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...Fucking Tinkers (Worm/SAO)

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Mizu said:
Or they didn't want any 'loose threads' and thought the only one they needed living was Kayaba.
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Which would be pretty stupid, since as his assistant she'd be able to provide a good amount of information too, and help them verify that Kayaba isn't feeding them bullshit.

If SAO players start getting superpowers that stay with them after they leave the game, that's going to open up an ugly can of worms because everybody will think that something about the Nervegear, SAO's deathgame, and/or Cardinal made them that way. Thus unethical experiments .
 
So, QA is still hanging around, though possibly dying. Or is it perhaps Abbadon come back around? It would explain the broken down nature of the thing if it is a lone entity shedding pieces.

Though that would leave the question as to how it got access to QA.
Ars Poetica said:
(a) Kayaba's newfound power, whatever it may be, and (b) how that power will interact with the game now that he's permanently uploaded himself. I can see an ending for this story that results in the survivors exiting the game with superpowers and either becoming heroes or villains. Not sure what it means for Taylor.
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He got Imp's powerset.

Assuming it works ala Khepri. It won't work in-game since they effect reality.

...Which makes me wonder if players (probably the clearers) have been triggering and manifesting powers IRL. Outside of thinkers, it wouldn't show in-game...
 
Nah, Miss Militia had the same impression about Zion, that it was dying because it was growing smaller and smaller as it shed its shards. Humans shrink as they grow old.
 
menosay said:
I don't think so as I'm fairly sure it was Kayaba who was stopping his guard's hands from closing, and he was only invisible Mr. spy could still remember Kayaba existed which wouldn't be possible if he had Imp's power.
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Kayaba wasn't invisible, Hien could see him just fine to aim and shoot at him - at least until Kayaba closed the door between them. I'm guessing Kayaba had some sort of striker power which lets him interfere with voluntary muscle function and persists for a while - given that he was able to make the mercenary holding him collapse but wasn't able to make Hien twitch.
 
Figured I'd cross post this from SB if anyone was curious:

HotaruSama said:
My guess is that the SAT found Kayaba's location and the Chinese had them under surveillance. While the SAT was preparing to go in and capture Kayaba, the Chinese preempted them. In the OTL, the SAT never found his location, thus the Chinese couldn't steal his location from them.
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violetshadows said:
Pretty much; it's a bit more complicated than that, but not by far.

Mostly SAO Spoilers below, but some minor background as well
It'd be more accurate to say the JSDF found his location. Eager to pick his brain for their Aliceization project, they've been keeping on an eye on him for the last few weeks. Their hope was to wait for a better opportunity to make the grab, but Fenrir put a stop to that and impressed a need to move more quicklly. Unfortunately, in their desire to keep this quiet, their silence bit them in the ass; you see, it looks a little suspicious if the second someone gets insistent, you can just hand over Kayaba's location. Plus, if the SAT took him, it'd go to civil trial and turn the entire fiasco into a dog and pony show. The JSDF could work around it, but it'd be messy. Thus, some frantic ass covering swiftly ensued. The new plan was to volunteer some of the JSDF for the big push on Kayaba's decoy sites. Their team would 'coincidentally' get the cabin, while the SAT and the Americans hit the other ones. Kayaba would disappear down a hole, and the team which caught him would say the cabin was 'empty.' Certain officials would be made aware of the reality, and provided none of the hostages were executed that would likely be the end of it.

Then, the Chinese got involved. Between the talks, the mobilization and everything else, one of their agents caught wind of the situation. Now, they weren't sure which site Kayaba was at, but they knew it was one of the JSDF ones. So they went fishing. The cabin was actually the sixth such site they checked, making them a little pressed for time. Ideally, Kayaba would prove interested in asylum, but when he seemed determined to go down with the ship, they had to go into Damage Control mode. This did not end well for anyone involved.

Now, some of this will probably make it into the story (likely around chapter 6 or 7) but it's more ancillary than you'd think. Most likely, it'll only be lightly touched on, and I'll use the rest for a small short story in this overall universe.


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Aabbcc said:
And exactly what stopped the SAT from sending even a handful of agents to have the place monitored? I can understand the capture order could get delayed as they ruminate what to do, I can buy this causing a 2 day delay in response, but to not even send a single dude with a pair of binoculars to keep the place under watch (and know if Kayaba runs away)?
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Rather than risk another execution, they kept an eye on the place using satellites.


Also, for those who want to know the details of Kayaba's power, here.
The PRT designation would likely be Master 5. In short, Kayaba can induce hallucinations effecting any sense he himself can perceive. That means sight, sound, touch and balance, but not things like Cherish or Gallant's empathic abilities. It's not quite restricted to line of sight, but functionally it's pretty close to it. You see, while Kayaba can induce illusions, he can't actually perceive the effects he creates in any detail. That means, if he created the illusion of a troll attacking the side of your car, he wouldn't actually be able to see the troll, unless he also targeted himself (and that gets into issues of perspective.) Typically, this means he can shut down a single person completely or spread his attention to two or three people. Anymore is pushing it, and while he can target a crowd with a broad based effect (ex. blindness), it'd likely be inconsistent, with a number of people getting flashes of the truth. As he actually has to be somewhat close to someone to do this, it won't have an effect in game. Even if he was right next to someone, the NerveGear has a deep enough presence that it'd likely interfere with the process. Not completely, but he wouldn't be able to manage much more than static.
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A couple of minor nitpicks
1)If the chinese were pressed for time when they arrived at the cabin how were they able to wait for two days for Kayaba to come out?
2)Given your description of his power how was he unable to do anything to Hien?
 
TheUnicorn said:
A couple of minor nitpicks
1)If the chinese were pressed for time when they arrived at the cabin how were they able to wait for two days for Kayaba to come out?
2)Given your description of his power how was he unable to do anything to Hien?
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The Rinko line is a continuity error from a previous draft; it was supposed to be "He's been here for a while." Thanks for pointing that out, kind of annoyed I missed that.

Yeah - bit of backstory - but originally they were supposed to be there for a couple of days. In the end, I couldn't get it to jive with the exit strategy I wanted to use, so I changed it during revision. Missed that part in my rush to get it out; I told you it was messy in the AN :p

As to # 2, he did effect Hien; he blinded him. "Hien shot him anyway."
 
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TheUnicorn said:
So why did Hien only shoot once? If he was shooting blind I'd expect him to simply fire as quickly as possible in Kayaba's general direction hoping for a lucky hit.
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Couple reasons:

A. Two more members of his team were in the house. Bullets go through walls, and friendly fire isn't.

B. Hien still largely wants to take Kayaba in alive; he could probably survive a single gun shot wound, so one was all he risked.

C. He panicked. To the best of his knowledge, Kayaba just magically blinded him and disabled one of his teammates. Professional as he was, that rattles you. If he was thinking clearly, he would have just tried to tackle him.
 
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violetshadows said:
Couple reasons:

A. Two more members of his team were in the house. Bullets go through walls, and friendly fire isn't.

B. Hien still largely wants to take Kayaba in alive; he could probably survive a single gun shot wound, so one was all he risked.
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These make no sense. Firing blindly he's just as likely to completely miss as to hit Kabaya in the head. Trying to shoot to wound is stupid enough if you can see the target, firing blindly it's completely moronic.

violetshadows said:
C. He panicked. To the best of his knowledge, Kayaba just magically blinded him and disabled one of his teammates. Professional as he was, that rattles you. If he was thinking clearly, he would have just tried to tackle him.
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On the other hand this makes sense, and might even explain the single shot as opposed to multiple shuts that would be the logical course of action if he meant to shoot blindly.
 
On a different note, anyone think it might be significant that the title of Kayaba's last interlude was his name but the tile of this interlude was "Heathcliff"?
 
violetshadows said:
"Better, than I feared; worse, than I hoped"

"Lind; Johnny Black; Asuna and the rest of her guild"

"Level; health; damage output"
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The first line doesn't flow terribly well - it'd probably be better off as "Better than I feared, worse than I hoped"

For the other two, I'd say commas instead of semi-colons. Generally, I'd avoid using semi-colons in dialogue at all (as per the last quote), but that's rather more case-by-case.

Anyway, aside from that, I'd agree with some of the other folk in saying that your characterisation seems perfectly believable. She comes across as severely traumatised and essentially unaware of it. This is appropriate.
 
XenIneX said:
Please, no more invisible text. I would have missed it entirely if someone hadn't commented on it. And, it's impossible to read on (most?) tablets or smartphones, short of copying it out and pasting it into a notes app.
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Also, I'm told that the reason transparent text is visible when highlighted is due to a bug in the way browsers display it, a bug that likely won't be around much longer.
 
My general thought on invisitext is:
Who, exactly, are you hiding the information from?

If you're hiding it from the reader, then it must not be necessary to the story, and can safely be discarded before publishing it. And if you're not hiding it from the reader, who exactly are you hiding it from? The characters? I'm pretty sure they can't see it anyway.
 
armorfiend said:
My general thought on invisitext is:
Who, exactly, are you hiding the information from?

If you're hiding it from the reader, then it must not be necessary to the story, and can safely be discarded before publishing it. And if you're not hiding it from the reader, who exactly are you hiding it from? The characters? I'm pretty sure they can't see it anyway.
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Agreed. It seems to be a stupid gimmick that just hasn't died yet.
 
armorfiend said:
If you're hiding it from the reader, then it must not be necessary to the story, and can safely be discarded before publishing it. And if you're not hiding it from the reader, who exactly are you hiding it from? The characters? I'm pretty sure they can't see it anyway.
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It's a narrative technique, and it's used to maintain a character's perpsective within the narrative while providing information outside that narrative in a clever way. You could certainly do the same with footnotes, and Pratchett managed the same, or you could try to shoehorn an infodump into the narrative. Of the options available it's popular for a reason.
 
Silvercrystal said:
Agreed. It seems to be a stupid gimmick that just hasn't died yet.
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I treat everything I read as if it was on actual paper. Don't see any invisitext there; your editor will slap you silly.

Also, like you said, I find it nothing but a wasteful gimmick that does nothing. Why should the reader be forced to play what amounts to a hide and seek game with every chapter, just to be sure they didn't miss something vital? The way I see it, if the only way the author thought that they use the text by making it invisible, then there's no point to having it in the first place.

However, I will say that, in at least Kayaba's trigger scene, the invisitext was purely supplemental. Anyone who knows anything about Worm would be able to understand that he did in fact trigger. That being said, the Fenris interlude where the invistext showed that it was perhaps sapient? That's a pretty big friggin deal. That's something that should be showed in the text without a cheap gimmick. And if you as the author couldn't find a way to add it into the chapter without using said gimmick, shelve it and use it for later.
 
drake_azathoth said:
It's a narrative technique, and it's used to maintain a character's perpsective within the narrative while providing information outside that narrative in a clever way. You could certainly do the same with footnotes, and Pratchett manages the same, or you could try to shoehorn an infodump into the narrative. Of the options available it's popular for a reason.
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If the information is being presented, it needs to actually be visible to the reader. Hidden information isn't being provided.

What you're suggesting is lazy storytelling. What you're saying is that the author somehow isn't good enough to write a story with multiple perspectives or multiple characters. As if the words "character A felt emotion B" are somehow beyond them. Which I don't think is typically the case with most authors here. Certainly, violetshadows, our author here, has more than enough skill to do this- we've seen plenty of scenes delivered with multiple viewpoints and perspectives and feelings.

The one way I've seen invisitext used for good effect was for comedic purposes in crack fic as an easter egg, a joke.

As far as being popular goes, if the experiments last more than another eight or ten weeks, I'd be amazed. I've seen three, maybe four authors experiment with invisitext, of the authors I read. Most don't. It's extra work to cram in, and most readers will miss it, so they can't hang the story on anything in it. Why bother?
 
armorfiend said:
If the information is being presented, it needs to actually be visible to the reader. Hidden information isn't being provided.

What you're suggesting is lazy storytelling. What you're saying is that the author somehow isn't good enough to write a story with multiple perspectives or multiple characters. As if the words "character A felt emotion B" are somehow beyond them. Which I don't think is typically the case with most authors here. Certainly, violetshadows, our author here, has more than enough skill to do this- we've seen plenty of scenes delivered with multiple viewpoints and perspectives and feelings.
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It is, rather clearly, visible to the reader. If people can't view it because of their i-phone browser or whatever that's fine- people without computers can't get on this site to begin with. A story will always have limits on it's potential readership due to medium. Saying you can't be arsed to either use another computer or read the inevitable comments really doesn't impress me much.

Arguing that you dislike it and so authors should stop using it if they feel it improves their writing is like arguing that authors shouldn't use italics because it increases printing costs and makes it harder for dyslexics to read. Long story short? If it improves the narrative, it will be used. If people like it, it will be used. You might as well try to prevent authors from using images or videos at the start of their chapters or people discussing using :D.

armorfiend said:
The one way I've seen invisitext used for good effect was for comedic purposes in crack fic as an easter egg, a joke.

As far as being popular goes, if the experiments last more than another eight or ten weeks, I'd be amazed. I've seen three, maybe four authors experiment with invisitext, of the authors I read. Most don't. It's extra work to cram in, and most readers will miss it, so they can't hang the story on anything in it. Why bother?
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That's amusing. I've seen it become more common over two years and spread from and to other sites. Honestly, I think within five years it'll be widespread and just another artifact of the transition to electronic communication that alternately amuses and frustrates us older folks.
 
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armorfiend said:
If you're hiding it from the reader, then it must not be necessary to the story, and can safely be discarded before publishing it. And if you're not hiding it from the reader, who exactly are you hiding it from? The characters? I'm pretty sure they can't see it anyway.
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It's a stylistic choice, in some respects. Such as the voice in the back of a character's head chipping in when to do so "out loud" would break up the narrative flow, but it is still worthy of mention somehow.
 
So then you write like thus:
I can't believe he did that! She thought to herself, as she wound up for another blow.

It's pretty straightforward. You see it in every other written work.

Bottom line, if it's breaking narrative flow, you fix your flow. If you need to write better sentences, then that's what you do.
 
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