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Calibration (BAHHSCQ/Sanctioned)

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Alivaril said:
While that is true, cutting off Newborns isn't one of her (many) controversial behaviors. "It isn't unusual to do X" isn't the same thing as "QA is the only one not to do X."
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That, and she may be able to make a pretty solid argument that behaviour on her part is genuinely a superior alternative even if it isn't already the most common standard. She definitely has her quirks, but she's good at what she does; if she can show that she has a point, then hey, maybe other shards should listen to the monarch for a reason. As said, she has a reputation sufficient to earn her some credit and tolerance, so she has to be offering a sufficiently compelling stance to some shards and garnering approval. Further, even if she isn't actually right, that's not necessarily the same as wrong, per se. Other shards might just be ambivalent towards those quirks of hers for not judging them to be any actual detriment as far as they can judge and thus simply irrelevant, even if not worthy of acknowledgement as a positive aspect, and some shards may simply be indecisive for not thinking there sufficient data to come to a conclusion one way or another.

Of course, for being the specialist at what she does, other shards might not necessarily be able to properly appreciate some of the nuances of her actions as she does, and so might well just think her making up excuses, or encouraging other shards towards that line of thinking even if not believing it themselves.
 
Alivaril said:
Broadcast goes in the complete opposite direction and somehow manages to have absurd allocations despite his wastefulness. QA is partway convinced that her crueler siblings simply enjoy seeing how angry she and other frugal shards get in response to Broadcast's bullshit.
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To be fair to Broadcast, he's the one dedicated to long distance communication, which, at interstellar distances, presumably takes a bunch of power regardless of how you do it. Or maybe it's just getting the bandwidth for a full [MESSAGE] that's costly. Either way.

Also, to be fair to the other core shards, long distance communication is kind of a critical feature. Always keep your cell phone topped up.

Note this does not make him any less of a useless dickhead, he's just a necessary one.
 
I assume he's just really convincing. And probably sexy by shard standards. All the other shards want to work on joint buds with him and QA can't understand why they don't see how it will only result in an inefficient bud and disappointment but no, all those other shards see is his massive budget and lots conflict and lose their ability to properly risk assess.
 
BROADCAST is annoying, like, super annoying, and it is impossible to tune him out, so other shards end up just ignoring him or giving him what he wants unless it is really important not to.
 
Valmond said:
BROADCAST is annoying, like, super annoying, and it is impossible to tune him out, so other shards end up just ignoring him or giving him what he wants unless it is really important not to.
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It makes sense that this colony is so fucked up, since their go-to guy for communication is so obnoxious nobody wants to talk to him unless they can't help it.
 
TacitSoliloquy said:
Of course, for being the specialist at what she does, other shards might not necessarily be able to properly appreciate some of the nuances of her actions as she does, and so might well just think her making up excuses, or encouraging other shards towards that line of thinking even if not believing it themselves
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I'm thinking it's probably not her specialty that makes her as controversial/misunderstood/disliked as she is - I actually suspect it might be the other way around.

Consider: From QA's own musings here, in INW, and in the quests, the other shards are quite often mean to her. They'll tell her things that aren't true to make her waste time (because they think it's funny), they'll withhold information from her, they'll both try to sabotage what she's doing and at the same time fear her when she gets going. Whatever constitutes an "in group" among shards, she isn't in it.

She can't trust other shards. Even though they have a common objective, and even though they're supposed to be allies in reaching that objective (to the extent that shards have such things, since "working together" seems to include "actively working against each other" because conflict is awesome), she expects other shards to ruin her work and make things difficult for her - because they have many times before.

QA comes off, in her thoughts about other shards and in her conversations in Sanctioned, as "not all there" when she's dealing with other shards. She doesn't get why they're mean to her, or why they lie to her and make her waste time, or a lot of things about other shards. She comes off as that weird kid in the back of the class that nobody really likes. (Or at least nobody popular.) The other shards act in ways that she doesn't, and they understand things she doesn't.

So. The Friends. I wonder - a shard substitute to have something she could understand and interact with? That wouldn't attack her and denigrate her and cause her problems? And if she spent a lot of time and effort and attention to those Friends, and to Administrating those Friends..? Heck - even without the Friends, buckling down to get good to spite the ones causing her problems?

Getting good enough with Administration to become a Monarch would then lift her up to her position of power and known competence, but at the same time.. even though she's the Bunny-Ears Lawyer, now, everyone still remembers her as that weird kid in the back of the class, and she's still weird. She does her job, and everyone is well aware she does it well, but at the same time, she's still weird in ways they don't like, and so they still poke at her and cause her problems in ways they can get away with.

I doubt it's quite that straightforward, but..between her power and position, and how it seems like other shards could explain things to her but instead cause her problems..? That feels less like "I'm so good at my job you don't know what I'm doing" and more the sort of mean-spiritedness of standard bullying.
 
Kellcat said:
So. The Friends. I wonder - a shard substitute to have something she could understand and interact with? That wouldn't attack her and denigrate her and cause her problems? And if she spent a lot of time and effort and attention to those Friends, and to Administrating those Friends..? Heck - even without the Friends, buckling down to get good to spite the ones causing her problems?
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I'm pretty sure this is the reason she's even bothering to talk with a host species. It's not like they can hurt her (We're not counting emotionally), and she gets a unique perspective with her Friends.

Kellcat said:
Getting good enough with Administration to become a Monarch would then lift her up to her position of power and known competence, but at the same time.. even though she's the Bunny-Ears Lawyer, now, everyone still remembers her as that weird kid in the back of the class, and she's still weird. She does her job, and everyone is well aware she does it well, but at the same time, she's still weird in ways they don't like, and so they still poke at her and cause her problems in ways they can get away with.
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In Alivaril's stories, I see QA as basically a savant. This shard is good at her job. She's so good it's terrifying. She comes out with solutions to problems (She might have invented) so far ahead of the curve entire cycles are spent cleaning up the aftermath. Other shards have to listen to her, but even if she wasn't in a position of authority some of them would still be scared of her. (Kid Win's shard was an example, I think..)

QA wants to be recognized, and it'll be interesting how this might relate to her growing relationship with key members of her newest host species.
 
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Kellcat said:
I doubt it's quite that straightforward, but..between her power and position, and how it seems like other shards could explain things to her but instead cause her problems..? That feels less like "I'm so good at my job you don't know what I'm doing" and more the sort of mean-spiritedness of standard bullying.
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Interesting points, but this part here wasn't really what I was getting at. A lot of the other shards are definitely just downright mean to her, or at least act in a way that comes across as such (to the extent that it correlates suspiciously well as a point of compatibility between her and her host, for that matter). Part of that may be due to a lack of understanding and perspective, with pretentiousness on her part not a factor. She thinks that she comports herself in a manner commendable by shard standards, and she may be justified in that stance. Other shards may see differently, though, and thus consider her someone not meriting respect. If she does things that are laudable by the metrics of shard values because she identifies reasons for such behaviour only for other shards to evaluate differently, then her actions could be perceived as indeed not having a good reason; she is the premier shard for administration, so she has a perspective oriented around that and an understanding of how matters can relate to her area of focus in ways that may not be recognised by shards without her particular insight, to thus result in other shards coming to different conclusions for using different means of evaluation. QA might have legitimate points that support the notion that her points are valid and worth pursuit, and yet be disregarded as baseless all the same. From that, those other shards might come to opposite conclusions hoped for indeed having shard values should they think her actions simply stupid and counterproductive.

That can get compounded quite problematically when coupled with QA insisting that she is right and those shards that are just out to give her a hard time regardless of her merits. An inability to convey the significances desired could leave ample room for the more trollishly malicious shards to basically just claim that she's making shit up to make herself feel better and look important, making her seem pretentious to the shards actually inclined to judge her fairly and seeing an overly-defensive, immature, and less than ideally suitable monarch, in addition to all the more vulnerable to the shards set on causing her grief... which would just get all the more exacerbated by that souring of perception from those who might otherwise support her or discourage her ridicule. Past a certain point, bullying QA might seem the okay and right thing to do, and no one would necessarily ever know that it shouldn't be that way.

...Cadet Hebert's therapists really are kind of doomed.
 
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TacitSoliloquy said:
Interesting points, but this part here wasn't really what I was getting at. A lot of the other shards are definitely just downright mean to her, or at least act in a way that comes across as such (to the extent that it correlates suspiciously well as a point of compatibility between her and her host, for that matter). Part of that may be due to a lack of understanding and perspective, with pretentiousness on her part not a factor. She thinks that she comports herself in a manner commendable by shard standards, and she may be justified in that stance. Other shards may see differently, though, and thus consider her someone not meriting respect.
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I'm pretty sure she also tends to view a lot of other shards as selfish and cowardly.

and considering that she's the shard in charge of ensuring that entities act as a multi-cellular organism it's possible that generally most shards tend to act like a loose alliance rather than a unified organism that she would prefer.
 
Alivaril said:
On that note, @Neruz? Could you please stop bringing Worm WoG into the thread? Worm WoG isn't really going to help you here. Halp, maybe, but not help.
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I'm pretty sure that means I should keep bringing Worm WoG into the thread, because when I do that either I get corrected, in which case I have gained information and thus claim victory, or I turn out to be correct, in which case I was right and thus claim victory.

It's a win-win! :V

Alivaril said:
Broadcast goes in the complete opposite direction and somehow manages to have absurd allocations despite his wastefulness. QA is partway convinced that her crueler siblings simply enjoy seeing how angry she and other frugal shards get in response to Broadcast's bullshit.
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Are we absolutely sure that Broadcast's ability to get away with shenanigans aren't because it is an endlessly annoying, nagging, whining, irritatingly loud and shouty asshole and the Entities just cannot be arsed dealing with its shit?

Aka, if Broadcast whines loudly enough at everyone for long enough, eventually someone is going to give up and just throw some energy at him for no more reason than in the hopes that doing so will make Broadcast will shut up.


Phant0m5 said:
To be fair to Broadcast, he's the one dedicated to long distance communication, which, at interstellar distances, presumably takes a bunch of power regardless of how you do it. Or maybe it's just getting the bandwidth for a full [MESSAGE] that's costly. Either way.

Also, to be fair to the other core shards, long distance communication is kind of a critical feature. Always keep your cell phone topped up.

Note this does not make him any less of a useless dickhead, he's just a necessary one.
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IIRC, in Sanctioned canon, Broadcast is explicitly stated to be hilariously wasteful; as in its method of saying 'hello' uses an amount of energy equal to several seconds of the total output of the sun, by broadcasting the concept of 'hello' across basically the entire multiverse all at once at absolute maximum volume.

Ironically, in Worm canon, Broadcast is not stated to be wasteful, but is stated to be so very annoying to deal with that The Warrior cripples Broadcast exclusively to prevent it from being used very often, because Broadcast being used too much would be distracting to the Entities.


Yep, Broadcast actually is an irritating gossipy schoolgirl that everyone wishes would just shut up.


AmbiguousAngle said:
In Alivaril's stories, I see QA as basically a savant. This shard is good at her job. She's so good it's terrifying. She comes out with solutions to problems (She might have invented) so far ahead of the curve entire cycles are spent cleaning up the aftermath. Other shards have to listen to her, but even if she wasn't in a position of authority some of them would still be scared of her. (Kid Win's shard was an example, I think..)

QA wants to be recognized, and it'll be interesting how this might relate to her growing relationship with key members of her newest host species.
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Part of it is also probably because QA is the 'tool' the Entities use to enforce their authority onto the shards in their colony, so to the other shards QA is the 'symbol of authority' in the colony, the shard that they actually interact with.

When in Entity\Colony form, QA's word is pretty much absolute and subservient only to the greater Entity consciousness itself, but during a Cycle all the deployed shards are temporarily freed from the 'chains' of QA's control and QA herself is 'demoted' to the same 'level' alongside them.

So any resentment for the whole 'enforced control' the shards may hold is likely to be directed at QA rather than the Entity actually responsible, and during a Cycle is the only time that the other shards can 'strike back' at the target of their resentment, so they take advantage of that brief window of opportunity.

(Also, assuming this remains true in Sanctioned as well, the vast majority of a shard's existence is spent as part of an Entity traveling between Cycles, given that Entities routinely travel between different galaxies and there's really no way to cover those kind of distances quickly without expending truly ludicrous amounts of energy even by Entity standards.)


TricMagic said:
Broadcast to newborn shards: [GIVE]
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New Shard: [QUERY]
Broadcast: [PROTECTION]+[RACKET]
New Shard: [REFUSAL]
Broadcast: [GIVE]
New Shard: [REFUSAL]
Broadcast: [GIVE][GIVE][GIVE][GIVE][GIVE][GIVE][GIVE][GIVE][GIVE][GIVE][GIVE][GIVE][GIVE][GIVE][GIVE][GIVE]
New Shard: [ACQUIESCENCE][CESSATION]
Broadcast: [SUCCESS][VICTORY][GLEE]
Broadcast: [NEXT]
New Shard #2: [EXPLETIVE]
 
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ROTH963 said:
No wonder she had gone fuck the colony and helped Taylor murder Scion in canon.
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I would say that the fact that in canon, the Entities must cripple powerful shards and even 'program' shards to be unable to mess with them indicates that shards naturally want to murder their 'parents', probably with the intent of taking over and becoming a new Entity, also probably because canon non-Abaddon shards only understand conflict.

The Entities wouldn't have put such safeguards in place without reason after all.
 
Neruz said:
I would say that the fact that in canon, the Entities must cripple powerful shards and even 'program' shards to be unable to mess with them indicates that shards naturally want to murder their 'parents', probably with the intent of taking over and becoming a new Entity, also probably because canon non-Abaddon shards only understand conflict.

The Entities wouldn't have put such safeguards in place without reason after all.
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Inaccurate. The reason your browser tries to restrict access of every site to its own scope isn't because every script "naturally wants" to subvert your entire computer; it's because some of them want to. In case of Entities, who seem to be incapable of designing anything by any means other than evolutionary algorithms and neural networks, every Shard has a risk of learning to want to take over, magnified by being attached to a host species Entities are planning to destroy.
 
Neruz said:
also probably because canon non-Abaddon shards only understand conflict
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Not true, we got interludes in ward and Scion shard were perfectly capable of thinking in a way similar to humans.
Neruz said:
The Entities wouldn't have put such safeguards in place without reason after all.
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Every shard is a reality warper that get stronger with time, when they are not under direct oversight as part of the entity, it is best to put safeguards in case a few decided they are better off without the entity or had joined the host species, and even if they did know, their ideas that conflict is productive might stop them from terminating risky shards as long as they aren't too risky or are too useful.
Rgal said:
In case of Entities, who seem to be incapable of designing anything by any means other than evolutionary algorithms and neural networks,
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They seem to be capable of doing it here, and it is mostly their culture that restrict and harm them.
 
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Sydonai said:
It isn't even true for the Shards on Earth Bet; Nilbog's Shard would have been happy to sit around doing fuck-all until the Cycle ended.
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He probably pushed for more conventional reaserch instead of conflict based one, or he wanted to spend a cycle just playing with his version of Friends and volunteered to be a boogyman, which most shards won't want because S class are not really allowed to do much.
 
ROTH963 said:
Not true, we got interludes in ward and Scion shard were perfectly capable of thinking in a way similar to humans.
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To be fair, that was only his avatar. I'm not sure how much the main body of Zion was even paying attention to it, or if it was even awake.
You know, it's kinda fun that we're talking about how human-like actions & feelings are seen as a threat or risk to the entities, thus the forced compliance, but it turns out that Zion was brought low by them anyway.


ROTH963 said:
He probably pushed for more conventional reaserch instead of conflict based one, or he wanted to spend a cycle just playing with his version of Friends and volunteered to be a boogyman, which most shards won't want because S class are not really allowed to do much.
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IIRC, Nilbog's shard was a huge exception, a kind of 'repopulate the planet if we fuck up' kind of thing.
 
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ChrisPikula said:
IIRC, Nilbog's shard was a huge exception, a kind of 'repopulate the planet if we fuck up' kind of thing.
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It sounds more like a side job, Eden is perfectly capable of doing it manually, and his monsters are kind of short lived, so I think of him more as general purpose shard, he provide CR appropriate encounters, he can be a boss character to successful hosts, he can locate a repopulate small locations where the host species was killed and do so fast while Eden manipulate humans to try and reclaim it, he is a lot of stuff, but I doubt Eden will use him solely to repopulate the planet, the protocols for the planet being destroyed are move on to another dimension.
ChrisPikula said:
I'm not sure how much the main body of Zion was even paying attention to it, or if it was even awake.
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Here at least, his shards spend their time planning their next cycles and doing simulations about killing a lot of different things.
 
ChrisPikula said:
IIRC, Nilbog's shard was a huge exception, a kind of 'repopulate the planet if we fuck up' kind of thing.
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According to WoG, yeah, Nilbog's shard was a 'backup' shard intended to take over and complete the Cycle if the host species was rendered extinct. That's why Nilbog was happy to just sit in his kingdom and do nothing; his shard was intended to, well, sit and do nothing unless a certain specific contingency came to pass. So it didn't imbue any kind of conflict drive into Nilbog and thus he had no desire to do anything other than continue existing.
 
Neruz said:
I'm pretty sure that means I should keep bringing Worm WoG into the thread, because when I do that either I get corrected, in which case I have gained information and thus claim victory, or I turn out to be correct, in which case I was right and thus claim victory.

It's a win-win! :V
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Author: please stop doing this thing.
You: lololol no.
 
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