Sandbox Discussions

[Bluelantern]

alicorn and kappa are missing the peal?

[DanielH]

I feel like I’m beginning to identify Mark phases. I wonder if these would extend to other JokerSherlocks.

I also propose “close alt” vs “distant alt” as a scale to measure how similar alts are. For example, Ice and Amaraiah, should they encounter each other, would be extremely close alts, as would the various Marks. A bit more distant would be the various Buffyverse Sherlocks, followed by Gotham Jokers in otherwise identical universes (e.g., Cindy and The Joker). On the distant end of the scale would be, say, Pattern and Rapunzel (my first thought, Pattern and Promise, at least both have Earths, so are closer even if the worlds are different).

[Alicorn]

There are a lot of axes on which alts may be similar or dissimilar as people; it seems like you're talking a lot about the similarity of worlds and little about the similarity of characters, where I view althood as being mostly about character archetype and personality. Juliet and Phaeton-Bell (we could borrow the nickname Rune from a sandbox in which she wound up choosing one, though I may not go with it in Effulgence) are from similar worlds but pretty different in personality as Bells go. Loki has and has visited an Earth but is not more like Pattern than, say, Maurabel.

[Marri]

I think we proposed "Branches" for such cases? wiki page

[DanielH]

Branches aren’t quite what I was thinking of. I think the best way to word it is regular alts (same template, not just circumstance alts) who also share circumstance. For example, the Mark from Nexus and the Mark from Let That Sync In branch at age 6, but still are both Marks in the way that a JokerSherlock cloned from Iron Man wouldn’t be. Or, the Miles in both of those and the Miles in Superluminal share circumstances even though one has a little sister and is a unicorn. I mentioned this elsewhere on the forum, not sure where, with the example of Sunny Sherlocks (or at least the minuses among them), and I’d consider Phaeton’s Sherlock in this group despite knowing about magic all along. On the other hand, Golden, Pattern, and Stella are branches who I would not consider to be whatever-word-we-may-come-up-with.

Having “branch” as a word is still useful so a new Bell could (once Glass, or somebody else, imports the word into canon) say “Standard branch except male, with a book on summoning daeva in the basement”, or a new Adarin could say “Kystle branch, 100 years after evacuation”. I hope it gains popularity as a word, but it’s not the one I’m thinking of. I tried proposing a scale instead of a binary thing, but I may agree this is impractical.

[Kappa]

I'd be highly intrigued to see you talk about Mark phases you have identified, DanielH!

I'm not sure I get what thing you are talking about with the alts.

[DanielH]

I have seen something with Mark phases, but I’m not sure I’ve seen enough to put it into words well. My best guess is: 1. going along with Ser Galen, 2. with Ser Galen but not working towards those goals, 3. depressed from killing Ser Galen (Nexus instance: wandering the world for a year committing petty theft and pranking ImpSec; Let That Sync In instance: lumping out except for Ivan interactions), and 4. no longer depressed. Example phase transition from 1 to 2 is about when interviewing Miles or Linya in Nexus, from 2 to 3 is obvious, and from 3 to 4 is just beginning in Let That Sync In and is probably a bit further on in League. I’ve described 3 and 4 poorly, but don’t know how to do better.

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With alts, we already have:

• Alts: different instances of the same template
• Circumstance alts: different templates in the same or similar circumstances. Most often seen with canon replacements, although calling the replacee a “template” is a bit inaccurate. See: Lokibel, MCU!Loki; Slayer!Bella, Buffy Summers. Examples also exist within glowfic; see: Rupert Giles, Tamara Reed (watcher), Cara MacMoran: all are Watchers when the new Slayer fails to turn up; all discover said Slayer in different ways.
• Branches: Two or more (regular) alts who have identical or near-identical experiences up to a certain point in time. Example: All the Bells who grow up in Phoenix with summers in Forks until they move to Forks full-time; Prime and Cypress.
• Phases: Stages of life that a single character can pass through, often shared or partially shared between alts. The textbook example is Jokers (never thought I’d say that), who (often, not always) have a horrible childhood phase, a wandering phase, a Gotham phase, and a retiree phase.
• Clusters: similar types of backgrounds. Kind of like branches, but not; you can have clusters that have wildly different actual experiences. Again, Jokers are the textbook example: there’s a cluster for Jokers with abusive fathers, a cluster for Jokers with sexually abusive stepfathers, etc.

What I want is a word for a group of alts (regular alts) who share circumstances, in a different way from branches. Golden and Pattern are branches, but they don’t share circumstances because Pattern’s circumstances don’t include vampires. If they were different templates, they would not be circumstance alts. On the other hand, Cloud, Minus, and the Phaeton Sherlock all had genius billionaire playboy philanthropist brothers/creators they were cloned from, an accelerated growth, making up with their brothers, betrayal by a family friend, vampirification while losing Jarvis and Tony, and unusual vampire lives. Cloud and Minus are branches, but the Phaeton Sherlock is not because he knew about magic from the beginning. If they were different templates, the fact about magic being known would be considered minor (like Lokibel’s Rule 63 from MCU) and they would be circumstance alts. Since they are not different templates, they are alts. However, their story is remarkably different than Strat’s, Pearl’s, or Dochenza’s. This isn’t just in a cluster way, because I think Pearl and Dochenza would be same-cluster but still have fairly different circumstances and be fairly different.

Put another way, there’s a difference between “a Sunnyverse Sherlock” and “a Sherlock”, or between “a plant Bell” and “a Bell”. The phases I identified in the other part of this post apply to “Marks”, not “JokerSherlocks”; I don’t have enough data to know if non-Mark JokerSherlocks would have similar phases. If a female standard-branch Bell discovered a summoning textbook in the abandoned Forks house, there would be a difference between “Revelations/demon Bells” and “Bells”. There is not such a difference between “standard-branch Bells” and “Bells”, because standard-branch Bells can be wildly different after the branching point (nobody would accuse Golden and, say, Pattern of being similar for Bells). I want to capture this difference so I can say that Sunnyverse Sherlocks are one _________ of Sherlocks. Creating the sample sentence inspires me to suggest “flavor”, but I’m not sure it’s a good term.

[Marri]

Soooo I think what you're looking for is a way to differentiate "branches that are also circumstances alts" and "branches that are not perfect circumstance alts"? Maybe? I'd probably call them all branches, myself.

[DanielH]

Except, “branch” is too specific a word in addition to being too general. Hypothetical female standard-branch Bell who finds a daeva-summoning textbook and Cam are not (no shared memories whatsoever). Neither are Minus and Phaeton-Sherlock. I would say both pairs would be circumstance alts, though.

Basically, I think I’m looking for a word for “both a regular alt and a circumstance alt”, except that the usual way of defining circumstance alts involves the characters in question being different templates.

[Kappa]

...Circumstance-branches? XD I'm not actually sure if that works at a term. It might just be too confusing.