Life, the Universe and Everything writing symposium Feb 11-13

I'm trying to listen in to some of the panels over on ltue.net when I get a chance this weekend. Seems worthwhile. Darned real world keeps distracting me. The panel on parenthood is coming up next. Maybe I can quit writing so many orphans

Comments

[Nealend86]

I mean, you've also written half orphans.

[Hobbestc]

But if you don't write the orphans into your stories how will they ever gets families and live happily ever after!?!?!?!?

[KMCA]

Clover isn't an orphan yet. His mom died. But got better and grew some swell wings and his dad only ALMOST died but even if he had been frozen solid he'd probably be alright once he thawed out... maybe.

[Georg]

5453392 I've got a Fantasy novel in the extremely slow works where the POV character thinks she's an orphan, only to find out her father is her extremely powerful enemy. (i.e. like Star Wars)

5453099 5453467 Um, far as I know, the only full MLP Clover I've got is the infant in the Traveling Tutor/Farmer Bruener stories, unless you're talking about the one in Broken Star (unpublished) where Sara accidentally created an AI Synth out of her childhood synth fragment. Telepaths and starships and artificial intelligence, oh yes. Here's a snippet from her demesne with Captain Jenkins, where they are sharing a telepathic bond with an unexpected visitor.

---

“Or would you rather see my place?” asked the captain after a short time. “Admittedly, it’s a mess, and I don’t normally take young ladies there on a first date, but it has a beach.”

“No!” Sara tightened her grip and allowed the world to flow past, stopping only when she was sitting underneath the spreading elm tree at the banks of her glimmering fishing hole. The familiar shrubs that blocked any view of the surroundings filled the air with a pleasant humid scent and rustled with the breeze, while thick grass all the way down to the water’s edge allowed her to ease her awkward body down and stretch out to rest in the sun without getting muddy. To her side, the captain looked around in awe before sitting down beside her and starting to take off his shoes.

“You win,” he declared. “My place is just a beach house with a wallscreen for football games and a bunch of overstuffed furniture. Your place is awesome. Very girl-like, right down to the unicorn.”

“Unicorn?” asked Sara, temporarily taken back until she spotted the grass-green unicorn sitting patiently in the grass at her side. “Clover?”

“Technically, a partial representation of your Clover fragment from your personal data archives,” said Clover in her annoying lecture voice. “Retrieving your individual effects from storage would allow me to be more accurate, but I’ve had higher priorities.”

The Synth fragment was somehow larger than she really expected, more of a Great Dane than the Chihuahua-sized holograph that years ago had ‘trotted’ along behind Sara or curled up on her wrist comlink for a nap when she was not being used. When Sara had first sweet-talked her parents into allowing her a Synthetic Individualized Holographic Learning Aide, she had been on a ‘green’ kick, and Clover showed it. Dark green mane, light green coat, and sparkling green eyes on a standard unicorn frame, with the exact manestyle depending on the whims of a pre-teen girl, so it had shocked more than one passer-by into tripping over a street curb when Clover had unexpectedly waved at them. For now, her dark green locks were cropped short in a simple pageboy cut that left her illuminated horn poking out into the summer air, while a similarly supported notebook floated nearby.

“It seems the implant integration was more successful than originally thought,” murmured Clover in her normal soprano tone of voice with her tongue sticking ever so slightly out of the corner of her mouth while the pencil scratched away on her perpetual notes. “I’ve never been able to tag along on your telepathic journeys before. Either that, or you’re having some sort of psychopathic mental breakdown.”

“I… um… You’re seeing this too?” asked Jenkins.

“Yes, of course I’m seeing this too,” hissed Sara. “So if I’m going crazy, I’ve got company. It must be something from the ‘plant interfering with—”

“Plants can’t do that,” countered Captain Jenkins. “Not even modern ones. The Ganges must have really done a number on your mind to get that deep into your synapses.”

“Or I’m just a mental projection of the repair process,” said Clover, who had not stopped writing in her notebook. “When you first got me, you had to get a yearly neuroimaging so I would know if I was adversely affecting any of your mental development. Miss Ganges must have used that to guide her repairs or—” The green unicorn let go of the floating quill with her magic and watched as it continued to write. “Crap.”

“Language!” scolded Sara automatically.

The unicorn passed a glance between Sara and the handsome starship captain, who had gotten his shoes back on and was looking thoughtfully pensive. With a slight grunt of effort, she stood up, walked down to the burbling stream, and dipped one hoof into the water, then jolted back as if she had been stung.

“Look, I know I’m not real,” she started with an undertone of suppressed panic. “I’m an echo of the full Synth with Clover’s personality matrix overlaid, stuffed into the leftover storage matrix of the ‘plant and some of your unused brainspace by a damaged AI who lost most of her medical files. When you’re in Psychspace, most AIs can only monitor motor nerves for sending and receiving data. In order for me to be within your psychosensitive cortex, she…”

[Nealend86]

5453550
I was actually thinking of Ripple from The One Who Got Away and it's sequel. She only lost her dad.

But still a really interesting snip.

[Zubric]

At least people can stop riding scooter Lou has an orphan now because she actually has parents

[Zubric]

5455083
I hate often school stories. They got old really fast