Text, after doing the reading

[fightingevilbymoonknight]

So is there some kind of protocol for what we're supposed to tell people in the story, or not tell them?

At least one person in the last story guessed we'd come there to help with the god death thing and I didn't exactly lie to her, but if there's rules we're supposed to stick to it might be good to know that for the next one.

Comments

[forthosewecherish]

There's been no rules or protocols that I've heard of. It seems most are trying to avoid disrupting the story too much, but that also seems to be personal choice as opposed to the Assistants telling us what to do.

[fightingevilbymoonknight]

We're trying to help them finish a story, aren't we? Doesn't that involve some disrupting?

Have the Assistants told us anything at all?

[forthosewecherish]

[There's a series of dots off to one corner that has the feel of someone tapping their pen for a while before an actual written response.]

There's disrupting and there's finding the people who seem to be playing the roles of the characters in the recommended reading and tying them up for the next two weeks, for example.

I believe some have spoken to the Assistants about things here; hopefully one of them will see your query and be able to weigh in. I don't think it's been yet discussed much.

[fightingevilbymoonknight]

Well I'm not planning on doing that. Do you think it would help?

[This is maybe a little bit a joke, but he doubts he could actually do it. He's the murdering sort, not the kidnapping sort.]

Do they answer people's questions in these notebooks?

[angel_of_baal]

The Assistant Librarians do not seem to much care how the stories end, only that they end. I do not think they care much how we do it.

Though I have tried to reveal myself to someone dear to me, and he knew me not.

[fightingevilbymoonknight]

Yeah the person I talked to was somebody I know, too. She didn't know me, either. It was very weird.

[angel_of_baal]

It is disconcerting. The best one can do is to try to protect them from a distance.

[fightingevilbymoonknight]

I probably made a mess of it by not keeping my distance.

But it seems like it turned out okay. She only tried to kill me when she was going crazy from her god dying, anyway.

[codeswitchcraft]

I think in order not to give the people in the stories existential crises, we ought not tell them they're in stories we are trying to finish.

[fightingevilbymoonknight]

Are they even really stories? Do we know we're not dumped into actual worlds with real histories? How much do we know about what we're even doing?

[codeswitchcraft]

Why can't they be both? Hikaru has told me about a theory called World As Myth, according to which we're all from different stories, because every world is a story.

That said, realizing you are someone's fiction is a recipe for an existential crisis. Trust me on this.

[fightingevilbymoonknight]

Yeah I can believe it.

[He, too, has lived that experience, though from the side of the one breaking the bad news to someone else. He tried to keep it from Steven, but it's hard to keep secrets when you're in the afterlife trying to keep from getting turned to sand.]

I'll be careful about that part. I don't want to give anybody an existential crisis.

not me choosing the wrong post last night you saw nothing (sorry about that)

[lapilliculture]

To an extent it may vary depending on the Story's particular needs. People claiming the patronage of unfamiliar gods certainly stood out.

Not mentioning the weird library is probably a good rule of thumb, provided we have some way to identify each other.

haha I'd wondered a little until I saw the same tag in on the other post XD

[fightingevilbymoonknight]

I don't know saying I'd been guiding a bunch of sheltered scholars from their home library on a tour through the city worked pretty well for me.

Might depend on the place, but big libraries with lots of researchers in them aren't exactly unusual, and it might be a good cover story in some of them.

This is what I get for doing tag-ins at 2 AM...

[lapilliculture]

There is that, I suppose. It'd stand out a bit at home, anywhere other than Corarica, but if it works it works.

[fightingevilbymoonknight]

Corarica? That where you're from?

[Marc knows his world's geography pretty well. He's pretty sure that isn't a place there unless it's a very tiny place.]

[ohaiyo_isekai]

I’ve been avoiding drawing attention to myself by posing as a local, when practical. But there’s no hard and fast rule against revealing yourself, especially to help out bystanders.

I’d just avoid mentioning the Library, not let on we’re a group. Let us be many strange visitors rather than those Library weirdoes.

By the way. If you meet someone whose name is cognate to “a bolt from the blue” or “Mr. Blue Skies,” that’s probably me incognito. Or Acting.

- Hikaru Aozora
光 青空

[codeswitchcraft]

The 'light' part of your name is just as important, I think? Every version of you that I've met had a name that meant 'light,' but the version of you from the first story didn't have the 'blue skies' as part of his name.

[ohaiyo_isekai]

Ah, good point.

光 means "light." So far I've been called Akira and Charalampos, while I chose Lucas as an alias.

...And "Lucas" might make a good alias for this one, too, if it's to be space opera.

I do like Hisako's suggestion of asking if we've heard of the infamous Captain Tylor, assuming there's no one of that name where we're going.

[fightingevilbymoonknight]

I did pretty well with the cover story that I'd been guiding a bunch of sheltered scholars from their big, distant library. It's not like most people don't know that libraries exist with researchers at them, who sometimes make research trips.

I'll remember that though. I'm Marc. Haven't Acted yet and I'm hoping not to.

[steelfeathered]

The first time I was an Actor I was dimly aware of the Library as some distant place. I also remember a Reader walking around asking if he'd met people in a library. In a lot of cases I think some things would be pretty innocuous but you never know what will actually be terrible.

Maybe we should start going into these with code phrases. Find a bulletin board and go "Anyone want to swap stories of the irresponsible Captain Tyler?"

[fightingevilbymoonknight]

Might be easier to find a code phrase that works in more than one story so we don't have to remember a new one each time.

[steelfeathered]

Is it so taxing? They don't happen that often.

[redprayer]

Perhaps next story we should all try to prove the existence of the Library to the people within. The results might be interesting.

[fightingevilbymoonknight]

Might be. Might also wind up being messy. Also how would we prove it?