Amelia, Worm AU [Complete]

[Coruscant Knave]

There's also the fact that if Coil's power is precog, it won't work on Scion anyway.

And if you want to argue it isn't precog, I'm still pretty confident he would notice it after a couple tries and neutralize it.

 

[Daunmi]

There's also the fact that if Coil's power is precog, it won't work on Scion anyway.

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I always figured his power did work on Scion/Endbringers/whatever, but that it intentionally gave him a bad end on the simulated 'timeline' so that he'd be forced to keep what was really happening. That part in canon, where the Leviathan fight goes worse when he uses his power? That's his shard basically letting him use his power on the Endbringer, but in such a way as it doesn't really show him what would happen, so he sticks with his original plans.

What happened to Coil here anyway?

 

[GiftofLove]

I just assumed he lucked out into a shard with very lax restrictions. Wasn't it was hinted at in Eden's interlude that she was using Coil's shard along with PtV for her simulation?

 

[Ack]

There's also the fact that if Coil's power is precog, it won't work on Scion anyway.

And if you want to argue it isn't precog, I'm still pretty confident he would notice it after a couple tries and neutralize it.

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Here's the thing. He's not using it on Scion, any more than he's using it on the entire universe. He's using it on himself.

It's predicting the effect of his actions on the world around him if he does one thing, or another. Gaining information.

Now, you can't say that Scion makes it impossible for said information to be gained about him, because Dinah was able to repeatedly predict the fact that the world was destroyed after a certain point, even if she didn't know it was Scion doing it. If Dinah can do it, why can't Coil?

 

[Coruscant Knave]

Here's the thing.

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I can think of a few different reasons, but they don't matter because I specifically worded my post to avoid a "how does Coil's power work" discussion.

Daunmi: I assume he had a similar fate to Danny and Sarah. No clone and killed in the tantrum. That or he lived as Pantheon's pet until they let him die of old age. Fix-fic!

 

[namelis]

Regardless of how coils power actually works they couldn't be shure that Scion wouldn't notice. So the possibility that he might leading to less time to prepare ment trying was not an option

 

[Sheaman3773]

I'm pretty sure TanaNari already dropped a WoG about how in this story, they were never sure whether or not Coil's power would feed them accurate information about the targets that are typically pre-cog blocked, so they weren't going to risk it, to avoid the shard feeding them tainted information.

 

[dasstan]

Topical:

It's nice to see that things seem to be going swimmingly in the future.

 

[Tabularasa]

Wow, I just finished reading this (took a good two long weeks to finish it). One of the best fanfics that I've read (even if I had only read a few of them), and my favorite of Worm. If the story didn't feed of its original to set characters, it would do a great independent work of fiction. Anyway, incredible work.

I just hope that the author gets to release some of its own work some day.

 

[Flukes]

(Sorry for only posting this now. This is a product of exam period procrastination and not allowing myself social media till after exams, and then forgetting about it entirely. Also, long critique is long)

So, first off, congratulations on being one of the rare fanfic writers to actually complete an epic length fanfic. Heck, congratulations on finishing an epic length story- and make it entertaining and thought provoking and awesome to boot.

It's honestly one of the most entertaining reads I've encountered, but I get the feeling that you don't want to stop there. I feel that a writer of your calibre can create more than just entertainment. I think you can make literature.

So, on with the critique. Spoiler'd to avoid making this page super long.

Spoiler: Critique

Having the scaffolding of the medium(fanfic) to hold up your piece is useful in some respects, because admittedly, I would have dropped this at about chapter 200 or so, or at least ceased to take it overly seriously. It was good entertainment- but I feel with the epic ending, you could have done more. So, I'm here to talk about theme.

I feel that consistent theming is what separates mindless entertainment from slightly higher level, more thoughtful stuff. What is your story fundamentally about? (Based on the ending, I'm going to go with ascension/ two is better than one or something along those lines- but there were so many themes that were kind-of-almost-but-not-really explored, like the whole administrative decisions made for the greater good- examples: Coil, association with Cauldron, Emperor of Japan, the various scenes where Taylia questions each other/themselves). The casting aside humanity to save the world/ascend thing is actually taken to its logical conclusion. If themes were questions, Amelia's summary would have been:

Would you cast aside your humanity to be fused with someone else's mind for functionally all eternity?
(and the answer is yes, I totally would)
Should admin have the right to sacrifice a few/ignore certain bad things for the 'greater good'?
(sort of left unanswered, sort of 'yes' but not really conclusive)
Does it matter if you lose sight of the ground(which ties into both of the other two)?
Kind of. Need a conclusion to question/theme 2 to really answer this.

And like any good theming, there needs to be some ambiguity to go around- there can be some advocacy for a particular idea, but there also needs to be some discussion of the flipside.

So, I'd say that it was the answering of the fundamental Theme Question that made 30.07 in Worm so powerful. And we do, explicitly get the answer to the implicit/explicit question of the story- should you always act for the greater good? What makes someone a hero?

"I keep on asking myself the same questions over and over again," [Contessa] said. "Maybe you can answer. Was it worth it?"

.....

"Were you really a monster in the end? A warlord, an alien administrator? A vicious killer with a cruel streak, mutilating your enemies and secretly enjoying it? A bully, if you forgive me for using that word?"

"Or were you really a hero? Do the good intentions win out? Was it Glaistig Uaine's strength or yours, that held her back from saving Scion in those final moments?"

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So this is the kind of Theme/Questioning that needs to happen to make your good story a great story. I reckon that this is the difference between -random Star Wars fanfiction- and Ender's Game.

And of course, the ambiguity- the reason why many people think that Worm should have ended at 30.07- is Contessa answering the question- but her answer is left vague. Did she spare Taylor, in the end? Or did she just kill her?

(And even with the epilogues this is still left unclear)

Note that ambiguity is my personal preference- just as many would like concrete endings.

I also really quite dislike 'and so and so has kids and everything is perfect forever' endings due to that. And personally, I disliked the Taylia Rose epilogue.

Firstly- we do not connect with her. While she reveals what happened and everything... well, she's essentially an OC. She didn't go through the 400++ chapter journey with us. She's just summarising the results of Taylor and Amelia's space shark ascension. It's not interesting, at least to me.

What I'd have done, in your place, was to use a character that tied into your themes and wrapped up the theme question while talking a little about the aftermath. Lisa, IMO, would have been perfect- she has a lot of regrets, she's done terrible things(betraying Avalon to go do the Cauldron thing, playing politics and burning people out, etc) and she's been in the thick of the action while not dying herself. The redemption theme, could also crop up here- and maybe a conversation with Emma and Riley- "You're really family now- it's no longer just about being useful to Avalon."

And using an established character for your epilogue also lets you wrap up the important character arcs- a sort of 'this is how far we've come' moment. I believe that's the reason why Imp, Bitch, and Tattle all got Teneral interludes at the end of Worm(as the only core Undersiders still alive at the end). IMO the rest of the Tenerals were mostly set up for Worm 2... but I could be wrong.

tl; dr? Provide a vague answer to your theme/questions, and also use epilogues as a way to wrap up your themes and character arcs rather than just making them extended 'this is how everyone lived happily ever after' segments.

I acknowledge that in fanfiction, you have a rather more limited control over what themes you can explore, inherent to the setting- which is why I'm ranting about this now, when you're starting your own original fiction. Everything here is merely my two cents- do whatever with it. It's mostly just something to think about and chew on while you move into original fiction.

Also, sorry for making this roughly as long as half a chapter of actual story and a hundred times less interesting.

Best of luck for your next projects! Looking forward to them.

 

[TanaNari]

long critique is long

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Not that long. Also highly appreciated. As is the pretty pretty art.

So, I'm here to talk about theme.

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There's a theme? I was just throwing things at a wall and seeing what I enjoyed writing about.

The transhumanist stuff was a definite part of that, and the whole ascending thing that started with basically the first chapter. "Accept and push through". There was also, absolutely, a theme of "not everything comes with a satisfactory resolution for the characters or the readers". I wouldn't say I added hooks with zero intent to finish them. But I did add them with the full awareness that many would be lost in the shuffle.

Note that ambiguity is my personal preference- just as many would like concrete endings.

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I feel the opposite. I am okay with "I'm not sure how I feel about this" ambiguity. But "not being told what happened" is just goddamn lazy. Look at the ending of Sopranos compared to the ending of Pan's Labyrinth. The former's ending ruined the whole damn series. The latter's ending made it one of the best movies ever made *because* of the ambiguity.

Provide a vague answer to your theme/questions

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I hate it when that happens. It ruined the end of Code Geas for me. I asked the questions about humanity, and the sacrificing of it. The audience can find their own answers.

Lisa, IMO, would have been perfect

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Probably. But to be honest, I didn't really want to do epilogues at all. I was almost tempted to keep everything in "spacewhale precognition mode" at the end. Kinda burnt myself out a bit. The lack of appropriately disturbed responses to all the existential horror dumped into this story was a bit disheartening. When you go for "mindrape" and people think "WAFF"... well, yeah. I *like* people coming to their own conclusions, but when I make my characters deliberately try to pretend away the horror, that doesn't mean I want the audience to ignore it as well.

I *tried* not to let it get to me, but I'm only human... really killed my enjoyment of writing this story toward the end there. Dedication and sheer stubbornness is the only reason the last twenty or so chapters even happened. The epilogues were... me running on inertia, basically. I almost never wrote any of them, stopping at "space shark" was a very real possibility.


... Honestly, some of the stuff people have put into the wiki makes me feel a whole lot better. Clearly at least SOME people saw the subtle stuff. I just wish more of them would have bothered to let me know. I would have been much more enthusiastic toward the end, there.

 

[Ack]

Wiki? Or TVtropes page?

If there's a wiki, I need to read it

 

[TanaNari]

Tvtropes *is* a wiki.

 

[evildice]

Tvtropes *is* a wiki.

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Also, Wikipedia is a TVTrope: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Wiki/Wikipedia

 

[LuridThrone]

For what its worth Tana, there are also some of us who embraced the horror. We saw what you did, realized how horrible it could be, but chose to embrace it rather than be horrified. Its neigh impossible to touch singularity concepts in any competent way without evoking horror, but the transhumanist fanclub generally includes a proportionally higher than normal volume of people who would do that sort of thing willingly, if not eagerly. (and some would be frothing at the mouth to get ahead in the line for their chance).

Lisa's position, and the reactions to it, i think paint a very easy example. Shes not wrong, and there are alot of people in the world who would feel that way... such people would be horrified by the things you were evoking in the story, but at the same time, alot of the readers turned on her for them, and the reason for that is that you have alot of transhumanists and/or people with transhuman-positive morals in your readerbase, who verily disagreed with her assessment and the entire ideological framework behind it. Indeed, she probably disturbed us more than the things you were trying to disturb us with, because she actually takes very well the role of the prejudiced baseline-human that typically forms the counterpoint to the transhuman mindset. In effect, you put her in a villainous role, and the fanbase rallied around taylor's position, rather than being disturbed by the implications of mind control, we dug in and defended our champion/s as perfectly acceptable and justifiable.

Thats just one example, similar things crop up elsewhere. Its like a pastor trying to scare his flock with tales of the endtimes... except hes preaching to rapture cultists Its not that we didnt get your subtle stuff, its that we didnt respond the way you expected.

....I hope that helps? *hug*

 

[dasstan]

So, on with the critique. Spoiler'd to avoid making this page super long.

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That is some spot on, insightful shit.

The lack of appropriately disturbed responses to all the existential horror dumped into this story was a bit disheartening.

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[screaming]

I tried.

 

[Coruscant Knave]

I just generally have a hard time taking anything that is supposed to be horrifying seriously. This is especially hard when, as ChaoticSky noted, you disagree with one of the fundamental assumptions necessary for the thing to be horrifying.

Not that there wasn't a whole lot of horror in this story, but a threat like the Entities can justify some crazy shit and still make the result look like a total win.

For the most part I did see much of what you laid out, I just chose to respond with humor and focus on good parts instead of uselessly freaking out.

 

[TanaNari]

For the most part I did see much of what you laid out, I just chose to respond with humor and focus on good parts instead of uselessly freaking out.

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That's actually worse.

Putting so much effort into things and then have them be missed... well, it's not something a writer enjoys. But feeling like it was ignored entirely by those that even did notice? That's not exactly wonderful. I mean, I started this because I enjoy writing and want to improve my skills. That was always the primary goal. But I love it when people catch and talk about the *details* and *themes*.

I finished the story, and am quite proud of that. I simply enjoyed it far less than I might have if (more) people had acknowledged the work and effort I put into the undertone.

 

[Hexed999]

Putting so much effort into things and then have them be missed... well, it's not something a writer enjoys. But feeling like it was ignored entirely by those that even did notice? That's not exactly wonderful.

But, well, I finished the work. I simply enjoyed it far less than I might have if people had acknowledged the work and effort I put into the undertone.

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I can't speak for anyone else but just because I didn't find the body horror themes horrifying doesn't mean that I found them boring, rather I found them quite interesting. I thoroughly enjoyed seeing how far they would push in the name of victory, I just wasn't horrified by it because i agreed with their choices*. Trying to guess if they could come back from the endgame chapters and just how much of them was left was what made the end amazing (I thought they could come back from it more then they did, but that sort of thing is a reoccurring pattern form me), and the concept of "how much of my humanity could I give up and still be me?" question was one of the things I really want to see in Path Magic whenever you get around to it.

In short I enjoyed the existential horror parts, I just didn't freak out because to me they were the right course of action.

*except trying to guess what parts of Victoria's personality changes were due to Passanger influence and what was due to Bonesaw's mods - that was just fun.

 

[TanaNari]

I just didn't freak out because to me they were the right course of action

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See, and I have no problem with that. But it would have been nice to hear it said a bit. At least then it would feel like it was noticed instead of just ignored entirely. It's a matter of seeing feedback- and I rarely felt like I got much of it during the course of Amelia. And what little I did get was mainly about the shipping, which so very much doesn't count.

It's not about wanting to tell my readers what to think- that's just asinine. But I'd like to know that they're thinking at all.

I put a lot of effort into this story, probably about six hours a day for several months- including weekends, which puts this into "more hours than full time job" territory. The idea that I did all that and no one was moved beyond "ooh, that's neat" is disheartening.


Although the part where you have a quote out of my story in your signature is really nice. I can't help but smile a little whenever I notice those floating about.

 

[Daunmi]

But I'd like to know that they're thinking at all.

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Little hard for me to think, but I'll give it a shot.

The lack of appropriately disturbed responses to all the existential horror dumped into this story was a bit disheartening

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When you go for "mindrape" and people think "WAFF"... well, yeah.

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I think I'm a little bit off from most people, because I just didn't see what you wrote as that. To me it didn't come across as a story about questioning identity or mindrape, just change. Which is why I didn't end up finding it all that 'dark' in the end, I guess. Sure, that stuff was in the story, but that's not the main feelings/thoughts I took from it.

For me, it was a good example of change. Because nothing is permanent.

What happened in canon, with the arrival of the Entities, spreading of shards, etc, etc, left the world a broken wreck and influenced people's lives, threw humanity out amongst the multiverse, and changed things forever.

What happened here did the same things, just that in addition to that you've allowed people to find a new form of love and connection, let them laugh in the face of death (to a certain degree), and created new ways of interacting with themselves and each other.

Can you look at communicating through power interactions as a form of mindrape/control/influence? Hell yes you can! But did humans think of that when they started to talk? ... Ok, probably not, because we were pretty damn stupid back then, but I hope you get my point.

But the shards start having a pacifying effect on people who find significant others with shards that match. Kind of like how people with personalities that mesh well can help each other get along with the world. Is it bad that the influence is coming from an outside source? I don't know, I'll go ask a friend of mine who came to me for relationship advice if he minds me helping him out. The shards aren't human? Couples with pets (according to a quick google search so, hey, I could be wrong) go better than ones without.

And of course we should have issues with existential questions. We have them in real life, right here and now, with matters of cloning and transhumanism. But we're not going to stay the same as we are forever, and sooner or later people are going to be using that sort of thing on a day to day basis (or at least often enough that no one even bothers remarking about it). And we'll accept that.

If we get to the point that I can swap out my arm for a robotic one, and then I need a new leg, and my lungs give out and, eventually, they throw my brain into data storage and toss the original one away? At that point in our society it'll just be the way things are done, same as the way we do everything now. Without thinking about it. My idea of self will already match everyone else's because we'll all have grown up not worrying about it.

So I can't feel dread about the actions your characters took, because I see them as something new for the world(s) they live in, something that is change.

Or am I looking at this the wrong way?

 

[TanaNari]

Little hard for me to think, but I'll give it a shot.

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Fair enough. .

Is it bad that the influence is coming from an outside source?

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You're kinda forgetting the part where the outside source is using mind control, which is a little different than what you list there. Be more like the computers in the matrix selecting who you're supposed to love and then forcing you to do so without your consent. Or even, really, awareness.

Which is, y'know, how the freakin' Space Parasite Shards *always* worked. But. Well. Canon Worm kinda barely looks at those details. I tried to highlight it with Amelia.

Eh, I'll make it cleaner in Price, since the pairbonding there is something people will have been aware of for long enough to be part of the general awareness. Not everyone's going to be as accepting of "forced into loving someone through power based mind manipulation" there as here.

For me, it was a good example of change. Because nothing is permanent.

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Fair enough. I was more focused on it as a "next step forward" thing than change in general, but definitely a theme that went into Amelia as a story. No doubt about that.

 

[Coruscant Knave]

That's actually worse.

Putting so much effort into things and then have them be missed... well, it's not something a writer enjoys. But feeling like it was ignored entirely by those that even did notice? That's not exactly wonderful.

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Well, ignored is a bit strong for me specifically. The part you quoted comes after the part where I also mostly didn't have a problem with the stuff considered "horror".

Like, when the cloning backup stuff came out, I commented that it's a bit of a silly argument in my opinion, but that it works here because of Lisa's special circumstances. That was the part I identified with, the tragedy of these friends growing apart, and I do think I commented and that a lot.

I totally get what you mean, though. The sweet nectar of feedback is rare and precious.

 

[AliasBot]

I wish I was better at reading into things. If nothing else, it would probably immensely improve my ability to read older literature, looking for the themes underneath all of the...denseness.

I guess I read wide more than I read deep - making connections to other things rather than really digging into the undertones. And for whatever reason, the subtle mindrape and everything around the cloning business just aren't things I've come across in other media before now, so there was nothing to connect it to in order to be able to say "holy shit, what the fuck, etc."

I did eventually make a connection that put at least the Clone Saga into perspective, although in that case it really was just something that the fans figured out rather than having someone address it within the work. I think I finally figured it out either during the epilogue chapters or just after - a bit too late for it to be relevant, since the clone issue wasn't really at the forefront of things anymore, but hey, while I'm here, might as well go into it a bit:

The clone issue ended up reminding me of Red vs Blue, specifically the 'middle' seasons (6-8). I'm going to go out on a limb and say that you'd probably get what I'm referencing with just the name, but I ended up putting a bit of thought into it, so I might as well go into it anyway: in Reconstruction, Church dies, goes out with a bang helping save the day against the Big Bad. Then Caboose takes Epsilon, a broken fragment of Church, and helps it build an identity. Essentially, he molds it into another Church. Then he brings Epsilon to 'life,' and after a brief period of confusion, absolutely everyone basically just treats him as if he was the same Church they'd known for years, as if nothing had changed. Epsilon is very much a real 'person,' but nobody ever mourned the Alpha: to them, he died, then he came back. It's what he does. Except he didn't, really, and now all of his friends are parading around, acting as if this new person was their dead friend.

It was when someone pointed that out to me that I realized that was exactly what Lisa was seeing this entire time, and just like that, I went from not being able to see her point of view and thinking she couldn't prevent herself from stirring up drama to being able to feel genuine sympathy. I mean, she still couldn't prevent herself from stirring up drama, which could either be chalked up to her as a person or to that whole "mindrape" thing, but at least I was able to understand her point of view. I just wish I'd figured that out much sooner in the story, so I didn't just think of her as, essentially, an antagonist.

...I'm not sure if much of this is actually relevant to the post-story discussion going on, but I've been sitting on the thought for a little while now. Figured I might as well share it while the thread was seeing a bit of activity again.

 

[Lazurman]

...Just suddenly realizing that connection makes all too much sense. And now I has a sad.

 

[Ack]

I think a lot of what seemed to be people ignoring the drama was actually people seeing past it to the human feeling inside.

See, a lot of this body horror/mindrape aspect has two sides to it: what it looks like from the outside, and what it looks like from the inside.

Lisa sees her best friend die, irrevocably. And then she sees a simulacrum of that best friend up and walking around, everyone treating her as the original, and that grates on her. Because as far as she's concerned, that's not her.

But as far as Taylor!2 is concerned, she has continuity of consciousness. She skipped a week, sure, but people who've been badly injured sometimes lose even more time. She's herself. And to explain to her that "you're not who you think you are; that person is dead" would seem a little silly at first. "Of course i'm not dead. I'm right here." If it had not been brought home to her by Lisa's outburst, she would have been perfectly happy as she was.


In the same vein, people undergoing 'mindrape' would be happy enough never knowing that it was caused by outside influences. Falling in love with someone involves outside influences anyway; forcing the feeling just speeds it up some. Yes, from the outside, people are horrified. From the inside, it feels perfectly natural. Case in point: when Taylor had herself modified to be Amy!sexual, I think there was more uproar over how she refused to redo it after Butcher than over the fact that she actually had it done. (Personally, I thought Lisa's and Amy's objections to it were a little contrived). But after the wedding, Amy seduces her, and gets the exact same result, only this time done 'naturally', and no-one, not even Lisa, has an objection.

Also note that throwing too much horror at us kind of desensitises us. It's a natural effect.

Anyway, I still think it was a great story.


EDIT: to give a real-world example:

I grew up on a cattle property. When I was young, friends of my own age were visiting from town. One morning, they accompanied my mother down to watch her milk the cow. They were naturally horrified; 'their' milk came from cartons, not from ... there. For the rest of the stay, they only drank powdered milk.

It's all to do with perception, not reality.

 

[dasstan]

Case in point: when Taylor had herself modified to be Amy!sexual, I think there was more uproar over how she refused to redo it after Butcher than over the fact that she actually had it done. (Personally, I thought Lisa's and Amy's objections to it were a little contrived). But after the wedding, Amy seduces her, and gets the exact same result, only this time done 'naturally', and no-one, not even Lisa, has an objection.

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You understand that their relationship was only feasible at all because they'd been mainlining the mindrape juice for something like two years, right? Lisa isn't about to object because, by that point, she had been drinking deeply from the crazy juice, too.

 

[Daunmi]

You're kinda forgetting the part where the outside source is using mind control, which is a little different than what you list there. Be more like the computers in the matrix selecting who you're supposed to love and then forcing you to do so without your consent. Or even, really, awareness.

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I was under the impression that they were already aware of the mind control, since they were commenting that the shards were settling down and not pushing them to conflict and instead were pushing relationships (that's not a great explanation of it, but it'll do in a pinch).

For that sort of thing, it's a lot like going to a dating website and having it pick out a match (I've never actually done this, so I'm really hoping this is actually what it's like, otherwise this is going to sound way off target!), just with a 'no take backs' clause attached.

Kind of sounds bad from our perspective, but spend a couple hundred years being told that there's aliens who have been matching people up pretty much perfectly and it starts to just be part of the new culture of humanity.

And if I really (and I mean really) stretch it, society and how we grow up already tells us who we're 'supposed' to fall in love with anyway.

Fair enough. I was more focused on it as a "next step forward" thing than change in general, but definitely a theme that went into Amelia as a story. No doubt about that.

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See, I was going to say 'next step' myself, but that sounds kind of pretentious to me when we really have no idea what our next steps will be, so I tried to avoid it.

Since you brought it up, yes. That's what I was taking from it. You nailed it, in my opinion.

For the rest of the stay, they only drank powdered milk.

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"Hey guys, guess where powdered milk comes from."

For the rest of the stay, they only drank water.

 

[evildice]

For that sort of thing, it's a lot like going to a dating website and having it pick out a match (I've never actually done this, so I'm really hoping this is actually what it's like, otherwise this is going to sound way off target!), just with a 'no take backs' clause attached.

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Or just arranged marriages.

Kind of sounds bad from our perspective, but spend a couple hundred years being told that there's aliens who have been matching people up pretty much perfectly and it starts to just be part of the new culture of humanity.

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"Do not call your mother an alien again!"

 

[Ack]

Some people object strenuously to being told what to do.

Some people just want to be told what to do.

Sometimes, they're the same people.