Question Question about Loophole

I've read every story, read her wiki entry several times and the entry for gadgeteer several times. Her powers, as described on the wiki, fit with the gadgeteer rating and description of what Laine is capable of doing. What has been bugging for a while is what does her devisor 1 rating represent, what does it allow her to do that her gadgeteer 6 rating doesn't. Hoping for an answer from E.E. Nalley. If it is some secret that will be revealed in a future story or you simply don't wish to tell, I'll understand. Just always been curious why she has that Dev-1 rating when Gadgeteer 6 seems to cover it all besides her Exemplar stuff.

From my understanding and I'm sure E.E. will reply, is that she's a low level devisor in that she doesn't have to maintain the equipment for others to use.

She flows toward the other spectrum in that she can develop, sell, or allow others to use without her intervention. Devisors are limited in that their creations are for their use only. Also her gear can be duplicated whereas a Devisors cannot.

Let the ridicule begin.

Okay, maybe I didn't clarify my question enough, my bad. She has stated that her creations are pure engineering, nothing to do with devising. And that is all of her creations. So I was wondering why she was given a Devisor-1 rating if she seems to be a pure Gadgeteer.

Ibi, I think a lot of what you've said here stems from Loophole's gadgeteering trait being the far more dominant of the two. Pretty much everything we've seen Loophole do so far has been gadgeteering work, not devisor at all, because it can be replicated (hence the patents). If I had to take a guess, I'd say that the devisor rating is there more as a safety, because she does on occasion develop designs that seem to defy the laws of physics. Whether or not these are actual devises or if the theories behind them will eventually prove true and replicate-able remains to be seen.

Regarding your thought about the low rating being what allows others to use her devises...I'm not sure about that, and not just because I think most of her work is actually gadgeteering. It just strikes me that the lower levels of a rating would be more common than the higher, so I would think that the higher ratings would actually be more likely to produce stable devises, that others can use, than the lower levels can. But on the other hand I can also see the reasoning that the higher levels allow for more physics-bending, which could make them inherently less stable. So I guess it could go either way.

I'm guessing that I'm also seeing it as a sliding scale. One in which you are more of one and less of another as both are connected in some way.

Most of what I've read of Loophole leads me to believe that a lot of her gadgets can be reproduced such as the power source for her own suit, but that it had complications when used around another such device.

Its also like being told your either left handed or right handed whereas there are those that can slide into the middle, Ambidextrous which is by far the fewest. So for development purposes your rated on everything. Maybe there is a 0 percentage for gadgetters except that, as you said, she has a small trait towards it, but not enough to be noticeable.

Keep in mind that these ratings are not classes in a game. They are assigned by men who are hedging their bets. Thus far everything loophole has created has been replicable but in a fantastic array of disciplines. No one is entirely sure if loophole is just gifted in more than one specialty Or if there is some form of Devisor trait that is allowing her to make these fantastic leaps of ability. Ratings are not carved in stone but rather a best guess arrangement. There is a tendency to think of them as categories in some kind of game in which points have been spent but they are in fact a way to try to categorize what is observed in real life.

Thanks, E.E.. That definitely makes senses. The ratings are what they believe at the time are accurate or as you said, are hedging their bets. So it could be she has a Devisor trait allowing such leaps of ability like they suspect or she is just gifted in multiple specialties, they just have no way of determining it concretely at this time.

Exactly now you have it.

Well I know which end of the horse I came off of.

Ib12us wrote: Well I know which end of the horse I came off of.

?

My responses and how I made myself look.

This would segue nicely into a general discussion on the limitations of the rating systems, and how they function as general categories in an evolving system, rather than being set in stone.

Great, more books to lug around.

Kristin Darken wrote: I'll be taking care of some of that this week when I post the updated version of the powers classification article ... it will be much heftier than the original Bible version.

Ooo, I can't wait to read the updated powers classification article. Found the originals interesting, can't wait to see how the definitions and other details on how they are classified have changed.

Could it be written in the style of Dr. Filbert Quintain.

I need something to help me sleep...

Just repeat after me: "Sleep is for the weak!"

The ratings are what they believe at the time are accurate or as you said, are hedging their bets.

Case in point, Jade.

OK, a quick reply don't include quotes

Domoviye wrote: Just repeat after me: "Sleep is for the weak!"

Um...no.

I'm quite fond of sleep actually, so I refuse to say such a thing!

It's very easy to get out of the habit. Just spend a few all nighters in succession doing other things. I did and it hasn't affected me at all.
At all.
At all.
At all.

I found sleep to be over rated. That was till my head found the bed and the pillow in which to comfort itself against when my mind refused to heed the call for which it was sol diligently refusing to surrender to. The last thing I saw was my sordid eyelids shuttering themselves to the top of my cheeks as my face slackened in response to the rest of my body.

I gave myself a severe thrashing once morning arrived to my much relieved self for taking such an unnecessary act. Of course I found myself repeating my offense sometime during the next fortnight.

<Claps>
Nicely said.

Domoviye wrote: <Claps>
Nicely said.

For who? Quoted the raven.

I would have said her devisor rating is the part of her abilities that allows her to understand a piece of technology just by holding it, her gageteer rating allows her to duplicate it.

Domoviye wrote: Just repeat after me: "I'm sleeping for a week!"

fixed that for you

Kristin Darken wrote: I'll be taking care of some of that this week when I post the updated version of the powers classification article ... it will be much heftier than the original Bible version.

Sorry if I'm being a pest. I know Kristin is swamped with a lot right now. I'll be patient until it is, just wish to know if there is any further news on it as I've been curious to read it since she posted about it.

Thank you, Kristin. I understand you have a lot keeping you busy and was just curious, I'll continue to be patient.

My understanding was that gadgeteers could perceive how an invention would work before it was invented - kind of like Eddison inventing the lightbulb without having to figure out all the ways not to make a lightbulb first.
whereas devisors make a devise work regardless of whether it should or not - like a 12 year sticking a drinks bottle up their jumper and saying it's a jetpack and then actually flying off.
Mutants with both traits can, I guess, take shortcuts using their devisor power to fill in gaps in what their gadgeteering power says they should be doing.

Back in Diane's Ayla stories, Loophole explains that she doesn't like the name Loophole and asks Ayla (and those at Ayla's Birthday Party) to call her 'Doc.' Was that something Diane came up with, and if not, why hasn't it come up again?

No, it has been mentioned in E.E.Nalley's stories. Loophole IS her official student codename, but it was sort of forced on her by (I think) an exasperated Mrs. Carson. My guess that the school is not letting her change it until Senior-year-choose-adult-codenames time as a sort of punishment for being a rules lawyer.

You'll find that names play an important part in all the magical traditions in this universe. While this is touched upon with the concept of True Names, spells can be anchored or reinforced by lesser names. So a bit of history is in order.

When Elaine arrived at Whateley her parents called her Lanie as a diminutive as did her brother Stephen. She requested the codename of Aglaea one of the three charities commonly known as Glory. Aglaea was the faithful wife of Hephaestus after his divorce from Aphrodite due to her adultery with Aries. Lanie met Becky Corbin and Maggie Fenson on her first day and thus the lit chicx were born. Falling in with a group of similarly literate friends and deciding that a new name for a new place would generate a new person Lanie chose to take the nickname 'Doc' because of her fondness for the writings of the science-fiction Grand Master E. E. Doc Smith as well as the similarities to her own initials of E. E. Nalley.

Lanie had always been an avid photographer and so was documenting her stay at Whateley in photographs for her mother and father. This is what got her called into the headmistress's office on her third day. The resulting argument got her codename changed to Loophole. Lanie laments about this in the opening paragraphs of her story Gearhead.

The final piece of this name puzzle comes from Lanie's encounter with The Kodiak in which he supplants her memories over her time with Songbird. He attaches such a strong sense of revulsion for what happens that Lanie makes the subconscious choice to now be referred to as Elaine. This is both a coping mechanism for dealing with what she thought she had undergone by making it someone else as well as a way for The Kodiak to strengthen the spell by tying it to this new personality. Thus every time Lanie corrected someone and told him to call her Elaine the spell got a little stronger.

Sahar comments on this during the hot tub scene where Lanie meets Kayda. I hope that helps.

The long answer to "what's in a name?" I like.

Shouldn't this thread be in review section: characters?

Does Elaine consider being called Loophole an insult? I ask because some people consider being forced to us a name they do not like or choose insulting and abuse of authority.

sam105 wrote: Does Elaine consider being called Loophole an insult? I ask because some people consider being forced to us a name they do not like or choose insulting and abuse of authority.

'Insult' is a strong word. Who, after all, would LIKE being called Loophole? But I would say she's made her peace with it.

Devisors don't jump around the map. They shove it aside and doodle on the table.

Would it be presumptuous to say that a Devisor creates by intuition that cannot be defined by regular logic? In essence they just 'know' what to use whereas others have to logically think of the how so that it can be recreated later?

I've always considered Devisors to be a specific subset of Warpers. They're creating a small distortion where the laws of physics no longer work quite the same way.


I like to think that the Devisors-as-Warpers theory is one that's been proposed inside the WU by a few researchers, but hasn't gotten widespread attention and may or may not be accurate.

Ib12us wrote: Would it be presumptuous to say that a Devisor creates by intuition that cannot be defined by regular logic? In essence they just 'know' what to use whereas others have to logically think of the how so that it can be recreated later?

Possibly something people have thought of, and there is probably a good story of a lifelong search by a devisor to 'prove' this

Phoenix Spiritus wrote:

Ib12us wrote: Would it be presumptuous to say that a Devisor creates by intuition that cannot be defined by regular logic? In essence they just 'know' what to use whereas others have to logically think of the how so that it can be recreated later?

Possibly something people have thought of, and there is probably a good story of a lifelong search by a devisor to 'prove' this

Please forgive me. Thinking is not something I do on a regular basis and I don't want to take advantage of it for fear of losing it.

Actually, I think your definition is pretty good... for a Gadgeteer: they know intuitively that something will work, but they not always can explain why because they lack the theoretical framework.

I like giving the example of an atomic bomb. A Victorian gadgeteer might figure out that if he takes uranium ore, refine it, react it with fluorine to make it gaseous, subject it to this incredibly involved process to concentrate the fraction of it that is only a tiny bit lighter than average, precipitate it as metal again and smack together two chunks of it so that the total mass will be above a minimum level, it will result in a big boom. But he won't be able to explain WHY it will go boom, because that requires a knowledge of atomic structure that simply didn't exist back then.

A Victorian devisor, on the other hand, would be able to produce a megaton-level boom by subjecting nitroglycerin to X-Rays to "increase its power" or something daft like that, which makes no sense in any theoretical framework.

Sir Lee wrote: A Victorian devisor, on the other hand, would be able to produce a megaton-level boom by subjecting nitroglycerin to X-Rays to "increase its power" or something daft like that, which makes no sense in any theoretical framework.

Not quite. Some devisors do have a theoretical framework - just one that doesn't accurately model reality. For example, Buck Swift, Boy of Wednesday Afternoon (Weather Permitting). If ether was a real thing, he's be a gadgeteer (or maybe just a regular scientist). But it only exists where he imposes his own reality on his devises.