Questions about Visitor

[DanielH]

As I understand it, fairies need to be far closer to the source of the food to be vassalized, and can eat arbitrary wild.food all they want. Mortals are a lot less safe with fairy food (which is alright; I think fairies are less safe with mortal food too). My question was more about why hand-feeding prevented that estate lady’s claims when baking cookies intended for somebody’s consumption, and that person later consuming them, does not.

I also find it interesting how multiple people, myself included, seem to have switched to female-assuming language in this thread. I don’t know about Endovior, but I use male-assuming language more than I intend to in real life, and saying “her” a few posts above was not deliberate on my part.

[Endovior]

Again, as I understand it, hand-feeding makes the difference between 'these cookies I found, which were baked by X, from materials grown by Y, on land owned by Z...' and 'these cookies which A fed me'.

Specifics on how fairies go about safely acquiring food haven't been elaborated on, except that it's generally safer for them than for mortals.

Also, female-assuming language seems to make more sense when discussing fairies, possibly because we've met more important female fairies, and because fairies as a whole are ruled by a queen. Not that gender assumptions aimed at arbitrary persons make much sense to begin with, really.

[DanielH]

Yeah, that’s what it sewms to do; I’m just not quite sure I understand wjy it works like that instead of becoming “these cookies which A fed me, were baked by X, from materials grown by Y, on land owned by Z...”. I think I get it, but I’m not certain I do and am not sure I know how to word my remaining confusion.

I would wonder if people had to understand their commands, not just receive them, but that would actually only make sense for the impossible mortal vassal/mortal master relationships. Instead I’ll ask if you can deliberately misinterpret orders. For example, if you have a lot of various materials available and are ordered to “make shoes”, could you make horseshoes instead of shoes that would fit your master? If told to sing, could you deliberately do it horribly, or sing your name at the top of your lungs hoping to be stolen by somebody else, or anything like that?

[Alicorn]

There's not a lot of room for that. No horseshoes. Singing volume, lyrics, and quality could be left up to your discretion with a vaguely worded order, until the master clarified.

[DanielH]

Fortunately for my hypothetical voice, I can’t sing well anyway.

Or would I be able to if I had the right order? What’s the scope of orders for things which are physically possible but the vassal doesn’t know how to do or has trouble doing? A Bell who pays a lot of attention can usually walk medium distances without tripping once; could they be ordered to just always be very careful? If I were told to do cartwheels (which I have never done successfully, but probably could with practice), would I suddenly be able to do them, be forced to practice until I could do them, or what?

Wait, could most Bells be ordered at all, or would they block it?

[Alicorn]

Some Bells would resist some or all of vassalization, but most of them are susceptible.

You can be ordered to practice things and to actually try to improve at them, but orders do not impart skills unless you count "actually attempting things" as a skill. A Bell could be ordered to be very careful all the time but not to just plain never trip.

[anthusiasm]

What causes a name to stick? For example, let's say a baby is born, one parent said "We should name this baby George!" and the other parent says, "No, his name should be Rupert!" and after some argument, they settle on Rupert. Would Visitor consider the baby's name to be George, because it was the first one suggested, or Rupert, because it was the one agreed upon? Also, if someone were to pick out a name for a child while she was in the womb, then change it once she was born, which one would be her Visitor-name?

[tau]

Huh... from this thread I just noticed this world interacts interestingly with the world of Death Note. Or poorly, depending on how you look at it. You can trade half your life-span to a death god to get the ability to see people's names when you look at them (useful for writing them in the death note and thereby killing them). Someone with that power dropped into fairyland would, um, be able to take over very very quickly.

Do you guys have plans to do death note anywheres, btw?

[Alicorn]

If the first parent doesn't consider themselves authorized to personally without consensus name the kid George, then it's Rupert. If they do so consider themselves, George may stick, or the name might wind up being George Rupert Middlename Lastname, or something. Enwombed children are not yet nameable.

Somebody with shinigami eyes in Fairyland would be able to replace the queen if they were smart about it. We don't plan to do Death Note anywhere.

[Nemo]

Death Note killing powers are limited to humans. I don't remember whether the same applies to the Shinigami Eyes. It'd be funny if a fairy took the deal, though, since it'd be half of an extremely immortal life span.