|
| ||||||
Reply Subj: Re: That's a bit cold. Posted: Mon Apr 12, 2010 at 08:10:05 am EDT (Viewed 459 times) | |||||||
Quote: Quote: The LL had a teenaged urban robot on staff when the Hellraisers attacks. She was destroyed, along with her boyfriend and his best friend. The team has been very sensitive about robot ages of consent since then.Quote: Liu Xi falls into that category too, except for the robot part. But Liu Xi endured a lot more trauma in a much shorter time, so she matured faster. Now that Anna endured similar, she might benefit the same way.The difference is that Liu Xi has an absolute, human, age of consent. At 18 she can join the army, agree to sexual intercourse, enter into credit agreements, own property, and pretty much do anything she wants that adults are allowed to do (except drink in parts of the USA). That's the arbitrary line that society - at least most of Western society - has adopted as a shorthand way of ascribing adulthood and its privileges and responsibilities. Liu Xi's over 18 so however emotionally scarred or retarded she happens to be she's accorded adult rights. Anna, and all other artificially aged creatures such as Hallie, Asil, Fleabot, Catbot, and the whole urban robot population, need some other criterion by which to be assessed. Software? Psyche test? Personal choice? There's no agreed measure. Quote: Also, that sort of mental and physical testing also will prove that if Anna can handle it, she's safe enough to be around people. It's not only the kind of thing that would mature a person, but it could drive a less stable one insane. So if Anna is still her gentle self, she passed the test.Think about how you'd go about contructing a test for a "normal" human to award an adulthood certificate. You'd probably want to check on their citizenship, their emotional balance, their personal integrity, their sense of responsibility, their capacity to empathise, their performance under stress. How many humans would pass? Quote: Quote: Quote: I think I've just recently learned how to make group efforts work well. It's why until just a few months ago, I avoided dealing with more than 2 or 3 people in a story. The great bonus to it is I can surprise the reader by switching focus. For instance Liu Xi can seem like the star for most of it, then half the Lair Legion gets involved, and then at the last minute someone you never expect comes out on top.Quote: Quote: It's always useful to have that skill. I've certainly improved my large-cast writing on this board.Quote: I used to keep screwing that up - you can see in my earlier stories, if there were more than say, 3 people in the cast I kept rotating them so no more than 2 were on scene at a time. Often that led to half the cast of a story being forgotten halfway through.It's especially important in a shared writers universe where posters feel proprietorial and sentimental ownership over certain characters and situations that that balance is retained. It's an easy way to either upset or gratify readers. | |||||||
