beccaelizabeth's dreamwidth journal

I am listening to the Torchwood audio book 'Hidden'. Audio book is harder to listen to than audio adventure, I keep getting distracted by my own brain and having to back up and replay a bit.

I noticed it keeps explaining the tech as it goes along. Not just saying the shiny place has high security and gave them visitor passes, saying about the fingerprint scanners and the 'webcam' they use to get photos to put on the visitor passes. Explaining exactly which databases they're tapping into and mentioning they're using a touchscreen. Explaining you can track a cell phone like a lowjack before they do it. And did you know CCTV cameras are everywhere?

And I vaguely recall all that being the sharpest of cutting edge stuff at the time, but now it's all seeming terribly dated. So when written it would all signify Shiny, and now it's as out of date as the fashions, and at some not very distant future point it'll be useful explaining all over again not for what they can do but for what they cannot.

Which I've stopped the adventure to type about because audiobooks are harder to listen to and it was getting distracting.

:eyeroll:

I've had a good day though, did Cleaner Day and am getting laundry done while I listen, so, winning.

:-)

I went to look up some words but ended up back on my own blog finding the last time I complained about imprecise translation of historical relationships of power, so I am no further ahead but know I've been annoued about the same thing for Long.

I started out with Pathfinder rules, where if you take a Leadership feat you get Followers and also a Cohort. In the skinnier book Cohorts and Companions it elaborates on this so you can also have Recruits, which are like slightly lower level Cohorts but you can have several of them, only one of them following you around on any given day. Companions usually means *animal* companions, which ends up being unflattering to Doctor Who. And there are a lot of very specific versions of cohorts, some of which you get through an archetype, like Instructor and Apprentice for wizards, which can only make the same type of wizard as you are but has rules for letting them go voluntarily and finding a new apprentice. Or there's Torchbearer, Light Bearer, Weapon Bearer, Page, Squire, and Groom, who are all lower level cohorts of a particular limited type. (Many of those are from Ultimate Intrigue, or look them up on Nethys.)

What interests me are the in universe social and legal relationships implied by this stuff. Like there are Adventure Party Charters mentioned in Cohorts and Companions p22, and in some jurisdictions the Party so contractually bound is a legal entity with a specific tax relationship to the state, one which works out as expensive up front but advantageous if you survive the long term. "In some regions [...] characters can pay a fee of 100gp per level for each member to register their charter with the local government, exempting them from salvage taxes on treasure and mitigating fines for collateral damage to property and buildings." [C&Cp22] Of course not every game is going to have taxes etc in the first place, which may be why the associated feat is mentioned but not actually included, anywhere, ever. But it's an interesting try at giving the Party a distinct legal status. They're a business with a difference from mercenary companies, since no one has to hire them and 'salvage' is presumed to be relevant Often. But they're different from everything else too.

Honestly requiring the armed bastards to get a licence seems like an idea with significant utility.

And a new party just setting out isnt going to have the fees handy.

And part of registering is making sure no one else is using the name, like Companies House and so forth. But who among the sixteen year olds with a single spell each or possibly One sword is going to have encyclopedic knowledge of such parties? They'd end up looking for names just like usernames on a new service.

Also it clears up the deciding who is and isnt the party. The full members paid their 100gp per level and are entitled to treatment as per the charter re treasure sharing and being brought back from the dead. "Are shares equal or is level a factor".

Also when I went looking for what a cohort calls their leader (no opinions discovered) I found many (many) discussions on where a cohorts equipment comes from, who pays for it, should the party wealth by level be adjusted for them (no), etc. The book says a new cohort is equipped as per an NPC of their level, but after that it sayeth not. So people kept arguing. Like, the people saying a cohort is over powered and they dont allow them at their table and the people saying its really difficult to keep them properly equipped from their share should maybe pay attention to each other's point? But in Cohorts and Companions it actually mentions this as something the *charter* needs to decide, "Do cohorts or hirelings get some portion of the wealth, or is their master responsible for rewarding them?"

Which also is one vote for Master and Cohort. Which seems awkward to me.

But it puts that at the level of 'the party decides and agrees in advance' rather than a rule.

Honestly page 22 seems Incredibly Useful for deciding in advance the kinds of things adventure parties get Really Very Annoyed about, and having people agree in advance seems likely to lower the temperature on a Lot of arguments.

Where people could learn this kind of stuff before they run full tilt into it in universe though... seems like a Pathfinder thing? Like teh Pathfinders aren't an adventurer guild exactly, but they also are. Guild experience would accrue in many advice books, and Pathfinders publish the Chronisles full of hard earned lessons. And if you've got to charter, you could probably get some suggested charters there.

... p22 also advises thinking of a party alignment and keeping everyone within one step of that. Which probably helps answer such questions as do you actually have to help each other in combat. Team Evil's charter could be evil.

... Team Chaos having a charter at all seems counter intuitive, but that runs into the definitions thing again. Like I'm sure Robin Hood and his merry men were very clear on the division of wealth and their obligations to each other, they're just paradigmatically Chaotic Good because they weren't taking top down authority about any of it.

ANYway

I set out looking for Words
because there are a lot of specific Words for specific sorts of cohort
but fewer for the people who have cohorts.

Like, Recruits dont imply the existence of a Recruiter, let alone that they'd address their Recruiter by that word. "Be they students, retainers, new recruits to your order, or neophyte members of your faith, you have access to a small set of dedicated servants." Your recruits have so many words right there, but what do they call you? Teacher? Sir? Leader? Master?

Master is awkward for... several reasons. Because Master of the house, Master of the subject, and Master who owns slaves, are all the same words. Master Journeyman Apprentice encodes a different relationship of power to Master and Slave, as far as I know.

Also when I went looking for word sets I got annoyed, because thrall in the dictionary says it means slave, servant or bondsman, but those are different things. And nobody says what the person who can give the thrall orders is called. English seems to have fewer words for boss than for people you're the boss of. Forms of address, there should be more of them.

Also when I went looking for stacks of words in original language, older versions of English maybe, I still got frustrated at the fuzzy definition, and still didnt find anything about how you'd address the next layer up. Is it just not there or do I not know the search terms?

Wait, google is rubbish looking for things I already know are there, that's going to make it trickier.

Why I ended up back on my own journal was looking for a citation for a thing I remember reading that said English translations frequently introduce gender where no gender is stated or implied. Not just saying policeman where the original word is more like police officer, also saying Lord or Lady, or rather specifically saying Lord as a translation for a particular level of power and according to this one specific book ignoring that the gender just isnt there.

But even my own notes get frustrated because yes the one book said it, but only that one, so then what?


Like, also, I'm frustrated with the subtitles on martial arts movies, because I feel like I'm not understanding the relationships between people, since how they treat each other isnt necessarily something I'd guess from available titles in translations. But is that because English just never did that exact relationship, or because I dont know enough martial arts movies, or because the translator was doing their best, or what?



If we're inventing fantasy worlds we're inventing fantasy relationships of power, and we get to decide what those mean.

But we either go full conlang (I lack the skills)
or we're importing thousands of years of historical assumption with every word.


... actually having the characters work out a Charter *on page* would let you specify what Party and Cohort means *to them*, and then you can stress them accordingly.


But you'll still have to decide what the cohort calls their... leader master instructor knight boss.

I have been stuck reading Jack/Ianto, mosly post CoE fixit fic, lately.
(stuck as in I did not decide to focus on this particular variety but I cannot steer my attention for toffee)

It's good because there's a Lot of over ten thousand words not an out of universe crossover finished fic to read
but
a lot of it had the same ideas.

And they're great ideas! Yes, obviously Ianto should travel to the 51st century and meet both younger and older Jack, acting like a sort of reverse three ghosts, that's an excellent idea. And starting at the most bookmarked fics, it is also an idea I have read repeatedly already. I can also see the appeal of making Ianto immortal, by any means necessary, and making him a Time Lord, possibly with a stopwatch for a fob watch, works grand too.

But I am at that point in reading fic where I'm all
yes, like this!
... but not this.

I can't figure out exactly what differences I want either.

I mean the fic where Jack raises Ianto's baby in the far future is an excellent one, but, do I want to read another one?

I know I *don't* like the ones where the two of them leave Earth together after CoE. God knows they need a holiday, but it just doesn't feel plausible to me, knowing how they choose duty over and over. And of course having seen them choose duty, and on one memorable occasion vote screw it, we want them to get their freedom and their happily ever afters... but I just feel strongly that they'd manage a holiday for... maybe whole numbers of weeks, if it were a busmans holiday like the Doctor always manages. And after that they'd need to know Cardiff was okay roughly like you'd need to know if you left the cooker on.

I love the ones where everything gets declassified and everything changes.
It's perpetually frustrating that, in order to stay relatable and one step around the corner for new and young viewers, DW is just not going to do that.
Everthing resets instead.



I get tired of the tragic endings. Yes, the story can lead us through satisfyingly cathartic dark places, but, anyone can set it up and then leave it in the bad bit. Stories should figure it out and fix it too.



I've seen recent pictures of GDL and quite a large part of what I want is for Ianto to also have the chance to keep up. Live as long and look as good. It feels important more people get a turn at that.



Happily ever after isnt a childish ending. Leaving it in the dark seems teenage. Like you get scared and hide in a dark corner, but the good bit is figuring how to get out.

And it isn't really immortality angst when you get upset about having to watch everyone die
if they die like, every year. Every couple of years, tops.
That's just regular horrible trauma.



... give Jack the highly specific trauma he deserves, after spending the rest of the century watching Ianto grow old with him!

Ianto is such a classic character though. He's got that whole well organised butler sinks into the background thing going on, and then suddenly everyone has to *see* him and notice there's been wells of desperate passion driving him all along. And then he goes back to quiet competence? As you do? And getting underestimated, over and over. And that time he had to shoot Owen because both of them were absolutely certain they were doing their duty, that is good stuff. And just in general, the way Ianto will make a straight line plan starting where he is and going where he needs to go, and just do it, and you think he is therefor Fine, but he is having all the feelings, loudly, actually, and just getting everything done Anyway.

That's a kind of guy who could age in such interesting ways. Because maybe he continues to find someone to Follow, and Serve, and Look After. And they continue to wonder what they did to earn that. Or maybe he sort of grows into himself, and becomes the kind of highly competent leader who also knows how to get his people whatever they need. He could keep on trying to keep his feelings on the inside, or he could have his feelings out loud where actual other people can see them on a more frequent basis. And if he does, either way, it could be about growing out of insecurity into confidence, or he could keep that flaw of thinking he has to hide his needs in order to get a sliver of what is needed. Plenty of good story!

I do kind of want to see him as a parent, but not so much in the ways kidfic mostly covers, where there is A Cute Accessory that lets us see how much they Care. More like... for those of us who are not Immortal and unaging, there comes a day where someone else has to look after us, because they are more capable than we are today. Or than we will be anymore.

I think Ianto would have some Adjustments to make, to be the recipient of care.

And then his kids grow up a bit and want to work, want to *serve*, and how is he going to adjust to that? Send them elsewhere or set them up in Torchwood? Keep them where he can keep an eye on them, but everyone will know that's what he's doing?

(Not to mention the teenage years where the kids go all Sarah Jane Adventures but Ianto is very aware that the stakes are always Torchwood and his reality has no plot armour.)

They wouldnt have to be his biological kids for a lot of this to apply, obvs. Just, there keep being people who are Younger. Now what?

So the interesting bits about getting older when your partner doesn't, those would include watching him keep doing the same things the same ways, and you can't anymore... but maybe your kids can. And that is going to feel a whole heap of ways.

And Ianto admires James Bond so being a field agent seems like the height of glamor, but what if you hit the height of skill, and yet the rest of you doesn't keep up?

Kind of like Owen and Andy are doing in the audios, where Owen just can't risk getting any more broken, so then Andy gets hurt, and nobody is happy about that.

But instead like, an older Ianto has Jack as a model, someone to look up to and admire, and that includes a tendency to be the one throwing himself into danger. Yvonne didnt flinch from throwing other people in harm's way, and I feel Not Being Yvonne is going to be a legit priority in Torchwood future. But at some point you just arent the best option for the mission. It's time to send someone else.

I want to see someone adjust to those sort of long term changes.

TV isn't the format for that, unless you set up parallel stories, or giant flashbacks.

Fic can have it covered though.




Anyways, food delivery arriving, these are just some thoughts.

I keep on thinking of Bard characters and then getting stuck on the thing where I don't know much music.

Bards could in theory be primarioy Oratory or Conedy dudes though, and honestly I'm not coming up with much for that either.
( Read more... )



Thing is I'm getting stuck on what kind of
get up and dance
(with death, reprise)
song could even go there

at which point I have to admit I know not of music.



I am getting many ideas for how to fit these Torchwood inspire characters into this Runelords adventure, what character arcs they can have etc.

But it wouldnt be good fanfic, or properly original, so then I dont get around to writing it.



I like game rules though, they give you such an epic climbing frame.



I do have another Bard character in mind where I could think of songs for all their spells
as long s they were Disney
with a hint of Bagpuss.


... that's unuseable for a whole other reason long before you get to Mood though.


You can get a long way with Queen's Greatest Hits as well.




If you try and make up music you get a really tough challenge, because music is primarily connotational, so you have to build the connotations before you use them.

And if you're trying to do that in text
where you can't use key and tempo anyway
you're just stuck trying to make up really meaningful poetry
that your Bard could say
in six seconds.


Trick-y.



Ah well.

The Mummy's Mask Player's Guide is free via the paizo website and it has lots of good suggestions for how to invent a party for this adventure.
The Archive of Nethys has all the rules online. Mummy's Mask is first edition.
Combine them and you can get... very lost in the multiplicity of possibilities.

But I made a start:

I decided my adventuring party for Mummy's Mask will be the Dust Diggers.
... then I discovered a bestiary entry for Dust Digger.
So the group named themselves something blandly archaeological, but, it turns out to be a sort of sand starfish with big pointy teeth.

A Dust Digger has five arms, so I shall have five characters.
( Read more... )


I know this is not especially fascinating to read. It's meant to be a game and I wouldnt be inventing all the characters at once in a game.



But with this set of characters you can tell it as a Chosen One story with an older supporting cast
or
you can tell it as a bunch of mature students trying to put their new degrees into action, while keeping their kid out of trouble.

Everyone's got insecurities to work through and power to grasp.

I think it could be fun.

The long thing I wrote last year, the one based on the Pathfinder module Academy of Secrets... I am not sure a polish is really what it needs. It might need taking apart for parts and starting again.

I mean in fanfic land you can post both versions and it's just variations on a theme, plus I know there's phases in writing a thing where you've figured out all the problems and none of the solutions, but... I just have a different idea of what the interesting bits are than I did when I started.

(Discussing specifics gets into spoilers, obvs.)

Like, peak relatable in that module: ( Read more... )



This morning's thoughts brought to you by
that stupid recurring nightmare where a teacher tells you hurry up you're in the wrong room
but then you can't go fast enough to follow them
so you check your schedule
and there's a whole bunch of classes
and you haven't been going to them
and if you don't pass them all
they'll somehow take your qualifications back.

I mean who doesn't have academic nightmares?

Walking into a hell built of them ought to be personal and pointed and
not actually solved by stabbing anything.


... well, not *only*.


Can have a cathartic stabbing as a climax
as a treat.





I was also thinking about the Academy setting
specifically Toff Ornelos
who is a very boring bully in the couple of paragraphs or source text about him
bound to a job he hates by obligations to his family.

The only clue you get for how he attained such a high level
is he's a famous wizard duelist.

... a player character of his level has done a majority of an Adventure Path, at least 5/6ths of it. He could have done some pretty intense things, but we don't hear of them.

But then I imagined him played by ASH
and then of course his character has to have depth.

... plus there's another teacher at the Academae with the initials ER, whose speciality is transmutation, the magic of transformation, so of course my other obsession introduces himself...

Mostly though I keep carving one aspect off of Giles at a time to fuel a character, and at the Academy I just imagined two that can meet.

( Read more... )



I think I'm thinking up a better set of stories, taking on aspects of what interested me in other characters and adding them to this setting.

But the things I'm thinking up are not going to be settled by a fight scene.

Everything needs to get a much stronger metaphor layer than the game module can give it.




So that's a back to the drawing board for that story.

Maybe.

Today I at least know what felt missing in the fanfic I read: metaphor layer.

It told a perfectly good fixit adventure story. Character has magic, character applies magic to all canon problems, character solves problems. But despite the fight scenes it felt like they didn't have to work for it?

I think I was looking for that metaphor story
where a character finds their power
by dealing with some personal issues.

Like, not just, here have a spell. More like, here, overcome shyness that leaves you agreeing to anything asked of you, take back your power for yourself, and impose your will on the world! Or, start reaching out to people and instead of applying force apply The Power Of Friendship. Or... you know, rebalance your life to slay your demons. With spells.

Without that metaphor character feelings layer, it feels like video game or rpg levelling up. Like sure, you killed enough monsters, but if those monsters didnt even represent childhood fears, was it really hard work?

So now I know why the fic was not what I was looking for, but I am also :eyeroll: at myself.



Also there was a certain degree of things just happen to them going on. Like, seeing how specific choices push the plot forwards, yaay, one single choice pushing the whole thing forwards on inertia, kind of... unsatisfying at that length. Like it was plausible but... I don't know, sandwich only has one filling? No salad?


So I have figured out things I'm looking for in a story but once again not things that are tagged and searchable.

Ah well.

There are ways I love the main Pathfinder setting, Golarion in the Age of Lost Omens.
( Read more... )

Today I typed a bunch more into Scrivener, more or less catching up with the first draft on paper, but now typed and easier to rearrange etc.

If I used the buttons right there are about 13K words already. A lot of pages.
They're not the right words yet, some of them are three different ways of doing a paragraph I wont know how to perfect until the story is done, but they're not awful.
And I can see where I need to go back and fill in and do extra, or maybe leave out a false start, and I've put little pinboard cards for things that need doing next.

I think I've started many subplots and juggling them while keeping them thematically consistent and relevant is going to be a good trick.
Also I tend to not put characters names and the said said bits when there's just two talking, but that can go too long.
And I need to figure out ways of telling stuff the actors would put in. Like when they're kind of lying or trying to make something sound like nothing. But the other character there wouldnt notice so its tricky.

But I have words of a story all in a row.

Also the more I write the less it's about the rpg module it's hanging on, that's just giving it some bones. So that's nice.



Later, maybe more new words.

Now, sleeps.

Today my attempt to file serial numbers off of characters that started out as werewolves lead me to find on behindthename that
Madog Howells
is a perfectly valid Welsh name
and now I'm annoyed I'm not writing the kind of story where that could hide at all.

Also the closest thing to McCall on that website is MacCallion, anglicised from MacCailín, which is from the name Cailean. Cailean means whelp or young dog.

... Cailean is also the name of a deity in Pathfinder's main setting, so I'm probably keeping MacCailean, just in a non wolfy way.
On Golarion the followers of Cayden Cailean run a lot of orphanages, and some of those raised there take the name Cailean, so by now it has to be a fairly common name that may or may not mean you personally are an orphan, or descended from them. But being an actual son of Cayden is also reputedly possible, due to Cayden being a bit of a party god. So that's fun.



I've never watched Teen Wolf, I just needed half a dozen characters to drop in at once and I've read some fanfic, so this morning I woke up and got distracted renaming them.


... oh, I had so many more windows open in private browsing, but Firefox just crashed and they are All Gone. *sigh*
... I mean, having so many windows open was probably why it crashed, but still, *sigh*


Given that this story is unlikely to see daylight I should just stop fussing with names anyway, dont need to file anything off if nobody sees it.

I feel weird about this one because usually fanfic is 'we know these characters but I will make up the plot', only I am making up characters and throwing them at a Pathfinder adventure module, because what happens next is the hard part. So it still isnt original, but the things that happen are only lightly customised to be happening to these people at this time.

oh well, made pages, is good.

rpg magic is sort of boring.

Not when you're playing. Then it is a whole toolkit, often filled with grenades, and the world will provide a number of (flammable) problems to ise it on.

But as a story? Boring.
( Read more... )

So what magic is for in a game - tools for the PC to change the game world - isn't what magic is for in fiction - tool for the story to give the reader Feels.

PC roleplaying is to give the Feels.

And there's only the other players there to make Feels things.



These thoughts could be more coherent but that's kind of it.

Magic is a different tool in games or in stories and I dont quite know what to do in book type storytelling with an rpg size spellbook.

I saw another meme about how love triangles dont work because polyamory
and totally agree, date both, both is good

but

if the only choice being made is between two people
it is already not the most interesting triangle.

The example that springs to mind is a PI with two love interests, one a cop, one a vampire.
That's two different lifestyles and alignments
That's thesis and antithesis.

The solution is some kind of synthesis, if I'm going to stay interested
or going all the way over to one side, and then I get bored.

And like, synthesis can make an interesting poly relationship? They will still have Lawful Good on one side and Chaotic Possibly Good Possibly Neutral on the other, and they will still have the person in the middle trying to figure out what is Good and what is simply Lawful, and whether they personally choose to be Good right now, or if Neutral will do for today. Even if they remain romantically involved as a threesome, they haven't collapsed the underlying tension. There's still story there and always will be.

But sometimes all of them go full masquerade, or one goes vampire and one quits being a cop and then it's a two vampire and a PI relationship, or... you know, the whole alignment of the triad gets pulled to one specific corner.

Or the vampire becomes entirely Good? Like, I've only seen Chaotic Neutral but Really Trying, but like, in theory he could have made it to Chaotic Good?
Actually I've not watched Forever Knight recenly enough, is that a Lawful Good vampire?
... have I watched those this decade?


ANYway, my example is flawed because vampires can have multiple alignments.


But it could be other issues that are in tension between them. Being boss or employees or clients, for instance, different sets of choices and power relations. Dating civilians or masks, maybe. Those need unpacking, what they stand for and what the contradictions are.


If the people supposed to be chosen between are very similar then they can just all click their lives together and you are left wondering why they dont. But also I am left wondering why I read it. Like the endless iterations of the romance where the only thing stopping them being together is they dont communicate. I am not getting much of the good stuff out of the yearning having cycle when they're only stuck yearning because not asking.



But lots of 'love triangles' are actually choices between two different and often opposing lifestyles with different values and ideas of what the good life is.

Even the Hallmark city vs country divide I have read about on tumblr isnt simple to collapse into 'just date both'. Which lifestyle do they pursue together, what work life balance do they agree to, where do they have Christmas?



Date Both is only the answer if those things can resolve, otherwise it's a work in progress.