[X] My Assistant

[hermit]

Tamago is pretty mundane scrambled egg with soy sauce, like every omelette in Hawaii I ever ate.

[Stahlseele]

Well, i can't think of anything right off the bat . .
"Photoshop or japan" has it's reasons for existing.

[ravensmuse]

Glorified, RM. Glorified. Which she is, and you know it. Ping was getting into softcore actions when she was first introduced until some of the subroutines kicked in, like throwing the lot of them out of the apartment while she got ready for school.

I know very well that dating sims =/= H-games. That still doesn't change that she's an accessory for the purpose of romance.

"She's an accessory for the purpose of romance" =/ "sexbot". Again: Ping doesn't have the subroutines for sex. End of story. She can get more comfortable with her users, yes. She can become what that user desires in a woman, yes. But in order to be a "sexbot", she actually, y'know, has to have sex with them.

Considering that her primary descendants are Chii from Chobits and Ruri from Nadeisco, neither of which were sexbots (though I'll give you that there were sexbots in Chobits, Chii wasn't one of them) and that she's in the comic as a means of exploring what it means to have your own thoughts and feelings when you're not supposed to (something familiar to the transhumanity vibe of SR4) I don't think writing her off as a "sexbot" does it justice.

Ech. Just spent half an hour searching for my H-games post from last year. I'll find it, but not today, apparently.

[KarmaInferno]

I'm pretty sure a lot of folks tend to classify any robot that's designed of ANY sort of 'human' relationship (as opposed to, say, manufacturing or utility or combat) as a "sexbot", even if it's TECHNICALLY the wrong nomenclature.

As ai said, most simply don't care enough to bother with those fine distinctions. Another smaller percentage of that group finds the whole idea weird and creepy.

I find it more amusing, honestly, when fans of a particular subject get all upset and bothered when an outsider gets the terminology wrong.

For example, we all know some folks who would just get right pissed off at this and totally miss the joke. Often goes hand in hand with Fan Myopia.



-k

[Doc Chase]

Fan Myopia.



-k

ALARM ALARM TVTROPES LINK

YOU WILL LOSE YOUR LIFE

[Stahlseele]

Thx, Dr., i allmost clicked on that link, if i had not read your warning . . and i don't have time right now!

[Doc Chase]

I know what you mean. I'm out of here in five minutes, and I almost clicked on it. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

[Fatum]

All that fuss instead of writing a single line in the hosts file.

[Aaron]

Yep, and that's part of the problem. There are a lot of previously established characters in the Sixth World, specifically on Jackpoint, even, that would fulfill the need that /d/ (this is my own private joke) is supposed to be filling. So she jars against previous established canon, and she doesn't bring anything new or poignant to the table. No offense to Aaron either; I can totally see creating a character and then having other people use and abuse her.

No offense taken. I work with genius teenagers, and you write what you know, so I pitched her to Rob, and she was in.

Anyway, she's hardly "my" character any more. I wrote her with the intention of letting other writers have their way with her (so to speak). I've always envisioned her as starting out full of energy and optimism, and sliding into a very gritty and broken reality. Whether she does that without noticing (like Edmund), or violently (like O-Ren Ishii), or tragically (like Mercutio), or some other way is up to those who write her. She might get a real coming-of-age story, or sudden death. I personally think it's cool that I don't know. Hopefully, it'll be interesting.

(By the bye, that's a reference to 4chan's hentai forum, right?)

[CanRay]

I still say hand her over to me for a bit and she'll be a force to be respected.

Or in a corner gibbering madly.

Possibly both.

[redwulf25]

My favorite examples of what Sixth World hackers are like are shows like .Hack, Densha Otoko, and Megatokyo (I think ya'll have heard my argument on that one before, right?).

Speaking of which I once made a hacker that had burned out on too many L337 M4573R BTL's. They used a Renta-zilla for their attack program and kept hallucinating a small hamster.

[ravensmuse]

No offense taken. I work with genius teenagers, and you write what you know, so I pitched her to Rob, and she was in.

Anyway, she's hardly "my" character any more. I wrote her with the intention of letting other writers have their way with her (so to speak). I've always envisioned her as starting out full of energy and optimism, and sliding into a very gritty and broken reality. Whether she does that without noticing (like Edmund), or violently (like O-Ren Ishii), or tragically (like Mercutio), or some other way is up to those who write her. She might get a real coming-of-age story, or sudden death. I personally think it's cool that I don't know. Hopefully, it'll be interesting.

And if that was your intent, cool. Given that I actually enjoyed her more in Attitude!, I guess whoever wrote her sections got it.

Now I'm curious to see what they do with her.

(By the bye, that's a reference to 4chan's hentai forum, right?)

4chan's alternative hentai forum (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Speaking of which I once made a hacker that had burned out on too many L337 M4573R BTL's. They used a Renta-zilla for their attack program and kept hallucinating a small hamster.

Largo is a technomancer. There. I said it. Everything he's seeing - zombie attacks, Rent-A-Zilla, crazed fanboys - is him interacting with the Matrix.

[Mäx]

But in Almanac, it's just, "whoop, here's this little girl, now everyone hold her hands." It was just plain weird.

I just read all of her comment in the almanac and i just can't figure out where you got this impression.

[Wakshaani]

On Dev, there are a handful of "Why is she here?" storylines that could work.

1) Someone's GF. It's a demeaning thing for a character, but, "Bob's GF wants to hang out with us" is a mantra in many places. Someone called in a big favor to get her on the boards and everyone else puts up with it.

2) Someone's relative (Niece, daughter, etc) ... Not *quite* as bad, but still demeaning. Could be a Legacy (Hachetman's kid always has a place, etc)

3) Legit That Good. This one seems to not have much traction due to her comments and seemingly being a bit over her head.

4) "What does this button do?" accidental joiner. She just tripped into Jackpoint and they figured they could accept her or kill her. Unlikely, obviously.

5) The Long Con. She's being brought in by someone who needs a mole in her corporation (Shiawase, isn't it?) and will be betrayed. (Unlikely, obviously.)

6) "I'm a teenaged girl, tee hee!" Dev is, in fact, Louie the Plumber, 120 KG worth of unwashed New Yorker who pretends to be a teenaged girl online. FUNNY, but unlikely.

7) Lastly, "The Jubilee", which is the one I expect. Someone (Probably Fastjack himself) is on a run, something goes wrong, they go down from a bullet, stumble away, and wind up being found by Dev, who hides them from the corporate security team and nurses him back to health. While he recovers, they chat a bit and she brings him her deck, which is clearly modified. It's not the greatest of work (She's a fifteen year old corp kid) but it shows potential and a willingness to go outside the lines. She takes a risk later on, distracting the guards to get him out of there, and, a week later, she gets a gift in the mail ... a fully kitted-out deck, a handful of personalized programs, and an invite to Jackpoint. "You got potential kid. You're no, well ... ME ... but you have potential. I owe you a big one, so, get ready to be a protege."

This lets her be a decent hacker, but not a GREAT one, explains how she gets access to such an elite area, and why no one's talked about kicking her out ... they might bitch about her here and there, but she's Fastjack's personal project, so everyone shuts up and deals with it. She's proven that he can trust her, even if her talent isn't up on everyone else's level yet.

That's the one I'd go with, but, you know ... told way better. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Mäx]

1) Someone's GF. It's a demeaning thing for a character, but, "Bob's GF wants to hang out with us" is a mantra in many places. Someone called in a big favor to get her on the boards and everyone else puts up with it.
2) Someone's relative (Niece, daughter, etc) ... Not *quite* as bad, but still demeaning. Could be a Legacy (Hachetman's kid always has a place, etc)
3) Legit That Good. This one seems to not have much traction due to her comments and seemingly being a bit over her head.

It's somekind of combination of these 3, she really is pretty good hacker and knows stuff about many subjects the rest of the jackpoint crew aren't so well versed.
And she also know many of the members personally, whether or not she's related to any of them remains to be seen.

I have never gotten the impression that she's not a top notch hacker, most of the stuff she doesn't know about seem to be specific happenings of sixth world history, witch isn't surprising considering she's a teenage corp kid.

[Aaron]

Good point: we haven't seen a lot of her run fu, at least not directly. Has anyone done a search to see what evidence can be collected on her Jackpoint-worthiness? I'm talking stuff she's actually done, not what information provided, which she might have gotten first-hand or might have just looked up.

All I can think of off the top of my head is planning a run in her head (Unwired) and digging cyberware out of some dead dude. Anybody else?

[CanRay]

We haven't seen enough of her in the fiction yet. She might be a good hacker, she might be a braggart, she might be a protege for FastJack as he's starting to feel old...

Hell, who knows at this point?

[Floyd]

I would hate to step on any toes here, or hurt feelings. And I don't means this as an attack, just as an observation.

The OP (RM) has many times stated that he does not dislike the traits of the dev-grrrl, but wishes they would have used an already established character or someone whose style he is more comfortable with. This suggest to me that the OP's largest concern is that she is new, representing new ideas and posibly a new face to something he has spent very long getting to know. The authors have chosen to continue to use this character, in their own way, to possible express where the hobby has progressed to or hopes to where it is going.

The OP also talks about the entries in the book to be substnadard to previous additions, suggesting a cut-paste would be a better idea. Not the best, but better. This again harkens back to what is familiar. The change may exist to add things to the past that the authors meant to be there or altering continuity to get over the past, our time, catching up to the present, Shadowrun time.

These are mere suggestions, but the pattern seems to fit, especially with such polarized opinions and a huge page count on the post in total. Now where the sex-robit talk fits in, I cannot say.

[Stahlseele]

We haven't seen enough of her in the fiction yet. She might be a good hacker, she might be a braggart, she might be a protege for FastJack as he's starting to feel old...

Hell, who knows at this point?

Fast Jack Feels Old, but he knows how to rationalize it away in his fight aainst the second crash worm . .

[Fortinbras]

Good point: we haven't seen a lot of her run fu, at least not directly. Has anyone done a search to see what evidence can be collected on her Jackpoint-worthiness? I'm talking stuff she's actually done, not what information provided, which she might have gotten first-hand or might have just looked up.

All I can think of off the top of my head is planning a run in her head (Unwired) and digging cyberware out of some dead dude. Anybody else?

I used her as the kidnapped girl in the Emergence adventure seed Realm Beyond and found that she had a lot of neat uses for storytelling. She's perfect for exposition and to show how someone can seem aloof and uninterested in the flesh and blood, but when communicating through text can be a treasure trove of information. The theme needed to show how immersible the Matrix can be and she helped out with that.
Two of my players are teenage girls and another two have teenage children, so it was fun to see how they interacted with the character.

On the run, however, my group had no end to the uses for a 15 year old hacker. From seeming non-threatening for infiltration to running logistics to finding social media connections. When I put her in the run I honestly thought she would just be dead weight for an escort mission, but everyone got a lot of mileage out of her. Before the run I was totally in the camp that /dev/grrl was some kind of little Anakin Skywalker exposition tool, but I was genuinely surprised at how useful a character she was in the campaign.

While there is relatively little fiction or allusion to any of her runs, I would imagine she'd end up the Kitty Pride or Jubilee of Shadowrun.

[warrior_allanon]

*sigh*

She's a non-H model. It's spelled out explicitly several times. She will not take H-games. She barely had any subroutines for undressing in front of people for the longest time. Her purpose is to help draw otaku out of their shells and actually make them date real people.

Also, dating sims =/ h-games. This is the problem with people who hear about things only through off-hand references via Something Awful or Crackd or whatever. Dating sims are generally softcore at their worst, and usually have what "core" elements excised when they do manga / anime translations. I don't have the time to go into the differences, but yeah. Kagetenshi could explain more, or, when I get back tonight, I could dig up my old post on the differences between the two.

I happen to be an MT fan as well, so bad in fact that i brought the groups "Endgames" characters into my 3.5ed "Ebberon" campaign. Not to mention that i'm already working on bringing the whole crew into the SR universe, or else sending the author/artist a crossover story for one of his "Omake Theater" spreads. That said, heres the IMPORTANT comics that refer to Ping.

http://megatokyo.com/strip/1172
http://megatokyo.com/strip/1173
http://megatokyo.com/strip/1174
http://megatokyo.com/strip/1175


personally since I think i've got the bugs worked out of Miho, I think i'm gonna do Ping next, but she's gonna have to have the restricted gear quality so that she can have the Otomo drone for a body

[ravensmuse]

I happen to be an MT fan as well, so bad in fact that i brought the groups "Endgames" characters into my 3.5ed "Ebberon" campaign. Not to mention that i'm already working on bringing the whole crew into the SR universe, or else sending the author/artist a crossover story for one of his "Omake Theater" spreads. That said, heres the IMPORTANT comics that refer to Ping.

http://megatokyo.com/strip/1172
http://megatokyo.com/strip/1173
http://megatokyo.com/strip/1174
http://megatokyo.com/strip/1175


personally since I think i've got the bugs worked out of Miho, I think i'm gonna do Ping next, but she's gonna have to have the restricted gear quality so that she can have the Otomo drone for a body

I don't know if it was here in this thread or another thread, but I have laid out before that Megatokyo takes place in the Sixth World. I mean, think about it.

Largo: complete unaware of the fact that he's Emerged. His plot centers around the technomancer and AI community that's sprung up in Tokyo.
Piro: Somehow managed to become best friends / lovers with the latest Horizon subsidary pop-superstar, now trying to help her fight the system.

And then you get into the magical girls, and Rent-A-Zilla, and the Sony Hitsquads...

[ravensmuse]

I would hate to step on any toes here, or hurt feelings. And I don't means this as an attack, just as an observation.

K, cool. Also, you can just call me raven, or you can call me Al. But call me Dottie and you're dead.

The OP (RM) has many times stated that he does not dislike the traits of the dev-grrrl, but wishes they would have used an already established character or someone whose style he is more comfortable with. This suggest to me that the OP's largest concern is that she is new, representing new ideas and posibly a new face to something he has spent very long getting to know. The authors have chosen to continue to use this character, in their own way, to possible express where the hobby has progressed to or hopes to where it is going.

We-ell, no. That's not exactly why I expressed an issue with /d/.

I'm all for change, and I'm all for moving things forward. I may have started reading Shadowrun back in the 2nd edition days, but I've finally gotten to play Shadowrun with 4e. As such, I'm actually pretty new to things, I just like shout-outs. Usually, as a manner of the universe in which the Sixth World exists, there exists enough of this to satisfy me and keep me relatively tame.

As I've said multiple times within this thread, I have absolutely no problem with the writers introducing new characters.. Nada. Bing. Zip.

What I do have a problem with is when those very same writers choose to introduce a character that doesn't jive with the established world.. Why is this girl here? Who introduced her? Who invited her in? Jackpoint is supposed to be a closed community with multiple vets to get in - yet, a girl who had to have someone explain some of the Sixth World history to her - history that, IIRC, isn't even that unknown, is invited in? Uh...

It's jarring. And it's kind of annoying. That's why I suggested that if they were looking to introduce a new character in which to provide a window of entry for new players for, they could use someone already pre-established in previous material. Using GnuB would be nothing more than a fun shout-out to a character that personally, I dig.

Now, I've since gone on to read Attitude, where other writers have utilized /d/. And I found that, despite her familiar writing style (she's a fifteen year old girl) I actually really dug her perspective on things. And, shock and awe, I actually thought her contributions were some of the best in the book.

Imagine that.

The OP also talks about the entries in the book to be substnadard to previous additions, suggesting a cut-paste would be a better idea. Not the best, but better. This again harkens back to what is familiar. The change may exist to add things to the past that the authors meant to be there or altering continuity to get over the past, our time, catching up to the present, Shadowrun time.

Eh, once again, kind of missing the point.

Sixth World Atlas has a good couple of things working against it. One is that it's a product with a very long development time. Originally it was meant to be part of the 20th Anniversary of Shadowrun and was supposed to be the American version of [b]Die .6 World; something I'm too willing to admit I have a crazy obsession with. That meant multiple cooks in the stew and all of the sundry things that can happen to that.

Secondly, it was hampered by a shift of management.

Thirdly, said management is currently a bunch of crooks and liars and are putting books out to say that they are putting books out, regardless of actual quality. War! and Attitude suffer this very same problem, to varying degrees.

I make no bones about how I feel about the current management of CGL. You can read my sig for further details.

This is not a problem of "everything new sucks! Everything previous was so much better!" This is an issue of, "your quality control sucks, and you need to get a handle on this shit because it's costing you money and fans!"

Again: While I started with Shadowrun in 2nd Edition, I didn't get to actually play Shadowrun until 4th Edition. There is no starry-eye'd idealism going on here - okay, maybe just a little, I'll admit - just someone with half-a-decent hand at writing and a proficiency for world lore going, "seriously? This is your triumphant return from disaster?"

These are mere suggestions, but the pattern seems to fit, especially with such polarized opinions and a huge page count on the post in total.

The grognard card? Seriously?

Now where the sex-robit talk fits in, I cannot say.

Geeks hate geeks in other genres, news at eleven.

[Fatum]

What I do have a problem with is [b]when those very same writers choose to introduce a character that doesn't jive with the established world.. Why is this girl here? Who introduced her? Who invited her in? Jackpoint is supposed to be a closed community with multiple vets to get in - yet, a girl who had to have someone explain some of the Sixth World history to her - history that, IIRC, isn't even that unknown, is invited in? Uh...

It's jarring. And it's kind of annoying. That's why I suggested that if they were looking to introduce a new character in which to provide a window of entry for new players for, they could use someone already pre-established in previous material. Using GnuB would be nothing more than a fun shout-out to a character that personally, I dig.

Oh, apropos to annoying characters - FastJack was extremely annoying in The Way of the Adept with his reprimands. There's hardly a character a bad writer can't spoil.

[CanRay]

Well, back when I was in school, my English Teacher tried to show us that there weren't any bad characters, only bad writing.

She was wrong. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)