Effulgence Fandom Ideas

[Kappa]

Yeah.

Basically, if you want a Joker that will be as hard to rehabilitate as possible, make them a robot constrained by the Three Laws. Jokers with more power tend to be more helpful, and Jokers with more external pressure to be nasty tend to be less nasty; conversely, if you take away a Joker's capacity to kill people, disobey orders, and hurt themselves, you are ensuring that they will very desperately want to do a lot of all three, and they will be very, very creative about figuring out how.

(There are other Jokers who are coerced into not doing these things - Fire comes to mind - but it's not quite the same thing in those cases. I think what makes the difference is that the Three Laws are so specific and so hardwired. There is pretty much no one to whom a robot Joker can even hypothetically apply for relief from these things, no one who is inflicting them on him; they're built in. And the nature of the prohibitions is extremely particular. It all adds up to heaps of Not Good.)

[Alicorn]

I think I'd slot in a Bell as Susan Calvin if were going to do Asimovbots - Calvin seemed to be the only one who actually ever liked robots, let alone cared about them. A Jokerbot would probably be too wrecked by the Laws to do a Bicentennial Man plot or whatever.

[Kappa]

It's within the realms of possibility that a Bella Calvin could improve the situation of a Jokerbot sufficiently that he would stop trying to kill people. Whether she could also make him less suicidal is an open question. Getting him to be obedient is right out, but "less aggressively contrary/more amenable to non-enforced requests" is theoretically achievable.

[Shoal]

i suspected the three laws would be awful for the joker. i also suspect it would be entertaining to read.

Shoal is more interested in Bella Calvin than Bella Sheldon

[BlueSkySprite]

I think the Psychonauts universe would be fairly Bellable, though probably not the exact story. It's set in a psychic summer camp where psychic children learn to use their abilities.
The powers they learn are clairivoyance, confusion, levitation, invisibility, marksmanship, telekinesis, pyrokinesis, and shielding. There are also some extra abilities some people seem to just have, like telepathy, talking to animals, head explosion, (maybe) precognition, and mental shielding. Some people are really good at abilities that match up well with their personalities. It seems like people who are really good at telepathy are also really good at mental shielding. There is plenty of room for a Joker to have an awful childhood, as evidenced by many of the canon characters.
There are little doors that can be used to send an astral projection of yourself into a representation of someone's mind as a landscape full of people. Some mental problems can be fixed like that, but others can't.
There is a mineral called psitanium that intensifies psychic powers, but makes non-psychic people more unstable. If exposed to it for too long, sometimes wild animals gain simple psychic powers.
There are plenty of unpleasant things to happen to anyone, but also plenty of room for clever applications of powers to improve things.

[Kappa]

Ooh, Psychonauts! Psychonauts was kinda fun. It's been too long for me to really comment on how well a Joker would fit it, though.

[BlueSkySprite]

It doesn't seem like any existing characters could be replaced very well by a Joker, but the universe seems to allow for all the template attractors I know about in a new character.

[cbhacking]

Agh, I missed the heavy WoT discussion, but what the hell: a vote for seeing what Effulgence would do with the world, or at least some of its aspects. Apologies if the below is a waste because it's already been decided not to do this...

A few possibly-not-trivia points about female and male channeling (in-universe term for use of the "One Power" a.k.a. magic):

• Channelers have (often wildly) different strength in different types of power (Air, Water, Spirit, Earth, Fire; in-universe called "powers" or "the five powers"). Somebody who can call down a rainstorm in a desert (massive power in Water, some in Air) may be barely able to light a fire bigger than a candle; somebody who can ward their mind against mental intrusion (a sophisticated weave of Spirit) may be hopeless at healing (also requires water and air at a minimum). Men are disproportionately likely to have F/E strength, women A/W, S is equally likely in both.
• Power and skill are not entirely related; power usually increases with training but a skilled channeler can overcome a much stronger yet untrained one. Max strength is an inherent characteristic of a person (and for the vast majority of people, it is nil; they cannot even access the power).
• Male channelers are usually (though by no means always) more powerful overall individually, but they cannot combine their strength without the aid of women; women con combine strength unaided (up to 13, at which point they need men).
• Angreal and sa'angreal boost power levels as long as you touch them. A sa'angreal requires a certain degree of inborn strength to use, but a powerful channeler using one can literally flatten mountains or annihilate cities from existence. Both types of artifact are male-or-female specific.
• 13 very weak women channelers, linked, could subdue (cut off his access to power) the strongest man canonically possible, although it is unclear whether they would be able to if he was linked to (using) a sa'angreal or powerful angreal (personally, I suspect not).
• Over-drawing power is possible, though the warning signs of hitting your limit are unmistakable in normal cases. A small over-draw will burn the ability to channel out of a person. A large one is fatal and hazardous to its surroundings. If you want to use an overdrawn power, you must do so immediately. Its uses in canon range from "in vengeance, wipe out the army that killed my husband so our people will be safe" to a gratuitous overkill level of suicide.
• A small number of channelers can "read residues" to tell what weaves (spells) were used in an area, where they were directed, and even learn new weaves. This ability is intrinsic and not learnable.
• Men and women channelers cannot see the weaves of the power's other half, but can see the weaves of their own half while active, no matter who made them. Women glow brightly (to other women channelers) when holding the power, men do not but the amount of power they hold can be sensed (at close range) by other male channelers. A male channeler can tell when a female channeler nearby holds the power (they get goosebumps, basically) but they can't tell who; a female channeler has no such warning against men under normal circumstances. A women channeler in proximity to another can detect the other woman's ability and strength even if she is not holding the power, men have no corresponding ability unless actively testing for the ability with the cooperation of the subject.
• It is canonically possible for somebody who is "supposed to be" one sex to wield that sex's power even when they are mentally and/or physiologically the other, though the example was a special case I can't talk about because spoilers.
• Channelers live longer than normal people, with a weak one easily beating 200 years and a strong one exceeding 600 at least. They "slow" in early adulthood; the age at which this starts ranges from 18-ish to 25-ish.
• Aes Sedai (fully-trained women channelers) gain a look of agelessness in their face and skin (which can be used for identification by those who know to look), although their hair will still turn grey in sufficient time (i.e. a few centuries). It is the height of rudeness to ask an Aes Sedai her age, or even discuss it. There's a lot more here I could say, but it gets spoilery.
• The taint on saidin (male power) causes insanity over time, but the form of the insanity varies. Some men remain more-or-less functional (with psychological problems) for years, others start screaming about spiders under their skin in days. If they continue channeling, the taint will cause them to rot from the inside until it kills them. Stopping channeling (including being "gentled" which cuts them off permanently) does not cure the harm done so far but halts it.
• A very small portion of the population can learn to channel, though they never will do so themselves unless trained. An even smaller portion will do so whether they want to or not (manifesting around 15-20), although if they do not receive training they will suffer a series of mishaps after (usually unintentionally) channeling until they either die or learn to control the power directly. The survival rate is 1 in 4. Aes Sedai seek out girls with the inborn ability for a number of reasons, among those being to save their lives.
• Learning a weave (spell) is a matter of learning what powers to arrange, in what pattern. It can be simple - a single "thread" of Fire touched to a physical object will heat/ignite it - or extremely complex, involving many different powers which much be combined with precision. The canon usually just describes weaves by the powers they use ("... raised his hands and wove fire and air. Red strands shot from his fingers, burning through any unfortunate enough to be hit" is not an exact quote, but describes a real weave as its weaving was usually described).
• There is a weave (balefire) which annihilates matter it hits. The annihilation is retroactive (further back depending on the strength put into the balefire); a person shot in the heart by an archer will be fine if the archer is balefired soon enough. Balefire is damaging to the fabric of reality ("the pattern"), especially when used in strength.
• The three oaths of the Aes Sedai ("I will speak no word that is not true" is the first, the second prohibits making weapons for people to use against one another, "I will not use the One Power as a weapon except against Shadowspawn, or in the last defense of my own life, my warder's [optional magically linked bodyguard] life, or that of another sister [Aes Sedai]" is my best recollection of the third) are supposed to make people feel safe around them, although the first has simply given them a communal reputation for being willing to twist their words and mislead people, while the third is not believed by many.
• A very small number of channelers can "foretell", which is pretty much fantasy-genre-standard semi-enigmatic prophesy, not at will. There are other prophetic systems as well, of variable levels of accuracy and interpretability.

... you know, I'm just going to stop now. It's a really fun system and world, and I could brain-dump about it for hours, but even if you want to use it with minimal alteration of the canon there's a lot I can't say here because SPOILERS! and there's no point writing even everything I could "safely" put without knowing whether you care. There's a ton more of it than just the magic system, ranging from various races ("trollocs" are basically a variant on orcs, but "ogier" are very much their own thing) to societies and politics (and how...), to artifacts of previous ages ("cuendillar", a magical substance, is invulnerable to everything up to and including balefire), to plenty of interesting characters and history. It's a very nice bit of worldbuilding, in my completely amateur opinion. General tech level is mostly-pre-gunpowder (fireworks are new and mysterious) medieval, and society feudal, in the canonical period.

For what it's worth, books 1-3 are relatively straightforward to read, the vast proliferation of plot threads and character count, plus general dragging out of the plot, doesn't come until later. Books 6-10 are slow, with 8 being the absolute worst.

Bellish things:
The world definitely needs *fixing*; the Aes Sedai don't do nearly a good enough job of it largely due to a tradition of not messing with, studying, or attempting to create ter'angreal (specific-utility artifacts, many of which are usable by non-channelers; in fairness they can be very dangerous).
Magic is a thing. A Bell would almost certainly be a channeler, probably but not necessarily female. If she went to the White Tower (became Aes Sedai), she would probably end up blue ajah ("the blues meddle in causes" according to one non-blue's comment).
Sherlock would totally make a badass warder. The relationship is often, but by no means always, platonic. There is a canonical (extremely rare) non-channeler ability that could be described as "supernaturally good detective".
Compulsion (mental influence) is a thing; a banned (by the "good guys") weave. Canonical defenses typically require being prepared for it and being a channeler yourself of at least roughly equivalent power, but "Talents" of all sorts crop up in the Aes Sedai population from time to time...
Within the scope of the canon, Aes Sedai have the closest thing in-universe to a life of useful luxury. An in-universe Bell would almost certainly go to the White Tower whether or not she had any reason to expect to be a potential channeler, just in case.
There are no limit of awful things that can be (and are, occasionally) done to people in this universe. As the Dark One's power waxes, the world goes from generally impolite to outright sadistic.

[cbhacking]

Other random things that come to mind (in no particular order):

There's a finished webcomic, Errant Story, that could quite possibly use a more rational and introspective protagonist.
Lord of the Rings.
Jumper (Gould). I've only read the book, not seen the movie. Lots of potential there, although the titularly-powered protagonist is also the one with the abusive father.
Stanger in a Strange Land, or even just a setting based on it, would be kind of amazing.

I'm going to *not* recommend the Amber series (Zelazny) or anything by Anne McCaffrey; to the extent that I have such a heuristic, I expect Alicorn would dislike both although for different reasons (if you know otherwise, let me know).

... I'll be back to this thread more often in the future.

[Kappa]

So all of this Extremely Binary Gendered Magic Use in WoT is making me think that a Joker is going to weird the fuck out of this system. Any thoughts on that? Also, I totally wanna hear more and I don't mind spoilers.