Akasha even in a world that had lost its magic.

Sounds maybe a little familiar, no? One wonders just how the hell Kayaba built a computer system that even has evolving graphical capabilities.

Of course, per Nasu the Moon Cell only exists in EXTRA, and that universe is very much distinct from the mainstream Fate setting by the 2000s. Then again, I've managed to convince myself this is all taking place in some permutation of the Metal Gear universe, so I'm clearly not entirely attached to canonical statements or even basic rationality.

EDIT: Um. This is the right thread for this, yes? Or should it be in the other discussion thread (bearing in mind that I'm unbothered by spoilers)?

daniel_gudman · Aug 12, 2014

Olivebirdy said:

Yeah it's unorthodox, but it's also intentional.

for example said:

That is, I think the rule is illogical, so I'm not obeying it. Or to be more specific, this split case of using a question mark or an exclamation point to end the spoken phrase, but a comma instead of a period, is too imprecise.

Basically it boils down to the fact that I'm using the statement as a complete sentence, and then presenting the "she said" as a dependent fragment, rather than a secondary clause. It divides what the character is saying from what the narrative description of how the character is saying it more clearly. When I start doing stuff like sticking the "what is said" part next to an unrelated sentence describing what somebody does, it allows the reader to cleanly infer that the person speaking is the person from the notionally unrelated sentence.

...In terms of grammar I tend towards descriptivism instead of prescriptivism, and since I have the luxury of obeying my own sense of elegance rather than conforming to rules I don't like to appease a copy editor....

It's intentional, that's the take-away.

Revlid said:

Welcome to the forum!

I've played my cards tight to my chest, but basically I've been going with shifting FSN forward about 20 years (well, more like 17 or so) so that I can keep the 20 Minutes Into the Future setting.

magic

Well I mean, not True Magic, but like, he is a magus and Aincrad is basically his Workshop, so it seems obvious that he'd be able to go completely hog-wild once he doesn't have to worry about explaining to the gaming press where the performance boosts came from, right?

Since it's just chatting about stuff, this is the best thread.

Olivebirdy · Aug 12, 2014

Descripivism vs Prescriptivism: Wut?

But yeah, thanks for the take-away.

'With an angry expression, the fat guy turned in place. "That's because you don't know the first thing about moe you, you 3D bastard!"'

What the hell is a 3D bastard?

'"And last, is the player [QV], which is just pronounced [Cuvie]. As far as he's said the name was a whim without any meaning."

Kirito nodded, although Asuna didn't quite understand why Kirito was most impressed by the last one.'

Why is Kirito impressed? Is this a PMMM joke? How would Kirito get the joke if it was?

Vanigo · Aug 13, 2014

daniel_gudman said:

Hmm. My sympathies tend to lie with the descriptivists, too, but I'm not sure you're using the word correctly. Descriptivism, in a nutshell, means "describe the rules that people actually use, and ignore anything that the bulk of English speakers ignore", with a side of "singled out for particular disdain are the rules that were invented out of whole cloth by 19th century grammarians in an effort to make English more like Latin". It does not, however, mean "make up your own rules when you think the existing ones are stupid".

(Not that there isn't a place for making up your own rules now and again, but it's usually the domain of either slang, or poets struggling to fit verses to meter.)

As for emphasizing that it's a complete sentence, allow me to present a counterpoint. Try reading those examples out loud, and pay particular attention to the pause between the quote and the "he said". Do you use a comma-length pause, or a period-length pause? I suppose it might be a dialectical difference, but a period-length pause sounds really off to my ear, probably because it leaves that flagrantly-not-a-complete-sentence "he said" hanging naked.

zerohour · Aug 13, 2014

daniel_gudman said:

Olivebirdy said:

Star count is a function of post count, specifically, order of magnitude.
1 star: 1-9 posts
2 stars: 10-99 posts
3 starts: 100-999 posts
4 stars: 1,000-9,999 posts
5 stars: 10,000-99,999 posts
we don't have any members with post counts up in 6 figures.

You won't be surprised to know that zb1 is far-and-away in the lead; he's got like 37k posts when I write this, with second place going to my old nemesis Raine (although that guy isn't active any more) with about 29,460 posts. Third place is everyone's friend Paul, with 19k or so.

Also the default title changes from "Purist Lurker" to "Lurker" when you hit 10 posts; 3 stars is "Newbie" and 4 stars+ is "Member", although you can make that a custom title whenever you want over in your control panel.

Gunning for you daniel. Just 45 more posts to go...

Revlid · Aug 13, 2014

daniel_gudman said:

Cool.

Fate seems to have something of a creeping timeline, anyway, given that Rin was fiddling around with a Blu-Ray in Carnival Phantasm (which is clearly the highest tier of canon). It's not exactly a period piece.

daniel_gudman said:

I kept having trouble wrapping my head around that point, but I guess I get it - more of a conceptual workshop than him literally having the server banks surrounded by a magic circle in a basement filled with dribbly candles. It's not like he's gone around and personally magic'd up each individual NerveGear, which is what's handling the graphical side of things (though if the safety inspectors missed enough batteries to microwave a human brain, who knows, they might have missed some ominous Latin scribbling on the graphics card).

...and I suppose even I've got to admit that "magic" isn't somehow less plausible than "moon crystal magic", especially when the latter would presumably see Shirou clad in his butler's tuxedo outfit rather more than usual.

Huh. Do they still call it graphics, considering it covers every sense, rather than just visual representation? I guess the term has inertia.

lhklan · Aug 13, 2014

-> Carnival Phantasm
-> highest tier of canon
... Wut? You do realise that CP is a gag series right? Meaning that it's not actually canon.

ice2215 · Aug 13, 2014

lhklan said:

-> Carnival Phantasm
-> highest tier of canon
... Wut? You do realise that CP is a gag series right? Meaning that it's not actually canon.

Someone clearly doesn't understand sarcasm.

Olivebirdy · Aug 13, 2014

ice2215 said:

lhklan said:

Someone clearly doesn't understand sarcasm.

Irony means sort of like iron.

...Is a 3D bastard someone into NPCs in VR games?

wakshazi · Aug 14, 2014

No that would be ferrous.

daniel_gudman · Aug 14, 2014

Olivebirdy said:

3D world, as opposed to the 2D world of games and anime.

He was basically calling the other guy a normalfag.

In the light novel, Kirito had a monologue about how he couldn't come up with a good character name, so he basically gave up and just truncated his IRL name instead.

...Since Cuvie is also the user name of a doujin artist that's active in the hentai scene, which is something I found out after I wrote that chapter, there was actually another reading entirely for that.

Vanigo said:

I was really more referring to the "top down" approach of prescriptivism, that is, starting from first principles and applying them as rules, versus the "bottom up" approach of looking for organization in things that were already written.

That is, content is more important than form.

Since I do silly voices for different characters to distinguish them, it actually sounds better to my ear.

zerohour said:

Yeah I'm way in the lead for the other two metrics, though.

Daneel has 2/3rds the rep-count I do; he was catching up thanks to Genkyouien, but we'll see what happens now that he's brought that to conclusion. With hard work and guts I might pull back out in front of him.

As for referrals, I have more than the rest of the first page put together.

But I'm never going to catch up to zb1 for post count. That dood is a machine. Raine's out of the running and Paul I might conceivably pass, but my posting rate has actually gone down over the last year (funny enough, I can't seem to post 7,000 words of fanfic as fast as I could post 300 word extended metaphors about other stuff), so I don't think I'll actually catch up to Paul anytime soon.

Anyway, good luck zerohour. I'll be watching my back, so don't think it'll be too easy!

lhklan said:

I've said it before, and I'll probably say it more in the future

Sixth Ranger / Magical Amber
OTP

Anyway "Carnival Phantasm" is probably about the only way that could happen so yeah

Olivebirdy · Aug 16, 2014

Wakshazi, I was about to explain the joke, but I caught myself in time.

Daniel, do you have a rule as to when you bracket and when not? Say, the chapter with REXX, Johnny Black, and PoH. [Red Slime] is bracketed, because it's a [Game Monster]. So is the [Slime]. But, at points it is only the Slime. Do you not put on brackets by mistake, because you are not refering to it as a [Game Monster], or because it felt right?â€Žâ€)â€My typo-check review for chapter 39 is only half-finished, don't look for coherence there.)

As for WMGs, I think that the players are going to be spit out of SAO, then take over the Clocktower. Open-Source FTW! â€Ž

daniel_gudman · Aug 16, 2014

Whether I put something in [Brackets] or not depends on the rule and logic of Magical Girls.

"Don't think, feel."

...To answer your question seriously, it's basically according to a simple rule with a complicated caveat.

"Proper game terms are [bracketed], depending on how game-like the person speaking is treating the situation."

That is, I don't [Bracket] things as a sort of grammatical emphasis, I use it as as part of characterizing each character's voice.

Let me walk through the main characters to illustrate what I mean.

So Kirito will have [brackets] littered through his thoughts and speech whenever he thinks about "the game world", whether that be [Monsters], [Magic], or the [Random Number God].

Meanwhile, Ilya will put stuff in [brackets] as a fellow gamer, but as a magus, she's going to use them a lot less when it comes to the [Thaumaturgy Patch].

Asuna will tend to think of [Concrete Game Elements] like monsters and spells in [brackets], but things that are just ideas like a [Chain of Deals] wouldn't be something she'd recognize as a clear game element.

And Shirou barely ever uses [brackets] because he doesn't really think in game terms.

Furthermore, as the game converges with "Real Life" and the dissonance between "Real Life" and "Game Life" fades away, the brackets will appear less and less. I'd like to time it that they practically never happen somewhere before "Game Over."

Then I can put SAO Survivors in the position of almost never using [brackets] compared to "regular" gamers, to show how they changed as a result of their experiences.

Olivebirdy · Aug 16, 2014

K thx. That helps a lot with the proofreading.

Nasuren · Aug 22, 2014

This might be bringing up a dead horse again, but I wonder... Daniel, despite having a torch for Saber, is it possible for Shirou to develop a romantic relationship with another character? Not that I'm asking for a pairing, mind you, but I'm curious if it's possible.

Olivebirdy · Aug 22, 2014

Well, on the one side, you have an army of tsunderes, and on the other side you have Shirou, who has still not figured out that Sakura is into him.â€Ž It's impossible.
â€

Guys, what the hell is going on with Shirou's Fake Circuit?

Siriel says that making a circuit should be done, once. Then a switch is installed. Then it never has to be done again. "Making circuits" can only be done by those that already have them, and it's not really what Shirou's doing.
And anyway, how was Shirou able to reinforce that poster, when his "making a circuit" failed earlier that night?
Are Circuits "filters" for collecting mana, or are they "reactors" for turning Od and Mana into Prana?

Deathwings · Aug 23, 2014

Olivebirdy said:

The later. Magic Circuit siphon Mana out of the atmosphere and then process it into Prana.

Mokofooja · Aug 24, 2014

Deathwings said:

They are also needed for Od as well. The key point is that they're an organ necessary for most magecraft/thaumatergy to be possible.

lethum · Aug 24, 2014

Nope. There is magecraft without circuits. It's just not...modern magecraft. Or alchemy. Or formalcraft.

happerry · Aug 26, 2014

I'm pretty sure Formalcraft is the basics of 'magecraft without circuits'. It's traditional ritual magic, to my understanding, of the 'We do this with these parts and get that result without ever putting our own power into it'.

Nasuverse Let's talk about FRO!

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