35 KiB
[RT][WIP] Worth the Candle, ch 65 (A Kindred Soul)
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Author: u/cthulhuraejepsen Fruit flies like a banana*
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URL: http://archiveofourown.org/works/11478249/chapters/29791008
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Score: 115
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Created: 2017-12-15T20:20:50
Post:
Comments:
u/Cifems [+27] (4 hours later)
I frowned slightly. This could all have been avoided if he was more loyal to me. Twinned Souls would remove the need for his informed consent.
Is this not a huge red flag for anyone else? Or has the rampant paranoia in the story affected me?
u/Kishoto [+25] (5 hours later)
Nope. I definitely read that line and did like a mental 'double-take' and wondered if Joon was being exceptionally pragmatic and cold hearted or if this was a purposeful hint left by the author to show that Joon is in fact not alright.
My tentative theory-bunny is that perhaps Joon is compromised but Grak is not and, as being the only companion not soul bonded to Joon (edit: Six Eyed Doe isn't yet but it's a doe and Fallethr also doesn't know about it yet), Fallatehr hasn't had time to compromise him in some other fashion. Grak says he tried to rouse Joon by touching him but it's also possible that Fallatehr could mess with Joon's soul in some other fashion or through touching Joon very softly, such as grasping a few strands of Joon's hair or something similar. We haven't heard Grak's side of the story (since he himself assumes that he's compromised) so we only have the nonanima's version of events and, much as I instinctively like her due to the shitty, pitiable life she's had, it's also possible she's been Fallatehr's puppet/agent from the jump. The sudden loyalty jumps are concerning to me and I feel like they may be a method that Fallatehr is using to attempt to connect her to Joon via Twinsouls (which it's possible he knows about, if he got to access Joon's soul, we can't say for sure)
Either way, due to the intelligent way this fic is written and the very real possibilty of everyone double crossing everyone and soul magic fuckery thrown into the mix...I can say I'm more than eager for seeing where /u/cthulhuraejepsen takes us.
u/Makin- [+11] homestuck ratfic, you can do it (12 hours later)
A very interesting subplot would be the entire cast except Grak (and the Six Eyed Doe) having been compromised, and Grak having to solve the problem on his own somehow. Would give Grak some needed screentime and development IMO.
u/Kishoto [+7] (20 hours later)
That would be very interesting! I'm personally not a big fan of Grak's character; not that I overtly dislike him just that I'm so much more interested in almost any other character and their storyline. I think his personality just kinda bores me.
But I do agree that would be a very interesting spin on things considering the amount of agency Joon's had so far. And the SED could also bring potential interest to such a storyline too.
u/wassname [+15] The Culture (7 hours later)
I read it as him disproving of twin souls. "Wow this would make it easy to bypass informed consent frown". Now that you mention it, it does sounds like a Fallatehr thing to think.
Perhaps thats how Fallatehr does it at first, insert minor pragmatic beliefs that align with Fallatehr. They are minor and useful so they will probably self-reinforce and stick around (as long as there isn't too much dissonance with existing beliefs). All the while making Joon easier to deal with.
Prediction: If this theory is true we will see the gang act slowly more sociopathic, pragmatic, academic, and reckless. Recklessness will help them give him openings. The other values that would help Fallatehr get along with them safely until he has the info he needs to act.
u/ArisKatsaris [+3] Sidebar Contender (14 hours later)
Definitely a huge red flag.
u/Makin- [+24] homestuck ratfic, you can do it (54 minutes later)
Can we just talk about how incredibly dangerous is to aim for a soul bond with an vessel that will only ever contain demon's souls?
If Fallatehr is planning something I'm almost sure it's related to that.
u/ThatDarnSJDoubleW [+12] (2 hours later)
Except Fallatehr doesn't seem to know about Twinned Souls at all.
u/Makin- [+8] homestuck ratfic, you can do it (2 hours later)
He only has to check Joon's soul once, not even modify it, and it should be obvious to him.
u/kaukamieli [+3] (14 hours later)
He would not see a character sheet. Probably would take him lot longer to find out about that, unless it jumps out.
u/None [+7] (7 hours later)
[deleted]
u/_brightwing [+5] Feathered menace (14 hours later)
The last I remembered.. They still have Solace's soul in a jar, right? If Joon got better at Essentialism maybe he might be able to transplant it into her body. At least temporarily - like a Speak with Dead spell, until they can properly resurrect her. The ethics of doing it is a whole other can of worms though.. How would things interact if Solace's soul has degraded?
u/TwoxMachina [+4] (15 hours later)
Yeah, when I find read about the non-anima, I had thought she was a quest progression for Solace.
Presumably, 2 souls in 1 body kind of deal.
u/Law_Student [+2] (3 days later)
Perhaps she could use Val's body long enough to cast that druid spell that rebirths a new body for her to inhabit?
u/RiOrius [+3] (2 hours later)
Is there any indication Fallatehr knows about Twinned Souls?
u/thebluegecko [+3] (3 hours later)
Fallatehr can't know about twin souls though right? So any plan he has involving the non-anima can't involve the soul bond.
u/sparr [+1] (5 hours later)
I wouldn't be surprised if he has artificially increased the loyalty of all of his clones to the point that he had twinned souls access to them.
u/thebluegecko [+18] (5 hours later)
I assumed that twinned souls was something only main characters got. Part of the special rules our hero operates under. It seems like there would be obvious social changes if liking powerful people made you as powerful as them.
u/PanickedApricott [+3] (23 hours later)
Just imagine if the demon has
existentialismessentialism as a skill.edit: lol autocorrect
u/Stopppit [+22] (an hour later)
I think a sufficiently devious soul mage wouldn't just springboard themselves up in the values table. Instead they would change the math that allows values to change. Qualitatively that might look like "rational arguments have a 1.5x effectiveness in changing someones values." In this way the soul mage would immediately know the best ways to 'naturally' get to the top of the persons value table. This type of manipulation would be much harder to detect.
u/icesharkk [+4] (3 days later)
Which would explain wh Val's loyalty is going up so fast. Nothing says the numeric representation of loyalty isnt based on both how much they trust joon abd how much joon trusts them.
I'm not convinced Val is a nonanima (i need to double check some game interface feedback on that). Regardless of whether she is a non anima I do believe she contains Fallatehr's actual soul.
u/nohat [+2] (22 days later)
How many people has she touched? A concerning thought...
u/icesharkk [+2] (23 days later)
Fenn, Joon and grak at least. Possibly Mary when they we're adding restraints to her.
u/RiOrius [+2] (2 hours later)
But it would take time to take effect, and allegedly soul manipulations revert back over time.
u/JusticeBeak [+1] (5 hours later)
Right, but depending on which takes longer, it could get them to drop their guard long enough for more unrestricted access to be possible.
u/xamueljones [+21] My arch-enemy is entropy (2 hours later)
Once again we see someone making a joke about Juniper looking like a 'default' character. My hypothesis is that Juniper is a game character, but not as someone from Earth playing in Aerb, but rather someone from a future high-tech society who is playing as a character from present-day Earth thrown into Aerb.
It sounds weird to have Juniper be a character from Earth rather than being an Aerb native, but it saves on exposition having him already know the backstory of any 'dungeons' the party enters and it provides a mystery/plot for the player to pursue (why am I in Aerb and how can I go back to Earth?).
It could explain the weirdness of several different layers in the game. It's because multiple different highly advanced gaming software are being used in a kludge by people just importing assets to make the game Aerb.
Also can I say how much I love this chapter for being a real-life version of high-stakes Mafia?
u/munkeegutz [+11] (3 hours later)
I actually rather like this idea from a rational perspective, but it would not make very much sense in the context of a story because of the lack of a satisfying ending... Unless he somehow escapes the Box?
Unrelated- if I were her, first order of business would be to ask joon to reveal something private about her. That would relieve most risks of joon being corrupted- a fully corrupted joon would not reveal the twinned souls thing, and a joon who didn't have twinned souls essentialism could not reveal information.
The problem of scar magic is that it is permanent and only works briefly. Why not use a soul mage to keep it tuned up? Just heal into the right configuration after correcting the soul to a functional scar magic upgrade. Or at the very least, clean her soul of those scars.
Fenns hatred of Fallather (sp?) Means that the teaching relationship will not end peacefully.
u/adgnatum [+1] (13 hours later)
I was surprised to see the scars on her arms, but they made sense, because magical healing hadn’t wiped them away.
Not yet it hasn't. >:D
Plus we can have a paragraph on Upkeep as a game mechanic.
u/adgnatum [+1] (13 hours later)
Through this lens, what if the point of the 'game' layer's skill numbers are a way to not-really learn the subject, an abstraction between it and the player's brain?
Suppose you want to play a survival game with immersion but making traps to catch small animals is aesthetically unpleasing to you even if you're not a vegetarian. The ability to
mapreduce a skill set to a number has an obvious appeal in the domain of fighting and violence. But why not just combat skills? Consider driving as an example. The instincts of a NASCAR racer on a closed course are not the best for everyday driving.Now to take this line of reasoning to the fullest: ideal Bayesians don't want to learn false things in general, so the abstraction allows the designers to respect this preference and invent systems and interactions for the game. Magic is a prime example. Training the impulse to call on non-existent magic to solve an urgent problem seems like an actively bad thing to do to yourself.
Having said that, I think this explanation is missing something. When the narration jumps back to Earth, there's clearly someone we're following. And when I try for increasingly fanciful explanations I keep hitting the same sort of notes that we're presently or imminently experiencing on the topic of our new friend Valencia.
u/lazaret99 [+29] (26 minutes later)
This is my favorite story on here
u/GlueBoy [+11] anti-skub (6 hours later)
This is my favorite story on the Citadel!
u/Bramble-Thorn [+3] (a day later)
What is the Citadel?
u/SeekingImmortality [+8] The Eldest, Apparently (a day later)
The line 'This is my favorite _____ on the Citadel' is a reference to the video game series 'Mass Effect', specifically #2, in which the main character can earn money by giving endorsements to stores on the Citadel (a massive and politically important space station). The intrinsic humor of the statement is that the main character can give this endorsement to ALL the stores, resulting in 'Store A/Store B/Store C/Etc is my favorite store on the Citadel'! being broadcast as ads while you walk around the station.
u/blast_ended_sqrt [+12] (11 hours later)
thought
I was reminded of his lisp from Ch. 61
To my surprise, I realized that he had a lisp; the ‘th’ sound was coming out awkwardly, or replaced entirely by something that sounded similar. ‘Uther’ had become ‘Oo-her’. I could imagine how that was a hard sound if you had to stick your tongue against pointy teeth, but couldn’t remember the other elf having that problem.
How many other elves have lisps? It's not something I've ever seen mentioned before, even in passing, but idk how many elves we've seen before other than fake-Fallatehr (even as simple one-liner NPCs). Maybe lisps are common in elves since they have those ridiculous fangs, but you'd think they'd be used to them. I'm no linguist but that sounds like someone trying to keep their tongue away from their teeth because they've accidentally bitten down one too many times. (accidentally huehuehue)
Maybe Fallatehr is just an outlier. Or maybe that's what happens when someone's transformed into an elf but isn't used to talking in that form.
Conjecture: We haven't met Fallatehr.
The story's awesome btw /u/cthulhuraejepsen!
[EDIT] Hmm. When they broke him out they got quest text including "You have retrieved Fallatehr Whiteshell" - but I've played games that lied in the quest text to preserve an in-universe fiction.
:thinking face emoji:
u/Izeinwinter [+9] (11 hours later)
No, if this was his play, there are two soul mages on the board - His apprentice, pretending to be Fallather, and Fallather, pretending to be a very tall lady.
u/icesharkk [+3] (3 days later)
Which means the one on the most danger is Fenn. Which is a theory both in line with in universe paranoia about literary cycle and what is actually the most dramatic from our perspective as readers:
All this paranoia and planning to safeguard against the elf is just the distraction while Fenn comes to harm. I was partly expecting her to be killed in the prison in the first battle. The fact that Joon values her as a love interest makes her a Target to the GM and to /u/Cthulhuraejepsen
u/Law_Student [+4] (3 days later)
Yes and no. She's useful to the DM, but not so much if she's dead. Love interests are most narratively useful as plot mccguffins when they're around to be put in danger and need rescuing.
That makes Uther's long string of dead lovers a bit odd, come to think of it. Maybe it was the DM trying to beat Uther with a stick over and over until he gets the hint and goes back to his wife and kids instead of running away from the story?
u/Bramble-Thorn [+2] (a day later)
Honestly, I was wondering why they weren't all soul mages. Because if you want more of yourself wandering around, and are setting their values to be as much like you as possible, then they should have the same aptitude for soul magic you do. And could learn soul magic easily.
u/Izeinwinter [+3] (a day later)
And all of them would be inclined to fuck with other peoples value systems. There is an obvious risk of feedback loops or chaotic cascades here, or alternatively, of making it impossible for any of them to change at all, because any shift in value would get edited back to the consensus baseline instantly.
Two soul mages do not run most of those risks, and - if it is correct that a soul mage can stuff a soul back in a body - grants a degree of insurance against the hells.
u/icesharkk [+4] (3 days later)
I think this whole arc is about resetting Joon and our expectations by creating as much paranoia about the game interface as possible. The DM/Cthulhuraejepsen is setting trap after trap using assumptions based on game interface information. The DM won't lie in the game text. But he can arrange situations where we and Joon assume the wrong thing from the assembled info.
Joons gets the quest update message when he crossed the wall with Nulli. It doesn't happen when the arrow gets across.
This allows for a version of the story where Nulli is The soul mage. The name null pointer exception is the means by which he escaped the prison's detection. Coincidentally (DM is cheating) this tricks Joons companion log.
This works in my own head because it is the intersection of /u/Cthulhuraejepsen's desire to surprise us, the DMs desire to make Joon afraid of his own conclusions (like the suits of armor), the symmetry of fallatehr actually becoming a companion, and the cost of losing solace just to get an empty shell. The remaining incongruity is the rapid increase in Nulli's loyalty. Maybe fallatehr is ratcheting up his loyalty in order to facilitate integration into the party without realizing that Joon gets immediate verbatim feedback on it. Again DM fuckery to make the whole arc joonbait.
u/Mandabar [+1] Worth the Candle (6 days later)
It does fit the theme so far of all Joon's companions being a female or an it...
u/None [+17] (11 hours later)
The creeping paranoia here is filling every action the good guys take with tension, I love it.
Also, super funny how Jun's value system rates Tiff over Fenn (if I interpreted last chapter correctly), but as soon as he sees Fenn's system rating some rando over himself he gets irked.
Also also, the value system has thus far revealed a lot of potentially frightening stuff: Jun's (healthy?) obsession with leveling up, Mary basically being some sort of bred-from-birth automaton fixated on her own success above all else (above even her kingdom's propsering, which she pays lip service to as her responsibility but is apparently just a rationalization for gathering power/safety?), Fenn doing a rather exceptional job at hiding her murderous inclinations vs anyone of the elf race.
But on the bright side Juniper doesn't have to worry about figuring his companions out anymore, since he can just directly hack into their brains once they pass the loyalty threshold. I'm sure he'll use this newfound power responsibly.
u/Law_Student [+3] (3 days later)
The whole mind-blowing ecstasy of leveling up thing seems like it would be highly addictive. Indeed, it might have been designed to be highly addictive for some (nefarious) purpose by the game's programmer that has yet to be revealed. It's going to cause him to make some terrible decisions and his companions will be forced to intervene.
u/SoylentRox [+13] (39 minutes later)
This story is awesome and also my favorite. Best 'gamer' fic I have ever read and it has a very good use of cliffhangers and a blisteringly fast plot.
u/None [+7] (7 hours later)
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u/TheGuardianOne [+10] (15 hours later)
I think Juniper is the first ever to treat Valencia as an actual person, and she is responding accordingly.
Also, for some reason I read "Life" as valuing all life, not just hear her own.
u/None [+8] (8 hours later)
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u/None [+3] (9 hours later)
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u/None [+13] (9 hours later)
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u/throwaway11252016 [+1] (a day later)
Well, up until reading this chapter, I had thought this line of reasoning was spot on. But her list of values says otherwise. Or, if you want to go down the rabbithole, the absence of Fenn among those values is evidence they've been changed (for what reason would Fenn be devalued though?)
Maybe she is romantically interested in Fenn, but doesn't sufficiently value romance to place that above the ticket to power that is Joon. When she's disappointed with Joon saying everything looked as expected, she's disappointed to confirm that's the type of person she is.
u/adgnatum [+6] (14 hours later)
Hm, the Amaryllis partial preference ordering doesn't seem that interested in the kingdom. Maybe it's just a means to Autonomy/Power? Maybe the world needs Arthur because Amaryllis is not Best Princess?
Increasing complexity:
"Nellan" isn't the name of a (past) love interest. (An AO3 comment suggests a parent.)
Nellan isn't the name of a person, even though the narration in that paragraph sets us up to think of a person/concept dichotomy and then think of this list as not conceptual. Maybe a specific place?
EDIT: Oh, one more: the entity in question might no longer exist/be alive
u/Izeinwinter [+11] (17 hours later)
.. Maximum drama: Nellan is her child. Which is why she is so extremely cranky about her home village, they kicked her out but kept the kid.
u/icesharkk [+3] (3 days later)
Murderquest to recover child! Joonbait!
u/Law_Student [+3] (3 days later)
Nellan could be a word in elvish for a unique concept without a direct translation, like the weird elven take on an adventuring party that she brought up earlier.
u/Ace_Kuper [+5] (10 hours later)
This is probably going to be a lengthy post so let me start right.
First of all i really liked the story and characters, even tho binge reading kills my soul cause i have a habit of putting myself into characters shoes.
I find so elements of the story or rather Junipers description of things funny or ironic considering his knowledge, but i it maybe a personal thing.
Here is the list if this funny\ironic things.
1. At the start of the novel he comments about video games having less freedom or free form compared to D&D and the like.
But i'm pretty sure there are plenty types of video games that allow you to just run a simulation of regular life Sims style or even be a Tycoon. Even some RPG's are strictly about running your own shop and being a merchant. In the world of Aerb and to an extension in the previous D&D sessions of juniper he says the narrative wouldn't allow it or it would be boring. I think this highly depends on the group you are playing with and the system you use. There are even some homebrew systems like Maid RPG and i'm sure there are some that are dedicated or applicable to running a fantasy tavern with friends that can be used after you are tired of looting and plundering. This leads into 2.
2. I guess D&D is more rigid about stuff you can do and what exactly counts as out of box thinking.
But it seems the narrative and his previous D&D experience was to an extent about party being a Murderhobo type. We have them talk about issues and discuss roles and being in character, but at the end of the day Aerb and snippets of previous escapades lean towards kill them after identifying the problems you have with them approach. Every "enemy" or problem is mostly resolved with killing stuff, in a smart or roundabout way, but still. They are not full on murderhobos, but funnily enough they are technically hobos and they do murder a lot. System itself lead into 3.
3. The d20, fabled natural 20
I was under impression that physics still worked somewhat normally in D&D and the example of sickly crippled man vs. knight in super armor raise a couple of questions. The d20 results of critical successes very not misrepresented per say, but the explanation was somewhat weird for me.
For example a super strong warrior saying that he starts flapping his hands and begins to fly wouldn't prompt the DM giving him flight even he throws a 20 and at the very list all rules thrown aside would require a series of 20 for a variety of tests.
In the case of crippled guy he would not only require an aim throw of 20, but at least a strength check of 20, maybe even a vitality check so that he isn't crumpling to the ground cause his body can't take it. I'm also pretty sure the difficulty of the task affects the rolls and makes it semi to impossible to make it even with a 20 at hand. I guess grazing the cheek and not straight up murder is the result of this super successes failing, but it still kinda felt like treating d20 as something that it's not.
4. The DM not being able to wiggle the results.
This one seemed pretty funny since there is a system that bears name of Pendragon and if i remember correctly it actually has the exact thing that would have helped Amaryllis in their D&D game to protect her sister. It's called Passions and she would be able to make a passion roll or DM could say she should make one or gets a bonus, since she is protecting her Sister and Family could be a passion in that system.
5. Bond Girl and creating conflict
Again kinda ties into the whole D&D in Junipers case was more about fight action and other systems followed in similar ways. There are more narrative driven systems, but i'm sure author knows that.
The conflict or interest generated from Bond Girl syndrome serves almost no purpose in the D&D campaign and in the case of Aerb's DM (him existing or not) would loose all tension after a couple of deaths. Repetition of the same trick is kinda tires people and players or observers\readers wouldn't really care after the 5 attempt cause it would seem artificial. For all the 'rules" of narrative Aerb "follows" it certainly can hint at choosing boring\artificial ones to uphold. The Bond thing also raises the question of the DM's ability to tell a story, cause Bond Girls were more of a necessity and inability to progress the character\story with them intact. Also Bond from a movies stand point was played by different people too, would it call for Juniper changing for another protagonist who is similar and in some cases totally different?
In case of his previous D&D group the DM(Juniper) would be somewhat an asshole somewhat if he tried to create tension by killing the lover frequently or at all, cause for it to work the pair would be a real couple of players - aka real people and his friends (murder without reason mind you, they can't just say love wins all the battles). There is a little chance of someone role playing a realistic romance and even if they did that, they wouldn't exactly care about death of an NPC after a couple of times. It's like making all of the chests in the game mimics, you become desensitized and don't really care after a while, no tension just tired of the same tricks even if it's a variety of mimics.
6. Stagnation and change, there is conflict or there is non?
I know people are complex creatures and not everything can be solved by analyzing what someone said or did. This just seemed funny and part of it felt wrong or out of place.
Joon's thought process or things he thought about after the revelation of Fenn being thirty-three years old seemed kinda strange and didn't sit well with me. It wasn't out of character or contradictory to himself in a span of those thought, but it seemed kinda out of place with itself on a small scale. I wish i could put my finger on it, but maybe i'm just confusing myself or combining multiple different dialogs and talks into one in my head.
His assumption of her not changing in the span of 16 years, or his definition of maturity and what "adult" people do and feel, seemed okay for a panicked reaction of a 17 year old, but at the same time felt strange and like him thinking it for story reasons and not person reasons. He wanted to change and grow with her, but at the same time he didn't want her to change previously and i bet even after this. I guess there is nuance to those "changes", but it still felt like going in circles.
I'm also sure that not addressing personal problems or even thinking about them as problems or "high school level drama" and not as people being themselves, is totally healthy and not a problem onto itself (Sarcasm). But this at least is in connection with a 17 year old boy who didn't really see much of the world.
All in all this story is a great read and i hope people will notice and disagree\agree and talk\comment about points a brought up.
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+3] Fruit flies like a banana (39 seconds later)
Typos here, please. (I am a little bit behind on typo correction at the moment, forgive me.)
u/thrawnca [+6] Carbon-based biped (35 minutes later)
years of dairies/years of diaries
think armor/thick armor
(Although the idea of thought-based armor is intriguing...)
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+8] Fruit flies like a banana (2 hours later)
Fixed and fixed, thanks, thought-based armor filed away for later use.
u/JusticeBeak [+3] (6 hours later)
I'm more interested in Tiff's cheese collection, personally
u/Alphanos [+3] The Bright Powers (an hour later)
I’m not limited to the grid of forty, it’s two-hundred and fifty-six.”
Well, it was actually 266, since I had split Deception and Stealth from each other.
Probably supposed to be 257?
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+2] Fruit flies like a banana (2 hours later)
Fixed, thank you!
u/Veedrac [+2] (an hour later)
You was just about what I expected.
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+1] Fruit flies like a banana (2 hours later)
Fixed, thank you.
u/Kerbal_NASA [+1] (3 hours later)
saving her the trouble to using her muscles
to -> of
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+1] Fruit flies like a banana (6 days later)
Fixed, thanks.
u/nytelios [+1] (a day later)
All the principle players
principal
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+1] Fruit flies like a banana (6 days later)
Fixed, thank you.
u/SoylentRox [+1] (21 minutes later)
503 Service Unavailable No server is available to handle this request.
Why not post on fanfiction.net?
--Edit : was able to reach the chapter by a different route, not the link that was emailed to me.
u/Makin- [+8] homestuck ratfic, you can do it (55 minutes later)
The place for this kind of non-fanfic story would be Fictionpress, which is pretty much the worst place to host a story if you want readers (Mother of Learning is the only serial I've seen it make it work).
u/Hakurei06 [+3] (4 hours later)
My qualm is that updates aren't readily syndicatable. AO3 has atom feeds for canonical tags, but that's about it. I can't subscribe to a specific series or author. My workaround on that is to subscribe to a reddit search query for "[RT][WIP] Worth the Candle" on this subreddit, linking to AO3, and ordered by most recent post, but it hasn't exactly been reliable.
u/Agnoman [+2] (6 hours later)
The easiest thing seems to be to just make an AO3 account and subscribe through that, if you're okay with email notifications. If you're not, I think you could make a throwaway email to get updates, and convert that to an RSS feed?
u/Hakurei06 [+1] (7 hours later)
At this point I'd settle for email, even if it wasn't my preferred subscription method, but do you happen to have an invite handy?
I put a bunch of email aliases in the wait list but haven't heard back from any.
u/Agnoman [+2] (7 hours later)
I'd forgotten what a pain the AO3 sign up process was. Unfortunately I've got no invitations, and they're not willing not give me any. Sorry, I'd love to be more help.
u/Mandabar [+1] Worth the Candle (6 days later)
What is up with that actually, do you know? I luckily have an account at least somehow.
u/Mandabar [+0] Worth the Candle (6 days later)
What is up with that actually, do you know? I luckily have an account at least somehow.
u/Mandabar [+0] Worth the Candle (6 days later)
What is up with that actually, do you know? I luckily have an account at least somehow.
u/Mandabar [+0] Worth the Candle (6 days later)
What is up with that actually, do you know? I luckily have an account at least somehow.
u/SoylentRox [+2] (59 minutes later)
Fair enough. I just meant "put this amazing story somewhere reliable"
u/Law_Student [+3] (3 days later)
Just discovered this series, and feverishly read my way through the whole thing over about three days. It's superb, truly. I'm glad you're so prolific, I'm looking forward to reading lots more.
u/knite [+2] (5 hours later)
I wonder how easy it would be to convince Grak to level up his loyalty...
u/abcd_z [+3] (15 hours later)
He tried that back in chapter 56. Didn't work.
I gained a single point of loyalty from [learning dwarvish from Grak], bringing him up to 7, when I apologized if my relationship with Fenn made things awkward, but that was about as much as I got for my efforts. I’d had this idea of ‘grinding loyalty’ with him, but it didn’t really pan out like that, no matter how much we talked. He had, apparently, made up his mind about me and trying to budge him wasn’t easy, especially since he knew that I wanted him to be more loyal. I’d tried telling him the same thing I’d told Amaryllis, that he would become more powerful, but that didn’t sway him like it had swayed her.
u/narfanator [+2] (22 days later)
Heya, anyone heard anything from cthulhuraejepsen? They haven't posted anything in 16 days. Are they OK?
u/nytelios [+1] (a day later)
Devils can take possession of normal people. Is that a danger? Possession jumping is easier when the devil's in a non-anima?
I'm getting the Yeerk vibe from devils, but if it's only explicit/declarative memory, then having enough Insight might let Joon discern a poor actor of a devil. On the other hand, if the devil also actively access implicit memories like muscle memory or conditioning, having soul magic makes it relatively easy to check for foreign souls in her body.
So soul magic can work through clothing. (Fenn's glove considered clothing or does skin-contact with invested entads make it a part of you?) Would be scary if the definition of contact isn't clear or can be changed.
u/Law_Student [+2] (3 days later)
I'm a bit concerned about the prospect of the party winding up twin souled to a 'soul' that could be a demon at any moment. Seems like a set up for shenanigans. On the other hand maybe Juniper could use the link to rewrite the demon's soul into a nice proper soul for Val that wasn't all demonic.
u/Keshire [+1] (5 days later)
Something that jumps out to me is that the narrative theory has a direct analogue in the game Rimworld. When starting a game of rimworld you can pick from 3 game narrators that effect the flow of the game differently.
http://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/AI_Storytellers
The tension and discussions they go through about it is interesting. Unless they attribute it to a god though I'd be really questioning my existence.