Alicornutopia

I can't speak for Beila regarding empathy, but Dao responds very poorly to people who get in his space and refuse to leave him alone. It's his opinion that anyone who is that desperate to violate his privacy can just put up with the animal facts or get lost.

Yeah, I expect the reason I don’t remember what that scene as well as the lawyer one is that the reporters were worse to Our Protagonists than the lawyer, and Our Protagonists did less in response.

In the process of re-reading Spirit threads. I don't see anything wrong with Dao's response to the reporter? Like, the reporter is asking Dao questions he doesn't want to answer! Thus, Dao is refusing to answer these questions and being snarky about it! I'm not an expert but I'm pretty sure this isn't an unusual way for one to interact with reporters one does not want to talk to? Am I missing something?

Is the thing that's bothering people Beila blacklisting a whole news company because of the one reporter who hid in her tree? That would make more sense. I think it's prooooobably justified, but I can definitely see why it would bother people.

I have no issue with Dao's response: the thing that really bothered me is the part here, especially this particular post. Obviously I am applying RL law to the fictional setting, but in the US, at least, when you are out in a public place anyone is *definitely* allowed to take pictures of you (this is why people are allowed to film/record cops). And it really bothers me that Beila's response is essentially to say "the cops are on my side, I can get away with breaking the law with impunity/have them harass you if I want." It is not the sort of behavior that makes me confident in her running-the-world skills!

I took it as implied that the actual law was on her side since her father probably wouldn't approve of her using his name to threaten people who had not in fact done any illegal things.

Oh, I had read the reporter's "Now, Avatar Beila, you're in a public place -" to imply that this same argument about photos in public being okay was valid in Spirit. If that's true than it seems a lot better, I admit, though Beila's immediately bringing up the cops still makes me uncomfortable.

Other Charlies definitely explicitly told their Bells that they would side with the law in such an argument. I guess I can’t think of a Charlie talking about being used as a threat.

My impression of US law is that taking the picture is legal, but publishing it is not, at least for a random person. There might be something about how celebrities or other public figures are different, or it might just be that you can’t publish the picture while captioning it “Avatar Beila supports Our Product™, buy now”. IANAL, etc, etc.

IA also NAL, but see here and here. Beila is the Avatar, which seems to qualify her as a public figure for any reasonable definition of the term.

anthusiasm wrote:Finally catching up on Lumos and oh no this whole Karen and Vivian thing is hitting my Feels Buttons, I want to hug these poor children.

Vivian will happily accept hugs! And possibly make whimpery noises about why her crush has to be cute and actually also be gay but have a crush on a girl who's not her so yes about those hugs please.

jalapeno_dude wrote:Okay, so by my count we have now reached three Evil Reporter incidents in Alicorn!Fic (the one who bothers Rhysel in Summons, the one who harasses Dao in Effulgence, and the one just now in Lumos), and it's beginning to seem like a pattern of generalized hostility to the profession. ;) Is there some RL backstory I should be aware of?

All my personal experience with moronic reporters is of the "wrote a misleading / at least partially factually incorrect article about the place I work, other papers picked it up without bothering to fact check, we were not allowed to respond and had to sit and have people judge us over nonsense" flavor and not the "creepy stalkery dudes" flavor. But I do have less personal generalized hostility to the concepts of paparazzi and clickbaiting and the whole twisting-your-words thing. (Okay, so that last one, probably a little relevant to the work incident tbh). But Russell is also born from the shiny lulz of turning non-incidents into "news" but like... on purpose, to be as absurd as possible? Plus some inspiration from this Tales of MU side story mocking amateur news articles.

Plus Russell is mine, so he begs an exemption from Alicorn's pattern of smarmy reporters, he can be smarmy all by himself. Aar Bite-Your-Face and the Republic Newscorp guys could be alts, no idea.

DanielH wrote:I like Russel Peasegood. He’s completely detestable, but in a way that I could see myself as his friend if I could ignore the detestable stuff. This is not true of all antagonists; I don’t think I could be friends with Jane, for example, even if she didn’t have the pain of turning to fling at people.

Preview edit: Again, I emphasize that I dislike his behavior. I just think I could like him as a person if he weren’t an evil reporter.

Russell is not particularly bothered by people disliking his behavior (or man would he need a new job) but he is delighted you enjoy his character and waves hello.