Soggy kitty is not impressed.

No, not particularly.

And Alicia was having enough arguments with Lyta before she picked up an independent existence.

I'm sure once they're able to escape the paper their revenge will be swift and (literally) sizable. ...And I'll want front row seats.

Oh, I already have plans on how that is going to happen. Not easily, and quite frankly as essentially a magical familiar Lyta would much rather Alicia just get better at magic, as Lyta can't really hurt her without hurting herself, too.

Oh, you don't have to HURT to get back at. A good and proper scare works too. Or sufficient quantities of cat fuss.

"Lyta can't really hurt her without hurting herself, too."

One doesn't need to cause pain to achieve payback. And I know a feline will find a way to make it happen at the exactly perfect moment. (For the spectacle.) It doesn't even need to be serious, or dangerous, or even something which is damaging emotionally.

It could be like, say, absently chewing on the cables for that lovely new tablet... what a shame, I just couldn't help myself...

True. And, granted, with the emotional bond between them all Lyta would have to do is, say, do something physically pleasurable while Alicia is trying to focus on something else.

But Lyta does want things to work out, so that will remain just a threat for now. Alicia isn't deliberately trying to mess with Lyta, she just doesn't understand all the implications of what she's doing yet.

Of course Lyta wants things to work out... that's her function, it's her purpose for existing... I always do wonder about whether magical beings who are created - such as Lyta, such as others who I've run across - are doing things because it's their own willpower...

... or is "their own willpower" part of what's been ingrained into them at their creation? Do they have free will, or the illusion of it?

Questions for another time.

It rather depends on the amount of power put into them, and the details of the spell used to create them and what was 'programmed' into them.

Alicia put a fair bit of power in, a personality she'd had in her head for several years, and didn't know that she should put any safeguards in because she wasn't expecting magic to happen.

So Lyta's a lot more free-willed than most such creations. And will likely stay so as long as Alicia is alive and thinking about her.

Also, part of the magic concept I've been using, mentioned in a previous episode, is that mages pretty much happen across a spectrum from the hardcore hermetic types who specify every last detail of the spell, which allows them fine control and allows them to do a lot of things with relatively little power... to the more 'witch' types who tend to ad-lib things, papering over the details with power and possibly getting the results messed with by whatever may have supplied some of the extra power. Alicia tends to run more towards the 'witch' side because she isn't trained well yet, which means unintended effects are pretty common.

Not quite as explicitly formalized as the Ars Magica system, but that's certainly in the back of my head as well.

Aw, cute lil angry wavy lines!

Carni does like playing up the emotional side in cartoony ways.

So Alicia managed to gum up this particular Lyta-works, then? ^_^ Even if a cat is wee and made up of charcoal or pigment, a liger is nothing of the kind of beast I'd want to leave growling at me. <3 I mean, more or less.

-2Paw.

Alicia does like to experiment. Sometimes it works, and sometimes less so. At least Lyta has the ability to control how much focus she puts into various representations of herself, so the failed experiments don't have to be too distracting.

Of course, at some point Lyta will have to teach Alicia how to enchant more charcoal so she doesn't run out...

"Of course, at some point Lyta will have to teach Alicia how to enchant more charcoal so she doesn't run out..."

Leading to the question... can other materials be enchanted similarly in order to carry the same specific properties?

(Hang on, need to stop Evalia from experimenting on this...)

In theory, yes. That said, working with more charcoal would be a lot easier because you could use the Principle of Contagion pretty much directly: grind up some of the existing charcoal, mix it in with the new material and a bit of clay as a binder, and enchant the mixture as it is pressed out into a pencil form. You'd be able to just extend the existing enchantment out, using it as a framework. Trying to do that with a different material would be more work and would require a greater understanding of how the original enchantment worked.

Somewhere there's a mouse in my head muttering about the Limit of Essential Nature and it being possible to retain such between suitable vessels...

'Suitable' being a key word here, of course.

I can definitely dig that. So in a situation like this, where the physical form Lyta is embodying, like a tulpa thought-form taking physical shape in space-time with local matter (and in my novel Sandbox's 'Geistlincker' Project and the golem medium-bodies the 'time travellers' in the novel assume to interact with the simulacra of the singularity of space-time in the 'past'), Lyta's direct control and refinement is like Rene Auberjonois' 'Constable Odo' or a Founder/Changeling with the unusually limited experience he has in not growing up and being taught how to shapeshift amongst his own kind.

Granted, Odo can't get any bigger, mass-conservative to his non-anthropomorphic 'gelly' form, and I suspect Lyta could get as bit as Alicia's art supplies could allow her to be. Certainly she's been enormous in the drawing-forms of her and Alicia's initial experimentation within two dimensions, if not mass and size. The charcoal must be deliberately magiformed, then, from non-enchanted charcoal, to work as a medium for Lyta's bodily incarnation when Alicia draws her, then? That makes sense.

-2Paw.

Something like that. Essentially the charcoal was bound with a spirit and enchanted to do two things:

- Create a personality for the spirit based on the template idea held by the mage using the charcoal to draw for the first time. That personality persists as long as the mage continues having any sort of interest in it. So to rewrite the existing personality Lyta would have to be completely ignored long enough to go back to sleep, and then a new form created. Lyta remembers everything that happened to previous incarnations of her, but they're more 'read somebody else's diary' sort of memories rather than personal ones.

- Create a virtual space for the spirit to inhabit, also based on the template idea held by the mage using the charcoal to draw, though this one is on a per-drawing basis. The spirit retains a vague mental awareness of all the places where the charcoal has been used and is still mostly intact, but can only really have personal focus on one location at a time. So, for example, a drawing of Lyta could be left behind in the apartment to wake up when an alarm spell went off as a result of somebody breaking in, even if Lyta had previously been focusing her attention elsewhere.

As for mass, well, that's going to come up soon, but it's not something that Lyta's original creator considered, so it's going to take a bit of work on Alicia's part. And it's still going to require some of the charcoal embedded in it to make Lyta consider it part of her.

So Lyta-as-being is somewhere between a tulpa and a tectonic/inhabitant entity, expressed and congressed in the materium Alicia has enchanted, and her incarnation and ongoing activity as a person spread across multiple 'wave packets' of self, each time she sustains active consciousness in Alicia's enchanting, then? That her memory is as much memory of form and enchanted materia her being is associated with, like an amulet or source-core, as her sentient and self-aware intellect is.

I am thoroughly chuffed you imagine the way you do, when you're putting together a writing project's context and then putting fingers to keyboard, and that I have learned as much from you, your work and technique as I have, and continue to do so exposed to your creative novelty and breadth, Jen.

-2Paw.

Something like that. I know how she works in my head, though some of it is hard to describe in words, and even less is going to be obvious in story because Alicia doesn't even necessarily know the right questions to ask yet.

But yes, as long as Lyta has someone actively paying attention to her and thinking about her, she keeps her current form and personality... and the time frame for being 'forgotten' is days or weeks, so it will last easily while Alicia is asleep. In fact, since there's an active bond as a familiar, and no previous bonds like with Lyta's original creator, she's unlikely to go away as long as Alicia is alive. Which, given access to magic, could be a significant amount of time.

That's entirely fair, and I would prefer not to put words or definition in your mouth or minding about a character you've put together, and how you've defined their purpose and ability-function; I apologize if I've done so this evening or in prior conversation about Alicia, Lyta and Sketch Upgrade. While I will always enjoy imagining about my characters and works and those of others in my mind, I have no business sticking my snout in unkindly by an author or artist or intruding on their creations or creative process. Only if I am expressly invited would I press any such imagining on their creations' behalf, and then within defined and reasonable bounds.

I think I prefer the idea of a familiar being a magical construct who is bonded or associated with their partner in magical business, rather than a living creature that is 'claimed' or modified for that purpose, with uplifted intellect, prescience or magical abilities not native to what they originally were. I prefer the thought that a familiar is itself created or amalgamated into active sentience and self-awareness- from magical ether or magical energies- coalesced into sentience or mimicking sentience in its own fashion, that what it was and what it yet is, is wholly fluid, fixed only by intent or deliberate shaping.

I mean, right now in the present picture, Lyta is more than a little literally fluid, yes? ^_^

And perhaps Lyta will be an imp in her own right, being that she is both a living creature with self-awareness and growing in her awareness of existence on Alicia's plane of reality, and of course of Alicia herself, and she has also chosen the form or chosen to be in the form of a cat-woman. She will have her cleverness in due time, I think, being an adventurer in existence as we all are, and she has a great deal of doing, being and fun to find, together with her magical-matron Alicia.

-2Paw.

^_____^ Such cute lil' sourpus! X'33 hehe

I mean really... she's a teacher stuck with a student who might be a genius in her own way but who never took any of the prerequisites. It's hard enough to explain magic to someone who didn't even know it existed until recently, but Alicia keeps experimenting as well... which makes it hard to form a lesson plan. One of the more frustrating sorts of students, because you can see the potential but getting there will probably require going off the beaten path.

(Why, yes, I do have multiple teachers in the family, and have done tutoring myself...)

At any rate, it's no wonder she gets frustrated at times.

heh! :> love this

I mean, really, one of the 'secrets' to writing is that your characters have to have inner lives of their own, you have to understand how they might think so they act consistently. Lyta may be a magical construct, meaning 'free will' is a bit more complicated in her case, but she was a construct first created as a magical familiar and teaching aid, and then given her current form by someone with a vivid imagination who was picturing an old 'imaginary friend' of hers that she used to argue with, so that gave Lyta a fair bit more flexibility and personality than most constructs.

Of course, that also means Lyta likes having that level of personality, and really doesn't want things to go wrong (if her artist stops using her she goes back to sleep and could wake up completely different), so there's a certain amount of anxiety to go along with it...

Could not agree more! (in the pursuit/that method od writing/depicting deeper, nuaced and compelling characters!)

But of course~ could expect nothing less from a writer! ♥ ^_^