Quote:Hey Vulpis, welcome to the forums! (Now I just have to figure out who the other person is who signed up over the weekend...)
Hidey Ho. Been reading the Walk for while, and finally decided to sign up on the forum to comment on it
Quote:No, he's going to get better. Slowly. As you note, a lot of his hot-button prejudices are getting triggered here. But I think you can all see that those prejudices are going to get severely eroded by the time he leaves...
First off, I'm curious--is Doug going to be fated to make at least one knee-jerk reaction that he really should be smacked in the head for in *every* universe he visits?
Quote:Willy-nilly? No... Released? Yes -- but via consumer products, not just dumped into the market, and then only after the original weapon/gadge/whatever has been thoroughly analyzed. From Doug's point of view, he's teaching her a useful tech skill -- the equivalent of seat-of-the-pants engine repair and hotrodding.
While it's doubtful that he's dealt with it under the 'Prime Directive' name, I'd have thought the Warriors/UN would have *some* rules about not letting the mad-scientist uber-tech being released willy-nilly to the masses
Quote:That's a way of looking at it that I hadn't thought of. Doug's entire issue with this is concern about free will. Megumi essentially has no choice -- she either swears herself to Skuld, or gets mindwiped (or worse). And from his point of view, the former without the meaningful choice to do so is slavery, and the latter is an abomination (memory is identiry -- mess with it, and you mess with a person's own sense of self).
I'm not sure how to look at his reaction to Megumi being 'pressed into service', especially with the 'Soldier' thing..on the one hand, he could be equating it with Arcane's virus (in particular, the concerns about free will)...but on the other hand--in a way she's being offered a chance to join up with the local equivilent of the Warriors. ;-)
Quote:He does, but not out in the open like a pendant. It's under his shirt, nearest his heart. When he's wearing his polykev -- which he hasn't been before now -- it's under that, too. Mara may have picked up on the chain, but in her arrogance, she didn't bother to consider that anything other than some kind of pendant would be on it, if anything at all.
On a tangent...doesn't Doug still wear his wedding ring around his neck? I'd have thought Mara would have picked up that...
Quote:That's explicitly answered on the DW FAQ page: He arrives sometime between Talia's rescue and her marriage at the end of Arrow's Fall, and leaves about two years later, well before Kerowyn shows up.
but as a Lackey fan myself, I *have* to wonder what time period it was set in
Quote:Well... that was all planned before I decided Doug could detect divinity with his magesight, because it made some plotting problems go away... Not that I'm sure he's perceive most Companions as Celestials, anyway -- that's one I've never had to think over. Groveborns, yes, definitely. But the others? Probably not. Maybe. I think.
Not to mention the Companions themselves and *their* little secrets, given how well Doug's magesight picks up these things...
Quote:Now where the hell were you when we were planning out stuff? We could have used that!
(Possibly followed by Doug, muffled by his head being One With The Floor, commenting, "Okay, poor choice of words...") ;-)
-- Bob
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