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hkmaly

Story Friday February 3, 2017

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SOOOO MANY QUESTIONS! I think I'm channeling Ashley.

The first one is kind of picky, but exactly what color is the end of the world? White? Gray? Powder puff pink? Does it glow like a lighting panel or an old-fashioned TV tuned to a channel that isn't in use? [Look at the original Poltergeist if you're too young to remember raster-scan low-res cathode-ray-tube television in glorious black-and-white] It's not like a wall because the lights from the cars are acting normally on everything up to the end of the world but don't seem to affect it at all. I know it's all magic and a simulation, but...

What would happen if (when) Sarah goes through or tries to go through that barrier? I can think of three things off-hand:

  1. It's like a solid wall and she can't.
  2. She comes back in the opposite point on the perimeter.
  3. The simulation expands, but beyond the "barrier's" original radius, it gets less and less reliable and more dreamlike. Or it draws more magical energy to scan again; maybe Sarah has to consciously re-cast, or maybe not.

I'm also thinking that since Sarah's spent a lot of subjective time in this simulation, she might really already be at school, or maybe in the back of an ambulance with a cop waiting for her to wake her up so he can ask her some questions. Except for the magical spell part, that actually happened to me once.

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1 hour ago, Tom Sewell said:

What would happen if (when) Sarah goes through or tries to go through that barrier?

I have to agree with Sarah's logic.  "not going to do that", a good idea when dealing with a spell given out by a bored Demigoddess of Chaos.

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I would actually like to know what happens if she walked into the barrier. Is she thrown out of the simulation? With the possible exception of Dan, who knows?

Though, I must agree with Sarah that it is better to be on the safe side. That barrier is not only weird, but scary.

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4 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Note: And we saw the range of spell ... except we still don't know how far it is. But it seems to cross the road almost straight, no visible curvature, so can't be so small.

That's with the expectation of a spherical or hemispherical area. While that does sound most likely, my next guess would be the area Sarah is wondering about, trimmed to the limit of her spell's power. She would likely wonder about things like entire rooms, buildings, or roads, so a flat "end-of-scan" might be how the spell goes down the road until it runs out of thaums. With that clue slightly blunted, Dan has done a masterful job of obfuscating the total area.

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4 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:

What would happen if (when) Sarah goes through or tries to go through that barrier? I can think of three things off-hand:

  1. It's like a solid wall and she can't.
  2. She comes back in the opposite point on the perimeter.
  3. The simulation expands, but beyond the "barrier's" original radius, it gets less and less reliable and more dreamlike. Or it draws more magical energy to scan again; maybe Sarah has to consciously re-cast, or maybe not.
2 hours ago, mlooney said:

I have to agree with Sarah's logic.  "not going to do that", a good idea when dealing with a spell given out by a bored Demigoddess of Chaos.

I'd think the spell would just end and she'd snap back to reality, similarly to when Nanase's fairy avatars get destroyed.

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1 hour ago, Scotty said:

I'd think the spell would just end and she'd snap back to reality, similarly to when Nanase's fairy avatars get destroyed.

I wonder how eager Nanase was to have a fairy avatar with herself in it destroyed before she knew what would happen.

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A spherical range for Sarah's spell would make the most sense.

If you think about it with Euclidian mathematics or Newtonian physics.

But consider who activated this spell.

There is not reason why we should assume the area of effect would be simple or symmetrical.

Why can't the range be a series of interlocking dodecahedra in five dimensional space-time?

Or perhaps her world really is banana shaped?

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8 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

I wonder how eager Nanase was to have a fairy avatar with herself in it destroyed before she knew what would happen.

Nanase did have the advantage of a spellbook telling her nothing would happen to her if her avatar was destroyed. So she knew about it before the first time it happened, though not sure if her scream was from the experience of suddenly having her consciousness thrown back to her body, or from suddenly having Vlad in her face just prior to getting sent back.

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8 hours ago, Sweveham said:

I would actually like to know what happens if she walked into the barrier. Is she thrown out of the simulation? With the possible exception of Dan, who knows?

Though, I must agree with Sarah that it is better to be on the safe side. That barrier is not only weird, but scary.

For starters, pick up an object and toss it...

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36 minutes ago, Don Edwards said:

For starters, pick up an object and toss it...

The effects shouldn't be too bad.  The barrier should just be impenetrable, or alternately one other facet of the simulation that Sarah could manipulate. The worst that could lurk beyond the barrier would be aspects of Sarah's own mind,

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13 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:

What would happen if (when) Sarah goes through or tries to go through that barrier? I can think of three things off-hand:

  1. It's like a solid wall and she can't.
  2. She comes back in the opposite point on the perimeter.
  3. The simulation expands, but beyond the "barrier's" original radius, it gets less and less reliable and more dreamlike. Or it draws more magical energy to scan again; maybe Sarah has to consciously re-cast, or maybe not.

Or...

  1. She could fall out into an infinite empty abyss.
  2. She could go into another simulation world from a previous time she cast this spell, or from someone else casting this same spell.
  3. She could wind up in another dimension entirely.
  4. She could simply cease to exist altogether.

Maybe she should start by throwing a rock into it. Or poking it with a stick. Or pulling that half-car out of it.

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13 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:

SOOOO MANY QUESTIONS! I think I'm channeling Ashley.

The first one is kind of picky, but exactly what color is the end of the world? White? Gray? Powder puff pink? Does it glow like a lighting panel or an old-fashioned TV tuned to a channel that isn't in use? [Look at the original Poltergeist if you're too young to remember raster-scan low-res cathode-ray-tube television in glorious black-and-white] It's not like a wall because the lights from the cars are acting normally on everything up to the end of the world but don't seem to affect it at all. I know it's all magic and a simulation, but...

You might underestimate how weird seeing the end of the world is. It's not depicted accurate in the comics because it's not possible to depict it with just pixels.

13 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:

What would happen if (when) Sarah goes through or tries to go through that barrier? I can think of three things off-hand:

  1. It's like a solid wall and she can't.
  2. She comes back in the opposite point on the perimeter.
  3. The simulation expands, but beyond the "barrier's" original radius, it gets less and less reliable and more dreamlike. Or it draws more magical energy to scan again; maybe Sarah has to consciously re-cast, or maybe not.

She goes into it and it will surround her on all sides, so she won't see anything. She makes several steps, no change. Then she turns around, makes single step and is immediately back in simulation.

12 hours ago, mlooney said:

I have to agree with Sarah's logic.  "not going to do that", a good idea when dealing with a spell given out by a bored Demigoddess of Chaos.

I don't think Pandora had that big influence on what exactly is the spell doing. Most influence probably had Will of magic. Who was NEVER sane by mortal standards. On the other hand, it's the same will of magic who is enforcing the safety rules on transformations, so ...

10 hours ago, Haylo said:
15 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Note: And we saw the range of spell ... except we still don't know how far it is. But it seems to cross the road almost straight, no visible curvature, so can't be so small.

That's with the expectation of a spherical or hemispherical area. While that does sound most likely, my next guess would be the area Sarah is wondering about, trimmed to the limit of her spell's power. She would likely wonder about things like entire rooms, buildings, or roads, so a flat "end-of-scan" might be how the spell goes down the road until it runs out of thaums. With that clue slightly blunted, Dan has done a masterful job of obfuscating the total area.

Hmmmm ... no, that would mean there is some sort of pre-scan of what is around. Although it IS possible that the center of spell is not Sarah but center of her attention ... but still unlikely. Tedd description was accompanied with spherical range centered at Sarah's head, after all.

7 hours ago, Scotty said:
7 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

I wonder how eager Nanase was to have a fairy avatar with herself in it destroyed before she knew what would happen.

Nanase did have the advantage of a spellbook telling her nothing would happen to her if her avatar was destroyed. So she knew about it before the first time it happened, though not sure if her scream was from the experience of suddenly having her consciousness thrown back to her body, or from suddenly having Vlad in her face just prior to getting sent back.

Remember also that while she isn't actually injured, she FEELS the damage of fairy.

But, yes, the spellbook is BIG advantage in such case. As noted by Susan.

1 hour ago, Vorlonagent said:
2 hours ago, Don Edwards said:

For starters, pick up an object and toss it...

The effects shouldn't be too bad.  The barrier should just be impenetrable, or alternately one other facet of the simulation that Sarah could manipulate. The worst that could lurk beyond the barrier would be aspects of Sarah's own mind,

I don't think anything bad can happen if she toss something into it. There doesn't seem any subconscious monsters around either, Pandora would mention them. And Sarah's body is not there anyway ... so, while I would start with tossing and poking with a stick, even poking with finger should be completely safe. Entering it, well, that may be more risky ...

13 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:

I'm also thinking that since Sarah's spent a lot of subjective time in this simulation, she might really already be at school, or maybe in the back of an ambulance with a cop waiting for her to wake her up so he can ask her some questions. Except for the magical spell part, that actually happened to me once.

If she's in buss, she might missed her stop - oh wait, school IS the FINAL stop.

 

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8 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

Remember also that while she isn't actually injured, she FEELS the damage of fairy.

I wouldn't necessarily say she feels the damage itself, I'd compare it to being suddenly woken up from a dream. There have been times where I've been woken up by what felt someone flicking their finger against my spine, and my whole body felt like it had been jolted by an electric shock. It didn't hurt, but it was very unnerving, and Nanase's reactions to getting her consciousness forced back to her body look exactly how I felt.

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1 minute ago, Scotty said:
18 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

Remember also that while she isn't actually injured, she FEELS the damage of fairy.

I wouldn't necessarily say she feels the damage itself, I'd compare it to being suddenly woken up from a dream. There have been times where I've been woken up by what felt someone flicking their finger against my spine, and my whole body felt like it had been jolted by an electric shock. It didn't hurt, but it was very unnerving, and Nanase's reactions to getting her consciousness forced back to her body look exactly how I felt.

She's holding her stomach there and she's holding shoulder next time. I think she does feel something in places where the doll was damaged.

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9 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

She's holding her stomach there and she's holding shoulder next time. I think she does feel something in places where the doll was damaged.

We never saw Abraham hitting the avatar's shoulder, so we can't really use that as proof. As I said from my experience being jolted awake has the same effect, nerves are firing, heart racing, certainly does feel like something hit you at first and you instinctively yell out and curl up to try to get yourself back together.

Her actually feeling the damage her avatar takes has some undesirable implications, for instance, if it requires an avatars complete destruction, like getting chopped right in half, to force Nanase back, then how would she feel loosing a hand or foot? Arm or leg? Of course she could manually return to her body herself, but I can imagine the feeling of losing a body part would be very unsettling.

I'd much rather it be a sudden shock that quickly passes, rather than the feeling of something being snapped or sliced or stabbed.

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Having physically attempted to dodge any number of flying objects that were absolutely guaranteed to miss me by at least a couple feet (being that they don't actually fly out of my computer screen), I can easily believe that having my fairydoll-avatar cut in two while I'm in it would be EXTREMELY disquieting - even if I don't physically feel it at all.

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Did everyone see the end of the world as a wall? I interpreted it as a cut off into empty space. Though I guess a wall would make more sense to wonder about walking into it. Maybe it looks like a portal?

I'm just going to boldly assume it's empty space, while simultaneously being open to other possibilities.

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4 hours ago, Scotty said:
5 hours ago, hkmaly said:

She's holding her stomach there and she's holding shoulder next time. I think she does feel something in places where the doll was damaged.

We never saw Abraham hitting the avatar's shoulder, so we can't really use that as proof. As I said from my experience being jolted awake has the same effect, nerves are firing, heart racing, certainly does feel like something hit you at first and you instinctively yell out and curl up to try to get yourself back together.

True ; the angle of axe swing suggest that might've happened but it's not certain enough to be proof.

4 hours ago, Scotty said:

Her actually feeling the damage her avatar takes has some undesirable implications, for instance, if it requires an avatars complete destruction, like getting chopped right in half, to force Nanase back, then how would she feel loosing a hand or foot? Arm or leg? Of course she could manually return to her body herself, but I can imagine the feeling of losing a body part would be very unsettling.

I'd much rather it be a sudden shock that quickly passes, rather than the feeling of something being snapped or sliced or stabbed.

Maybe the damage she feel is not realistic - she feels it on corresponding part of her body but the intensity doesn't match what would she feel from real injury.

If she does feel it realistically, she's much tougher than she looks. On the other hand, she's doing martial arts, we can't rule that out.

Remember that she definitely has tactile feedback, and while pain and touch receptors are separate, the "overload of touch" sensation is likely painful even without pain receptor firing.

In any case, the feeling should quickly pass after disconnecting from fairy, although based on comics it's not immediate ...

57 minutes ago, Camion said:

Did everyone see the end of the world as a wall? I interpreted it as a cut off into empty space. Though I guess a wall would make more sense to wonder about walking into it. Maybe it looks like a portal?

I'm just going to boldly assume it's empty space, while simultaneously being open to other possibilities.

What part of mine "What we see is not what Sarah see" did you missed?

I think that what she sees is not wall nor empty space but somehow both.

 

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19 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:

What would happen if (when) Sarah goes through or tries to go through that barrier?

Wild Speculation.  Beyond the barrier to her simulated realm is the spirit plane in which immortals hide and Magus is trapped.

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22 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

What part of mine "What we see is not what Sarah see" did you missed?

I think that what she sees is not wall nor empty space but somehow both.

There are some Youtubers that I watch that play GMod Prop Hunters and Trouble in Terrorist Town, and some of the maps they play aren't made very well and sometimes they'll open a door where there's nothing but white space on the other side and you risk falling out of the map if you go through. It's likely the same for Sarah's simulations, if she happens to step over the edge, the simulation with either immediately end, or she'll float or free fall in empty space until she ends it herself.

3 minutes ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

Wild Speculation.  Beyond the barrier to her simulated realm is the spirit plane in which immortals hide and Magus is trapped.

If that were true, then Pandora's much closer to being able to view what Sarah does than she thinks. ;)

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5 minutes ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:
19 hours ago, Tom Sewell said:

What would happen if (when) Sarah goes through or tries to go through that barrier?

Wild Speculation.  Beyond the barrier to her simulated realm is the spirit plane in which immortals hide and Magus is trapped.

That's extremely unlikely based on Pandora not being able to observe what she's doing with her spell. There's nothing beyond the barrier. Probably literally.

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4 hours ago, hkmaly said:

That's extremely unlikely based on Pandora not being able to observe what she's doing with her spell. There's nothing beyond the barrier. Probably literally.

Actually I think The Shive has made a logical misstep here. Pandora clearly can read minds to some extent, and since Sarah's simulations are going on inside her mind, Pandora should be able to get into Sarah's mind, much like she got into Grace's dream.

As for there being nothing beyond the barrier, perhaps, but there's really nothing inside the barrier, just a simulation of the region around Sarah when she cast the spell. Sarah doesn't have to see everything inside that simulation before she casts the spell; the very first time she used it, her sister Carol was beyond a closed door.

The barrier could be impenetrable, or could be just a warning that everything beyond it isn't a reliable simulation. Earlier I speculated about recasting while in the simulation, but now that I think more on it, a recasting would be from the point where Sarah's body actually is in the real world at that moment. Since she's probably in a moving car, that point might not be inside the volume of the original simulation at all.

As for re-entering on the opposite side of the simulation, that's something that would happen pretty often in early video games like Asteroids. It's easy to program as long as you're not modeling your game world as the surface of a sphere, which was way beyond the capabilities of consumer electronics back in the day of Ultima I.

I'm kind of reminded of an Oh My Goddess story arc where Skuld, the cute little mad scientist-goddess, came up with maybe her weirdest invention: A gadget that created more space in a room by borrowing volume from the future. Of course it malfunctioned and stranded her sister Belldandy and Belldandy's boyfriend Keiichi in an infinite room. But it gets better: In that room, an interdimensional flying whale visits them. Remind you of something else in EGS?

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