@BESW @trogdor I am getting so excited to revisit our Amaterasu story.

Yes. @trogdor don't worry about making an actual map; I hadn't expected Greener to! I was thinking we'd just bring together our pictures and use them to guide discussion about making a single map.

@BESW It just clicked there's actually a super simple non-graphical way to do an influence map:

ok

the biggest issue has been actually dragging myself into doing anything at all

If the text way clicks better for anybody, go for it.

I feel like a picture is gonna work best for me.

But the text version is part of my process toward the visual map.

(revised 'cause I added Saga as a minor influence so now I have 7 minor influences, otherwise it's exactly the same. Avatar took up 3 spaces in the graphical version so that's where the extra spot came from.)

@BESW Either way works for me. :) But text might be a good option if @trogdor has limited tools to arrange a graphical version.

I think part of it was my little scare over that Kidney stone

been in a funk over the excruciating pain for a little bit

threw myself into mindless forgetful entertainment

not sure I am entirely done just yet

That seems reasonable.

@trogdor oh dear, goodness. I forgot about that. Are things OK on that front?

@trogdor Take your time. :)

I am eager to see your influence map but I can also wait.

@BESW I can't recall; did you make a post-Librarians influence map?

Not yet.

Count that as 2 influence maps I am eager to see. :D

@trogdor Is it a good time to mention something that came up in my thinking about Doctor Light?

@doppelgreener pretty ok right now yeah

one problem is fear that it will happen again

it's been twice to a place to get treatment for it

jeez. :( yeah, i hope it doesn't happen a third time.

the first time I got pain killers for it and an IV and it was fine after that

but this time I went to GMH (a mistake) and it passed without having gotten any of that first

the biggest issue isn't just it happening again really, it's if I get no help again that I would really lose my #$#%#$#

will you need to head to GMH the next time?

this avatar was in one way a little joke to myself after it was over

actually does make me feel a little better

@doppelgreener no

there are other options

good :P

@trogdor good :)

thing was,... I made a stupid call while in pain

@trogdor hooray!

@trogdor yeah fair enough ;_;

and no personal experience with just how screwed up GMH is didn't help

@trogdor i mentioned yesterday the Librarians gave me a framework for how Stellata might work (at least, in their canon): Stellata, being a magical creature, would be the focus in the power -> focus -> effect process. She has a source of power and she can funnel that power to produce effects. Presumably that power's only necessary for stuff outside human norms.

@doppelgreener I did read that

it is interesting

is the idea that she is and always was magic, or that she has acquired that by some means?

(This power can be random stuff. There is a magical creature that's powered by lies and weakened by truths, and another magical creature that's powered by people reading the fictional story they feature in.)

The idea is that Stellata's a natural channel for power.

ah

She probably has a particular kind of power she can channel into particular effects.

again like, technically only saw three episodes of The Librarians

Without her, the power can't create those effects. Without the power, she can't create those effects.

This got me wondering if Doctor Light wound up with some side-effects he wasn't expecting via becoming a magical focus of his own.

The trick being, in our existing narrative neither of them are magical. They're ridiculous science.

@BESW That is true. Stellata could wind up as entirely a creature of science, or could wind up a magical focus. (And science could recognise what's going on but not fully explain it.)

[rummages for quote]

> Some things we have to hide from science, waiting for the day when people will be ready to deal with the idea of talking mice or fish with fur. Other things science hides from itself, because no one really wants the night to be dark and filled with monsters.

@trogdor it's airy-fairy, but they begin to increasingly suggest that magic always comes in three parts: power, focus, effect. The power can be an ancient potent artifact, or a thing people are doing, it's more or less just a battery. The focus can be an object, a bunch of objects, a ritual, a person -- it's the thing that takes the power and converts it into an effect. And the effect is, well, whatever kind of stuff the magic is meant to do.

Possibly an overly complex way to explain a fairly normal way things work. Focus: hammer, power: arm swinging it, effect: smash a thing. But it helps the librarians figure out what could be causing the magical stuff they're seeing.

If you remove the power source or the focus, the magic stops.

The power of the Atlantean artifact run through the focus of a video game produces a real-life video game.

(In that case, removing the power source was insufficient because the episode was more satisfying that way one level of the game had already been fully powered up by it.)

@doppelgreener So far he's seen the two pilot episodes, the season one episode with Santa, and the season two episode with the video game.

ah four then

anyway, I like the idea that in some ways magic and science really are not truly different things

that people explain them that way because they don't really know better

that in calling something magic you miss how you could know what is causing it

and that calling something science means you could miss why you shouldn't be messing with it because you don't know literally every variable

that may sound contradictory, but I mean a wide range of things

and for one thing maybe it is more predictable than you think, and for another maybe you missed just one thing that was crucial to actually deeply understanding it

in a world where magic is real,... it is as much a law of the universe as physics or chemistry or math

one example I would use is, like firing a gun

even like a paintball gun

you do it, maybe you even hit the target you were aiming for

but then try hitting the exact spot you did and it takes you 100 or 1000 more tries

then the same thing happens with a magic spell and because it's magic you throw your hands up and declare it unpredictable

this isn't to say I think they should be considered the same thing, just that in some ways the definitions of them are down to perceptions

and we will always know ourselves "well that guy just literally casted a spell,... you don't do that in real life"

@trogdor there is a character in some story I can't recall who wants to understand magic on a scientific level, and they are regularly curious about how and why it is working the way it does. And they meet people who are like: it is MAGIC. you're not MEANT to UNDERSTAND it. Or do SCIENCE to it!!

You just DO it, and don't sweat the finer details. So stop sweating the finer details!!! Stop it!!!!

[character disregards and sweats all the finer details constantly]

I agree with all of that perspective though :) in amaterasu I'd enjoy magic and science being regarded as just different ideas about the same stuff

In the Librarians there are lots of people who regard magic as completely separate from science, but there are a small number of people who regard magic and science in a united way. (Cassandra is one of them.) So Amaterasu could easily have people who insist one way or the other regarding whether they are connected or not.

Like a wizard who feels slighted when doctor light asks to study them doing magic. And the wizard agrees to spite doctor light because he's sure doctor light won't get any useful results, and then doctor light does and tries to explain what's happening on a scientific level and the wizard gets SO MAD.

It might have been Kat from Gunnerkrigg Court that I'm thinking of, but she probably only heard that from one or two people.

> Magic was never an exact science; only science got to use that particular label. Magic was more like cheese making than chemistry, depending frequently on “when it feels right."

again, there are definite ways we can tell the difference, I just don't want magic to just be "there are no possible definite rules"

which it sorta sounds like isn't the case anyway

@doppelgreener I think we should be careful with making our own maps independently. Not all of each of our ideas can make it into the final mix, and (like with the Same Page Tool) it's easy to get attached to our personal vision at the expense of a vision the whole group can engage with. That's part of what happened last time; each of us had some significant touchstones that others were unfamiliar with but we couldn't let go of them.

@BESW Well, more, careful about getting attached to them and their content. They're super informative because they teach me about what you see, and open my eyes to what things I hadn't considered. It will also help me a lot going forward in the game: like, if I know what your influences are, I can build a wider mental framework of expectations for the game and understand how the things coming up fit into it.

(I can't overstate how helpful that will be when something entirely new comes up that doesn't match my preconceptions. If I can better understand where that might be coming from, I can accept it more rapidly and with less friction and better understand where it might be coming from and will help me handle and respond to it both in my own private processes and as a fellow player trying to make the game fun for myself and for you, the person I'm playing with.)

Very likely for each of us, the majority of our influences just won't show up in the shared influence map for the game, just because of the numbers involved, and because we're all drawing on different sources. However, knowing each others' influence maps means we can make meaningful, purposeful decisions about what influences we put into the shared influence map when we discuss creating that.

Like, I could say: "oh, you have influence XYZ! That's incongruent with my influence ABC, but I'm familiar with XYZ and they'll jive really well with these other influences. So what if we put XYZ in there and leave ABC out? Does that sound good?"

I guess I'm putting more significance on actually making a fully ranked map or list that could be a finalized product than you are.

Could you expand on that? Because I am not sure you are.

But I'm not sure I know quite what you mean by that.

Nothing you're describing is what I'm saying I'm wary of.

For some reason this feels to me like it's solidifying choices more than, say, all of those pictures linked separately would be.

I feel a distinct difference between "here are things I'd put in an influence map, let's make one together" and "here is my influence map, tell me what you're going to take off of it."

@BESW I am not myself looking at it as a net loss, like "here's half the things I'll just lose." They are things I get to share with y'all in where I've been coming from, and would be interested in, and if they get left out that's OK, because they are not the sole exclusive set of things I would be interested in -- they are just Things That Have Been Influencing Me Whether I Like It Or Not.

I think I can work with that. It's the format that threw me.

They set the "me alone" tone. Our combined play is already not the "me alone" tone, and I love it. I can tell you for sure that stories that are 100% just my "me alone" tone are sort of boring because they are too safe and do not explore new and different things -- I actually love several of the things on there because of the new ideas they thrust upon me to deal with, so presenting them in a static fashion is sort of weird & wrong.

Steven Universe, Atomic Robo, and Adventure Time, all throw emotional curveballs and go "here's what we're dealing with now as a series. We weren't dealing with anything like these ideas before but we are now." Hellboy, Rick & Morty, and Fables also regularly deal curveballs but along a more consistent theme with what had been explored before.

I am very, very interested in seeing what possibilities lie in the "us together" tone we could establish. It is going to include things I would never have thought of, and let me explore a story with you both (and with others who join us) that I couldn't possibly explore let alone even dream up on my own, and I very much want to do that.

There were lots of things in the original Amaterasu game I was concerned about and confused by and couldn't come to grips with because I had a preconceived notion of the game I didn't know how to slot them into, and I didn't understand where they were coming from or how I should interact with them or enable them.

(They were coming from Warehouse 13, X-Files, and other influences, but I was operating on an assumption those were similar enough to Atomic Robo and Hellboy so I had trouble making a congruent mental map of the game.)

(I am good at making improperly checked assumptions, then operating off them as absolutes, and taking a long time to realise those assumptions need checking because they're invalid.)

If I know what's going on and the nature of what I'm dealing with -- including how it might differ from what I expect -- that's going to be helpful for me cognizing the game and the emotional and content spectrum it's operating in, and it's going to help me recognise where my assumptions might need checking and where I might need to adjust my mental map of the game.

That makes the prospect of forming and articulating a combined influence map both exciting as an opportunity for exploration of new things I can only do with other people as a group (so I am not concerned about anything like a perceived loss of my own influences and tone & content palette; I see a net gain in the form of getting to explore your own influences and our combined palette) and an opportunity to construct a way more helpful mental map that lets me navigate what will come up in play.

How's that all sit with you?

Absolutely, those are my goals too.

\o/!

@BESW I hope I've assuaged your fears, but if there are still some lingering, please let me know so that I can self-examine (if the issue is with me) or look out for and be sensitive to them (if the issue is not mine, or not just mine). It may be confronting but it will be helpful and/or healthy for me and/or the group. I'd generally suggest charge ahead with making our influence maps so we can explore how we'd meet in the middle.