Comments on: Annotated 49-50

By: T

Tue, 27 Dec 2022 22:33:53 +0000

Sure, but also almost all that was confined to the people I mentioned. I feel like you’re asking “How do Sepia people cope with the supernatural,” and the answer is “Mostly they don’t have to.”

The big exception on your list in terms of affecting the world outside those 4 people is the weather. That freak storm is going to concern a few meteorologists. But it’s California and it’s the age of climate instability. It’ll be mostly forgotten in a week.

The only other time we’ve seen the supernatural directly affecting the people of Sepia World is when the gamers talk about the weirdness of their game. And there, as with Xan and Shanna here, I guess it’s kind of a combination? Figuring out what they can and discarding what doesn’t seem to make any sense?

It is possible that the supernatural forces HR was playing with will affect Sepia World again at some time in the future…the government may take an interest in his research, for example…but if that happens, it’ll be beyond the scope of our story.

By: lp

lp — Tue, 27 Dec 2022 15:10:55 +0000

Flying, purple halitosis warping solid matter, either purple stuff murdering people in tubes or illusioned corpses in tubes, maybe magic weather, magic voice/noise, glowing eyes, colored pieces of attire in a world that lacks color. That’s definitely more than one strange thing, even if it’s almost all contained in one room and one is just a stylistic choice.

By: Eric

Eric — Tue, 27 Dec 2022 01:36:22 +0000

It’s actually 23 +/- 3.16 minutes, depending on how long they have to wait for the elevator, how flaky the WiFi is, and whether the VPN can connect on the first try or not, so that deserves an “about”!

By: T

Tue, 27 Dec 2022 00:13:22 +0000

I’m not sure I understand what strangeness we’re talking about, because for most of the story, no one in Sepia World knew anything about magick or Arkerra being a real place except HR and Carol. Shanna knew Carol believed in magick, but she just figured HR had turned her head around so much that she was seeing things and talking nonsense. Even when Shanna considered that the Five might have indeed been taken to some experimental realm, she was thinking advanced VR, not dimension-hopping.

So Xan and Shanna encountered the supernatural here and, as we can see, are both kinda rattled afterward. They’ll be okay in the long run…lots of people are fine after a strange evening they can’t explain in our world too. But as involved as they were with the missing persons case, its supernatural side affected them only briefly. The only others who experienced the supernatural were Ferris, who didn’t survive doing so for more than a minute or two, and HR and Carol, both of whom ended up pretty damaged in the end.

By: drs

drs — Mon, 26 Dec 2022 20:45:20 +0000

“about 23 minutes”, lol.

I got called out when I said it took me about 22 minutes to walk to my office. ‘about’ and minute-level precision clash for people.