11:23 <VoxPVoxD> "...so because of the bug in the console's hardware, it's possible to program a continuous stream of inputs that the game just can't handle, and you can end up directly at the end of the game less than a second after you turn it on." 11:28 <VoxPVoxD> They're at the Wherehouse, it's probably a bit after lunchtime. Stewart's hanging around because he doesn't want to go home and record. What's Melanie up to, besides listening to Stewart natter about making computers play video games superhumanly fast? 11:30 <banana> Melanie's lying on one of the hollow's moderately shitty sofas - something she doesn't usually do, but she's laid down a bunch of sheets first to catch all the scraps and scrapes. 11:30 <banana> She's got some paper floating above her head and in theory she's working - thesis deadlines don't include a christmas break - but in practice she's staring at the scribbled pages and enjoying a personalised stream session while she muses about where to take these ideas next. 11:31 <banana> "You could probably get a vampire to do that with a real console. They could press the buttons at hyperspeed." 11:36 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Two vampires, since it uses both controllers. Or I guess one really, really fast vampire. Or a four-armed vampire... anyway, it led to this really involved debate over what constitutes 'gameplay', with different schools of thought ranging from, like, any input counts to it doesn't count if you can't see your character on screen... there was a question of whether it 'obsoleted', 11:36 <VoxPVoxD> and consigned to archive, a similar project that also corrupts memory and executed arbitrary code, but requires you to actually play the game for a couple of minutes first." 11:36 <VoxPVoxD> He's about to keep going but the subconscious realization of how much he's monopolizing the conversation pushes him to ask, "What are you working on?" 11:37 <banana> Melanie: "You know, you're pretty good at verbal footnoting. Explained, conveyed the meaning of." 11:37 <banana> "I'm not really.. doing anything? Just assembling endnotes. Like footnotes but nobody reads them unless they're a dickhead." 11:38 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Normative dickheads or dickheads within the cohort of people who read theses?" 11:40 <banana> She waves and most of the papers fall in a heap on the covered couch. One flies over to Stewart instead - it's covered in carefully formatted references with a lot of placeholders. 11:40 <banana> Collison, D.C. (2016). Exploring the power differential within and between intramarginality dynamics: The birth of the subsubaltern (ArXiv). University of California Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, California. 11:41 <VoxPVoxD> "Within and between intramarginality.... subsubaltern... sounds like philosophy you need an electron microscope for." 11:42 <banana> "I need like.. exact page citations for the references I end up using, god knows which ones those will be. I don't want to keep everything on the computer but it's getting hard to keep track." 11:43 <banana> Melanie lifts her head at the mention of actual philosophy, though. "Intramarginality, it's a dialectic between groups who are alternately, meaning in different senses, othered by the same in-group." 11:43 <banana> "Augh. I don't give a shit about any of this." 11:46 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Well if you ever need a break, you can always come vampire hunter hunting with me and Gaunt Rose." 11:49 <banana> "Actually... I could probably help with that." Melanie's thinking about contracts taught by Summer, pacts with the sun itself. But, wait- "Did you say vampire hunter hunter? Like the opposite of subsubaltern?" 11:51 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Hunting a vampire hunter on behalf of-slash-in coordination with the vampires. There's a task force set up, it's called the Gang of Four, which may or may not be a deliberate reference." 11:52 <banana> She tries to sit up, ends up mostly standing. "I hope there's um.. more to it than that. The vampires can be friendly.. they're sad in a really hot way.. but if ordinary people want to.. how do I put this." 11:53 <banana> "The Freehold wouldn't usually stop people from fighting back." 11:53 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "The vampires who got murdered absolutely deserved it, insofar as anyone deserves to get bisected by a giant sword on a public dancefloor." 11:55 <VoxPVoxD> "It's like a... it's politics, you know. We've got these alliances, and mutual defense arrangements... Gaunt Rose I think sees it basically like you do, like, there's clearly one faction here responsible for a disproportionate amount of disruptive violence. The vampire rep didn't like that much. At the same time, the vampire rep almost killed someone feeding off them in the stockroom across 11:55 <VoxPVoxD> the hall from the meeting." 11:55 <banana> Melanie's having trouble calibrating that one. Just what does and does not justify, she mumbles something about 'disco-centric vertical elision'. 11:56 <VoxPVoxD> "Someone had to give her epinephrine to make sure she'd make it to the ambulance." 11:56 <banana> "Well. If the public executions are a problem, and it sounds like a problem, then maybe we could hunt down the hunter and tell them to do it quietly." 11:57 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Right now I think the plan is to ask them to leave and go do it somewhere else." 11:57 <VoxPVoxD> "Vampires obviously want to kill him, but no one else really wants to." 12:00 <banana> Melanie: "Right. There's a lot you could debate here but.. we've got other problems and maybe it's best to just follow instructions. What kind of, um, leads have you guys got? Do you need someone to do research, or-" airquotes here- "engage in a confrontation?" 12:02 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Right now Rose and I are thinking about forcing a meeting. We can use magic to make that happen - you remember the Contract I invoked to get us to Camden - and then learning more from the hunter - the Book just calls him 'The Boy' - and maybe convincing him to leave ourselves." 12:03 <VoxPVoxD> "I'll ask her if she thinks having backup would help - I don't wanna just show up with extra people without consulting her, it might not fit what she's got in mind and she's low-grade mad at me all the time as it is." 12:04 <banana> Melanie: "I'll join you if it's okay and make sure he doesn't just run away. Also, I don't know if I've forgotten someone again and I hate to ask but. Who is Gaunt Rose?" 12:06 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart... can't remember if Melanie was around or visibly paying attention the last time he talked about this. "We're partners, basically. She was apprentice to the Lord Sage before Santander took me on. She feels like I'm muscling her out, like there can only be one Lord Sage and I'm gonna cost her the job." 12:08 <banana> Melanie: "Ohhh. Oh, I know that type. It doesn't really matter, but is she right?" 12:10 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "I don't know. Santander doesn't seem to think so, but Santander could be adopting a rhetorical position to get the best results out of his candidates or just, like, fooling himself. I think the Wyrd has an opinion, but the Wyrd's opinion is full of catches and loopholes. I need to research it more." 12:13 <VoxPVoxD> "I just... like I don't see it as a competition. There's more than enough work for two people even if there's only a title for one. But I feel like everything I say to her about it is wrong somehow." 12:13 <banana> Melanie: "Okay.. here's what you do. Don't say 'I have a friend-', although you do, btw. Please tell her, the Summer Court's Melanie Lucas can provide extra muscle to back us up. Extra vegetable fibre. Feel free to be like 'I know her, we're in the same cohort' if she asks but just present me as a.. facet of the situation. A problem/opportunity." 12:15 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart thinks about this for a bit before saying, "I don't know, like... I don't want her to think I'm trying to trick her, that's just going to poison the working relationship even more." 12:21 <banana> Melanie: "I'm not talking about a trick. I wouldn't be able to pull that off. What I mean- I've met a lot of girls like that, in candidate mode, often having to compete with someone unexpected- I don't know this woman but I don't think she's accept something that comes across as you bringing extra resources, trying to take credit for a better approach..." 12:21 <banana> *she'd 12:21 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart frowns. "Maybe you're right." 12:23 <banana> "The main thing is to make things, ideas, people available, something to be selected as an option. So that it's part of the rules.." 12:24 <banana> Melanie: "Maybe I'm overfitting to this situation, it just really.. reminds me of some team dynamics." 12:24 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "How so?" 12:29 <banana> Melanie: "There was a girl on the 2015 squad when I got into college basketball, Riley.. she wasn't the point guard but maybe she should have been. I was gonna be point guard or center because, Riley would tell you, I was tall and on a scholarship and one of two white girls on the team. I also mostly played lacrosse at the time. Like, before college I'd been on a court less than a dozen 12:29 <banana> times." 12:30 <banana> She starts packing up the sofa-covering sheet, bundling together bark and notepaper indiscriminately. "I get that same feeling I guess." 12:30 <banana> "What you think of as a 'working relationship' might not be the context she's even operating in?" 12:32 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Man, that sucks." 12:37 <banana> Quietly: "We never became friends. But I remember her, I don't remember most of their names..." 12:39 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart gets up and stretches - a habit engrained from streaming time - before sitting back down. "It just seems like, if there's a pre-existing disposition or commitment to view your presence as intrusive, then anything you do can reinforce that. It's like, you ever get the thing where you're mad at someone for some unrelated reason and then suddenly all of their personal tics and 12:39 <VoxPVoxD> mannerisms are the worst way to be?" 12:40 <VoxPVoxD> "And then like... what if my presence *is* intrusive?" 12:41 <VoxPVoxD> "In the strictest sense it is. Like I got replaced when I got taken, and now that I'm back the world needs to make room for this whole entire additional thing." 12:42 <banana> Melanie: "Nervensage." 12:42 <VoxPVoxD> "I don't know what word." 12:43 <banana> "Nervenßage? No, um.. nervensäge. It means nervesaw." 12:43 <banana> "You haven't done anything wrong, though! A sawblade doesn't." 12:47 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "The person moving a sawblade can do something wrong, though. Is the implication then that I'm being forced to do this?" 12:49 <banana> Melanie: "No, it was just a bad analogy. That's a phrase I came across in like, disciples of Nietzche.. ich bin eine nervensäge. They were reclaiming the slur of being an incredibly annoying person, you see." 12:50 <banana> She smiles. "I have no useful advice! You probably are inconvenient to her, a genuine obstacle to what she wants. But, like, you're doing useful things that are good for everyone? Including Gaunt Rose pretty soon I bet? So that just.. won't last." 12:50 <banana> "Wait, I do have advice!" 12:51 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart looks over. 12:52 <banana> Melanie: "It's quite possible that one of you will 'lose' here, like.. not get the cool title. If it's Rose, she'll have to get over it or not. You probably wouldn't care? But don't try being, like, actually you should have this. I am condescending to grant you the prize for which I do not care. Ho, my steed, away!" 12:52 <banana> "Um, I'm not saying you would do that!" 12:53 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "I actually did consider that, but I worked out on my own that it'd just make everything worse." 12:53 <VoxPVoxD> "So. Not bad advice." 12:54 <VoxPVoxD> "It sounds so petty but it just... I guess it just bugs me that she doesn't like me." 12:55 <banana> Melanie sets her filthy sheet-bundle by a door to take out later, then drifts back over to stewart and rests her elbows on a countertop. "Well.. what percentage are you going for?" 12:56 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart blinks. "I don't know, I don't really think of it that way. I guess, in practice, a hundred." 12:57 <VoxPVoxD> "Which sounds silly, but also like... why would you deliberately aim for a lower percentage?" 12:57 <banana> Melanie: "Of people liking you? Because it's really really hard?" 12:59 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Well sure, I can understand not wanting to worry about it at all. But caring halfway doesn't make sense to me." 13:01 <VoxPVoxD> "What's your percentage?" 13:03 <banana> Melanie frowns, fully engaged now. "It should. Care is.. should be reciprocal to some extent. If everyone likes you on some level, they're all the same to you, right? People don't work that way, there are actual meaningful relationships, l- love- why would you want to put time into getting on at neutral with every single person out there even if.. due to circumstances that neither of 13:03 <banana> you control, it's a burden?" 13:06 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "Well, like I said, I don't really think about trying to befriend groups of people. In practice it's like, oh I've met this person, I'm going to try to be nice to them. Oh, it's this new person, I should pay attention and figure out how they want to be treated. You know? And here it's... speaking of German words, do you know zugzwang?" 13:08 <banana> Melanie: "I know just enough German to ask where the bathroom is in Renaissance Austria. Zugzwang is.. chess?" 13:10 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart nods. "It means the obligation to act. In chess, the turn order is locked and taking your turns is mandatory. So often, especially in endgame positions, you see situations where the correct thing to do would be nothing, you know, pass your turn. But that's against the rules! So you are compelled to move, to take a position, knowing it will weaken you. That's being 'in zugzwang' 13:10 <VoxPVoxD> - it's when no matter what you do, it makes things worse." 13:11 <banana> Melanie: "Oh so in English - that sucks ass?" 13:12 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart snorts. "More or less." 13:13 <banana> "So I guess the play there is just, get weakened. Which sucks. Then keep going." 13:15 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "...yeah. I don't think there's a trick to it, or anything. I'm not doing anything *wrong*, which means there isn't anything *right* I could be doing instead." 13:16 <VoxPVoxD> "It sucks, though! It sucks so bad." 13:19 <banana> "Making people comfortable is important to you." 13:20 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart kind of shrugs and says, "...yeah." 13:20 <VoxPVoxD> "What would you do?" 13:21 <banana> Melanie: "I don't know if it will help but feel to.. pay less attention around me and the others. We know you and we're gonna interpret stuff charitably." Like when Stewart was going nuts over not being able to do anything about the Terminator. 13:21 <banana> "I'd..." She thinks. Tries to remember. 13:25 <banana> "The old Melanie would.. assume I was in the right, so no offering up the title out of misplaced charity. Get smug about being the team star like it was some natural outgrowth of being popular at parties. Have a year and a half of one-sided rivalry that cooled into sort of.. weird flirting. Start running into each other at weird times even though you're now taking different paths and not 13:25 <banana> competing anymore. Have some of that weird nervensage hanging about but with a new focus, make some tentative.. ehh." 13:25 <banana> "I mean if you had me work with someone who doesn't want to be there now I'd hide or fight them. Depends on how important the job is." 13:26 <banana> *doesn't want me to be there 13:26 <banana> She looks around nervously like Maggie or Tony might jump out of a cupboard and quibble with the advice. 13:30 <VoxPVoxD> Stewart: "I like the idea that meanness is conserved somehow, like you can budget it." 13:37 <banana> Melanie: "If it really doesn't take you energy to befriend and coddle all human beings, that's great. I'm merely saying."