161 posts
Sage of Breath
Played by Nedben
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Post by telestialGrotto on May 20, 2016 18:10:13 GMT
Flux! A delightful maze of meta and mind control.
Since restlessDerivativ hates it, I'll write up what I remember from the short periods as a Sylph of Flux when I wasn't licking my bestie the Knight of Rain. While at a beach party, because I'm having a nice day.
You can easily smash the game, but you have to realize that Flux covers multiple themes, not just 'it's a game'. It is the intellectual violation of a narrative, cheating around narrative rules rather than enforcing them as Ploy does, exploiting them in different ways. If you deign to leave or assault the Game, if you still wish to maintain the good graces of the Story atop that, you must remember you are still part of, or in its place create, a story. Since bowing your heart into submission is a thing us replayers have decided against, this path probably needs more explanation since the game lore and revelawesomes can handle the fine minis.
The first tenet is that if you believe in reality, pretend. If you think reality is unreal and this is all just some horrible Hell we have been cast into, you have no need to change. This is a game, and you get to tell people that it is. We are a beautiful story woven from horrible suffering, abused children cowering and battling through the house of an abusive parent, unable to slay them. Now begin toying with it. Pretend we're not real. Pretend nothing matters. Pretend this is all just a game and if it kills you and you die that's somehow even remotely okay. Pretend that reality's not real, that there are normal people living normal lives writing our suffering as a story and yanking our puppetstrings to make us act as they wish. The more you think it's actually real, the more the Story eats that stuff up and blesses you like crazy.
There are plenty of guides on all the visionary meta, but few on the meta you can walk up and exploit. You don't have to be a Flux champion to record yourself, but you want to be one if you want to bounce around off panels. Frankly, Flux is a great all-around aspect for defensive and supporting purposes, but it utterly sucks as far as going up and existing. I view it as a 'jack of all trades' aspect (outside elemental application dear god flux y u no be a physical thing) because it has lots of bonuses for things other aspects can do a zillion times better but has no above-and-beyond powers of its own beyond giving mostly not useful information and some insight into strange values. If you can make something important enough holy hell though you'll be actually decent.
That abstraction that MSPA Reader lets you see? That's just the beginning. Many of Flux's offensive abilities rely on exploiting narrative conventions. So, let's work on murdering things with a story. The cute scrying abilities are just cute unless you're a scrying class anyways. To be honest you'll need to rely on your class techs and tricks during the lategame to remain above 'team mascot and emergency brute-force (psy)buff dispenser' status, I swear [WILD TECH: Frenzied Strike Nightmare Storm] was my best friend after the rain player I was snorting all day.
Here are some of the major gems! I know the vast majority of abilities suck but these are mostly okay! And a little memorable.
[Witchkiller Wedge Demirror] is like Ploy's [Witchkiller Wedge Mirror] and Law's [Witchkiller Wedge] but skirts over your own inadequacies so it's better. It's a burst of metaphlogiston that impales a target, and the more they are 'narratively inadequate' the more they get hurt. Call out random rules of storywriting or how their ARC should work and explain to them how they're not following that before the wedge dissipates for massive bonus damage as it explodes rather than dissipating quietly as long as you're right, the more the deadlier. Try it out on imps complaining about how they have no purpose to exist other than evil and should therefore die, the Story agrees enough. Weaponizing importance is difficult so unless you have a whole rulebook on game design to quote from it will usually not be useful after a while but if you're reciting from gM's etiquette FAQ holy shit you can murderize people. Law's is way better. Also has a bonus against Witches and a smaller one against Mages and other cryptic stuff because holy shit does that stuff violate Rules of Sane Expression 50 billion times over.
[Panel Handle] allows you to start /manipulating/ those 'panels' various abilities let you see, both them and how they network among each other. Well, not quite their contents, but you can sure futz with the edges. This ability alone just allows you to fling yourself out of these panels via metaphlogistonic portalbarriers at the edges and wander around in whatever-colored fluxspace, and fling yourself back in somewhere else. It's sort of dreamlike to be outside of reality like that and not in a Sburby way. If you get horribly lost or run out of pluck without getting back into a panel you will be ejected either into the nearest panel or the Magicant. The fastest way to do this is spam flashsteps in random directions until the game goes 'what are you doing stop that' and punts you back into the normal game. You can also sort of 'teleport' by jumping between nearby panels (though your Space player is indeed like a zillion times better), and while you CAN time travel via jumping into a panel in the past, that's usually not a good idea unless your Time player is dead, the timeline's doomed, and nobody has any other form of time travel available as this is about the only chronomanipulative blessing and power Flux gets because it is not Time besides the alleged juju of retconjuration or some garbage like that and that's eighty bajillion zillion cans of eldritch worms so don't bother thinking further on that. Most of the time panels are decently far away enough that you have to spam flashsteps in order to make any big jumps before pluck drain becomes problematic. I guess because Flux is 'narrative' it has to have access to 'important' points in space and time, however the hell importance is determined. If you're not running [We're Fictional] (see below) you're in for a bad time the mindscrew tends to lead to bad realizations at bad times.
[Drag and Drop] allows you to start flinging things around like you're a telekinetic. You can sort of grab and throw things from outside a panel rather than having to physically be inside to manipulate them, with much less mangrit than you'd otherwise need. Very hard to deal much damage with this unless you're a pro at Sburb Server flinging stuff. Even an amateur Space player can do much better and speaking as a native Breath *I* could have done better.
[Break Flux] tosses a bunch of angry metaphlogiston at the target and getting a splash of importance trying to kill them to the face usually interrupts abilities. Frankly it's really just [ Stop That ] you see on police carapaces except you can do it from further away with a splashing effect rather than slapping people and slightly better damage. Still sucks though. Flux does NOT like being manifested directly besides itself so it's hard to kill with it and the pluck cost gets expensive the longer you have importance trying to blow up stuff existing.
[==>] is standard mind-control, exile style. Thinktype a thought at the target and send. This is why many Flux session leaders seem to be mind-controlling all their coplayers, because they actually are between hax pepleader and ==>spam. It's still abjurable though so if the victims have enough inner conflict or would simply rather not they'll just go 'hell no' and continue doing what they're doing. Best spammed on carapaces when you're sneaking around or otherwise don't want to be interfered with by directing them to do other things. Those familiar with Rage will get a kick out of this.
[ Be The Hero We Want You To Be ] is like the evilest psybuff ever, and it is hella strong. It just chucks the target into the passenger seats of their mind (that state where you have to exert will just to do stuff because someone else is literally in control and it usually has to go through them first ) and writes up whatever their mythological role interpretation can blossom into to be as a personality, sprinkles it with some archetypal traits of the person so targeted so you can recognize them as the same character however flanderized, and then leaves them a lobotomized Sburb-loving role-playing husk until you turn it off or they leave the session. For the sake of consent I usually put it into a pin so they can just say 'okay I want to be a real person again' and take it off and chuck that X-of-Y thoughtstyle into the passenger seat instead. Being a passenger in their own body so it just goes off and does all the Sburbing for them is a great time to grieve without losing combat effectiveness. Also, the X-of-Y isn't 'deleted' when the buff is disabled or rolledout, it just sits up in the shiny and brain being a puppetface that can be made a person later, so if it starts developing a personality beyond that framework like some splinters do the person can keep it around on their own or let it stay an uncomfortable memory. Not useful for incapacitating at ALL because it just puts a considerably harder to psychologically traumatize machine where their personality should be, and if your coplayer would object to being demoted from controller in charge you can bet the X of Y you put in that spot (plus the original person's thoughts in background in full agreement, since the only matters of disagreement would be embodying the role stuff if they don't want to be doing it) will march over and demand you disable the buff in an ARC-harvesting fashion and take you out while flawlessly attuned and embodying their role if necessary. BTHWWYTB-coated people are better addressed by their mythological role as that distinguishes them from the real person you locked away. The strongest step in psybuffs is what it is
[We're Fictional] is a slightly less overwhelming but almost as creepy psybuff that puts the recipient into a state of 'haha this is all just a story all our struggles aren't that bad'! And it numbs pain pretty well at least, like you're an outside observer, so it's more 'oh I'm injured mmk I will need a vitality gel cube later then' than '[screaming head off in agony]' when you're being lacerated dozens of times by a serial killer mantis. Most Flux players run it on themselves because the imposed mindset makes other Fluxy stuff way easier, even if whenever you're not on it for pluck's sake feels rather...disturbing. You can have more than one instance of it out, and it's a good idea if your class supports the action very well, so if you've got a Rain buddy you want to share the meta with or more than one coplayer cracking under the nonstop abusestorm that is Sburb have fun.
[Dreamcam] is an actually useful scry that gives you the ability to sense things outside your body as if you were a head-camera-thing in a pre-Sburb dream or one of the narrative cameras with flight speed to match. Stackable with [Panel Handle] framejumps and your focal senses will snapback to your main body if you turn off the ability or it gets interrupted, say by an imp trying to claw your claw out and otherwise hitting you.
[Wallslam] is basically the ability to make a narricam that isn't an actual camera already like ones from flux scrying a solid metaphlogistonic object you can smash into things or smash things into. Frankly slamming imps into metacams and taking pictures from them via [MSPA Reader] and a mindread is besssst. Damage still sucks though and it's likely to dephysicalize the camera quickly since again Flux hates being physical, if you've got the mangrit behind it to fling someone high enough it's the fall damage that usually hurts more than hitting the camera.
[Meta], the basic passive where you can just screw around with abstractive matter in cool weird ways, has a lot of fun special applications. I'll leave those to you! Flux is second only to Rain for dodging rules, though if you slip up on it Flux is a lot more annoyed.
[ Slaying the 4th Wall ] is like Meta on steroids as an active ability. You go into 4th-wall-smashing mode (sometimes with literal exploding glass) and utterly toy with everyone by running around between panels and screwing stuff up as a practically external party. It's supposed to be endgame but sometimes it pops up as a berserk trigger option. If reality gets fucked up due to this and there's no First Guardian to right the panels just run like hell until you reach a panelspace that's not ruined or your Space/Time players can make reality heal faster.
[Hussie Hunt] subverts the Session Disc Abstraction guy to basically be your mentor/friend/whatever for a while whenever you use this. He's sort of like a sprite, except it's usually an orange tall dude in the Waste of Space godtier?? Anyways whatever the hell it is it's okay statwise has a cool white broom to hit people with and summon ponies from the sky. He doesn't actually do much though, he usually just emerges from the nearest magicant entrance, offers a few instructions and runs away or smacks the enemies with a broom a few times and then proceeds to spend the rest of his plot-mandated time riding around on a pony before leaving. Frankly the Whore Adventurers do more damage in the vast majority of situations compared to what happens when the SDA actually attacks so unless you or a coplayer need advice or a friend wants to do something inadvisable to the session disc don't bother wasting the pluck.
[Metagaming] is another sometimes okay scry but it only works based off some arcane bullshit where another you or some weird controlling force in another reality knows some information you don't and it comes to you. It's too much of a headache to explain at all if you can figure it out tell me!!
[My Body Is Ready -Flux Edition-] is....weird. Basically it says 'if you look fine you are fine', so if the damage or its extent isn't visibly apparent suddenly your health vial regenerates and you're fine and full of energy. Even if you are visibly injured it does come with a small but decently notable raw healing component for both your vial and your body so it'll be at least slightly less bad of an injury all around. Once cast while it's active it vastly boosts the effectiveness of healing items and mildly raises pluck, scamperway, health vial regen, and mangrit. You can also cast it on other players, and since the cooldown's actually way shorter than the duration if you're willing to spend the pluck and dispense healing items you can stack it or share with your party. ...Yes, people cast it in the bedroom. I think it's just as a joke for the meme. Stage has about the same thing I bet. Frankly I used this a lot as a Sylph because ~vaguely healing potential~.
[Toonforce] basically makes you or another target all cartoony for a bit and vastly better at tanking stuff. Get crushed? Oh, you're flat, but you'll just reinflate yourself like a Rain trick. Sliced to ribbons? Stack back together! Pierced like the catch of the day? Pull it out and bandage the hole and suddenly what you're fine. You can also pull out a bunch of random cartoon objects. You're so full of importance that the universe is making stuff up to protect you.
[Too Relevant To Die] is a last-ditch shield which manifests importance as a buff to the target's (usually your own) defensive/evasive/luck stats and health/pluck regen, the more critical someone is the better. If the Fluxie is the last player standing the entire session's fate rides on them so they're blessed to hell and back, but as a doomed player they get no bonus once they've done all they can to contribute to the alpha and their doom comes.
[Reader of the Tale] protects you from a surprisingly large amount of damage so long as you are reciting or administrating a game or story, though the bonus is much weaker while you're not in the thick of doing it. This is why many Flux players will sing long stories or play games with their coplayers in the thick of battle because it's helping them not die. I know I sang the stories of my homeworld to the tune of fraymotifs more than once. Not anywhere near the level of a Blood player but every bit counts when you're not flipping out of reality.
[Tropes Are Not Bad] is another survivability and general booster passive, except this time you have to literary analysis things to buff your stats. The flat buff to your brainitude literally makes you smarter and dear god you will want it because the vague things the Story demands you do become much clearer and so much more annoying if you ask them how to exploit this ability. Did not bother exploiting beyond usual commentary due to all the meta bs, just stood behind the rain player and laughed and got a few small fraymotif-like bonuses for on-point commentary.
[Whisper To Me] passively allows Whisperings to stick to you better (and amps them a little if you actively use it), including those of other aspects. What this means is that the aspect passives of other players will occasionally tell you important things if you stick around enough and apparently if they die their leftover whispering-love will just stalk you for the rest of the session instead of going away, because as the fundamentals of the universe they're kind of important and as the champion of importance you must carry the burdens of their relevance. This was a major component of me getting high off my rainbro (the salvadordaliitis just made it way easier to actually just get high off licking him), and I also used it to amplify my native Breath because I was sorely missing the Breeze and wanted it back. You will have a pretty strong feeling of what the Story wants or needs you to do once you get this. I think Mist, Flesh, and Blood all have better versions of this somewhere in their ability list? Anyways this is the ability that you hella want because it makes the impressions of what the hell you're supposed to be doing a bazillion times clearer so PLEASE grab it.
[Lost in the Story] is basically like a less intense BTHWWYTB for the Flux player. In exchange for a temporary sacrifice of 'humanity' you fill yourself with the importance that is Flux to more or less attune yourself to your role automagically. You understand your aspect much better and your pluck gets a nice boost, but...it's like you're not yourself, like you're so focused on this game that you lose sight of yourself and all your trauma. You are no longer a player when you use this to its fullest extent, you are a tool. Remember to turn it off if your coplayers think you're acting weird, because it's really a 'stand up and fight even if you have to throw your mind out the window' emergency get-up-and-fight command buff.
[Narrator's Privilege] conjures a chair, usually a comfortable reading chair but footstools and folding chairs are not uncommon. It appears in metaphlogiston but the chair is definitely really not made of importance. Sometimes it's even just called [Chair]. Why!? I guess you could use it as a shield or an attack power but what is it doing here??!?!?!?!?!?!
[Upgrade Rehash] is another healing/improvement ability. It also works on inanimate objects. It basically takes something and imbues it with 'importance' and 'evolution' and to a small but important extent 'meta'. The love of the fandom takes ideas from their metafiction and you the champion of importance casting it ascend their fanon into a canon virtue, restoring and improving the original. The more love the fandom has for something the better improvement is, whether that fandom is us the players, your session, a dead world, or the Story and its nebulous whisperingly friendships. The more the plot is cheering you on the better. Classes with great healing or constructive potential love this.
And last but not least, [Plot Love]. That thing is like a session plan generator eegh. Glorious. Endgame as vehk but the ability pretty much teaches itself.
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161 posts
Sage of Breath
Played by Nedben
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Post by telestialGrotto on May 20, 2016 23:06:20 GMT
And now for the fun part! How to KILL with this stuff!
lol
The first and foremost thing to do while murderizing with flux is movement. If you are not a combat-ready class who can strife their way through everything on mundane, majjyk, and class technical lens exploitative strifing alone, you're gonna have to fucking move. Out of reality, like a Voidie (voi-dee), and all around, like a Spacei (pronounced Stacie with a p), but in order to utilize advanced meta abilities cheaply, you have to fucking step into the meta(phlogistonic aeropools) and start flinging stuff around unless you want to step on people's heads to start whacking their health vials directly. In either case you've gotta hop around in order to reach and futz with all the abstractions unless your telekinesis is good. So I guess telekinetic trolls are good, scratch that. But for those of us who lack mundane or magical 'point focus move it', it's a tad more important to get off our collective asses and grab for discounts.
The second is to stay meta as needed. Attack in unexpected ways, preferably from outside panel to minimize the risk to yourself. Also, use your aspect to enhance yourself and if appropriate others. I was not always that good at this. [Upgrade Rehash] on your weapon is a perpetual keeper and gristsaver, especially if the Story goes 'omfg love it' at anything ever, and if you think you're feeling down [My Body Is Ready -Flux Edition-] is practically essential cuz 'looks fine = is fine' as an ability is hella refreshing for those moments when your health vial's drained but physically you look relatively okay. Don't be afraid to retreat to [Panel Handle] if needed.
asdf lillian stop that
Calling guide a day for now, possible upd8 latr kbye
Updating...
Anyways I was a shoddy Flux player beyond metacommentary spam. Generally you focus on becoming 'that one commentary character' and abuse your powers as beacon of meta to start futzing; the more you're an untouchable and dictating narrator (Rage fans who roll Flux almost invariably go for that, as do many Law-yers) or a feisty commentariat zipping about and delivering one-liners (flow and space lovers) or a jokey comic relief character, the finer your powers grow under the watchful Story of Flux. Like other aspects, your embodying translates to increased combat effectiveness, Flux is just much more direct about it. ARC building is tied directly to being a fluxy rando, changing up this Sburban game with your evolutionary prowess.
Even if your ARC is shit the Story will be very nice about it and rewards you with localized power just by meeting the usage criteria for individual abilities if you can't be good at enough of them. For example, if you can't figure out the meta bullshit for life but have a zillion rules for calling people out on and read enough systems [Witchkiller Wedge Demirror] will not be an expensive fuck and will in fact be your main aspectual sword, weak though it may be. If you embrace the meta hard enough [We're Fictional] will file a divorce between you and your traumas and make the trauma pay alimony to you rather than the other way around because you love being somebody's scribblepuppet idea, and you can walk off-panel into panelspace for practically free. If you focus on making changes and improvements and/or you're a Smith/Muse, [Upgrade Rehash] will love you forever and you can buff everyone's equipment to hell and back. If you're already pushing someone to change to fit their role, the stronger BTHWWYTB will finish the job. If you are already ordering people around, ==> them to hell and back to provide that little extra oomph to force a change. If you can Seer well, all those random metascries might be useful. If you're a literary analyst, milk [Tropes Are Not Bad] for all its apparently gigantic worth.
The point is you are an agent of change and the narrative commentary. Hit your enemies with regular attacks with your aspect backing you and having upgraded your stuff and you'll be fine, as the more important and change-heavy your missions or the missions of those you are supporting, the harder the Story will back your moves. You are walking plot armor for either yourself or others, that is your greatest weapon.
We may not have flashy attacks, but we have a wider array of strong supporting tools and simple and decently strong buffs than most of the single-purpose aspects field outside of their focal area, especially towards ourselves or brute-forcing game-related solutions.
A Fluxie will usually have to enter the Unbreakable Union necessity phase (or at least exploit wacky antics) slightly earlier than other players (especially so for passive classes) as they do not have too many heavy-hitting aspect powers so if their class techniques work better helping others they need to be helping others to operate at peak effectiveness if they're passive. An endgame Flux player will usually acquire normally and be able to sustain [Slaying the 4th Wall] relatively early for endgame abilities simply because it's really hard to directly weaponize narrative change aspectually beyond freestyling a whole ton of 'make my strikes important' so Sburb hands it out earlier to stay competitive. Flux players do not walk up and bash people with their aspect, they bash people with their aspect empowering the act of bashing.
In general yeah you're gonna have to manhandle that strife specibus.
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161 posts
Sage of Breath
Played by Nedben
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Post by telestialGrotto on May 22, 2016 20:47:56 GMT
UNBREAKABLE UNIONS
Surprisingly, the aspect of fueling change and importance and supporting capabilities is ridiculously fucking good in some UUs! Cannibalized a LOT of UU guides for this, linked 'em in via the server filebin just search for 'flux unbreakable union' or something like that, sorry guys!
In general, Flux is fuel. The other aspect provides the default fireworks, Flux makes 'em bigger and sometimes better by providing change and propulsion and evolutionary meta.
Flux/Rain
THIS IS GLORIOUS! The insanity and rulebreaking of Rain go incredibly well with the meta and bullshitting the rules of Flux. This combo has such good synchronicity that you can drag it out way longer than any normal UU has the right to last without markedly impacting your survival rate even if the Flux player is drugged out of their mind nonstop 'cuz they're smoking the Rain player alive. You will also be violating the laws of physics like a gamebreaker once you get good at it. Think everything a Rain player does and then give them permission to stop even pretending that they make sense to anybody but their own delicious flavors, and give them even more mobility and rainbow bullshit. Yeah it's kind of an OP combo.
The formal Unite Synchronization for Flux/Rain is [It's Raining Meta], which really just means using Flux's enhancement potential to make Rain's characteristic rainbow bullshit even more stronk by mixing metaphlogistonic enhancement into it, spray a fuckton of it everywhere but mostly where we're aiming it, and then it's easy to get it all over the place using other abilities from both aspects. Effectively it also ups the participants' sync to the point they can use the other aspect with their own for hella combobs if they think in tune with the other person enough and they're close enough to cast it for the other, which it does. Most of the time I basically went [Upgrade Rehash] and [Break Flux] in a certain nonharmful-to-Rain way all over his rainbow goop to make it more OP and then he went into [Panel Handle] space to fling it all over everything. During the BK battle we managed to sync up [Requiem of Sunshine and Rainbows] with [ Slaying the 4th Wall ] to drown the BK in enhanced rainbow bullshit and random panels for a few seconds for massive damage and it was fucking amazing. With our coplayers and a small army of sniper rabbits we managed to finish the damn thing off a good bit after.
Flux/Flow
Also pretty GLORIOUS apparently. If Flow is fire and movement and Flux is fuel and change, well...big fires and movement that renders change. Metaphlogiston is still phlogistonic after all and it fucking burns well if you can keep it real long enough to get it on someone. Seriously if you can apply [Break Flux] all over someone and then have the Flow player help it burn itself out of existence it's really harmful to whoever's on fire, but that's better for the Fluxie to be in one of the Destroyer classes since they're SUPPOSED to make the aspect get rekt and it therefore will not ruin their ARC. At any rate enhancing their firepower and being conceptual besties means it's a reliable sync on the aspect level so if you can get along with them their abilities will reveal good ways to collab in time. The sheer verballistamina of a Flower teamed with the ability buffs to witty comebacks for a Fluxie means a coordination of the two will basically be milking the shit out of abilities that get better with sick burns in the form of the spoken word. Also apparently there's some cool exploit about using that shitty Flux attack ability involving calculusing at reality and then having the Flow player help you for making it even more haxkureiz, but I don't think anyone wants to do calculus enough to make that hot or even cool.
The Unite Synchronization is [Burn The Plot] which basically makes meta-abstractions viable incendiary targets and severely amps the raw literal firepower of Flow's fires so you can quite literally burn everything capable of burning. It's got some disturbing brute-force applications that can act like Void powers in the right situations by incinerating the offending abstraction materials rather than you know deleting them from existence with the big eraser. I'm sure there are better applications for this but the UU has not been explored, in part due to Flux's comparative rarity.
Flux/Blood
A Flood pair as they are sometimes called is virtually invincible, but unlikely to take out many flashy powers for the purposes of directly whacking people with their aspect. Blood is already superhero durable and Flux is fairly defensible if you stack enough abilities and armor yourself through Flux, and with their decent powers of sharing for certain classes on the Flux end together they're pretty much durable enough for standard purposes. The Pulse reinforces, the Story...also reinforces, just way more weirdly. Plot armor and all. Blood is connection and Flux as narrative arcs is okay with connection, so they're a reliable pair in general. For once Flux is the flashier agent here, so they'll be spamming more abilities while Blood can rely on just being Blood to not die because Pulse reinforcement and chuck out a few golems if they want to animate more friends. [Toonforce] coupled with Flux's do-narrativey-stuff-and-you-are-more-difficult-to-kill buffs and [My Body Is Ready -Flux Edition-] for restoring health vial because the Blood player will reinforce themselves to the point they'll have enough extra vial to look fine but could really use a refill to be durable as they should be pretty much ensures together you're a walking wall above and beyond Blood's normal stonewalling capacities. Spamming [Upgrade Rehash] on particularly long-lasting [Ashes of Logorg] golems the Story says are liked by the weird people on the other side of that mysterious 4th wall thing can make them considerably better.
This pair's Unite Synchronization is [Pulse the Story], which basically puts together the connective elements of a story (think how a lot of replayer good times are sappy be-friends-with-each-other moments) with the connective and reinforcing powers of Blood to make you and the allies around you durable and toughter without reducing the Blood player's durability, as if the Blood player was a considerably better passive class (think endgame Grace maybe? Or an Avatar of Blood, that works too). Useful during the BK battle to avoid dying.
Flux/Breath
YOU DESTROY STUFF. It's Breath, it destroys stuff! With wind! You can be wild and impulsive and do stuff! That aspect is so me and utterly my thing. Anyways nativism aside I loved chaining breath majjyks with Flux when I enhanced my native Breath whisperings back into a thing that I could feel because I love the Breeze so much it's just GLORIOUS! And it works so well! Tornados with some metaphlogiston attached! Breath's raw offensively-oriented nature makes up for Flux's lack of manifestation, and Flux's supporting range makes up for Breath's...lack of focus on that. As an actual UU between two players it's still rad because of that. Breath handles firepower, Flux handles tools. You can also improve the windy things so they're more powerful in general, which is rad if you're hankering for your native and know enough majjyks for it to call out to it. Being able to panelhop allows you to keep up with their windy wind-ness, and Breath also has some raw potential for metamanipulation because the windy thing can interfere with certain abstractionspaces so you can collab way good. Destroyers apparently go better with this (or maybe it's just the native Prince of Flux who wrote one of the UU guides being himself)
The Unite Synchronization is I think [Winds of Change] (is that name shared with a coins/breath synchro or something else? w/e shitburb doesn't stabilize names), which is basically [ Slaying the 4th Wall ] duct-taped to the windy thing. Flux amplifies Breath's abstraction manipulation capabilities via sharing [Meta] and generally both partners go the hell out of control. The Flux player is expected to ==> up ideas if the Breath player and the exiles run out of ideas. SO FUCKING AWESOME. Flux is almost as good as Breath and when they collab I'm so fucking jelly that I am EVA-Beatrice's fucking jelly landscapes murdering people that is the level of jelly I am!
Flux/Coins
Flux uses its narrative conventions to fortify Coins, which buffs Flux to balance the narrative. They're both support-heavy aspects so they'll spend the whole time buffing each other and wanting more because progression of power and demand of necessity to get stronger goes crazy and it slowly builds its way into the sky. Flux's ability to enhance elements to construct its precious Story is a very useful element in Coins' economy so with their powers combined the market cycle becomes a more elegant process. Because both aspects are relatively rare rolls this pairing has very little concrete documentation. Elements of relationship and controlling mean the golden stars and metaphlogiston will be useful buffing stuff up and toying with relationships between elements.
The formal Unite Synchronization is apparently [Economist's Change], or if that's not the name then that coins ability goes hella good with the US. Basically it takes all that buffing UP TO TWELVE! GLORIOUS! Not even ELEVEN, TWELVE!!! And then puts together Flux's directions to direct Coins. It goes well. It was not explained thoroughly so it's probably a 'here your collab's better now see what you can do' US.
Flux/Doom
A story has a denouement and downsides! Another pair good for destroyers, but others can make use of it as well! Flux really has to do more buffing and imbuement here as Doom really is unfriendly to killstealing but if you soften up guys for them to finish off in traditional Doom fashion, good! I'm not sure how this mechanic would work for certain classes, the best I could come up with is 'the doom player is the serious man to the flux player's lightheaded whee' but Fluxies can be played seriously too so not really any serious aspecty sync, it's just a regular UU tbh. Focus on being friends I guess, that usually ends well. At the very least Flux's defensive attributes cover for Doom's application-towards-people being strictly case-specific outside 'make it die'. Weaving a story here is up to you guys, working in 'ending your enemies' is a pretty useful arc concluder to farm ARC off of for both of you.
The Unite Synchronization here is [Death by Plot], which has Flux and Doom coordinate to murder things in meta and exotic ways. It was not elaborated on, so I'm guessing another run-of-the-mill noice sync.
Flux/Dream
An aspect that goes one-and-done with an aspect that provides fuel. GLORIOUS! And okay. Dream is a more well-rounded aspect as well (better than Flux because you can actually up and hit people with it), and as a creative aspect it goes well with stories (as long as they're not too repetitive). Evolution and change to create a different new idea goes well with Dream because it's recycling in a better way than just churning out copies. The buildoff here is that Flux's abilities for enhancing items are very very nice to get an extra kick out of a particularly good idea that Dream weaponizes, and create a spinoff unique enough that Dream will go 'okay that's a new idea I'll allow this'. Dreams' tendencies of systemization tend to work well with meta-abstraction interference because you can coordinate to fuck up stuff in very cool ways, and because FOCUS do it perfectly. Weave an orderly but creative story that doesn't repeat itself and brings up new ideas for maximum fun together killing enemies.
Their Unite Synchronization is [Dreamflux], which besides being uncreatively named uses dreamglass and metaphlogiston together for shenanigans, the gas and liquid of metaphlogiston to dreamglass' solidity. Also apparently you can fire a wave of glass ideas at your enemies and use flux buffs to rehash them into better ideas? That's pretty cool! And GLORIOUS!
Flux/Fate
Fate is another aspect of firm direction and things falling into place. And as ==> can attest, Flux likes arrows the way Fate LOVES arrows! POINT POINT POINT POINT! Take the directions and impulses Fate demands exist and weave a story between those commands. Navigate along the path so laid, and write out a glorious tale with it. Otherwise just a fairly easy normal UU aspectwise, nothing wrong with that. Make some friends!
The Unite Synchronization here is [Destiny's Tapestry], which is a run-of-the-mill powerful guidance buff where Fate directs the Fluxie on what to do, sharing that Fate-y impulsive goodness with 'em. Very fun, apparently. Also protects the two involved players with a carpety shield of small arrows and metaphlogistonic pulses, so it's a good shield-and-dodge-into-panelspace combo.
Flux/Flesh
Flesh is really just Blood and Doom taped together with more emphasis on golemancy and manipulation than reinforcement or direct whacking. I mean they even have the same name for their Whispering as Blood does for crying out loud! The sync is therefore fairly average between the hell yes of Blood and the mmkay good of Doom. Try enhancing zombies, while it's not gonna be as good because no shinyfucking allowed = buffs don't shine well beyond what Flesh explicitly authorizes (this is kind of why Flesh/Heart isn't the best of pairings, yes?), so it's kind of nasty and naughty and snapbacky. Zombie apocalypses are a good genre though so what you CAN enhance (i.e. the player) is gonna be all sorts of cool.
The Unite Synchronization here is [Narrative of Flesh and Bone], which...apparently involves weaving stories from flesh. I am kind of disturbed! It was not described in very much detail 
Flux/Heart
SEE INTO EVERYONE'S INNERMOST DESIRES. SHIP LIKE THE OCEAN. YOU KNOW THE DRILL. More seriously two aspects with gamebreaking levels of potential put together = well shit sburb is now broken send help, and two aspects with 'look into people's personal lives' levels of scrying potential put together = nothing is secret or sacred anymore. The mixing potential is obvious. This is a very good pair of aspects. Metashenanigans mean shinyfucking will get rather radical.
The Unite Synchronization here is [Evolution of the Soul]. The fine documentation is missing, but the name is apparently accurate to the ability? Creepy. Apparently involves restructuring a soul to be better, and not just in the way Sburb wants. Fucking crazy!
Flux/Hope
REJECT THE PLOT! Proceed to mess around! Documentation missing. Suffice to say the amount of rejection is pretty rejecting. It doesn't like you and the Story is making that even stronger.
The Unite Synchronization is a thing but it rejected letting me see what it was. Just kidding, it's [Denial of Story]. It's the opposite of [Death by Plot] in some aspects, where instead of condemning someone to the plot you mess with Sburb's...'priorities'. A little. Nothing too big and you can't usually do shit about any of the actually important or 'if this was not a thing we wouldn't have any problems in our lives' Imperatives, but it does accomplish...something. I am unsure.
Flux/Joy
It involves 'flowers', and brings out the theme of 'redemption' from its burial under 'happiness' and 'what you want consequences be damned but they're coming anyway'. Insufficient documentation.
The Unite Synchronization is un(der)documented, could a Joy-ie help me here? Someone thinks it's called [ I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings ] and apparently floods the place with flowers and fluxtricks to accomplish something, like destroying an enemy.
Flux/Law
A strong pair. Law creates systems that have consequences for disobedience, and Flux can promote that element through narrative arcs because the game's big on enforcing those too. Generally Law lays down the Law and Flux helps enforce it like some crony. [Witchkiller Wedge Demirror] with a simple 'you [broke a law the Law player instituted]!' has incredibly massive damage, so chain Law's [Decretum] into that for a reliable murder machine. Law has their own [Witchkiller Wedge] so provided the Lawyer is following the Word of the Law, use them together on top of shouting that they broke the law for hilarious levels of murderizing. ==> can also be used to prod more...disagreeable...coplayers into cooperating with the Law player to prevent them from accidentally dying by plus signs to the vital organs, so if you've got a rampant rule-declarer you can either force them to stop or force others to comply, though if they're prone on abjuring you (i.e. any hope player EVER who was any good at it) that's not happening.
The Unite Synchronization alongside the Law is [And Then There Were Rules], which is basically the Witchkiller Wedge series duct-taped to various Law declarations fired from metaphlogistonic aeropools Gate of Babylon style. Set up rules and the people who break them despite violent probability restriction and ==>ing automatically to prevent it if at all possible get sniped with a bunch of explosions! Follow the Law and the PoLIC won't murderize your pretty face!
Flux/Life
Life is a strong healer. Flux has nebulous small healing capabilities but a much more concrete foot in causing change and fueling meta and evolution. Put them together and you've got a flesh/blood player with healing items fairly impressive restoration and improvement capabilities. Flux takes Life from just healing and growing and nurturing to evolving and improving life, improving the component that says 'it grows' to 'it grows into something better' far more concretely than Life alone will do under certain classes' standard interpretations. It makes long term positive effects embedded in Life much more obvious with its own capabilities for improving things. In general the pair is highly effective and much like a Blood/Flux pair unlikely to die between two tolerable healers.
The Unite Synchronization assisting Life is [Grow Like All Heroes], which is basically the Flux/Life unbreakable union summarized in the form of powerful healing and regeneration coupled with some cool improvements and immediate and lasting stat buffs, including a slowly growing one to health vial and bodily regeneration that doesn't go away until the replay is taken. Once a Flux player grabs its healer abilities have it UU with Life ASAP if possible at all because [Grow Like All Heroes]' lasting effect is very convenient to have growing on everyone early on and the Growth of Life is a good whispering to have floating around a Flux player.
Flux/Light
This pair makes good things happen. The Shine nudges events into favorable outcomes and the Story's supporting powers can be used to more forcefully assist where necessary, sort of like a less dramatic Light/Rage UU. A good Flux/Light pair makes their day (or everyone's day) much better because they combine plot armor with amazing luck for as good fortune as fate will allow. Flux/Light is often best used to assist in the passage of a displeasing but Sburb-required event, such as class related character arcs, because Flux's mastery of narrative elements and metaknowledge will alert them to what exactly Sburb is doing and where they can prevent it from being a dick, and Light will smooth over everything not strictly fated as much as feasibly possible and then some with incredible luck.
The Unite Synchronization for this lovely duo is [Shineagram], which is a pretty impressive luck buff and psybuff that more or less tries to make you feel better about existence in general because luck is on your side. Fling at odds-based events that have a chance of making you feel bad because either way it'll help at least a little.
Flux/Might
Might is the aspect of strength, kinetic energy's fluidity, and meeting challenges, that often falls into heroic tropes. Flux is an aspect of enhancement, fueling movement, and providing unorthodox advancement, that likes tropes. This is a strong pair in a number of (primarily very literal) senses. Both aspects are very good buffing aspects and their themes reinforce each other in a defensive sense. Might's intense fanboyism and general tropeyness mean whatever mysterious ethers of democracy that the Story draws its audiences from love them in a classic sense so Flux's buffs stack very well with the archetypal Might. Might has raw strength that Flux can enhance further. Might has fluidity of energy that Flux can help move around. Might can meet challenges, but Flux provides bits and pieces of help that can make sure they have energy left over afterwards to keep on marching. This UU is a naturally pleasant combination. Might is better than Flux at manifesting physically but it's still not exactly good and would rather be in things than outside on its own, though Flux has better supporting tools at long range.
The Unite Synchronization here is [The Sea of Tropes Reunited], which basically takes in all those tropey fluxy shtuffs and shoves it alongside the ocean that is Might for a rather impressive teamup blast. [Chaos Dunk] memes here.
Flux/Mind
This team will solve every mystery novel they come across provided it's not a bullshit unsolvable fantasy where the answer comes out of nowhere and makes no sense, due to the combination of deduction and pathways with knowledge of narrative shenanigans. Mind's already impressive possibility deduction is boosted further by Flux' ability to recognize when Sburb or Paradox Space as a whole has a hardcoded limitation we cannot bypass (i.e. 'that possibility is a guaranteed doomed timeline because of prophecy X being irrevocably violated'). This pair usually enhances the Mind player's Mind-iness by giving them a clearer picture of what choices can indeed be made as far as we know so they can deduce and discard possibilities that will end badly, though the Mind player tends to take this badly if they are not previously rendered fatalistic and have to break out of that to be good at Mind. However, Flux at least is apologetic about it and tries to suggest new and interesting paths of action that the Mind player wouldn't be able to take on their own but can with them, like hopping between panels to accomplish a task wildly differently from its intended pathway or something. Generally a pair which will rely on developing friendship to be tolerable because while in an unsealed catbox Flux/Mind would be amazing, in Paradox Space doomed timelines are a thing that tends to get in Mind's way, which is why Mind/Time techniques tend to be strange.
The Unite Synchronization for this is [Think Media], which improves a team's collaborative potential immensely and shares meta-awareness, meta-interference, and possibility-analysis capabilities between those so buffed for maximum fluxy/mindy shenanigans power. It is a Unite Synchronization that unites and synchronizes others, conveniently enough.
Flux/Mist
Mist provides substance that Flux can shape. Put together this means that Mist is fuel...for fuel. Daffaq. It's a very nice pair for simply smacking stuff into reality so you can fling it at others, plus Flux and Mist are rather well-balanced because Mist can copy abilities and Flux has generic stuff allowing it to keep up with abilities Mist is copying from more specific aspects. Usually the Mist player makes something exist and the Flux player enhances it into something more useful for the current situation and/or flings it at the opposition. Good times, good times.
The Unite Synchronization for this is [Expy], which basically allows the Mist player to fog something that couldn't normally be fogged for lack of data and more importantly bring abilities and temporary equipment with it, such as impersonating a powerful endgame player from another session or a fictional character. There is a limit to how strong expyfogging can be, so you can't just fog God, make a flower of omnipotence, stop fogging, and then be omnipotent but also yourself, but the better both contributing players are the higher that limit is.
Flux/Ploy
Merging the opposition. Floyd is a tad overnarrative of an aspect pair. Where Ploy is straightforward reflection, variability, mirroring, and conflict, with silvery subtitling narritape to match, Flux rushes offpanel, has more defined sets of dominion, takes its own unique perspective on things, and serves to fuel and support others. The match does help work stuff out.
The Unite Synchronization for this pair is [Our Narration], which flings a whole bunch of duct tape and metaphlogistonic radiance at stuff and makes stuff happen.
Flux/Rage
This is a pair of aspects who command and make stuff happen. In the words of the Borg, resistance is futile. Rage will order things to happen and they will happen, and Flux has a few selections to make sure escape isn't happening as well as make Rage's orders a lot more firm. Rage can have a standing TOP PRIORITY ORDER and then Flux has lower priority orders after that for fine tuning plus a fuckton of raw mobility. Not quite Rage/Heart but fairly close.
The Unite Synchronization for this pair is [Command Sequence] which basically uses Rage-buffed ==>s to command people around. Creeepy.
Flux/Rhyme
This pair makes Flux chill the fuck out already. Rhyme relaxes the story, slows it down, and allows it to branch out and investigate the wider setting beyond a narrow narrative it follows. Rhyme makes most narrating types savor potential, to let change happen as it will rather than provoking it. It's a good pair to relax without pissing off Sburb.
The Unite Synchronization for this pair is [Frozen Tale], which basically localized winters the place for a bit and amplifies all those random-ass scrying abilities into useful stuff for a while.
Flux/Sand
Fland is a very hilarious combo. Sand's weakening and evasiveness of rules go well with Flux's wedgier moments and metatastic evasion. A well-placed [Witchkiller Wedge Demirror] at the right point will cause something Sand-weakened to really asplode. However, not really much else special about it due to their lack of conceptual agreement beyond rulebreaking. Have fun defying all attempts at order together, cuz friendship's about all you'll get out of it.
The Unite Synchronization here is [What Story Was That?]. It obliterates meta-abstractions with Sand force, like Flow/Flux it can strategically be used to mimic V iding of certain matters.
I have no data on Sight and Self. I guess the Fuckoff Symbolism Zone would go well with Panelspace for Sight, but...idk shit about Self lol.
Flux/Sound
FLOUNDER FREELY GLORIOUS ONES!!! This is a pretty strong combo for copying others' potential while being otherwise alone but for the music and story, but it tends to wrap up relatively quickly because Sound is one sucker for isolation plotlines. It tends to make [ S ] ==> commands a lot easier, lol. Ride the horschestra bruh!!
The Unite Synchronization for this lovely pair is [The Music To My Story], which is another run of the mill coordinative power synchro. Sweet but best stacked on with other powers or freestyling wildly.
Flux/Space
EVERYONE ALL THE WAY ACROSS THE EVERYWHERE! Space does portals. Flux can sort of do portals if you're really good at determining viable edges and know how to scamperway. DOESN'T STOP FROM KEEP PORTAL SPAMMING! Kyahahahahahahaha! But seriously this pair is not going to be in one place for long if pluck regen is good. Lovely movement focus.
The Unite Synchronization combo for this one is [World of Stories]. Yay. It basically massively cheapens the cost of portal spam on both ends of the combo and then both sides go running around realspace and panelspace respectively bouncing off stuff and hitting things. Not quite Space's BT but pretty close to Flux's.
Flux/Stage
Harsh combo but they do collab well. Stage stages stages for a stage (through stages of Stage, staging Stage to stage stages, of course). Saying Stage unnecessarily many times aside the Stage player restrains the place and then Flux skirts the rules and their enforcement to futz with now-incapacitated abstractions. The aspects are kind of oppositions (potential for changing the status quo vs. creating a status quo and fighting against changing it) and not in a collaborative way like Ploy, but if you can get the Audience to lighten up about it by spamming your Fluxy shtick at them in a cute enough way you'll be beating the shit out of people in a turn-based battle on the Stage player's turn illegally and still manage to kill all the enemies and get phat lewtz.
The Unite Synchronization here is [ Stage My Play, Rulebreaker! ], which pretty much sets up a stageload of staging and then has the Flux player conveniently be an exception to all the rules so they can mob the shit out of enemies whose reactions are minimized. Hella exploitable to get like 60 kabillion hits on the BK without him doing anything apparently.
Flux/Stars
A combo without too much to say about it. Stars will go along with anyone who asks so just offer a [We're Fictional] and a trip through panelspace and suddenly they'll consent to everything and then some. Very nice to have someone who can put up with the meta bullshit.
The Unite Synchronization for flars is [ Understand We Are Not Real ] which basically gives everyone meta like the flux/mind US but with [We're Fictional] on top of it so basically everyone becomes a low-grade flux for the duration. Sometimes the understanding part is a tad more...permanent. Convenient!
Flux/Time
Flime is what it is. Generally causes antics and shenanigans out the wazoo. Suffice to say this is the only point timejumping in panels is acceptable because a proper monitor can clean up the mess should it exist immediately. Not much to say, however. Basically the space one but in time instead.
The Unite Synchronization here is [Multiphase Pacing]. It basically...provides too much power and understanding over the way the story progresses in multiple layers, both in-world and without-world. It is very disturbing to know so much about time. The fine details of weaponizing this are too nasty to discuss in this space.
Flux/Void
WHY WON'T IT WRITE LILLIAN FIX THIS
okay misted
This pair isn't really anything special, Flux just smooths the kinks of kicking stuff out of existence. There's nothing to fortify, so it can't really do anything here. A pair for destroyers and not much else, if you've got tips pls share 'em.
The Unite Synchronization is [And Don't Come Back] which basically minimizes the unwanted consequences of rampantly voiding shit by tossing it into a meta-space where the cross-4th-wallience can toy with it as they wish. Fucking weird, be careful with.
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40 posts
Witch of Hope
Played by Mara
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Post by kenoticAntagonism on May 23, 2016 10:45:07 GMT
I have rolled Flux once because hey why not KA's the meta girl let's give her the aspect that lends relevance to every high school English class we've ever tried to forget. THE CURTAINS WERE BLUE BECAUSE THEY WERE BLUE MR. BUNCH JEEZ.
My thoughts on the matter are few because I'm mostly repressing the memories of my Flux life. That's that shit I don't like. But. That said. Thing is that with sufficiently high brainitude for both UU members involved [Multiphase Pacing] is a hella powerful tool. You know how authors sometimes skip around and write things out of order? So that their inspiration hype train is always chugging along and they keep working on the parts of their story that interest them? When Flux sanctions it you can do this non-sequential tackling of story events, which is like some kinda hellacious cross between the Techs of a Tactician and a Destroyer class. You're always prepared to tackle the scenario at hand so your ARC is hella maxed.
What ended up happening was that the rest of the session players never ended up seeing either me or the Time player unless it was convenient for us to be seen. We both got that 200 IQ and all so we knew exactly how to jump around and affect the story in a non-linear manner. It's like, we were always hitting climactic points (unf) at exactly the right time, never wasting the swells of our ARC on the less dangerous parts of the story. We did the Black King fight first, because everyone always skips to the end. Then we filled in the blanks from there. 200 IQ aside neither of us had a damn idea what was happening but it was dope as f because we were never not in the zone when we were in a fight.
I think inspiration as a concept is on some level one of the Figuratives of Flux. A writer exists to be inspired to make their mark onto the world of fiction, blah blah blah the usual metaphorical spiel It makes sense, doesn't it? If your role as the Player of Flux is that of author/editor, the tools of a writer are your primary manifestations of power. We all know writers love that inspiration. And that expiration, if you're GRR Martin. Or the writer of Sburb's plot.
Also u should do an expose on Flux's denizens. I got the weird orange skinned asshole. Probably the most infuriatingly dumb Denizen I've had to date. Flux also unlocks a special passive flag when they finally kill their Denizen off. [Death of the Author], but who knows what kinda meta bullshit it actually sanctions.
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161 posts
Sage of Breath
Played by Nedben
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Post by telestialGrotto on May 23, 2016 11:46:40 GMT
I got Minerva. She was actually fairly nice sometimes but seemed more pissed off at me than the land. Blah blah in the ancient past she was a good ruler but then she got hella pissed, went to sleep, then I showed up and she was like 'omgwtfbbq die n'wah this land's mine' and turned her denizen palace into a battlemech and spammed underlings all the way across the planet.
Of course that might be because the Land of Lakes and Fortresses was pissing me off so I blew up most of the fortresses and forests on the way to said palace athene but whatevs the salamanders were all afraid of me instead of her but who gives a damn I had dynamite lol!
So anyways her special quests were making me help the consorts rebuild all the fortresses I blew the fuck up because she was like 'damnit Julie you're fucking up the land more than I should' because my land verdancy was fucking glitched pre-slaying.
Anyways when she got over that I was blowing up all her stuff and I got over she was constantly irritated at my existence we became good enough friends for me to kill her to death, which caused her to give me a tree to plant and fix stuff related to verdaDerp so I did! Also she liked flinging lightning and swords and spears and owls and robots at me mid-discussion because I was rigging bombs to her and her stuff and she was only narrowly missing because I dodged, isn't her Athena mode a Mind denizen or something?
DOTA sanctions a lot of crazy bullshit an endgame Fluxie post-slaying can do fucking weird shit man $_$ fucking narratives man how do they WORK
Cadmus is fucking weirdly nice for a denizen and has a shitton of weird Might powers apparently?? And Nabu is just Nabu fk da prophepriesPoLIC. I think it's a shitty plot twist that the Flux denizens are actually fairly nice people for Denizens but that might be just because I was cutting swaths through my land full of explosions and death during my native and didn't stop for rerolls so Sburb's like 'shit I should probably do something to make sure she doesn't team up with the denizen to murder the consorts'. Actually that's a good idea I should totally see if Ananke needs my help...
Nobody really likes talking about the Flux denizens because they're kind of weird or they're Nabu. Flux is one of those aspects you don't want to be sane or sober for, like find the nearest rain player and just go to town on hugging them and trying to share the Voices.
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161 posts
Sage of Breath
Played by Nedben
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Post by telestialGrotto on Jun 1, 2016 20:57:52 GMT
Commentary on Sight/Flux Infighting
The actual fight is provided to me by means of [CORRUPTION FILTER ACTIVE] so I can't link you to it directly or encompass the full effect, but we'll try to explain. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
According to deuteragonisticCommentary, real name not fitting on server but Kevin can probably explain it noncorruptively better since it was his head we talked this over in, Sight/Flux is...Dear god. The synchronization is aggressive. Linkage signs well to empowerment. Arcs sign well to Legends. A pointed focus on pieces of a story covers for an aspect that cannot seem to focus in on one thing but the story bits and pieces. Sight's practically nuclear offense covers for Flux's failure to offend. Sight is part communicative but also part manipulative and narrative; the cross of Heart and Flux if you will. It rivals Breath and Rage in terms of get out there and affect reality right fucking now no matter what you have to do, at least once the relevant abilities are acquired. The only weak point of Sight is really filling itself up defensively and it has fairly effective abilities for doing that if and when it becomes a problem anyway. Sight is to the narrative's organs and skin as Flux is to the hair and veins and claws of that narrative (and Ploy to its bones). Sight stays outside the narrative yet embodies it, Flux embodies the narrative yet stays outside it. They are aspects which are very coordinative eversive foes. Both of them show you a lot of useless symbolic shit but have some pretty convenient powers that turn them into weapons when finely handled. The Story is global narrative meta, the Sight is focused to local narrative sorta-reverse-meta. And they SORT OF like each other...
Their Unite Synchronization is apparently called [Canon Edit]. Legends are important bundles of links. Flux works with importance. Sight provides firepower in reality and metareality now, Flux provides supporting and embodiment to make it stickier and stronger. It's pretty good. And then you let the metaphlogistonic Story into the fuckoff symbolism zone Outline...
But Flux, like Rain and Sand, loves to skirt the rules every once in a while. This is where the SORT OF steps in like a nuclear bomb.
The Story doesn't like people fucking up its nice pretty archetypes, toying with attachments to shift about importance (unless you're a displacement/destroyer class and that's your job because the Story really likes people keeping their ARC up if you can stay meta about it). It appreciates potential for change but finds that magically running around with pieces of the story to be like an art thief or an anti-artist; you are effectively ripping up the story and taking it with you or destroying it. It can appreciate a story about an art thief, or perhaps someone who hates art. It will not appreciate someone molesting its favored works lightly. Eradicating a symbol, or storying the V id, or otherwise [Emptied Epitomes] everywhere, is an irritating experience for any Flux player in the same session, though possibly an ARC-filling one for a relevant class who may restore the importance torn out. When you take pieces remember to put them back before they're missed or only take things that won't be wanted again like problems, or you're going to have a pissed off Story on your meme-covered hands.
This is why you do not ever allow for the use of [ I Am Legend ] in particular on someone who has access to, even/especially by BT, [ Slaying The 4th Wall ]. The Sight is effectively declaring war on the story's elements of coherence and will leave an ugly mess if the ability proceeds to completion. Other berserk triggers aren't actively marauding against narrative sanity, but pitting the two ones who are in remote capacity for each other will end badly for the session script as a whole. Someone who can therefore override natural narrative gravity created by [ I Am Legend ] and will be pissed off at it grabbing symbols and start going panel chainsaw with ideas and upgrade anything and everything they can find to stop it is certainly the natural target for stopping this, but they won't do so cleanly. They'll respond to a sudden imbalance in conceptual importance by flooding it with their own and assaulting the offending black hole sue in the plot. Even if they would be a regular bystander due to being a non-target for either purpose the Story will more or less force its way in and start hitting people from both inside and outside the plot (and in the latter it's not exactly easy to counter), part in panelspace and part in realspace. This will result in a direct and fast conflict of ideas. If the Flux player is (also) berserking and/or considerably more in-character and/or not the target they might succeed in drop-kicking the Sight player enough to disrupt their focus and interrupt the ability with spammed break shots, abstract metaphlogistonic spikes, and regular violence or possibly surviving the narrative atom bomb when symbolism is removed because of substantiating their own symbology, otherwise it'll just end badly as their suicidal charge leads to a destroyed local narrative and a damaged global narrative that you are now lacking a Flux player to repair.
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161 posts
Sage of Breath
Played by Nedben
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Post by telestialGrotto on Jun 7, 2016 19:10:07 GMT
Flux General As An Aspect
You know, there aren't really that many guides on Flux besides this one at the moment. Hell, most of my info's taken from UU guides and Fred's coworkers, as well as a particularly silly collection of 'What to do when a player of this aspect is stalking you' guides which happened to have an incredibly massive one on Flux and all of its metagame scrying shenanigans simply because of all the stupid little tricks to get more from you than you'd give consent to that aspect has.
Honestly, it's an aspect that's hardly played for a big reason: Flux is meant for and given to people stuck in patterns and routine, the unchanging, and those who are simply not living up to their potential as people. It's rare because in Sburb the vast majority of people who fit that category die. If you fail to embody your role or you're not good enough to go on, the Game has no qualms with killing you to death to remove you from the stage. Replaying is full of changes; every session is a new role, a new way of acting you must take up or be executed by the cheating demon that birthed us all and will most likely be the provider of our deaths (unless we jump defenselessly with arms wide open into the nearest hostile tentacle monster willing to eradicate us instead). You don't usually see Flux because very few people can actually stay that consistent (and those that do are really stuck). Those that do usually have natives that encompass a wide enough variety of roles personalitywise that even with flaw patching they are still roughly the same person they were all those years ago besides a fuckton of trauma, or grew up with an incredibly abusive situation that the Game is usual business by comparison.
This tends to lead to a bifurcation between Flux players who are legitimately horrible people with tricks (me) or Flux players who have gotten so good at Sburb they can keep a sufficiently large chunk of the real them alive and breathing long after most players would give in and be a new person or die. Most people who would roll Flux don't actually succeed at keeping the real them alive despite all Sburb's troubles (sorry, we're not that good), and have another method of staying physically alive rather than spiritually alive: be it starting presession with midgame weapons, corruption by those precious few who would rather we not kill everything in our path, no matter how much we want to (sucks to be you, Fred and Lillian), enough majjyks and dance-strifing below their belt to seriously challenge an Agent on day one, or just so much in Sburban survival skills and Light-level luck that they are beginning to catch up with gentlemanMannerism in session count but giving the real them breathing room isn't needed because they have given up and strife on only out of duty to the frogs or whatever strikes their fancy as something to live for. Someone who manages to roll an aspect several times in a row and not die is either simply like that aspect as a person, an Avatar (possibly to be if not yet), or hasn't learned their lesson beyond enough to evade death. Think gentlemanMannerism-level 'so good it's virtually impossible to off them' or sanitysController-level 'rolls an aspect a fuckton because Sburb is trying to get a point across but gets a different one instead and because classpect logic can't actually kill her for it', or me-level 'what the fuck learn your lesson you literally got an award from your Denizen for being the worst player of that classpect still alive' (might get to dive into the meta again soon, good!).
Here's Flux's description from the Guide (though it speaks no more on it):
Keywords: Meta, narration, plot relevance, potential, evolution
Elemental manifestation: "Metaphlogiston" basically some stuff that flows and gathers around those with more potential to modify the status quo.
Offense/Externalization : •
Defense/Imbuing: ••••
Support/Conceptual Manipulation: ••••
Whisperings : The Story
From this we can see that Flux does not like being a physical asskicking object but it is actually pretty good at imbuing itself into objects and being used as an inspecific tool.
From a general poll-summary of aspect lore and abilities on the supraliteral-subabastract axis:
Flux is an aspect all about narrative potential. Whether that is encouraging and inspiring others to grow into their narrative roles, or by twisting and subverting tropes. Flux is assigned to those who are stuck in patterns and routine, those who do not change, or to those who are not living up to their potential as a person.
Descriptive: Liquid metal -> Connotative: Liquidity -> Emblematic: Changeability -> Figurative: (Character) Development -> Substrative: Narrative potential? (and in my own addition, meta and importance in the form of plot relevance, because I got told to do that a lot)
The mercurial metaphlogiston is what it is, representing situational liquidity, which is ability to change, which because Sburb means character development, which leads into the heart of the matter, narrative potential.
Idiomatically on the interconceptual-mediaderivative axis I can expand this with a bunch of notes Kevin/penitentGropagas had the courtesy to host for me. Isn't he a nice camwhore? lol But seriously, thanks for whatever Uogne did to you to pay for that, the look on your mental face said you enjoyed it because they made you enjoy it. Accuracy not guaranteed due to my shitty understanding of how aspect diagrams work. This thing is a trainwreck made of messes and all the trains are being bombed by me in a bomber and I'm dropping basilisks everywhere because fucking basilisks everywhere that's why.
symbolicconceptual-axial-verbatimactual
Shiny flowing stuff <-Liquid metal->Mercury and gallium and to a lesser extent being hot enough to be molten but not hot enough to gas in a technical sense, metaphlogiston as a material
Movement and flowing and fueling <-Liquidity->Physical state of being a liquid, metaphlogiston as a concept level
The derivative, the rate of change, how much between X1 and X2 will Y change, mathematical physics on potential, mechanical part ideas, progress in objects<-Changeability->Stuff being different or having the ability to become different (because you applied flux to bs machines and machinery to accomplish that into existence)
Statements and actions and tropes showing how a character is now different than who they were before and feelings jams and doing important stuff characterwise and narrating, progress in processes and people<-Character development->Forcing people to embody their X of Y job and also feelings jams
Tropes and plot concepts and storywriting rules and evading them and not sweating the small stuff unless your job is to sweat the small stuff because you're important<-Narrative potential (plus plot relevance)->Beating the shit out of people with the 4th wall while breaking the 4th wall because this is a game where you fight stuff
A quick way to embody this tolerably enough to not get murdered (idiomatic learning and aspect duality/vacillation, yay!) is:
General: Feel important, like you matter even if it's only as a piece on a gameboard. You are a Replayer, do not go gentle into that good night, and you will rage against the dying of the light like an old man atop the hill. Without you, the story lacks a narrator and will simply go on however it wishes, which might be bad for your coplayers, so you must be the reader of the tale, the architect, author and writer inside and outside, battling to give everyone the happy ending they deserve rather than the usual tragedies of replayerdom.
If you want to do basic metaphlogiston attacks, you've got to be a narrator character who shines and flows as the living embodiment of Flux, reader and writer, or at least a pretty baller 4thwaller. On a surface level, feeling shiny and charactery and 4thwally -> liquid metal -> weaponizing shooting metaphlogiston break shots at people or instead making them important for imbuing and scrying purposes. It helps the act for most of us but is ultimately just a surface show. Like Stage, keeping up the role act is even more essential than usual, though you're given license to parody it and be yourself a little so long as you're meta about it so unless you're a cryptical class and that ARC has demands you'll be fine.
On the level of looking downward from the surface or just below, you've got to move or speak or fuel or flow or monitor to take it further than mere movement, mere speaking, mere fueling, mere flowing, or mere monitoring. Hop like Flow, scamper like a Maid, stomp and demand like Rage, turn the page like a priest, recite like a miko, cause actions. Moving/fueling/flowing or causing it -> liquidity -> being able to hop into meta panelspace, turn all liquidity like that mercury dude, or act all toonforce and get away with it. It also is the first step into seriously buffing your stats to keep pace with more active-use aspects, though as it's a less intense level and not the heart of the aspect it's a bit less good than it should be. This is where the ARC bonus is strong enough to start making a difference, and because Sburb you should be doing this all anyways so do your job and you'll be fine.
Actually submerged in the heart of it, you reach changeability. To change things, you need to be the agent of change, get the ball rolling with that ludicrous battleship (of importance) you call an ass for Flux to slam the other foot down and floor the accelerator on this fucked-up Sburb flying spaceboat. You have to want to make things different and better and often take the first step for the universe to finish it off; until you're seriously that good at it, and you're most likely not, you're gonna need to cite at least a few tropes or find relevant prophecies to get to where say 'yo this has to happen n'wahs' and make it happen without fucktons of often pluck-expensive freestyling. The Story has its own motives and its audience has great pull, so you need to fucking step up to the plate and make your opinion heard if you don't want to get booted. ARCwise this is where shit gets serious but it's not actually that much so fuck you make those improvements (or other changes  ) to yourself you've been internally putting off and try to work on your flaws and you'll maybe not die.
Getting deeper, you have character development. To force others to embody their roles and coerce one iota of acceptance from the game towards being able to be people again, this is a level you must master. Shit gets fucking meta on this level. TvTropes is your GameFAQs. Seriously. You have to get all tropey and stuff. Also feelings jams. This aspect is almost as good as Heart, Mind, and Blood at the whole 'yo we're in a deathgame you want some mental help?' stuff to the point where if it results in a serious effect (i.e. making them able to go on again) you even get ARC out of it, though many psybuffs go towards the nuclear option of 'forcefully impose the X of Y mindset and actionset on them so they'll suffer less' end with such disturbing methods as 'depersonalize them into realizing they're fictional and their struggles are merely to be entertaining, so be entertaining in other ways lol dodge suffering'. ARCwise remember how I said work on your flaws? DEAR FUCKING GOD WORK ON YOUR FLAWS character development = good 4 ur not dying skillz while fluxin it up. You have a class, so look at that class and learn how to fucking play it to reduce your odds of dying by the way.
At the bottom of the ocean of fuckedupedness and meta fragments you've got narrative potential and importance. Shit's plot-relevant now. You've got to fucking english class it up in here in order to seriously utilize most of your bread-and-butter srs biz abilities to their fullest extent. Remember how I said TvTropes was your GameFAQs? Bullshit symbolism analysis like a Sight player is obligated to get is your ammunition container. The multiverse is a story. You are its narrator. Go forth, my child, and narrate shit. You've got to be one of those weird dudes who drops exposition like it's hot and explains what's happening like part of Light or Tacticians are obligated to if you want to exploit, sort of. If you're Cryptic then act like Lillian and say it in the most obfuscating way possible like it's the Wasteland or some shit so only english teachers in whatever meta-levels above us exist have the slightest hope of understanding you behind layers and layers of weird to ensure a net + for your ARC. You are within and without on the story level. You control and are plot relevance, it is you.
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On a literal pole, Flux is change. Between literal and derivative, it's agency of change and magic and machinery and the making to make stuff happen. At a derivative pole, it is stuff being different. Between derivative and abstract, it is making people embody their roles and helping them evolve and grow as helpful or necessary. At its most abstract, it is the narrative potential and plot relevance. Between abstract and conceptual, it is tropes and actions and feelings and the physical things that should happen anyways like feelings jams and making progress where it matters. At its most conceptual, Flux is progress, rates of change, potential in a mechanical sense for what can happen and what should, must, and will happen. Between conceptual and literal, it is metaphlogiston, the liquid metal and liquidity that is importance and potential to change the status quo.
Because it is the aspect of the story, and we live and are trapped in and are a core part of the story of Sburb, Flux is hardly original, or even making an effort to be unique. The story of Sburb is stolen from/by or contributes to/is referencing from every mythology in our host universes; it is a creation myth and a bildungsroman, both genres which due to their commonality can be frankly called overdone, which really gives us a nice pool of tropes and references to call from but is completely fucking unoriginal to the point where finding new things to do is a key component of the creative classes and aspects and gamebreakers in general as well as whatever hell develops these damn Sgames, and a major part of Flux's job is finding where it should be help and where it needs to be parodied and blown up.
Whisperingwise, the Story is a fairly nice guy/girl/collective/unison/disunities/it. It's one of the more environmental ones, but it also projects a veneer of 'hello I am here watching you I am the Story' once you enter and the role really hangs on to you and you can zone for a moment, because you're a player. It's like a low-level Whisper To Me at all times so even before the ability is formally acquired as a whispering-passive it just tells you like you're reading a book except the book is a memory except you're not real except you're a fictional character so you are so you aren't and then it gets worse from there. It feels like words, events, importance all flashing around in the back of your head and heart like 'Hi I'm the part of the game that's not an asshole' except it doesn't use words. It's like understanding is speaking to you, and when it wants to use words it's like your aspect is using ==> the same way exiles are to tell and coerce you into doing stuff. The Story is usually one of the more clear aspects because it's like your reading or remembering reading and the images pop into your mind's eye once you get a good sense for it plus it has the ability to just fucking say "Do X to not die" and get away with it in an emergency much like the Voices and Orchestra can if they want to and the Faith does all the time. Importance tells you what is important to do because it's fucking importance, so like the Faith and the Beat it has a good sense for what is important and needs to be done and how. Also as [ MSPA Reader ] can attest you are not the only object of focus to be around so sometimes the Story will be 'elsewhere' and act like a normal whispering. Favorwise its favors consist of making the narrative obvious.
There's limited data on the colors and mayhems theory and even less on how the fuck Flux acts with it, but in general which fragmented mind of the Story that is called for jury duty around you in particular plays a lot on the 'tone' of the session: different personalities will have wildly different methods of how They view it. If you want to know their particular method on the matter, once you're not bogged down by anything go to a safe and preferably big Skaian Summoning, relax, zone out, and maybe inactively let the meta begin to massage your subconscious like a horrorterror is gently stroking Kevin's reward system as a 'good job' measure. Then once you're beginning to feel it, ask. Just gently whisper back 'hey you there Story?' as if it's a thought you're letting walk into the meta for you, and once it's sent and then received pingback (if you've ever been in a telepathic conversation that's about the feeling) and the Story says 'sup gurl thanks for dropping in' except it's actually in the form of a vague warm sentiment of a consort visiting a friend somewhere and thoughts of happy endings and they all lived happily ever after and it's like the cosmos are saying hello but unlike The World it's actually The Story and it's not cosmos but it's just the plot and the edge of the panel and aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
and then you just sort of gently as possible askthink back 'hey how do you want this all to go' and they'll tell you. It's like all the latent power in the Skaian Summoning goes 'did I hear what I just think I heard', turns to look at you, smiles like a Cheshire cat, and then slowly bombards your mind with this sort of 'okay you know what fine take my sentiments and listen' like an aspect quest is going on except you're not told to do anything but just hold on a sec and get what they're trying to tell you. And then it's like an english class in a second as that particular piece of the Story tells you 'this is how I want you to do that shit, so do it this way if you want my attention' except it's in the form of a narrative tone. According to the guy who sent me the flux-sight UU if you play Sight and FSZ at a Flux Skaian Summoning the symbolism spam when this happens is second only to staring at a very plump legend or sometimes their own summonings. Once you have that information you know how Flux said 'yo do this THIS way bitch' and it's actually right? Yeah they're right.
This is pretty useful for determining what Flux will do when tasked to do something by an ability, general imbuing, or loose freestyling involving 'yo I'm dumping you and your Fluxy self into the environment because that's what you told me to do okay your job now Story', as well as offering playstyle recommendations to better suit what's going on, because the wide variety of stuff Flux can and does do means that it's not exactly set in stone.
wow this is a trainwreck could somebody with a better grasp on the aspect send help?
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161 posts
Sage of Breath
Played by Nedben
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Post by telestialGrotto on Jun 14, 2016 17:41:39 GMT
To round this guide off, a submission by cthyllasAutonomy, Birth-Mother of the Protist Thaumaturgy and Author of the Beautiful Futures, she-of-many-names-and-creations, recently posted in Kevin's head during a particularly spammy discussion apparently about Knebel's hairstyle, a brief mention on how avatardom of Flux might work. Translated as best able by Lillian the Corrupter (thx milady).
so anyways omfg I was eating this saccharine doppelganger and then I was like BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE? So this cray cray godtier Guard of Rain was like 'hey you thx 4 eatin that' up at the session he had just thrown it out of and I was like 'wtf u glubbin want human u look saucy' and I couldn't eat him because he was inside the barrier and wearing a frogsuit (fuckin godtiers always being PREPARED) and then he was like 'glub that I didn't go 12 sessions of 20 being a fucking badass narrator for nothing u need any glubs upgraded or some shit fuckin native smith of flux here' so I flopped over onto the barrier and was like 'hmm what's this' and then he said 'lol watch this' and recited random narrative shit and then pulled out a hammer, coated it in metaphlogiston bs, and BAM it was a better hammer and I was like 'dude yes sell ur soul rn you can make mad boon$ I will totes use you' and he was like 'maybe later hot stuff hmu @ [lol not tellin u he is mine to buy]' and I'm all like 'hnng yes fine I'll take you l8r k?' he be all 'k' and now I'm going to buy that the fucking moment he has a bad day which is prolly like a week or 2 cuz another rain sess is going 'well shit' w00t fuck yeah and also that dude's hairstyle is totally what knebel should do next it will be raaad
From this (well, more Lillian's translational notes on concepts that don't match well because words) we can determine that an Avatar of Flux would constantly have meta vision and story awareness, plus being able to produce small quantities of metaphlogiston in order to make stuff more notable.
yeah that's about all I have kthx
-Love,
Julie Lamarck, Destroyer of Worlds
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161 posts
Sage of Breath
Played by Nedben
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Post by telestialGrotto on Jun 20, 2016 22:44:41 GMT
Addenum: Tendencies and Glitches
Flux is not quite Law, so of course there's gonna be some buggy bits here and there. However, since Sburb is a pretty tolerably woven game in certain meta-abstractions that Flux and Stage govern by technicality, the tendency of 'mostly fine but occasionally ungodly spastic' is a given.
Hell, 'mostly fine but occasionally spastic' is a tendency: Flux players tend to flip violently between hating and adoring glitches from a safe distance. So let's go into that.
By all means this is not a complete list, duh.
Tendency: I love bugging you
Every time there's something that's 'but thou must' or 'fuck the game's broke what do' or 'fuck the rules let's do something else instead' and you are aware of it, Flux is going to be attracted to it like moths to a flame because meta-awareness is its dominion. Being that Sburb is a whole fucking boatload of 'but thou must' and 'fuck the game's broke what do' and you often have to resort to 'fuck the rules let's do something else instead' to not die, this means that your Flux player is going to irrationally adore gamebreakers once their aspect gets a hang of them. Your Flux player will occasionally suddenly feel the urge to chat with you when you run into something sufficiently frustratingly story-scripted, frustratingly broken/glitchy, or if you are about to do/doing/just did something something incredibly badass and/or rulebreaking and follow through on it just to see how you're doing, and in the case of a broken game they might be able to futz around the glitched-up patch. This generally means that Flux players will gush hard over Rain, Law, Rage, Heart, and sometimes Sand or Stage or Mist or Time players because they are walking piles of the offending things that attract Flux players.
Tendency: Middlemanning
Flux players often feel distinctly like middlemen to the point they will discuss it with chat clients at the beginning of their session. It's pretty much true though so it's just part of the stupid awareness. I think it's related to how [Meta] passively kicks in and you can start looking at abstractions and then realizing you're a puppet with maximum efficiency.
Glitch: Ow WTF I slipped into magicant
When abusing [Panel Handle] as a pseudo-teleport ability and something goes wrong (i.e. running below a focused pluck threshold at a bad time), you don't have the leisurely spacewarping of Space and sometimes it will register as an unplanned physics/geometry error and chuck you into a location designed for handling confused code it doesn't want to delete, i.e. the Magicant. This is why you don't want to panel handle out anywhere except where you came in during a buggy point in spacetime like transspatial architecture or an area you shouldn't leave midway, as this has all sorts of risky gamebreaking bugs as if a Space player had decided to rudely kidnap you and then chuck you into voidyland, as you might not be able to get out anywhere near you came in. Also, magicant panels are usually sufficiently far away from even each other that you can't jump out until endgame without exhausting your pluck reserves and then some. You may want to map your magicant in case the universe flips out at you.
Glitch/Shitty Design: My ARC Bonuses Are Fucktiny On These Few Abilities
Remember how I said the Story was polite about it when your ARC was shit if you were at least trying for the specific ability's special say-this-to-do-that component? That's a double-edged sword and holy shit does it cut both ways. While the importance of following your damn role cannot be underestimated as it directly affects your general stats and still contributes to ability effectiveness even in the special cases mentioned (albeit less than normally and mostly by affecting your situational or actual flummoxie), abilities that have an additional activation component above situation that can override role-based or competency-based fizzling if performed correctly (i.e. abilities that involve reciting stuff) especially when your flummoxie is not bad tend to not seriously improve as much as they would for comparable progress in other abilities. Witchkiller Wedge Demirror, Reader of the Tale, and Tropes are Not Bad suffer heavily from this, though only the first seriously falls behind as the other two have enough room for improvement and high enough stat buffs they remain useful, even though it kind of begins to fall into 'every bit counts' territory in certain cases and are basically just fraymotifs sans music and with different boost and not allowed conditions.
Glitch/Shitty Design: FUCK YOU NIGHTMARE HEIR FUCK YOU also fuck you denizen BUT FUCK YOU NIGHTMARE HEIR
[ Tropes Are Not Bad ]'s on-point commentary bonus feature and several other Flux abilities are absolutely devastating in the face of enemies that know your personal insecurities. Besides making your denizen even more overpowered than usual if you're in the mood for a violentslay, this means that during your Nightmare Heir fight holy shit do NOT use [ Witchkiller Wedge Demirror ] and be really close to the end if you're gonna go for exploiting [ Tropes Are Not Bad ] statbuffing. The Nightmare Heir's counteruse will almost invariably be just slightly stronger thanks to their snappy dialogue, meaning that leftover damage will slam into you and that is pretty much an autoloss.
At least if you stack [ Lost in the Story ] with [ Be The Hero We Want You To Be ] on top of [ We're Fictional ] you're practically soulless and feel almost nothing except for your narrator game-face on, so you do get to be at least divorced from your physical self and use only the specific emotional response sections relevant to mulling over, feeling, and addressing the issue while fighting the issues and having the comforting thoughts of the Story riding your soul almost as hard as Lillian does mine while the bitch over there spouts trash and forces you to deal with things that don't even hold you back anymore. Your Nightmare Heir will probably have 2 or 3 issue discussions solely on how you can't even fight them honestly, but for me the acceptance answer was 'Sburb doesn't give a crap about how I really feel and I'm okay with that.", "I've made my peace with the whole abuse thing, that is also Sburb's fault bt dubs so I'm okay with bearing the guilt there" and "You're just a cog in the machine I'm going to burn to the ground so I'll make sure to give special attention to your scripts, but thank you for your time" and that was when she finally knelt and I killed her. Then after narrowly missing trying to drink the weird nightmare goo I took my buffs off to see how I really felt and OH GOD WORST DECISION OF MY LIFE I was so emotionally exhausted and done with life and a little physically exhausted I fell asleep on the spot.
Admittedly my Nightmare Heir fight was a good bit shorter than everyone else's thanks to a. Lillian mostly having prevented me from fucking up too badly, b. I really do not have many regrets I just legitimately love killing everything in sight with all my heart and passion consequences be damned, and of course c. dumping every nuclear option psybuff Flux has onto me at once to turn me into a game-chugging machine.
Feature: SmartNPCs
Certain NPCs (or almost all of them depending on other players aspects) will recognize if you don't give a damn and will just give you the straightforward objectives if you want due to the passive Flux accumulating around them and with various other whisperings informing them and being able to just find relevant information in scripts. They'll also be slightly better at negotiating glitchy dialogues with you around because Flux's awareness shtick will be all 'that shit don't jive with my story yo' and will piece together what little it can find automagically. This is incredibly useful for figuring out what part of the consort babbling is useful and what part is actual babbling. This is a great exasperation reducer so people who are bad at puzzling things out but not charged to do so on their own can figure out what information is relevant and what isn't. [ Metagaming ] can be used to maximize potential for this by just flinging the mysterious ethers of democracy at coming up with the answer. It's like a more talkative use of the [ Mugged by Inspiration ] trick Fate players with ARC to spare freestyle.
Tendency: We Do Not Exist
Flux likes to share the whole 'we're fictional' thing around and take disturbing amounts of joy in it, but only when they're running their hyper psybuffs. Several abilities with Flux involved will not hesitate to remind you of this, though it can be a disturbing thing in the face of those who are not equipped to accept it or outright refuse being a piece. Your Flux player once they have access to [ We're Fictional ] or freestyling of an equivalent will act incredibly happy about horrible things happening to them and those around them like a Rain player had transmuted all of their sad into happy rainbow confusion funtime. Lillian and Terry just stood the fuck back and let me do my thing and I STILL acted like it, so I can hella confirm this. This can result in people seeming bipolar or extremely sadistic, but this is usually a worst-case scenario and a sign of someone who needs a feelings jam to be brought back to fakeness/reality.
Glitch: I hate glitches, no wait I LOVE glitches, wait no I hate them
Flux cannot decide whether or not something that appears to be 'glitchy and not helpfully so' according to you is their job or not and thus smacks your emotions every which way if you're full of your aspect enough because the relevant script for determining how you should treat artificial or fake or unclearly tagged unplanned 'meta-things' based on what you consider normal is having a seizure almost as hard as the patch of reality you're looking at, which has the awkward effect of making you notice that the script is flopping about like a fish in your head and then you maximize the flip until you start seizuring between happy and displeased and meta and every feeling that exists and some that don't (at least, I really hope you don't feel elaborate string arrangement unless you're thinking music or horrorterror) too. If you seem to be deciding between burning the witchcraft or making it your best friend 4ever and many other extreme emotional states every time you see something that you would call a bug take off your Flux psybuffs (besides the core trinity of stop giving a fuck and play the game if you're on 'em) and stop using regular Flux buffs for a sec so you can assess it objectively, and if possible call a Heart (or possibly void/mist/rage/rain etc.) player over to try and fix the problem. Once the loop about your treatment of the situation is shattered the script will reload and you'll be fine.
As the game cannot tell if something's bugged on its own and is relying on your perception, it is possible to make your Flux player start doing the Dersite Religious Flop by getting a bunch of people to pretend something is bugged but not garnering 'attention/local relevance' for the script to check your heads too, or mistaking a feature for a bug. I will admit to being the victim of this wholeheartedly and it was extremely funny afterwards once Lillian stopped facepalming in disgust at Sburb and after I got over the fact I was alternating between professing various extreme emotional states at a confused salamander wearing a baseball cap and an iguana with a baseball bat.
I mean that prank is totally unethical but SO worth it.
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161 posts
Sage of Breath
Played by Nedben
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Post by telestialGrotto on Jun 23, 2016 22:53:04 GMT
Even More Notes
You know, apparently some of the guides on visionary meta are...less than comprehensible to outsiders who are not Others with a knack for quality memes. So I'd better do that!
But first, Name Notices!
[ Toonforce ] is occasionally referred to as [ Gallium Body ]. This is partially because all the metaphlogiston warping your form is technically to the point you could melt into a liquid and recrystallize into yourself as well as just open holes to dodge bullets, but because it's mostly aspect energy and you it's not really toxic in low doses so the game calls it gallium rather than mercury. Former Mist players may feel it reminds them of [ Reverberata ], because they are coded similarly. Yes, you can jam yourself into your enemy's windpipe and neckburster out of there by reforming expendable pieces. No, it's actually much more pluck expensive than a [ Break Flux ] to the mouth. Toonforcing near someone and collapsing to harmlessly melt yourself and then reforming your head to scare them is an unnecessary waste of pluck, though it can be a particularly handy/funny last-second save if you've got some to spare. As with all other formography interrupts you should reassemble properly automagically when it ends so try not to have that happen at a bad time.
[ Too Relevant To Die ] is sometimes just named [ Instant Plot Armor ] or just [Plot Armor]. It has a similar variant [ Deus Ex Machina ] for a buff directly proportional to how much you need to change a situation, to the "best" stats to change it, as calculated by the game. This variant is weak to mediocre in any situation where something doesn't risk to go horribly wrong, but skyrockets in those cases where it does.
This should not be confused with [ Machina Ex Deus ], which is an alternative name for [ Upgrade Rehash ].
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And now for Flux as it usually gets used at session meetings that don't consist of the Flux player casually abusing [==>] to make people do what they want and everyone else abjuring it out of annoyance.
[ Fan Done It ]: The 'fuck you' of 'scrying' abilities. It allows you to see fanart and fanfic and other creations that people have made of any particular thing you can think of, like your coplayers for example, as if you were browsing an image/video/text sharing site inside your brain. It works cross-session and even on the dead since you can think of people but it's completely impossible to pick out what's a truly original scenario or an alternative interpretation of something that actually happened or is guaranteed to happen. Sometimes the 'comments' attached to any particular piece of work can be a trigger to tell you when something is strange, though often times they're alien or nonexistent. As a rule of thumb anything inappropriate on people who aren't going to do it or are in different sessions can be usually autoassumed false. Usually.
[ PrintScrn ]: Pleasantly abusable. It allows you to conjure printouts or files from scrying visions or general thoughts from a metaphlogistonic aeropool, and in video formats project them by drawing a small TV-shaped square of metaphlogiston to display it on, as well as recording specific thoughts. In other words you are a walking camera-printer combo. Pluck-expensive so best used only on the funniest of things, recording panels, or shortly before bed on a safezone sburban jungle land bed so your pluck will not be drained at an inopportune time. If you hold out your hands in the L-box format some Space players use when targeting things it's a great help. Best combined with [ Fan Done It ] or [ MSPA Reader ] and server space for blackmail purposes.
[ MSPA Reader ]: The actually useful actual scrying ability. As described elsewhere you basically view reality as if you were reading some form of webcomic or animation flash. [ S ] prefacing a command view when summarizing what you want to see in scry form (i.e. '[ S ] What is telestialGrotto up to right now? ==>') will ensure it gets sound, and likely give you a full animation flash. Extremely precious as it is one of the few abilities that can pierce inter-universal barriers far cheaply than most scries, but is still pluck-expensive as fuck to the point of impossibility when doing so except for exiles as they are within the same story framework and are from the same instance of Sburb anyway. Seers of Flux are seriously almost as good as Seers of Heart for determining Sburb's nasty bugged-up underpinnings. Trying to scry yourself puts you in non-sburb-dream dreamy 3rd person for maximum videogame feel, so don't bother wasting the pluck.
[ Speak to the Ether ]: A more specific version of [ Metagaming ] which is more situational. You toss up a query to the Story right up and to the mysterious ethers of democracy and from their strong whims determine what you should do or what they think is going to happen. When casting, it is best to face the nearest 'camera' sensation and politely ask 'the audience' or 'the players' what you should be doing, then pause for a second for them to be polled and the answer to flow into your head. Like, be Dora the Explorer. Most of the time the Story will reward following its request, so you'd better damn honor what you let be arbitrated or else take an unhealthy ARC hit. Cast during session meetings at your own risk as the audience tends to agree with what is generally a more entertaining or better idea and now you have to comply or look bad to your own aspect. If you want to avoid getting told to do something else entirely present specific choices for the story to pick from.
[ Be The Other Guy ]: Fusion of [==>] and [ MSPA Reader ]. You temporarily switch to scryvision following someone else possibly under an initial [==>] order a la MSPA Reader, while your real body goes on [ BTHWWYTB ]-style autopilot. Best not to waste too much pluck on it in case the real you decides to wander off and get into an unpleasant situation.
[ Heads-Up Display ]: This toggle pluckdraining passive is an upgraded version of [ Meta ] that at its lowest on setting allows you to detect others' meta-actions from a distance (i.e. if you're not immediately there to invade their menufication) and depending on pluck expenditure funneled into it simply 'know' details about their stats like you were in a panoramic imaginarium. If your other players feel like you're stalking them from the distance whenever they level up you leaving this ability on is why. You aren't actually stalking them unless you waste the pluck to independently panelport to their leveling screen to join them in realspace or are already there, but you do know what echeladder and tier rung they're on and experience progress to the next. You can and should leave it off without losing any benefits but if somebody needs help scanning something and you lack a Heart player to do better, pop over, dump a fuckton of pluck into this passive for a minute so you can see all of their useful stats and relevant coding that a Heart player could see without even expending a drop of pluck. As a combat-centric class this is best used at the start of combat to compare your stats to the enemy so you can see whether or not you're going to have to dodge like it's Dark Souls or you can go for the kill immediately, and midbattle if you're beginning to feel low briefly set it to the second-lowest 'setting' point (at that level unless you really suck it should just put a small dent in your pluck regen) to confirm whether or not an ability is affordable and not going to fizzle in the current context. You can actually afford to run higher settings without actually draining pluck if you're willing to run the Flux psybuffs at all times to maximize your ARC and stats accordingly, but at that rate you really are a machine and with the flanderizing effect if you have 'willing to go along with other people's ideas' as part of your personality the simpler read of your shiny is going to turn you into a slave to any coplayer who comes along.
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161 posts
Sage of Breath
Played by Nedben
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Post by telestialGrotto on Jun 23, 2016 23:53:28 GMT
Progression + Actual Use
Of course, all this mess doesn't come at once! Flux tends to get a few useful abilities, rely on useful abilities and mundane strifing for a while, get a slew of specific-purpose abilities, then get another useful ability, in an exaggerated version of usual ability progression.
The early game abilities are most of the fireworks-centric ones that have explicit combat use centering on or a basic convenience function, plus [ Meta ] since you start right out with that one. If you like grabbing abilities early on at every opportunity and have a rather large Land, by the time you've gone around the planet a few times and the main Land quest is seriously underway and the Red Line has been crossed you should probably possess [Break Flux], as well as having [We're Fictional] for dealing with early-game psychological trauma.
After that most of the scrying abilities like [ MSPA Reader ] series popped up for me plus [ Panel Handle ] in there somewhere, and about by the time the Knell was up I'd gathered most of those standard Flux sillies like [ Narrator's Privilege ] and started getting narrator-y survivability passives. Denizen questing was a whole glut of abilities because Minerva was just ugh weirdo.
Once Minerva keeled over and planet healing slowed the everliving fuck down enough to dungeon dive plus when the Earthsea Borealis was too fucking much I netted [ Slaying the 4th Wall ] early on and [Plot Love] soon after. After that I'd mostly done enough diving and sidequests and the Underworld was just a griefing session. Endgame sidequest finishing-up was where the UUs I was in came into play.
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A reliable Flux combo is to just strife as if you weren't aspect abusing but work in Flux-y ways of acting for the ARC of it and use what you have in a meta fashion. Many of Flux's better attacks work off acting-meta principles and its strongest elements are imbuing and tools, so if there's a lull in the fight and you need to kick it up a notch in order to win milk those activation bonuses. Freestyled fraymotif-synced metaphlogiston attacks are actually a good idea since fraymotif use is technically a 'meta-action' so the Story's like 'd'aww' and doesn't make the pluck cost a fuckton.
Once you've got a handle on your aspect freestyle ways of making yourself and/or others more important: specific ways of channeling importance into your blows differ from player to player by sheer nature of specibus, but just remember to make whoever you are choosing to make into the star(s) of the show, break the status quo, and smashingly break the 4th wall, and you'll probably do fine. Change things up and you're sure to win!
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) to yourself you've been internally putting off and try to work on your flaws and you'll maybe not die.