Exploring Hypotheticals

[Alicorn]

Lorica would be worse off. She could hang out and passively consume media but would have to make sure no data escaped; the wolf Bell would just have to make sure he didn't meet new, afab people and then look straight at them.

[DanielH]

The wolf Bell also has a floor on how bad his experience could be. If he decided that being a paranoid imprintable wolf was worse than the standard of “grow old and die”, or worse than going blind, he could always choose one of those options instead. Lorica couldn’t.

[Alicorn]

Yes, that.

[DanielH]

Thinking about it some more, I can’t imagine a male wolf Bell being paranoid about imprinting. I imagine he would quit ASAP, because mindreading. Maybe it wouldn’t be as bad for a wolf as for Sarion because it wouldn’t feel the same, but I imagine it would be worse because he wouldn’t love his packmates that much.

I’m still trying to imagine how Effulgence would have gone without Eos. They would still have the Belltower, they would still have killed Snow, met Jane, and taken over the Alethian afterlife, I’m pretty sure.

[kuuskytkolme]

Sorcery + Jokers is still pretty broken, everything would just have taken more time.

[Bluelantern]

Sorcery + Jokers is still pretty broken, everything would just have taken more time.

You mean Rose's magic (Enchanting)? Yeah-ish. It depends if you can make someone an enchanter without wishes, but that doesn't sound that impossible.

[DanielH]

Things that seem wish-dependent:

• Juliet surviving her specific list of apocalypse attempts, although she may have been able to handle it the traditional way if necessary
• Similarly, much of Panem plot would have gone differently
• Angela learning the nature of Jovah, although she probably would have figured it out eventually
• Much of the plot in Aurum, although there’s a good chance the Joker and Nathan would have met anyway
• Because Panem and Aurum would go differently, Downside couldn’t have been discovered the same way.

Because so much future plot depends on Downside, that seems like it might ripple outward even farther. For example, although they could have stormed the Alethian afterlife with just enchanting (with a small amount of help to get there), they wouldn’t have known about it, and they couldn’t have replaced it. They would, however, have gotten Jane and enchanting. Eventually they would have met Glass, who would have gotten her aura. This, when looking at Golden, might have led to her noticing the Stella-shaped hole in the Bell template.

[Bluelantern]

Things that seem wish-dependent:

• Juliet surviving her specific list of apocalypse attempts, although she may have been able to handle it the traditional way if necessary
• Similarly, much of Panem plot would have gone differently
• Angela learning the nature of Jovah, although she probably would have figured it out eventually
• Much of the plot in Aurum, although there’s a good chance the Joker and Nathan would have met anyway
• Because Panem and Aurum would go differently, Downside couldn’t have been discovered the same way.

Because so much future plot depends on Downside, that seems like it might ripple outward even farther. For example, although they could have stormed the Alethian afterlife with just enchanting (with a small amount of help to get there), they wouldn’t have known about it, and they couldn’t have replaced it. They would, however, have gotten Jane and enchanting. Eventually they would have met Glass, who would have gotten her aura. This, when looking at Golden, might have led to her noticing the Stella-shaped hole in the Bell template.

In the counter-factual effulgence without Stella, would Glass even notice such hole?

Also, I think that Enchanting is far more versatile than it is showed, but wishcoins are just way more versatile and practical, that said it would make all the bulleted points much different, and that doesnt consider stuff like Sarion. I think storming Downside would be possible and the system would change for something better even in the small chance that The Admin wouldnt be all that impressed.

[DanielH]

I just read the part of Effulgence where Healer Song and Feral discuss his spillway. I’m now wondering: how would a Joker handle being a spontaneous kama? The first part is easy: he would come down with kamai-of-a-sudden and his father would probably be there at the time. His father would very briefly get even worse, and then very quickly get dead.

The interesting question is: what then? Would he be able to control the spontaneous kamai as well as Feral could control his spillway, or would he have as little control over it as normal spontaneous kyma? Presumably this would determine how much he cared about taking care of the problem the standard way. I note that Mallyn, once he gets his spontaneous kamai under control, is not able to deliberately produce beads until he learns the long way around, but I’m not exactly sure what that would mean for a Joker kama.

On an unrelated note: I like it when authority figures are surprisingly not useless and therefore want to see more of Healer Song.