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File 144521825120.png - (237.73KB , 1024x640 , bfNoty1.png )
95633 No. 95633 ID: 120a13

For all questions, comments and concerns that may or may not concern the reader.
Expand all images
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No. 95634 ID: 3663d3

would like to note that ironically, stellars would be the best at taking out magic resistant enemies due to the chaining effect. a solar would do one big blast which gets negated and by the time they wind up for another one the resistance has recharged. lunars can't reflect anti-magic. but a a stellar can hammer on a single point until the chain causes the magic to burn through the anti-magic and break it.
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No. 95635 ID: fbc59e

Personally I am REALLY hoping we can make some kinda melee spell incase we run into military exos, or worse yet, magical pilots...
That whole 'magical girl in exo-suit' thing could be massive if it takes off in this setting.
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No. 95636 ID: 025c3c

Just wanna say I am really digging this whole magical girls with militaries and mechas thing. It's a great.

Also, I love that you let us roll with getting one of our two potential recruiters to defect with us when we made the "wrong" choice. Having someone along for the ride who believes in us but not the cause or anyone else is gonna be interesting, and way more fun than if we'd left her and she went the scorned lover / betrayed friend (or whatever she is) route.
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No. 95658 ID: 120a13

Whoop. forgot to format the spoiler text. Oh well.

>>95636
I try to cater to the readers best I can. Besides, magical girls kinda defy laws with their magic, right? Least, that's the way I always saw it.

And thank you for the nice comments. Constructive criticism is nice too, if you want to throw pies at me while I'm on a good note.

>>95635
I'll keep it in mind. Still, no plans for it were, or are currently, in the works. Not that it isn't a good idea...

>>95633
I agree. However, magic resistance, which was currently only exhibited by the Great Enemy and its cohorts/offspring, doesn't work by simple bleed off. I'd get more into, but it'll get addressed in time within the story.

Since I haven't said it yet, I'm grateful to anyone who is reading my quest, even if you don't respond at all. I hope to provide a good story for everyone.
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No. 95660 ID: 025c3c

>Constructive criticism is nice too, if you want to throw pies at me while I'm on a good note.
Little early to really have caught anything significant worse criticizing. Uh, in a few parts of the Sunny / Kyoko Q&A, I had to stop and figure who was speaking when they answered, since it was unlabelled dialogue and there weren't always blatant speech-style giveaways or one addressing the other.

>>95635
Finding some way to synergize mechs with magical girls in an interesting challenge, since armor for mobility isn't a good enough trade off. Maybe working together in different roles- artillery and fire support with front line tanks?

>magic resistance, which was currently only exhibited by the Great Enemy
I wonder if there were any bits left over after it exploded. I imagine if anyone got their hands on any remains, there would be research in trying to reverse engineer magic resistant materials.

I wonder if suppression was reverse engineered from the Enemy, or discovered by other means?
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No. 95667 ID: fbc59e

I wonder how clothing is gonna work. I HIGHLY suspect costume design is going to be suuuuper-important even without getting to do a paper doll of it.
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No. 95689 ID: 025c3c

>>95667
Probably even more important to Solars, since they're powered by being divas. But yeah, how we choose to present ourself will affect those who believe in us (our power source), and very likely factor into the development of our powers. If it's all about belief and emotions, choosing an identity / how you define yourself has to be important.

(And even if there's no paper doll, I assume you could always submit fashion sketches).
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No. 95820 ID: 26ac98

On discussing clothing- will we be able to do anything practical with it? For example, put stuff in a back pack, get a jacket grabbed by an enemy, smothering a flame with a coat etc? Or will that not play into it?Not stating a preferance, just curious!
Also @ other readers any oppions on the symbols
? I put them out there because I thought it was important to have an insignia but I don't mean to say those are our only choices- I just wanted to bring the idea up. Thoughts/feedback?
Also @ creator I am really enjoying this quest and I look forward to reading and participating in it every day, can't wait for more! Keep up the good work I'm excited!!
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No. 95822 ID: 12b273

>Symbol Thoughts/feedback?
If we're willing to break the rotational symmetry, the little moon things could be in different phases.

I might also tweak the way the center lines come together, so they form a small central circle instead of a point (like a camera shutter that's just barely open). So you get a little dot of white space in the middle. That way you sort of invoke the ☉ symbol, reinforcing that there's a sun behind the central star and the moons.
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No. 95823 ID: 26ac98
File 144608621971.jpg - (815.59KB , 2448x2448 , Star.jpg )
95823

>>95822
I had trouble executing the idea- I like it but I had trouble pulling it off so I don't know if this is going to be the vibe you were aiming for
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No. 95824 ID: 12b273
File 144608739891.jpg - (381.51KB , 1484x1484 , cheap edit.jpg )
95824

I really just meant a simple change like this (assuming the center blade bits could iris out a little).
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No. 95826 ID: 7a6915

Meh, fine, what do we want to be our cause? I like the idea of peace, love, prosperity and standing up for the oppressed but that might be a little too *communist* for some people. Do we have alternate proposals?
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No. 95827 ID: 26ac98

>>95824
tbh I like that better

>>95826
Communism for the win; personally I'm all for the ideas of uniting the people and ending the rebellions by finishing them- stop the court, bring prosperity, find balance for all, reconciling the needs of the people with whatever it is that drives the court. That's my end game and where I see this leading at least partially- after all we DID join a rebellion
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No. 95828 ID: 12b273

>>95826
Personally, I'm hoping we get to learn a little more about the people we've signed on with before we declare a cause.
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No. 95829 ID: 26ac98

it seems like the clothing suggestions are all over the place- don't be afraid to just take some ideas and choose a look. Suggestions guide the quest but ultimately you're the quest makers and get the final say in how stuff goes down. Don't be afriad to choose for a fractured audience
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No. 95920 ID: 26ac98

honestly I'm loving the fact that the second we were alone with Annette everyone's just like "WE LOVE YOU DON'T BE SAD" just like unanimously trying to reassure her
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No. 95923 ID: 3663d3

cheering someone up is one thing, saying we want to spoon is another.
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No. 95924 ID: 12b273

>>95920
Well, we do have a literal magic connection to her head telling us just how much we mean to her and how hurt she by all this. (Even if we lack the context to qualify that connection).
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No. 95925 ID: 120a13

Figure, since I apparently suck at including these in the actual quest thread, I'll throw these here for anyone who cares, they'll be short little things really, just so people have an idea of what a character looks like.

Annette Barker stands just shorter than Lily, though at times she appears taller thanks to still frequently using her military boots in place of civilian footwear. Slender and physically not very intimidating, she's none the less fairly muscular, suggesting frequent physical exertion and activity. Her naturally sandy blonde hair is generally tied up into a ponytail since her defection from the Court, and she can generally be found wearing common jeans and a button up shirt of varying colors. Green eyes are the most striking feature of her face, which is generally pleasant to look at, though Annette is best described as pretty rather than beautiful. She holds herself confidently, and while her clothing may not be that of the Court, her bearing and aura suggest a military background of some kind.
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No. 95926 ID: 120a13

Also, if anyone wants to request a certain character for description, I'll take those. I wasn't going to do any in a specific order, but I'm better at focusing when given a bit of direction, otherwise it'll take me ages to get anything done.
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No. 95937 ID: 26ac98

can we get a little more in depth look at our service mech and the battle mech and the differences/what they look like?
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No. 95939 ID: 7a6915

>>95923
I was thinking that forgetting who we were and who she was is most painful in two cases: Adoptive family-level friendship, and significant others (possibly married). What are the odds that someone would follow their friend into defection from everyone else they know, versus if it's their wife?

Also, what do Kaguya, Sunny and Emmett look like?
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No. 95940 ID: 12b273

>>95926
Probably should start with our protagonist. Don't think she got a good look at herself, unless I missed it.

(Although if there's a mirror in the room, it would be pretty easy to work into the narrative right now, since she's about to dress and put herself in order).
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No. 95953 ID: 120a13

>>95937

Servo-Mechs are much smaller than an Exo-Mech. Generally standing at roughly six feet in height, they generally appear humanoid, though they are much thinner than a human would be and are quite obviously made of metal.

Exo-Mechs are on average twice as tall, standing roughly twelve feet in height. It might be easier to imagine them as more akin to powered armor then an actual mech, however the machine itself has a chest cavity the pilot is seated in, and generally Exo-Mechs are built for mobility and agility over raw armor and strength. This means that many exo-mechs appear more like frameworks around a person then actual armored machines. Exact specifics vary wildly from machine to machine, depending on its specifications and loadout. Military exo-mechs do tend to be slightly bulkier, however, sporting more firepower and better systems overall than civilian ones.

More specific questions I'm more than open to.

>Also, what do Kaguya, Sunny and Emmett look like?

I'll work on these next then, at least for putting here.

>>95940

A wonderful idea. Hope you don't mind me stealing it.
>>
No. 95960 ID: 7a6915

>A wonderful idea. Hope you don't mind me stealing it.
Error: Can't steal what was already given to you unless you give it to someone else first and steal it from them. :)

Also, with regards to direction you've gotta give us a little as well or else we're all lost. I can help you with that:
-Answer for yourself what levels of explicitness/involvement you'd like in your quest regarding violence, gore and sexuality. Different suggesters have different preferences for these things so it should really be the quest runner's choice.
-Amnesia can be a useful plot and character device to keep a protagonist from having preferences and personality that clashes with your audience, but if the players and the perspective character are largely ignorant of what's going on the suggesters may have too little to respond to, or difficulty determining and agreeing on goals and priorities. Right now with the start we've got this far your quest could be a variant edition of Princess Maker, or we could be a magical girl reprise of J.C. Denton from Deus Ex right after his firing from UNATCO, or a bunch of other different things depending (particularly) on how annoying, dangerous, focused, and widespread our enemies are.
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No. 96039 ID: 120a13

To describe Kaguya in a word is to describe a more traditional idea of a magical girl looks: Frilly.

Very much playing to the archetype, Kaguya is dressed in what can only be described a frilly, with a short frilly skirt that seems to flutter with every move she makes. The most prominent of her articles of clothing is the obi that is tied elegantly around her waist. The sash glimmers frequently with splashes of silvery light that seem to run along and through the piece of cloth, leaving what can only be described as a trail of luminescent light behind her that lingers briefly before vanishing entirely from sight.

Otherwise, the woman seems to be a fairly beautiful woman, though hints of magic stain her features in ways you can't quite place. She is clearly of Japanese descent, her long black hair and facial appearance being prominent displays of her heritage. She is similar in height to Annette, standing only just shorter than Lily, though she appears to be of even slimmer build than Lily's aide. Still, despite her appearance, something about her tells of a quiet sort of confidence, and the magical energy that comes off her only backs up her confidence.
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No. 96128 ID: 86cfc3

Okay, if we're gonna go on keeping our realname™ secret, we really need to come up with some kind of alias already.

We don't really have an established ethnicity or cultural background to work from, so I guess I'm searching for some kind of a theme or idea to use to pick a name with.

Stella is latin for star, obviously. (And I'm not sure if it's significant that our divine name is latin or from a dead language as opposed to something else).

Lily is English (obviously) and a flower (obviously) though the actual significance apparently varies a lot with color and context.

Iridium, the element, is named for the greek goddess of the rainbow (due to colors). That fits our connection theme in a way (one whole made from many strands, as we unite and draw stregth from many connections). Perhaps more significantly Iris was a divine messenger. (And also, incidentally, another flower).


Hmm. If we're sticking in Tokyo for a while, and we want to use local naming conventions, Ayame means iris. (Works as an obvious alias, although I'm not sure it's good enough for a hero-name).
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No. 96131 ID: e649e0

>>96128
I specifically didn't want to use a made-up name with these people because it's important that they get there's a reason not to have records--whether under a pseudonym or not--about us. What do you think is gonna happen when we have to leave Tokyo and The Court starts digging into our activities looking for clues? Sad though it may be, everybody is safer if they don't have a file on us, and we need to communicate that clearly by telling them not to use any name for us or create any files on us.
Once they understand that, if we're invested enough to try to make a connection with them, we're in: A relationship will need trust, and that requires disclosure. At that point we tell them we were Lady Iridium, and ask them about aliases.
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No. 96132 ID: 88960e

>>96131
I don't think it's actually possible to work with a group and not have them hold information on you. Nevermind that our power requires us to form connections with many people- and a lack of any name is a barrier to trust and/or relatebility.

That and the bullshit mumbo jumbo title actually makes us more noteworthy than if we'd just given him a name.

We *need* a casual alias for interacting with regular people, and those we don't know personally well enough to trust with our real name. We need a face for followers to trust in, and faces have names.
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No. 96136 ID: e649e0

>>96132
I suppose this depends on the question of how realistic the setting is. I'm assuming that The Court runs whole-internet filters and searching because they can, like the NSA does right now and most other countries are trying to (and have varyingly succeeded at). If they are, then I doubt using an alias helps anyway because they only have to figure out that alias is us once and they can go back through everybody's message transcripts, search histories and TwitFace feeds looking for it. That's the fundamental problem of an alias: Even if it's not openly calling ourself 'Lily Iridium' it still is a handle which people can connect to our total identity.
If we accept my assumption of XKeyScore = 1 here, the nonexistent security afforded by an alias gets outweighed by letting people know that we are a person of interest to The Court and the trust- and reputation-damage through the use of a made-up name. In that case dodging the use of our name is much, much smarter than making an alias.
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No. 96137 ID: 88960e

I don't think hiding our real name from the Court will be the issue, long term. We enlisted, they have records on us. When they see us in action and the right information gets passed up the chain of command, they will connect our new identity with our legal name. (And/or whatever our codename was as a Court magician). We can delay that, but there's no realistic way to prevent that if we're going to be active as a magical girl.

For the moment, we're just looking to not ping any word filters, not make it easy for any new acquaintances to look us up, and to not give any new enemies an easy means to retaliate on any relatives we may have. (The fact Anette doesn't seem concerned about the eventuality of the Court retaliating in this fashion even though they know who we are suggests they may not employ this tactic. Possibly that's a line too far in magical girl culture, to the point where it's not worth the breach of trust or morale in their own forces to cross? That or Anette believes we have no one left to retaliate against).

But it is *really* not gonna be possible to operate without any name. We need to talk to people (and we can't tell every shopkeeper or civilian we interact with we're She Who Cannot Be Named). If we don't name ourselves, the media will name us themselves when we make the news. We just need a handle to be addressed by. The bar's not even very high. (Looking at you, "Sunny").

And being really weird or evasive all the time instead of giving false name(s) will leave curious people who might go looking for their own answers. That leaves a kind of trail the NSA type surveillance you're worried about could pick up on.
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No. 96148 ID: e649e0

>>96137
>The fact Anette doesn't seem concerned about the eventuality of the Court retaliating in this fashion even though they know who we are suggests they may not employ this tactic.
God grant me the serenity To accept the things I cannot change; Courage to change the things I can; And wisdom to know the difference.
Why worry about it if you can only make things worse by trying to do something? The Court not using that tactic does make sense: Rule one of trying to win an asymmetric war without using the final solution is to avoid recruiting for the enemy by attacking neutral/uninvolved parties. Unless they're crazy or their leadership has been captured by lobbyists they're probably trying to win.

>That leaves a kind of trail the NSA type surveillance you're worried about could pick up on.
Mass-scale searching and surveillance is automated because there's far too much stuff to look through to do any manual analysis. Judging by the fact that the world is not obviously run by AIs, there isn't any AGI capable of doing complicated searches and interpretation, like following that trail you pointed out. You'd need trained agents to follow that, which may or may not be reasonable for The Court in this area.
What mass surveillance is good at is simple stuff like keyword searches. There's surprisingly little mass surveillance can do besides tracking records by name and keyword, and activity-analysis to see who openly talks to whom. It's mostly useful for making dossiers of acquaintances, opinions, preferences and blackmail material on normal people instead of tracking criminals, revolutionaries, cranks and luddites.
The open question is biometrics and DNA-matching. Guessing by the fact that a resistance exists, biometrics has been defeated by a combination of the false-positive problem, the regular-variation problem, and people not cooperating with having DNA-readers in public places which report to The Court.
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No. 96149 ID: 86cfc3

You're still avoiding the real issue that it is massively impractical to interact with people without providing any kind of name, if not impossible to function as a public, focal leader as we need to in order to power our Stellar nature.

That and magical girls getting into public fights with the world government and each other is the kind of things that make the local news. It's big, it's flashy, it probably causes property damage, and it sure seems like people treat the girls themselves as celebrities. Unless we somehow avoid media attention all together, they'll end up giving us a name or title if we don't adopt one ourselves.

Look, I just want to brainstorm names. I'm interested in if anyone has ideas about theming, or feedback on what I was spouting before. We're gonna need a 'hero name', and possibly a civvy alias (unless we think we can safely be 'Lily' in public when we're not costumed up).

>only good for keyword searches
Current analytic can be used for making predictions about people or groups of people based off their searches or history. If we left behind a trail of curious people in a constrained area making say, searches for an unknown whose description matches known suppression side effects (or making reverse image searches) that's a pattern a court web-bot might be trained to pick up on. (Especially if they own or control whoever runs this world's google-equivalent).

...one real possibility might be that networking tech could be nowhere near as developed or established as it is in our reality. We don't have an exact timeline, but they blew it and North America up decades ago. And we're a third gen magical girl, and The Enemy would have appeared with the first gen. We don't know how bad it was when the enemy was active, but that could have diverted infrastructure and research focus on different tracks. And blowing up the US in say, the eighties (if we assume this is an alternate present), would certainly have altered the deployment / development of the internet. Digital spying might be much more difficult or impractical if the world isn't as networked together.
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No. 96166 ID: e649e0

>We're gonna need a 'hero name', and possibly a civvy alias (unless we think we can safely be 'Lily' in public when we're not costumed up). >If we left behind a trail of curious people in a constrained area
We've got a name, Lily Iridium, and pretending to not be her won't work. If and when we go out we will be stared at because we're a pretty albino girl with Stellar charm, those are rare and eye-catching. You seem to be missing that I'm saying, "Don't submit fingerprints and a DNA sample," and, "Don't do things that would have people ask us for ID or our full name." An alias can't hide us, won't hide us, and is worse than not having one for multiple reasons. Plus, what are we going to do with one anyway, get a nine-to-five desk job, a car, and a mortgage? Instead, we should avoid public places, displays, and things that would have people asking our full name until it is time to build our legend.

For the technical speculation, there has to be something like the internet here. Leaving aside that we were probably handed a smartphone instead of just a cellphone, we've got a general-purpose robot, and there are battlemechs walking around. We barely have primitive general purpose robots in our world: Personal scale computing has to be at least as good as it is in our world for those, and the network has to be really good to push all the programming updates for bug fixes and tasks not in the base set. In contrast, fibre optics has been around for over a hundred and fifty years, and the internet has existed since the 1950s. It's more than a decade older than integrated circuits, its developmental history was mostly straightforward, and it could have been public much quicker with less politics in the way. Whatever country had the early lead in electronics and telecommunications technology would have invented something very similar and probably made it public similarly too, or another country would have. The basic idea of a distributed communications network with no central point of failure and cheap running costs is something every military wants until it gets one and discovers they also want encryption, authentication, access control and other security measures too.
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No. 96170 ID: 86cfc3

>We've got a name, Lily Iridium, and pretending to not be her won't work.
Ignoring the fact that it has been shown to work for the other magical girls we interact with, and the fact that it is standard practice for both rebels and Court Mages not to use their own names when in costume, to the point Annette was outraged / scandalized we almost let our real name slip when the question was raised.

>You seem to be missing that I'm saying
>Plus, what are we going to do with one anyway, get a nine-to-five desk job, a car, and a mortgage?
I want to be able to talk to an employee of a shop or store, a server at a restaurant, a mechanic at a mech pit, or just a regular person on the street, without either having to give a name that gives reason for extra attention or alarm, or to awkwardly avoid giving one in a way that raises attention if the subject of what to call us comes up.

I want to define ourselves before we get involved in a fight and the media dubs us "The Orange Beret" or "Albina: The Stellar Ghost" or some other terrible thing.

This isn't about making it impossible to ID us (that is massively unfeasible). It's about convenience. (And to some degree, working with the conventions and expectations of people around magical girl culture).

>until it is time to build our legend.
We're Stellar, not Solar.

>For the technical speculation, there has to be something like the internet here.
Yes, but it doesn't have to be worldwide, connected, or as open as it is here. What technology is capable of, and what infrastructure / culture developed are two very different things. We have a (reasonably) open 'net, and it's development was fostered by a superpower. Things could look very different in a world divided by a years or decades long fight against an alien intrusion, or in a world subsequently divided by power struggles in the vacuum when a superpower collapsed and there was no non-human enemy to oppose, or by paranoia as a magic-based world government slowly took over.
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No. 96198 ID: e649e0

>>96170
I looked up the relevant quotes. I did miss a different reason we may need an alias, but I still disagree about the reasons you give being appropriate now. It's somewhat complicated, and I could put it in a hierarchical outline for more clarity, but here it is in plain English:
There is one thing an alias would be useful for at this point, if Lily Iridium is our actual name. Then it would hide our family, friends and background. I'm 99% sure that's the secrecy issue Annette was insistent about, and it is serious.
Because that is a valid reason to use an alias we may have to think about it. I'd start by finding out our old one and considering it: There's likely a hit of memories we'd get just for knowing it, and it may have some power we can use too. If it turns out we don't want to use that one then I'm gonna caution against using a Japanese name because, "Lily Iridium," probably isn't Japanese. What we should use depends on what Lily's nationality and ancestry are, we want something that makes sense both as an actual name and a public name. I.E. if it turns out we're Greek, "Aphrodite Asteri," or, "Iris Asteri," would make sense.

Your skin is incredibly pale, like it had been devoid of sunlight for a very long time, and you notice your hair, falling to just between your shoulder blades, seems to be stark white. You run a hand through it a moment, frowning, since you are fairly certain that isn't normal.
The 'normal things' you want to use an alias for won't fly, because we look like magic. To go do those things we need to level up our magic disguise powers first so that we can go incognito without either skulking in the sewers with rebels, another Caelestis Bellator guide plus distraction like Kaguya, or... maybe two hours in the makeup chair, a false identity, more acting lessons than we can cram in two months, a guide, and backup for the other problems that's just not good enough to handle. Even with a really good fake identity and disguise, if we use it more than once it becomes a trail The Heaven Court will follow, so that's still a bad idea. Instead, we need to learn about the state of the world and settle on our cause as soon as possible to get our disguise magic. Paradoxically, by the time we get that disguise magic we may be okay with flying around town openly to go visit people.
Once we have a cause we can figure out the rest of our identity and intentionally make a debut. I'd prefer that option to getting forced into the spotlight unprepared.

>until it is time to build our legend. >We're Stellar, not Solar.
Stellars are causes, so the more you represent your cause, and promote people's belief and support of that cause, the more power you'll draw in to augment your own abilities.
You're right, we're not a Solar, we're a, 'cult leader,' remember? How will we make a connection with dozens, hundreds, thousands, or even more people? That goes well beyond Dunbar's Number when we're successful, it's not possible without fame of some kind. Before we go hiring a publicist and a webmaster, I say we should start by building an ideal of what we do and what we stand for, and spend time attempting to actually achieve this ideal. That'll help people believe in us and what we're doing when we don't spend time with them every day.

>For the technical speculation, there has to be something like the internet here. >Yes, but it doesn't have to be worldwide, connected, or as open as it is here. >We have a (reasonably) open 'net, and its development was fostered by a superpower.
The internet's worldwide adoption was not pushed by American imperialism, it was pushed by academic internationalism: Tim Berners-Lee was part of CERN when he invented HTML in 1989, and I don't think Switzerland is part of the US empire. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, I'd imagine that research and non-military technology usually crosses borders.
You're right that the internet they have probably isn't the same. There are probably a lot fewer NSA backdoors and much better computer security, maybe there's a 'great firewall' around every country to help shut down foreign crack attempts, spam and botnets. People almost certainly still have MyFace feeds full of personal information, gossip, and pictures of 'interesting things' they saw. That means Heaven Court probably can easily find pictures of us online from each time we go out in public, months or even years after the fact, if we don't have a really good disguise. I'd be really disappointed in their intelligence division if they don't have an analysis department devoted to sorting out every picture of a Caelestis Bellator online, and fail to notice us within a week of our public debut.
>>
No. 96202 ID: 86cfc3

>Because that is a valid reason to use an alias we may have to think about it. I'd start by finding out our old one and considering it
Learning our old codename is trivial. We either ask Annette what it was, or we wait till the inevitable first time we end up facing a Court mage who knows us and calls us out by that name.

I don't think we should use our old codename, though. Whoever or whatever cause our old hero-identity represented, it's very likely not the same cause we're representing now. We've passed an inflection point, and if our magical identity largely exists as a symbol, we might as well reflect that.

>The 'normal things' you want to use an alias for won't fly, because we look like magic.
That depends on how well the general public would recognize we look like magic. It makes sense for Annette to recognize our symptoms for what they were in her position, but we don't know if our appearance will mean anything to a layperson. Especially if the Court tightly controls suppression and information about it, which I suspect they might.

Granted our appearance is still striking, but there are magical and mundane means to mitigate that.

>>until it is time to build our legend. >We're Stellar, not Solar.
>You're right, we're not a Solar, we're a, 'cult leader,' remember?
It's just that legends tend to be the subjects of societies or cultures, which isn't our scale. We want an organization / structure united around us, not a population inspired by us. We depend on the structures of the group or strength of the idea they unite around into to spread our connections beyond the smaller circle we can maintain personally. Sort of an intermediary.

I'm probably snipping at terminology here, but legend feels too much like the purview of the cultural hero, while we're shooting to be more the boss, or the crusader. Something tied to a knit unit.

>I'm gonna caution against using a Japanese name because, "Lily Iridium," probably isn't Japanese
The only real reason to use a Japanese name is as an obvious use-name. Like when you call tech support and a cheerful Indian man tells you to call him Steve. I know he's not a Steve, he knows he's not a Steve, but it's a transparent communication facilitator. In this case it's giving people a handle while sort of admitting "yes I'm not from here but I don't want to address that". Which strikes me as perhaps not an uncommon position as a free city bordering a police state- there must be some established immigrant population of refugees / escapees. Or a city rebuilt after the loss of old Tokyo. (Or I guess the other excuse would be if we turned out to be from somewhere where the language is challenging for the locals. Icelandic, say?).

>I say we should start by building an ideal of what we do and what we stand for, and spend time attempting to actually achieve this ideal
I agree wholeheartedly there. Our first priority is to decide what we want to stand for and build from there. Scouting the local groups is a step in this- see what ideas people are already fighting for, and if any of them are compatible, or something we can build from.

>1989
Honestly, I was assuming a world where north America blew up rather earlier than that, when the loss of the US military's and/or universities would have been more of a setback. But yeah.

Honestly, the biggest potential roadblock is if development decentralized and continued in parallel enough that you get a mess of non-compatible standards, sort of like the power grids.
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No. 96212 ID: e649e0

>That depends on how well the general public would recognize we look like magic.
Disguising yourself might not be important. It's a known side effect of Suppression, though most put into suppression haven't come out. You'll be noticeable to some degree. Still, people dye their hair all the time, and you can just as easily play it off as a personal choice.
I don't want to rely on, "Might not be important," and think a chalk-white foreigner is too much, especially since we actually are magic with Stellar charm. More importantly, even if the person we're talking to isn't weirded out by it we're still strange enough folks would gawk and/or take pics and post them online, which is problematic. Maybe what we want to look like is one of the trendy, subculture-following young ladies who look strange because they want to look strange... and are therefore usually ignored by everybody who isn't part of the subculture and fandom. That at least has potential as a hilarious way of hiding in plain sight. Is, 'elegant gothic lolita,' still popular?

>Learning our old codename is trivial. >Whoever or whatever cause our old hero-identity represented, it's very likely not the same cause we're representing now. >The only real reason to use a Japanese name is as an obvious use-name.
We don't know right now, and Annette isn't right here to ask at the moment. It might be close enough to be worth using, or far enough to be worth defining ourself in opposition. The same cause will also work differently with different allies and methodology, it may not have been the cause that was the problem previously: If our cause was previously peace, love and the end of poverty, for instance, that may have had severe conflicts with us being on the Heaven Court team. Y'know, the power fluctuations mysteriously happening whenever they assassinated folks, starved people, bombed stuff, and other similarly violent asshole type things.
If you want to give the guy we're talking to an obviously fake-name like that there's no reason to go as far as a last name, or call ourself anything more complicated than, "Aya." Yes, I know that folks in Japan tend to refer to people formally by their family names instead of personal names, but making up an entire alias for talking to Japanese people is too much like building a second identity for talking to Japanese people. That is bad for having a consistent persona to go with our cause and how we represent it.
Even if we are Icelandic there's gotta be something we can use that'll work fine though, just going by the fact that, "Lily Iridium," would work beautifully if it weren't our actual name. Considering how Icelandic names tend to be, we pretty much have proof we're not that... although what our name is remains difficult to pin down. "Iridium," is a name made up by an Englishman in the 19th century out of the name of a Greek goddess, so assuming we have the same nationalities in our world as this one my best guess is that, "Lily Iridium," is some kind of Anglosphere made-up name. If that's the case, how about, "Violet Spectra?"

>I'm probably snipping at terminology here, but legend feels too much like the purview of the cultural hero, while we're shooting to be more the boss, or the crusader. Something tied to a knit unit.
Frankly, insisting on just a tight-knit unit is severely limiting. Let's explain this by example, for cause of, "Peace, love and the end of poverty." To make significant achievements along those lines we would get further with volunteers and donations, in addition to having just more fanatical followers, so a full scale legend like Che Guevara or Ghandi had would be useful and appropriate. That would also have pretty damn high prospects for overall advancement, and lots of followers of both the lightly involved and more intensely (fanatically) involved kinds when we're successful, perhaps millions.
Other causes would have other ways to exemplify them, other forms of outreach and peripheral involvement, other forms of core organization and different difficulties of course. If we were to become NRA-chan for instance, trying to sling a bandolier of grenades and a loaded automatic weapon on every shoulder, that would... would... damnit, I need at least two more shots of the hard stuff before I try to think that one through.

>Scouting the local groups is a step in this- see what ideas people are already fighting for, and if any of them are compatible, or something we can build from.
I have a small quibble with that, in terms of the fact that as a magical girl we should really be fighting on behalf of humanity against its enemies. Right now that's Heaven Court and selfish people who are at war with them because they want the power to threaten, destroy and oppress others. I fully expect my cause proposal would bother a bunch of the rebels for good and noble reasons worth fighting for. I concede that we should at least know what the factions are and how many kill lists each potential choice lands us on before we commit to anything.

>1989 I was assuming a world where north America blew up rather earlier than that, when the loss of the US military's and/or universities would have been more of a setback. But yeah. >Honestly, the biggest potential roadblock is if development decentralized and continued in parallel enough that you get a mess of non-compatible standards, sort of like the power grids.
Did you know that the Soviet Union had their own computing industry and personal computers too? Nobody remembers because they were far enough behind that when the Iron Curtain fell nobody used the stuff anymore except for a few legacy installations. Remember, in 'internet time' five years old is positively fossilized, and it used to be the case that a computer that's five years old would have a tenth the RAM and storage space and something like a hundredth the FLOPS and INTOPS speeds as a current model at the same market tier. That brand-new, same-tier upgrade would have a lower raw sticker price compared to when the old one was new too. Also, consider how the enduring usage of 'Wintel' computing for many, many years was due to the fact that both the hardware and the software was much, much cheaper than Mac, and their large user-base meant that lots of third-party companies made and sold software that increased the value of those systems. The cheapness of that hardware would eventually intersect with the Free Software/Open Source software movements to create Linux, and Apache, and most of the other software the internet currently runs on because it is available for free.
Over time most folks around the world standardized on Wintel/PC computers and the American internet not because it was the greatest, but because it was internationally-available, the cheapest, with the most software and the fastest upgrades. Thanks to economy of scale in manufacturing and software development, selling the most means being able to be the cheapest, the patterns in market and technological development drive monopolies in hardware and software at the cheapest scales. Contrary attempts at enforcing parochial standards would ultimately fail: Either the governing body behind them would give up and give in, or the country with the incompatible standard would fall behind in the development and affordability curves because of economy of scale and interoperability issues. It all adds up to one internet, absolutely in a world with various premium computing and networking options available too, but just one internet.
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No. 96239 ID: 86cfc3

>that may have had severe conflicts with us being on the Heaven Court team. Y'know, the power fluctuations mysteriously happening whenever they assassinated folks, starved people, bombed stuff, and other similarly violent asshole type things.
Assuming we're right that it's a crisis of faith that was causing the fluctuations, they should only have been evident when Lily was aware of untoward things (so the connection to the cause / idea was damaged from her end) or when the people she drew power from was aware to damage the connection from their end. Assuming a military that operates on need to know, and assuming we'd want a large number of followers who are spread out a bit, sharp or frequent swings don't seem likely. Unless we were getting way more information than we should, or most of our pool of power sources was exposed.

The major sticking point remains that if the symptoms of doubt or disbelief were that striking you'd really expect the world's largest organization of magical girls to know and recognize them. I suppose sticking the unbelievers on cold storage before they break with you on the pretense of 'medical care' could be their standard practice for dealing with it. Or maybe they deliberately try to induce permanent memory loss? (Say, if we'd stayed under as long as they intended). Still feels like the pieces don't really fit, though.

>[for] an obviously fake-name like that there's no reason to go as far as a last name
No, there's not. Neither of our other limited sample of magical girls bothered to use an alias more than one name long for their costumed identity, either. (Aya's a reasonable casual false name, I think, if we need one).

>although what our name is remains difficult to pin down
One likely explanation for the odd name would be the upheaval and reshuffling of people caused by the conflict with the Enemy. Iridium strikes me as a name someone chose for themselves after moving / being forced to move or being naturalized somewhere. I expect we're probably descended from someone who was displaced.

>Violet Spectra?
Hmm. Too on the nose, I think.

>Did you know that the Soviet Union had their own computing industry and personal computers too?
I was thinking more along the lines they didn't have arpanet when the US first did.

Obviously the later on in the timeline you blow up one location the less the targeted impact it has on a specific technology. And obviously what can be done by one can be redone by another. The interesting hypothetical here is more if you blow up an idea the first time it happens: how long does it take someone else to have the same idea? Predicting when and where someone will have a specific insight in different conditions.

That and more than the US's direct involvement in the technology, when you outright remove a superpower from the international community, it affects how the remaining international community interacts. That's a huge potential mess for international collaboration, depending on how things shake out. (Possibly the most chaotic outcome would be if the US blew up close to the time the USSR broke up, so there's an even bigger international power vacuum. Although the very fact there would have been an external Enemy to contend with would have altered the USA / USSR situation to begin with).

Although however the power vacuum went, the Court obviously eventually stepped in as the new world government. (The question relevant to the present would be what their rules are for international involvement. Could be anything from a much bigger version of an EU-like open border setup across their territory to keeping individual countries / territories locked down as much as possible, so you got smaller boxes to control).
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No. 96245 ID: baef2f

Something we may wanna think of is the trick they use in HP- instead of trying to hide Harry they just make too many Harrys to find the real one. If we just have a bunch of people we recruit to pretend to be use (like thousands rather than like 10) then we could use our name and still stay relatively hidden.
I have to say when I heard that we represent a cause the first things that come to mind are titles- "Commander" Shepard, "Inquisitor", Furor, Pope, President, Empress etc. Rather than need an allias, it might be best if we have a name that represents our organization and the causer we champion, something like "The Peacekeeper" or something like that. A title that can be recognized, spoken, and isn't personal to us therfore getting away from the solar conflict. A title means and represents something, and anyone can carry the title, so it's not relevant to you. A title means something and represents our cause without making it about us . Thoughts?
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No. 96247 ID: d9d287

>>96239
>Assuming we're right that it's a crisis of faith that was causing the fluctuations, >Still feels like the pieces don't really fit, though.
We don't know what our previous cause was, how we represented it, who followed the cause generally, and more specifically who followed us and our ideal. If the cause was the victory, legitimacy and morale of the Heaven Court against all the rebels I could see that crashing like a meteor at times, particularly when fucking up an important mission, and critically so if we ever became disillusioned with the mission. This hypothesis is only scarcely-supported speculation, though.

>Neither of our other limited sample of magical girls bothered to use an alias more than one name long for their costumed identity, either.
I still stand by my recommendation for a singular alias (I.E. would be plausible for a full name and we use it as one), and one reason for it is because I do not have the chutzpah to name us something like, "Sunny," "Cher," or "Bono." Real world famous people who get away with just one name tend to be known for overinflated egos, so that's just asking for trouble when we're already a flying weapon the equal of many men at our weakest.

>I expect we're probably descended from someone who was displaced.
Plausible, and it doesn't disagree with it being from somewhere in the Anglosphere because the majority of the hits I get for, "Iridium," that aren't about the metal are institutions and products with the English language as their primary language. It's fair to guess that the ancestry could easily come from almost anywhere else, like a name made by a new-American hiding their roots to fit in better. A slim body type, back-length hair and a literal whitewashing of pigmentation isn't much to go on.

>Violet Spectra? >Hmm. Too on the nose, I think.
Bah, you're no fun. The stars probably aren't aligned right for us to use, "Helena Penelope Lovecraft," so time to keep trying. "Violet Corona," and "Astra Copernicus," are probably too spacey. "Terra Incognita," is at least a little more grounded but probably way too mysterious. If we don't mind breaking the rules about nationality I'm kinda amused by the notion of calling ourself, "Ivanova Mohorovičić," (Ivy for short), but even if it's not bad to pronounce it would quickly become a crushingly unfunny joke that nobody gets the spelling and accents right... potentially a source of a volcanic temper.
Help, I'm trying to come up with a good joke for our name and I keep finding bad ones.

>The interesting hypothetical here is more if you blow up an idea the first time it happens: how long does it take someone else to have the same idea? >That's a huge potential mess for international collaboration, depending on how things shake out.
For the first part, the idea of the internet wasn't terribly novel when it first came about. The largest reason why there wasn't already something like that was because of the profit motive and the fact that during the utility creation period of the 19th and 20th centuries they all were created as for-profit ventures: It's really hard to bill for internet usage without immense automation involved, beyond merely a basic monthly fee, and it's still questionable even then. By the time the US military decided they wanted to build one the existing monopolies and industry-trusts didn't want to disturb their gravy trains, and dragged their feet when being offered money to build it. That kind of private sector delay to favour their existing products/monopolies was one of the reasons the Internet took as long as it did to reach the consumer market, such delays occurring multiple times along the timeline.
For the second part, we don't have the beginnings of enough information about the nature of geopolitics, worldwide import/export patterns and current economics to guess. We don't know what shape, extent, or openness the 'rebellion' against Heaven Court takes beyond the apparent fact of New Tokyo rating ambassadors and not being under their control. I'd imagine it's mostly an asymmetric warfare phenomenon with little openly-separate territory, mostly based locally, judging from the talk about magical girl numbers/allegiances and the description of most of Japan either being contested or firmly under Heaven Court control. We don't know if any territory is solidly supportive of Heaven Court, or if instead most of it is.

>>96245
>A title means and represents something, and anyone can carry the title, so it's not relevant to you. A title means something and represents our cause without making it about us. Thoughts?
Currently our organization is one former captain and personal retainer of the Heaven Court whose skills, aptitudes and experience are unknown aside from the fact that she seems to have a plan for keeping us minimally-funded and enough experience to advise us on aspects of Caelestis Bellator life. A clone-army doesn't seem feasible for anywhere in the near future, and it strikes me as incredibly suspicious in a world at war should we ever become capable of it: That kind of thing is what conquerors and other folks who cause trouble with absurd amounts of power would do to minimize blowback (in the shape of assassination attempts).
Trying to become known by a title strikes me as having the exact same, "Egomaniacal asshole," problem as a single-name alias, except perhaps even worse. Even if the idea seems attractive to you it instead seems like tempting fate to me to try and establish ourself as different from a normal person. I'd rather not do that kind of self-alienation any more than we absolutely have to.
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No. 96248 ID: d9d287

Hey, Lily Iridium, how tall are you? What would the rest of a standard police suspect description about you say (eyes, build, estimated mass, distinguishing features, etc)? Is your hair absolutely straight like a Chinese girl, mostly-straight, wavy, curly, or curly to the point of kinky like some people of direct African ancestry have?
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No. 96258 ID: baef2f

>>96247
Just for clarification I wasn't thinking cloning- More along the lines of getting a bunch of friends or people we can rely on to use our name OR alternatively if there is some sort of net recognition software then tampering with it to make it appear as though theres lots of us. It may not be practical though it was just a thought since there seems to be a lot of debate over alias
I do see what you mean about the title thing though, someone claiming an auspicious title such as emperor or something is very egotistical and such. I still feel like there are circumstances where it doesn't have to be self centered though- being given a title for example is usually a great honor and gains a lot of respect and stuff like that. It could go down the egotistical route but I don't think it has to in every case does it?
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