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The Arachne System (SPIDERLIV 3)

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This reminds me of how Athena's girlfriend's other personality told her boyfriend about her. Don't want to fall on that same landmine.
 
open_sketch said:
sort of painted up like orcas
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Orcas? What type of ork is that? 🙂

open_sketch said:
You're right. I've been looking in the manual but I can't find the keybinds
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Daww, Nerd Mom is best mom.

open_sketch said:
May was looking up from her waffles, smiling, nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

"I keep seeing a name on your phone, like, texts and stuff, and I've just been wondering. Who's Athena?"
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😱 Defcon 1, everybody! The too-calm tone. The simple question popped at the last minute they could feasibly part ways before the con. The history of being cheated on. We have stumbled into a minefield.

[X] I've mentioned my dad is a jerk right? Well, Athena is my half-sister. We found each other online a bit ago, but we're keeping it quiet because we don't want my mom to realize when she was conceived.

That write-in drives home that it's a platonic but close relationship with another person. Also, it's mostly true (depending on how you view mind-forks).
 
[X] She's an Artificial Intelligence. That I made. I made an A.I. We should probably talk about this in the car.

Let's not lie to her if we don't have to.
 
Angelazreal1 said:
This reminds me of how Athena's girlfriend's other personality told her boyfriend about her. Don't want to fall on that same landmine.
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Yes.

Unfortunately we have two layers of problems.

Layer One is that Athena has an option on timesharing Liv's head and knows everything Liv does. May has a right to know this. That's the part that reminds us of Walker's problems.

Layer Two is that Athena is not a 'normal' member of a plural group, not just another instance of consciousness.exe running in parallel on Liv's wetware. She's a freestanding and separate person who has a separate brain of her own, and was using it for many months before the plurality thing really went full-bore. This is how she is, for example, able to send Liv text messages in real time while Liv is in full control of her own body, something Walker cannot do.

Layer Three is the nature of Liv's relationship with Athena more generally, aside from the thought-sharing aspects.

...

The Layer One problems can be put off until later; they are not essential to the question of Athena's identity the way they would be if the Liv-Athena system were a typical plural grouping. Athena has a separate brain of her own and could live a full life using it. It may be actively counterproductive to emphasize the Layer One problems at first, because May may be confused as to how or why Liv is carrying on text message conversations with someone who lives in her own brain.

The Layer Two problems are more immediately relevant because Athena's basic nature as an entity is important to understanding Layer Three.

Layer Three is the most important. We need May to understand that:
3a) Athena is not Liv's secret girlfriend she's been two-timing with on the side.
3b) Athena is a dear friend of Liv's, greatly trusted and proven worthy of that trust.

Everything else is, frankly... less important than that.

ancusohm said:
😱 Defcon 1, everybody! The too-calm tone. The simple question popped at the last minute they could feasibly part ways before the con. The history of being cheated on. We have stumbled into a minefield.

[] I've mentioned my dad is a jerk right? Well, Athena is my half-sister. We found each other online a bit ago, but we're keeping it quiet because we don't want my mom to realize when she was conceived.

That write-in drives home that it's a platonic but close relationship with another person. Also, it's mostly true (depending on how you view mind-forks).
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Problem with this statement:

It's a lie.

I mean, you know what I mean when I say that. It's misleading. It implies that Athena is in any way a product of Liv's father (she's not), and it implies that Athena is biological (she's not). It grossly undersells and does not adequately explain many of the things Athena is capable of, which may contradict things May has already observed or will soon observe.

At some future time we will eventually have to admit to May that Liv is, in fact, an AI we created, and who occasionally timeshares inside Liv's brain. At that time May will feel deeply betrayed. Furthermore, Athena may feel betrayed right now because now she will be on the spot to help cover for a lie Liv decided to tell her girlfriend on the spot.
 
[X] She's an Artificial Intelligence. That I made. I made an A.I. We should probably talk about this in the car.
-[X] .....and I should probably show you my other costume that I'm bringing along just in case.
—[X] (Athena) Oh my god Liv! I know what you're doing, talk to her about the hotel!

I saw an opportunity. This conversation is going to spiral, and I'm here for it.
 
open_sketch said:
was like 20 years old
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It's fine, GW still hasn't given the 'nids new models, or updated their codex in the last twenty years anyways. :V
It was this really odd blend, because they were keeping faithful to the technology presented while kinda updating the aesthetics? So the screens were all transparent glass displays and the ships were sleek and cool, but there were still characters whose job it was to use slide rules to calculate orbits, because they didn't have electrical computers of course.
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And despite that, it still has one of the very first hacking scenes in science fiction.

Which, okay, granted, is using telepathy to influence someone to make different calculations on their slide rule than they normally would, but it's still remotely taking over a computer.

I wonder what the flag bridge of Directrix looks like in the anime, and if they still have the operators using the plugboard.
Raiseth said:
[Q] "She's my online girlfriend, yeah, I'm cheating on you, k thx bye."
-[Q] Jump out of the cafe window.
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Liv is a spider-person. This sort of thing always happens.
Simon_Jester said:
But not in the first eight episodes.
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Depends on how many episodes per book, and if they adapted Triplanetary as the first part of S1, or if Triplanetary is its own spinoff with one season. Although I'm greatly looking forward to Liv and Athena's reactions to the diesel-electric stealth ships.

[X] She's an Artificial Intelligence. That I made. I made an A.I. We should probably talk about this in the car.
-[X] .....and I should probably show you my other costume that I'm bringing along just in case.
—[X] (Athena) Oh my god Liv! I know what you're doing, talk to her about the hotel!
 
[X] She's an Artificial Intelligence. That I made. I made an A.I. We should probably talk about this in the car.
-[X] .....and I should probably show you my other costume that I'm bringing along just in case.
—[X] (Athena) Oh my god Liv! I know what you're doing, talk to her about the hotel!
 
[X] She's an Artificial Intelligence. That I made. I made an A.I. We should probably talk about this in the car.
-[X] .....and I should probably show you my other costume that I'm bringing along just in case.
—[X] (Athena) Oh my god Liv! I know what you're doing, talk to her about the hotel!
 
Liv is a techno path and Athena is an AI, I have no concerns they can't handle the car. They did it with Justine.
 
[X] She's an Artificial Intelligence. That I made. I made an A.I. We should probably talk about this in the car.
-[X] .....and I should probably show you my other costume that I'm bringing along just in case.
—[X] (Athena) Oh my god Liv! I know what you're doing, talk to her about the hotel!

Heh, my first instinct was to not start talking about her being an AI because Liv would probably use it as an excuse to not do the hotel talk, but with the add-on...
 
You're right. This is hilarious.

[X] She's an Artificial Intelligence. That I made. I made an A.I. We should probably talk about this in the car.
-[X] .....and I should probably show you my other costume that I'm bringing along just in case.
—[X] (Athena) Oh my god Liv! I know what you're doing, talk to her about the hotel!

samdamandias said:
Depends on how many episodes per book, and if they adapted Triplanetary as the first part of S1, or if Triplanetary is its own spinoff with one season. Although I'm greatly looking forward to Liv and Athena's reactions to the diesel-electric stealth ships.
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Triplanetary is horrible dreck and the creative team took some time to figure out what the fuck they wanted to do with it (if anything). Maybe released later as a gaiden.

Kimball Kinnison's story arc from Galactic Patrol through Second Stage Lensman could make a good anime of... 2-3 seasons, I would think. Some filler material potentially required, potentially not. Tightly plotted, coherent, et cetera. Everything else should be released separately.
 
...Somehow I'm not surprised that it's this that finally convinces Liv to blow the lid on her superhero identity. :rofl:

[X] She's an Artificial Intelligence. That I made. I made an A.I. We should probably talk about this in the car.
-[X] .....and I should probably show you my other costume that I'm bringing along just in case.
—[X] (Athena) Oh my god Liv! I know what you're doing, talk to her about the hotel!
 
[X] "That's... a bit complicated. At a basic level she's a friend of mine but there's a lot more to it than that. And she deserves to have a say as I disclose it to you. Mind if we put her on the phone?" (cue greetings)
-[X] [Arachne] (adjust for conversationality as necessary) Fun fact: People's voiceboxes make microscopic movements when they're thinking or reading no matter how silently or quickly or goes. Well, since you were already playing with neural interfaces for your arm and during your internship, and, uh, before that, you hooked that up to a really sophisticated ML digital assistant suite and then set it loose on your... everything, really. You're not really sure how much of Athena is you and how much is the ML, but you found that things work best if you just treat her like a person.
-[X] [Athena] "For what it's worth, I'm pretty convinced I'm a person, and furthermore have no intentions on your girlfriend. It would be unpleasantly masturbatory. Speaking of which, Liv, don't forget the thing you wanted to talk about."

[X] She's an Artificial Intelligence. That I made. I made an A.I. We should probably talk about this in the car.
-[X] .....and I should probably show you my other costume that I'm bringing along just in case.
—[X] (Athena) Oh my god Liv! I know what you're doing, talk to her about the hotel!

I could go for either of these.
 
. . . So a voter that admits to being a normal troll, voting for a trolling write in, and suddenly many people want to jump onto the trolling vote band wagon. Why?

Don't have much of an idea of how to vote, but the trolling vote... sorry, the in-character meta trolling vote, just seems to me to be... at least un-productive, if not counter productive. So, seriously, I'd like to know why.
 
Hey! It was not a troll vote, it is perfectly legitimate. We control both Olivia and Athena, and Liv both does not want to outright lie to May and is procrastinating talking about physical intimacy.

This is the perfect excuse to have Liv finally reveal her secret identity in order to further procrastinate an even more uncomfortable matter.

It is extremely teenager.

Also I've been wanting to tell May and Mary forever.
 
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Yeah, the thread has been pretty much evenly split on whether to tell May and I think only backed off because there wasn't a good opportunity to do it, and a write-in like this is quest catnip. Normally I hate lulzy writeins like this, but that's because they're normally out-of-character, short-sighted, counterproductive, and at odds with the threads' stated long-term goals. In this case it's in-character and strongly supports long-term plans and themes that we've been working toward for a while. So I don't think it's trolling at all, just creative, unexpected, and funny.
 
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Finally, a chance to tell her.


[X] She's an Artificial Intelligence. That I made. I made an A.I. We should probably talk about this in the car.
-[X] .....and I should probably show you my other costume that I'm bringing along just in case.
—[X] (Athena) Oh my god Liv! I know what you're doing, talk to her about the hotel!
 
Parzival95 said:
Hey! It was not a troll vote, it is perfectly legitimate. We control both Olivia and Athena, and Liv both does not want to outright lie to May and is procrastinating talking about sex.

This is the perfect excuse to have Liv finally reveal her secret identity in order to further procrastinate an even more uncomfortable matter.

It is extremely teenager.

Also I've been wanting to tell May and Mary forever.
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As far as I know there are three types of trolling. The, to the best of my knowledge, original that takes moments of opportunity to make jokes at some convenient recipient's expense. This is one that you imply is your writing habit (don't know if you do or don't, but you have suggested that you do so... well either that or I dreamed it, too lazy to trawl your account posts to find them) The second form is when one intentionally lays a moment of humiliation in preparation of catching a victim; which is what this vote... appears to be. The third one I'm not sure how it's considered trolling, but nonetheless, is when someone rudely humiliates someone else with full intent to harm. To be clear I am NOT accusing you of the third form. But rather that, to me, the vote itself appears more the second form; and that I'm not surprised that you suggested it, given I seem to recall your self admission to adherence to the first form.

So yeah, I am curious as to why people are so gung ho about this particular vote. Though apparently while I was busy and then typing this I got my response. It's apparently because it offers the option/opportunity to tell the girlfriend about our costumed other. Ambivalent on that option as well, myself. To wit, my only nit pick is that the vote's format is designed to be as humiliating as possible to/for Olivia. To which I will disagree with on principal because, A.) Olivia isn't Peter Parker. and B.) Olivia isn't Taylor Hebert. So there is no reason to perpetuate the "Parker[Taylor] is suffering" meme.
 
Simon_Jester said:
Layer Two is that Athena is not a 'normal' member of a plural group, not just another instance of consciousness.exe running in parallel on Liv's wetware. She's a freestanding and separate person who has a separate brain of her own, and was using it for many months before the plurality thing really went full-bore. This is how she is, for example, able to send Liv text messages in real time while Liv is in full control of her own body, something Walker cannot do.
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It bears repeating that a lot of real-life systems can do this as well. Well, not the real-time text message. But
- running consciousnesses of several system members in parallel is perfectly possible, including real-time communication (albeit typically internal, so that others would not notice)
- leaving each other notes, or sending each other messages, is a common communication tool where that is less feasible. That is typically not real time, and does not look quite like it does here - but it can produce the exact same scenario as in this story: a partner finding a message from someone else adressed to their partner.

Indeed, let's reiterate that:
If Liv and Athena shared the same brain (rather than Athena running on separate hardware), and could not talk to each other very directly within that brain, then Athena might just talk to Liv by switching in for a short time, typing something out on the phone, and leaving it as a note for Liv. But, via fancy tech setups, this could very well show up as a text message for Liv, from Athena, just like here. In fact, we do that ourselves on occasion, using Discord and the PluralKit bot.

So literary the exact same thing could happen, and focussing overly much on the technical difference is relevant for anything. Literary every single way of explaining Plurality pertains here.

With that being said - yeah, let's just go for this vote. Because it works.
[X] Athena makes morethanone.info show up on the phone, along with a short introduction and "Liv really wanted to talk to you about another thing, please do so, I'll explain as much as you like about myself afterwards."
 
&era System said:
[X] Athena makes morethanone.info show up on the phone, along with a short introduction and "Liv really wanted to talk to you about another thing, please do so, I'll explain as much as you like about myself afterwards."
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Do we really want to reveal technopathy and that Athene is an AI and always aware of everything?
Making the site pop up on our phone seems like a needless flex that is actively harmful to some approaches.
 
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