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Secondly - the way I'd categorize them would be to rank them numerically on a set of scales, using the following categories which are named as follows until someone finds cooler stuff that fits better:
Assimilationist v. Swarm -
Examines how they acquire new members. An Assimilationist Hive Hive Mind will typically brainwash people of any species into joining, while a Swarm breeds new bodies.
Anchored v. Unattached -
The degree to which the hive's personality rests within a given individual to operate it. A species who, for example, requires a queen's direction to function is Anchored, whereas one which is Unattached is fine until the last member dies.
Composite v. Individual -
The degree to which the hive's personality depends on each member of the hive. A Composite mind is based on the personalities of all members added together, and assumes they would have one even if they were not present, while an Individual mind assumes one overarching mind which cannot be changed by the adding or subtracting of members.
Collective v. Scattered -
The degree to which the presence of the mind depends on the number of members in the area. So, for example, a mind which, if you encounter a fragment of a ship's crew or something, will give you a fight where your enemies are slow and sloppy, like they're being controlled by something half-asleep, would be Collective, whereas a Scattered mind is perfectly capable of having each member operating at peak performance regardless of how many are in the area.

Here are the three broad categories of hive mind we came up with in Discord, if that's helpful.

Insectile/Swarm: One mind controlling many bodies, but the bodies have no effect on the mind

Mind Hive: One body, many consciousnesses that form some kind of composite mind, with each consciousness contributing its own experiences and worldviews

Mind Hive Mind (thanks, Granz, for the term): A Mind Hive where the composite mind has control over multiple separate bodies

Hello, everyone! A really interesting discussion popped up in the Discord today and led to several hours of discussion about character writing; given the sustained attention it's generated among some of us, I thought I'd open it up to the rest of the PPC.

Morning greetings turned to discussions of assimilating people through a convoluted process I'm still not sure I understand, which naturally led to a badfic hunt, which sadly turned up nothing tagged with the word "assimilation." No, not even in Star Trek. That in turn kicked off a discussion about writing hive minds, assimilationist and otherwise, as characters; how would it work? How would the hive mind think of itself and others? How could one try writing a ship of a human character and a hive mind without it devolving into a badfic or cheesy villain?

A lot of us have had a ton of fun discussing different types of hive minds and how these types would think about complex things like gender, communicating with beings that fundamentally don't think like it, what happens when either or both of these concepts are completely and utterly foreign, and how do things like "death" and "considering other life" work into all of this when you start working with ideas about hive mind "queens?" Obviously the answer to a lot of these questions is "It depends on how the hive mind works," which is probably why the discussion lasted so long.

So, what are your thoughts? What kinds of weird and interesting hive mind ideas do you have for building a character? Are we all worrying way too much about sci-fi and should go read more Tolkien instead?

a piddly little degree from a nowhere university if you ask my mother, who teaches at said university. thanks for the vote of confidence, mum.

I've listed a bunch of stuff on the Board from my course, but yeah, I write a lot. My final project is a 15,000-word piece of original fiction that's basically an urban fantasy adaptation of my grandmother's experiences of growing up and training as a nurse in 1950s Australia. It progresses. =]

I really appreciate the reactions--it's good to know that Ix and me playing with the two characters like a couple of kids absorbed in action figures was as fun to read as it was to write.

RE the of them getting together inside of five stories... Well, we'll see. :P We have plans regarding that, and a vague idea of how it happens. When, however, is really anyone's guess. The two of them certainly don't see it happening in the span of five missions, anyway. I doubt it's even occurred to either of them, even if it might have to others.

And the perspective on the Fall is one I'm really hoping to explore further with Faust. He certainly takes the attitude that most of his work as a demon was "necessary," and the cosmic equivalent of being a "tax inspector," and genuinely resents being expelled from a place he thought of as home. All angels are family, after all (Broadly speaking. They all have the same Creator, anyway.) so from his perspective, he got disowned by his parent and kicked out because he "asked a couple of questions."

We'll see more of how he feels about that moving forward.

--Aegis

Currently writing a nearly thirty-thousand word Harry Potter and His Dark Materials crossover and an original fantasy which will eventually turn into a trilogy, although I’m still only on chapter three.

• The bit with the man in the telephone was funny (and I now get what y'all were getting at in Rudi's)
  - Actually, that whole initial bit, especially with Faust needing to explain television, was good times
  - Including Zaphoriel's opinion of Times New Roman
  - and not wanting a custard cream
  - So apparently the consecrated ground thing works cross-universe. Ouch
  - “Don’t tempt me,” Zaphoriel muttered.
  
  “I mean, I’m a demon,” Faust pointed out cheerily. “It’s sort of what I do.” was a good line
  - Wrt Zaphoriel falling on top of Faust - five bucks says they'll get together within five more stories :P
  - The snark is strong here, especially with the bit about the dumpster
  - Well, it's nice to see the two getting some perspective on the Fall thing
  - "hollow bureaucracy ..." yowch. That was a good scene, and Faust has a point on both Heaven and Hell.
  - "making Sam Winchester from Alabama" is definitely a charge, even though, last I checked, a section of the fandom would rather think otherwise
  - From what little I know of Supernatural, I agree with Zaphoriel about how he's not sure anyone takes that show seriously
  - The thing with the footnote feels rather PPC
  - The bit with the wings was interesting, and gave me a good sense of the relationship these two have going
  - The bit about angels disappearing if they figure out what a good time is (and the stuff before it) was also quite funny
  - Interesting bit about the clothing colors not feeling right. It's a neat small detail
  - Somehow, I'm imagining a fight about to "breakout" as that old video game where you bounce the ball into bricks starting up, but somehow multiplayer
  - “You want to keep track of the list of reasons for murdering someone in our heads?” XD (well, mostly from the surrounding context, but still)
  
  Overall thoughts:
  This mission did a good job of showing off Zaphoriel and Faust's characters and the contrast between the two. It's got a whole bunch of funny lines and scenes, a lot of which just came from the two agents interacting. There's also a good balance between character interaction and snarking at the fic. The few more serious moments between the agents (and more serious philosophical points) were well done and added to the story without overwhelming it.
  
  Overall, nice mission and I'm looking forward to reading more!
  
  - Tomash

This is still nice work, Cousin!

Glad you two got to hang out. :)

Happy belated birthday!

That sounds like so much fun. I do wish more people knew about Crassus. Poor Claire-Who-Named-Herself.

My main writing project right now is Vigiles, which is a satirical weird fantasy office comedy about the Municipal Vigiles, the first firefighters ever invented in the rapidly expanding sentient city, Claire-Who-Named-Herself, who are in actuality (and very blatantly) a bunch of pawns for their unscrupulous boss' barely legal plan to buy peoples' flaming houses for dirt cheap (or simply let them burn down).

It's inspired by the fact that that literally happened in the Roman Republic (search up 'Crassus Fire Brigade'), and despite being such astounding ground for very relevant satire, Pratchett and nobody else I'm aware of seems to have touched it.

I'm also running a D&D game right now for the first time ever which is, er, writing adjacent? It's set in the same world as Vigiles (I've had this particular world around for years, now), boiled down a little to fit into all the standard D&D stuff a little better.

I'm working on a couple stories from one of my pet worlds- I build it with a friend pretty frequently.
One is a story of a monster created by a cult out of corpses, and how and why she and her sister left them.
The other's an orgin story, with the main character a young urchin using her small magical talent to steal things. It's also a universe where everyone has wings- the universe is rather old, and the wings were leftovers from some of the very early versions.
However, I've always had a bit of a problem with finishing stories. This one's fairly far along, so I might complete it.
That's one reason I joined the PPC- the idea of writing shorter missions with a community to keep me honest sounded nice, and I also need to practice being funny.
Hope I'm not too rambly here.

I'm in Phoenix for work and was free yesterday, so I met up with doctorlit and he showed me around the zoo he works at. Here's the report, featuring two Boarders and various cute animals

(In the extremely unlikely event anyone else was traveling to Phoenix last weekend, or was capable of doing so and interested, whoops, sorry we missed you. This was pretty ad-hoc.)

- Tomash

Would you like to claim your accumulated rewards?

Zaphoriel and Faust get their first assignment as partners.

Into Supernatural.

This should be interesting.

I’m in a weekly Curse of Strahd D&D campaign and I’ve been doing a novelized write-up of the game. I’m currently 15,000 words into it and so far I’ve only gotten most of the way through our second session. I have almost three months of backlog, one character death, one major NPC death, and accidentally loosing vampires on a city to cover, and we’re only just now hitting level 7.

This one’s going to be a doozie.

Granted, I am not on the Discord so an Introduction would not be amiss either way, in my opinion!

/offers you chocolate bark

And if you don't actually get what's happening there because of the alteration, that actually is a problem. I mean, given what else happens it should be obvious, but still.

I gather that the translation in this dub is closer to the original Japanese, which is overall a good thing, but people are pretty ticked about some of the changes. On the one hand, making a thing more nuanced and less blatant may be a more faithful translation, but on the other hand, isn't the purpose of a good dub to carry the intended meaning across to the intended audience? Americans aren't that good at subtle and nuanced, by and large, and I guess there's one scene that changes one male character saying the following to another male character: "you are worthy of love ... it means I love you" to "you are worthy of my grace ... it means I like you," which doesn't look especially good even if it wasn't done maliciously. And I agree with the article writer: what does "grace" even mean in this context? I can see why the other points they mention are irritating and even stupid, too.

However, as someone with no attachment to the ADV dub and with the ability to read nuance and subtext, I don't think I'll mind too much. I have noticed one or two spots where the emotion of the voice acting doesn't quite seem to match the emotion of the animation, but nothing too egregious so far.

~Neshomeh

Why would they go to the trouble to re-dub it and still make it sound like an aging VCR chewing on a Tomagotchi? I guess they were trying to make it as close to the original as possible.

I will admit to watching the entire series, plus Death And Rebirth and End of Evangelion, in the span of a single weekend in 2005-ish, so maybe I just don't remember. That weekend...maybe I don't want to remember...

-Phobos