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It's not wrong to make Friends in the Dungeon (Danmachi / Sanctioned [Worm])

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Yay! Happy to see a continuation. And what a fascinating continuation it is!

Alivaril said:
She can't tell the difference between Creation, my Tower, and Masego's nursery,
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This is very interesting! When QA first arrived, she assumed she was in a simulation, at least partly because she noted that the world felt "unusually malleable". At the time, I thought she was just commenting on the malleability of Warlock's pocket dimension. But she's been brought into Warlock's laboratory in Creation now, and she still thinks it's a simulation. I think she's sensing the influence of Stories in this world, and that's what's making her think it's all a simulation.

Alivaril said:
The nature of reality ensures we cannot stake a claim without also allowing others a chance to make claims of their own.
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This sounds like "Unbeatable villains are boring, Creation ensures there must always be a chance for a hero or a rival villain to succeed".

Alivaril said:
"My leading hypothesis is one or more errors in your simulation," Queen Administrator informed them. "It seems capable of recognizing my existence, yet my identification is beyond its apparent limitations for information conveyance.
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I think this means that this world and its pocket dimension derivatives can't properly identify QA due to her status as a dimensional outsider. She already has a story behind her, but Creation can't parse the story of space worms just yet.
 
Wow! This side story is pretty fun. Like some other users have mentioned, I would definitely read this if you chose to give it its own thread. I think I still like the main story more, here's to hoping you work out whatever kinks you are dealing with for the next chapter! :)
 
Alivaril said:
Amadeus found himself relieved when a runner from Wekesa, the Warlock, requested Lord Black's presence 'At his earliest convenience.' That phrasing implied that the planned reintroduction of Masego to Creation either had not gone as intended, but not disastrously so. The Black Knight took the time to finish the current chapter of a pre-Conquest Callowan fairy tale before setting out at a carefully unhurried pace.
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If I'm reading it right, this sentence is cut off.

ALso I too would read more of this, though I doubt I see it having its own thread anytime soon. As I have learned all too well, one does not simply make up a plot on the spot.
 
johnworm said:
Okay... but why would QA see their world as a simulacrum then? That sounds like the world is real and the gods are just interfering which shouldn't cause that. Her words make it seem like the gods created a world isolated in a pocket dimension to simulate their game / experiments and didn't include all the usual physics or reality or something.
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QA Called Warlock a 'Sibling' in the previous part. It stands to reason then that she thinks she's in a simulated world, ala Coil's power perhaps, that's been created and controlled by Warlock, something that a Sibling(aka a fellow shard) would be capable of doing.
 
Alivaril said:
The overall result was that there were far more child-heroes than there were villainous counterparts. Amadeus always found it ironic that those who complained the most about killing children happened to be the same side that fielded more of them. As always, the sheer hypocrisy of heroes was infuriating.
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Ah Yes, the old Child Hero trope.
johnworm said:
I'm not familiar with the setting, but with their talk of Plot and gods above is their reality just a simulated realm kind of like a sandbox game but for gods?
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Here's the setting summary.
A Practical Guide to Evil (2015-present) is a Young Adult (Allegedly) Heroic Fantasy Web Serial Novel written by erraticerrata. The series is currently just finished with its 5th book, which began on the 14th of January 2019; there are 6 planned books. A key element of the setting is that many Heroic Fantasy tropes are enforced by the universe's laws.

Black and White Morality is an objective reality here. Individuals, species and nations can be clearly and unapologetically Evil and Good. People can gain superhuman powers and a degree of in-universe Plot Armor by embodying certain archetypes or Names. The majority of Names are associated with Good or Evil. Others are neutral and/or common. While some Names used in-story are more specific (Bumbling Conjurer, Ash Priestess, etc) the majority of Names can be found or derived from the Fantasy Character Classes page. Named individuals are both more powerful than normal people (able to kill dozens or hundreds of Nameless Mooks or Red Shirts single-handedly) and more important in terms of Fate (i.e. the plot). Fate tends to play out in patterns that can be manipulated by particularly Genre Savvy individuals. Names also each have access to three Aspects, initially undefined powerful moves or abilities that they gain access to at a suitably dramatic or necessary moment.
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johnworm said:
Okay... but why would QA see their world as a simulacrum then? That sounds like the world is real and the gods are just interfering which shouldn't cause that. Her words make it seem like the gods created a world isolated in a pocket dimension to simulate their game / experiments and didn't include all the usual physics or reality or something.
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The name Creation is entirely literal. I can see how a being like a shard might view it as an artificial simulation.
 
LostDeviljho said:
The name Creation is entirely literal. I can see how a being like a shard might view it as an artificial simulation.
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Simulacrum and simulation aren't exactly the same thing. Close, but a simulacrum can actually be a physical phenomenon. It's defining characteristic is that it's representative of some specific thing.
 
Logos01 said:
It was meant to be read as a of "catspaw" and "pawn"
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As both words encompass pretty much the same concept, I'm not sure what using them in a portmanteau brought to the table. Regardless, I'd avoid portmanteaus that are one letter different from regular words -- they look like typos.

On QA assuming everything is a simulation, if the entities have only been in universes with the same, ordinary physical laws, then she may be assuming that any deviation indicates the world isn't real.

An important question is whether QA has to obey the narrative structure of the world. If she can create death traps without exploitable flaws, for example.

I have high hopes Alivaril will handle the setting better than the original author.
They spent a great deal of time setting up the way the universe worked, only to violate that to impose a arbitrary obstacle on the protagonist.
 
Did QA just critique someone's programming? And found it wanting? Holy hot dogs, if I'm reading this right; Creation is just one big IDE to queen administrator! That's why she told black knight to broaden or abstract his concept, that's what you do as a.programmer when you need more versatility out of your code. What's more, it also implies that names are just data to be edited, and she knows how!
 
Bastet's Chosen said:
I have high hopes Alivaril will handle the setting better than the original author.
They spent a great deal of time setting up the way the universe worked, only to violate that to impose a arbitrary obstacle on the protagonist.
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Do you mean
the bard?

Not up to date with the story, grew tired of it after main character decided to
stop being a god. Always hated stories that felt the need to disempower protagonists. You turn a character into a god without preset time limit, then they're a god and i find it lot more interesting to explore being one that just going "all this power is terrible, i'll go back to being a mortal".
 
Valmond said:
Not up to date with the story, grew tired of it after main character decided to
stop being a god. Always hated stories that felt the need to disempower protagonists. You turn a character into a god without preset time limit, then they're a god and i find it lot more interesting to explore being one that just going "all this power is terrible, i'll go back to being a mortal".
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Honestly, I was also pretty annoyed at the time, but I'd say the results of that actually worked out in terms of enjoyment, IMO. The biggest thing I mourn the loss of is lakeomancy. :V
 
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While PGtE has some good moments its suffers from a tragically flawed premise. The tropes the setting runs on aren't just tropes of fiction in general, they're specifically the tropes of bad fiction - hackneyed, nonsensical storylines full of cardboard characters and ham-fisted deus ex machina plot manipulation. Making these tropes an official part of the world's natural laws does not change the fact that they're bad writing, it just means you're now stuck with using them constantly anyway. So once the novelty of the concept wears off, the rest of PGtE reads like an endless slog of 1920s pulp fiction.

Dropping QA into the setting is hilarious in the short run, but it seems like the kind of plot that gets steadily harder to write the longer it goes on. In the long run she either breaks the setting (turning it into a stomp fic) or gets kicked out by the gods (ending the story).
 
Skippito said:
You wrote more! Yes!

Can we petition for this to be a running side story? Practical Guide to Evil is great, and it meshes with Named Shards so well. Of course, the main story is still best. I love murder fluffs.
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All I'd say, is woe befall the meta villains, over dealing with a Concept, with the added 'Queen' modifier making it far worse. Or a hypothetical scenario where her 'host' (Taylor), is actually on a Dream quest as the "Dreamer" concept, and indirectly screwing all sorts of Good guy plots harder than prophesy...

And bar the horror 'plot twist reveal' of "actually also a Seer, of two souls?" Tier of plot upgrady bullshit. Or the equally horrific prospect of 'actually pragmatically evil, and had experience as a hero, and a villain' to the Black Knight...

Who, may also get nudged under ideas on if stuck to his 'narrow' concept, to inflict even worser 'edges'...

Eh, how long until a 'narrative' ends up hijacked by Escalation wars, pulling the exact stunt to 'beg' a retribution... Yet win it anyway.
 
I'm fairly certain that QA is very exact in communication; she explicitly complained that some of her siblings were not.

Given that she said simulacrum, rather than simulation suggests that Creation is mostly real, but sufficiently unreal to be malleable if enough power is applied.

I get the impression that she thinks Warlock made Creation, but the others haven't quite realized the scale that QA operates at.
 
Queen Adminstrator and Dreamer in this case might be a mimetic hazard to this side-story world as they could might more easily be part of the narrative structure of the more ancient concept of the more modern concept eldritch horror where it draws upon the ancient fairy tales, the deeper aspects of Dream Time, etc. There was an old series of role-playing game supplements titled Monsters of Myth and Legend by Role Aids before they got legally smashed by TSR (which action Gary Gygax supposedly opposed since he liked their products). It did a broad examination and conversion of a lot of the more interesting myths around the world to old D&D game terms and a lot of them involved monsters and backgrounds that are pretty strange to most popular modern fantasy tropes outside of horror genre.
 
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Fenrisulfr said:
Welp, Black Knight just "I can take her"ed QAylor, he's probably doomed.
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To be fair, if he ends up playing the 'caution' angle of "I can take her", he might very well lose in an... 'acceptable' margin, before ending up in a genre savvy horror attack, over WHAT "Queen Administrator" is. Not in a sense of 'somehow, some Named Leader' analog. But more...

"A Post-post-postpostpost end of Series Protagonist", grade veteran. In alien lens. That totally has experience in being BOTH Hero AND Villain, "alien Grey"... And thus, it'd escalate into 'I can totally bribe her' instead.

Such a horror reveal of a "Shonen Protag" eldritch protagonist, whose 'story' she hails from casually has named being able to 'spread' to other 'unnamed' in a parasytic (to Black faction) relationship. All for more 'data' to properly survive the 'ending' of their stories. Where the "Queen" suffix sanding for her having an 'important' role in said story.

In short. Depending on how QAylor plys the story, she could very well be something better/worse than a mere "Heroic Threat"... But a potential princess candidate, who could very well lead the Black team towards a Revolution, in administration so hard. That she may very well lead to fear/paranoia from the actual leader's of the Evil/Black team, in case she hijacks there role, instead of merely... Administrate things.

And this is all before I even touch a hypothetical Taylor in "shard space" might do, with the narrative. Give or take deciding to scheme and write/pull a pen for QAylor, end up geeking out over similarities between the Black team and her undersiders. And cue Catherine becoming a Black Queen... Or, "Queen Black" by an approving QA, saying that she should master 'ALL' of the Black, to become a "Royal Black".

But by that point, it'd be totally a case of "QAylor hijacking Catherine's fated defeat, by cosmic horror intervention". And creation suddenly, totally going "fuck it, it's Lovecraft time... OH SHIT, WHAT CAN WE DO AGAINST QUEEN ADMINISTRATOR? Oh, I know. DEMONS AND ANGELS ALL OVER!"

...

*Scribbles notes on odds/likelihood of QAylor becoming a Demon/Angel magnet. And end up escalating things until people start staring in horror in calling her the "Black Queen" instead, or "Queen Black". Much to Administrator's ire...

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Now. What else other than being horribly stray in thoughts over hypothetical "QAylor and pals in Shield Hero"? Give or take, if going meta; Queen Administrator (or Taylor) speaking to Cardinal Weapons, possibly giving Naofumi a 'shard halp' power up in monster taming+. Or eeriely offering "Friends" (read, bred monsters, and hijacked demi-human slaves), in exchange of 'valuable data' (read, pester Shield-chan on how their cycle 'works', and Queries/proposals for maximum efficiency.)
 
I was sort of picturing it as QAylor accidentally revealing that she actually is the being behind her 'Name' or that it is otherwise not related to Creations Good and Evil, and that her Name is empowered by some other neutral outsider God.

What I am hoping for is slowly dawning horror as Black Knight and Warlock realise that, based on QA's musings, their reality of more controlled wars for the purposes of entertainment is one of the more peaceful cases, compared to the orgy of maximum possible conflict that most Outsider Gods seem to revel in. They're the lucky ones.
 
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