Over-Savory Victory

[matchbreaker]

[ Our post begins with a video. A video that shows Elda Marker, in all of her 5', tight-muscled but thin glory wearing a... gaudy belt. A championship belt? The text on it marks it as being a championship belt for Recollé Ninja Warrior. Was that one of the official prizes, or did she commission this from somewhere herself...? Who even knows man, but she takes it off, bringing it up to the camera and then says something to the effect of, ]

< Thank you, thank you! I just wanted to show this off a little! >

[ ... In French. Why French? Who knows. But after that she picks up whatever she's using for the camera and re-focuses it on the complete Gamer Set she got from that prize (for the purposes of playing the one year Last Fantasy sub she got. ]

I wish I knew more about what to do with this stuff though.

[ That part is back to English, and then the video ends. Below there, she then shifts to text to go along with that. ]

So I was studying Japanese this morning and all of a sudden, I fluently understand everything I'm looking at? And then start speaking, and I know what all to say. Probably curtesy of Retrospec, but that's one of the most convenient changes I've gotten yet! I can't show it off though, because I don't actually know how to type it. That's a weird gap for them to give me, isn't it?

Anyone willing to tutor me on that? Does it need a special keyboard? Promise I'm not trying to be insulting. I may be bragging a littlethough (mostly about the Ninja Warrior win from last month though, I think I can be permitted riding high on it). At least I'm not asking you about fruit costumes!

Comments

[thesettingsun]

Definitely not. People are way more interesting to talk to than characters.

[matchbreaker]

The characters aren't as fleshed out, I assume?

[thesettingsun]

That's by definition. Even the longest novel isn't as long as a person's life.

[matchbreaker]

That's surprisingly philosophical, actually.

[thesettingsun]

I'm a writer, what did you expect?

[matchbreaker]

Dunno! To be fair, I'm not sure I'd read you work before now.

[thesettingsun]

Short stories don't get as much press, unfortunately.

More on the subject, the scenes in even a detailed novel will only be the ones that are 'relevant' to the story the author wants to tell. Human beings can have more 'scenes' than are in a novel in the space of a week, and most of them don't have a cohesive theme or point to them. That's not how real people work.

[matchbreaker]

Is it not the job of a writer to create the illusion of life, though...? It's interesting to hear a writer say that it will always pale in comparison.

[thesettingsun]

Of course writers try to make their characters seem like real people, and the good ones get pretty close. But it helps that a writer gets to pick and choose the scenes they put their character into: those are the ones that are given the most thought and attention to detail. The character itself doesn't exist beyond what happens in the book.

Maybe it's an uncanny valley thing. Something that seems almost human, but not exactly, is naturally unsettling.

[matchbreaker]

[ So a book is... hmm. A world in a book she'd think would fill in the gaps, but maybe it doesn't? What an interesting idea, really. ]

So can you bring other people into the book world, or is that just you?

[thesettingsun]

I haven't tried yet, but I don't think it's likely to work. It's worth testing... but I wouldn't get my hopes up.

[matchbreaker]

Definitely seem worth testing! After all, I'm jumped into a book before so Retrospec must have someone with some similar ability who can suck people in.

[thesettingsun]

When did you jump into a book?

[matchbreaker]

August. My team ended up in a giant library where you went into the books.

[thesettingsun]

Oh, so it's not a past-Elda thing. That's probably better, since that would be a weird combination of abilities.

[matchbreaker]

I can erase memories because of past-Elda.

[thesettingsun]

How long did it take you to figure out how to control that?

[matchbreaker]

I still can't.

... I don't know how to practice it without hurting people.

[thesettingsun]

Hurting them more than just erasing their memories? Which is pretty dangerous already.

[matchbreaker]

Hurting them *because* of that, obviously!

[thesettingsun]

Oh. Memory erasing is kind of unsettling, but probably you could get a couple volunteers to help you practice, assuming you could promise you weren't going to wipe more than a couple minutes.

[matchbreaker]

I can't. My first time instances of doing it erased three or so hours from people.

[thesettingsun]

Ask people to spend a couple hours doing really boring unimportant things first? Nobody really needs to remember doing dishes.

[matchbreaker]

[ . . . Mmmm. ]

I'll consider it.

[thesettingsun]

It's just a thought. You don't have to if you'd rather not risk anything.