He Couldn't Lose [SG Spoilers]

[Foxed]

Not just Ivy's knowledge, but also how she became the Archive. In Death Masks, she says that when her mother gave birth, she went into a persistent vegetative state, and that that was how the Archive always passed from one to another -- at the new Archive's birth. In Small Favor, the story's completely different -- that Ivy's mother killed herself while still pregnant, that the Archive passes upon the death of the previous Archive, and Ivy's situation is wholly different and unprecedented.

Sooo... is there WOJ that this was a mistake, or are we assuming?

Because Small Favor was about preventing the Archive from becoming corrupted, but what if someone wrote down some malicious code that actually rewrote Ivy's memories?

[Eldest Gruff]

Sooo... is there WOJ that this was a mistake, or are we assuming?

Because Small Favor was about preventing the Archive from becoming corrupted, but what if someone wrote down some malicious code that actually rewrote Ivy's memories?

Pretty sure it is a confirmed ret-con. As for messing with the Archive with malicious code...she's not actually a computer she just gets digital info. And even if it could effect her she would instantly know the remedies to corrupted code too anyway.

[Second Aristh]

Sooo... is there WOJ that this was a mistake, or are we assuming?

Because Small Favor was about preventing the Archive from becoming corrupted, but what if someone wrote down some malicious code that actually rewrote Ivy's memories?

There's a WoJ that most of what Ivy tells about her purpose is smoke and mirrors since she's running one side of the Oblivion War.  That might extend to her background.

As far as general inconsistencies with the series go, Serack made a huge reference post a while back.  Some things Jim has admitted are mistakes, but some things the beta readers caught that Jim left in on purpose.

[Quantus]

Sooo... is there WOJ that this was a mistake, or are we assuming?

I dont particularly think so myself, I chalk most of it up to her simply not going into all of her most personal details with a man she'd just met (and only in an official capacity), and to The Council being less that perfectly accurate with modern definitions of Death (a Wide and Grey spectrum in the DV, by all accounts).  If, for example, Ivy's mother tried to kill herself but only managed Brain-Dead instead of All-dead, then both Ivy's description and the Council's tactical assessment would be accurate. 

As far as WOJ, the closest I know of is that he did say he'd intended fro her to be a one-off character, but decided to give her a bigger role after.  But That doesnt actually qualify as a Retcon to me, rather I just call that Story Development. 

[Eldest Gruff]

As far as WOJ, the closest I know of is that he did say he'd intended fro her to be a one-off character, but decided to give her a bigger role after.  But That doesnt actually qualify as a Retcon to me, rather I just call that Story Development.

Going from, 'my mother passed the mantle down to me as a result of my birth which left her as a shell' vs 'my mom resented having me as a teen and decided to kill herself' seems like a pretty serious fork in the road to not be considered a ret-con.

[namkcas]

There are plenty of examples many of them small.  For example, Michael's sudden ability to be a combat medic in SG when he told Harry earlier that Charity was the one with the medical training.

Let me use a classic.  Harry and Lea have a conversation in Changes about her garden that guards his other side.  She notes she was always able to find him because they are so close together.  However, multiple times Harry says that distance in the NN is not like that in the real world.  That being 10 steps away in the Real World could be 1/2 the size of the NN.  So which is it? 

All I was trying to imply is that I take the word of later novels over the earlier ones.  A claim in SF is less likely to be true than one in SG.  Not an absolute, but a weight.

[Second Aristh]

Let me use a classic.  Harry and Lea have a conversation in Changes about her garden that guards his other side.  She notes she was always able to find him because they are so close together.  However, multiple times Harry says that distance in the NN is not like that in the real world.  That being 10 steps away in the Real World could be 1/2 the size of the NN.  So which is it? 

That's not really an inconsistency.  Faeries are pretty fast in general, and Lea had Maggie Sr.'s NN notes.  Lea has the stamina to not worry much about whatever NN environment she's going into next, so no slowing down there.  Not to mention whatever option Odin came up with post-Chichen Itza is probably available to her in a pinch.  Shadowing Harry shouldn't be all that difficult for Lea.  Basically, "close" is relative to the ability to travel quickly.

[Mith]

Not to mention that Lea can probably speed herself up when trying to reach Harry, since he is her Godson.

[Foxed]

There's also the fact that in Turn Coat, naagloshii don't procreate but in Skin Game we meet the scion of a naagloshii.

I'll... I'll show myself out.

[Eldest Gruff]

There's also the fact that in Turn Coat, naagloshii don't procreate but in Skin Game we meet the scion of a naagloshii.

I'll... I'll show myself out.

via Imgflip Meme Maker

[Quantus]

Going from, 'my mother passed the mantle down to me as a result of my birth which left her as a shell' vs 'my mom resented having me as a teen and decided to kill herself' seems like a pretty serious fork in the road to not be considered a ret-con.

Admitting Upfront that I could entirely be wrong about this, I dont think it has to be.  Takes a bit of Fae reading of the statements, but that sort of word game is entirely understandable for that particular subject, especially during a first meeting with a known maniac. Check it out: 

(click to show/hide)

The girl pursed her lips. "Ivy," she said, and then nodded slowly. "Ivy. Very well." She regarded me for a moment and then said, "Go ahead and ask the question, wizard. We might as well get it out of the way."

"Who are you?" I asked. "Why are you called the Archive?"

Ivy nodded. "The thorough explanation is too complex to convey to you here. But in short, I am the living memory of mankind."

"What do you mean, the living memory?"

"I am the sum of human knowledge, passed down from generation to generation, mother to daughter. Culture, science, philosophy, lore, tradition. I hold the accumulated memories of a thousand generations of mankind. I take in all that is written and spoken. I study. I learn. That is my purpose, to procure and preserve knowledge."

"So you're saying that if it's been written down, you know it?"

"I know it. I understand it."

I sat down slowly on the couch, and stared at her. Hell's bells. It was almost too much to comprehend. Knowledge is power, and if Ivy was telling me the truth, she knew more than anyone alive. "How did you get this gig?"

"My mother passed it on to me," she replied. "As I was born, just as she received it when she was born."

"And your mother lets a mercenary drive you around?"

"Certainly not. My mother is dead, wizard." She frowned. "Not dead, technically. But all that she knew and was came into me. She became an empty cup. A persistent vegetative state." Her eyes grew a little wistful, distant. "She's free of it. But she certainly isn't alive in the most vital sense."

"I'm sorry," I said.

"I wouldn't know why. I know my mother. And all before her." She put a finger to her temple. "It's all in here."

"You know how to use magic?" I asked.

"I prefer calculus."

"But you can do it."

"Yes."

So the Bolded bit is the key, as I see it.  It can be read as "This was my inescapable birthright, just as it was Mom's" instead of "The Archive Construct Passes to the new host at the moment of Birth."  After that everything fits:  She is effectively dead, just as both Ivy and Luccio said, and none of the rest was in conflict.  You simply have to read "Gig" as the Responsibility of the Archive, rather than the magical construct itself.

[Eldest Gruff]

Admitting Upfront that I could entirely be wrong about this, I dont think it has to be.  Takes a bit of Fae reading of the statements, but that sort of word game is entirely understandable for that particular subject, especially during a first meeting with a known maniac. Check it out: 

(click to show/hide)

So the Bolded bit is the key, as I see it.  It can be read as "This was my inescapable birthright, just as it was Mom's" instead of "The Archive Construct Passes to the new host at the moment of Birth."  After that everything fits:  She is effectively dead, just as both Ivy and Luccio said, and none of the rest was in conflict.  You simply have to read "Gig" as the Responsibility of the Archive, rather than the magical construct itself.

Still doesn't jive with the latter info in SmF:

(click to show/hide)

She nodded. "The Archive...has been around for a long time. Always passed down in a family line, mother to daughter. Usually the Archive is inherited by a woman when she's in her early to mid-thirties, when her mother dies, and after she's given birth to her own daughter. Accidents are rare. Part of the Archive's nature is a drive to protect itself, a need to avoid exposing the person hosting it to risk. And given the extensive knowledge available to it, the Archive is very good at avoiding risky situations in the first place. And, should they arise, the power available to the Archive generally ensures its survival. It is extremely rare for the host of an Archive to die young."

I grunted. "Go on."

"When the Archive is passed...Harry, try to imagine living your life, with all of its triumphs and tragedies-and suddenly you find yourself with a second set of memories, every bit as real to you as your own. A second set of heartaches, loves, triumphs, losses. All of them just as real-and then a third. And a fourth. And a fifth. And more and more and more. The perfect memory, the absolute recall of every Archive that came before you. Five thousand years of them."

I blinked at that. "Hell's bells. That would..."

"Drive one insane," Luccio said. "Yes. And it generally does. There is a reason that the historical record for many soothsayers and oracles presents them as being madwomen. The Pythia, and many, many others, were simply the Archive, using her vast knowledge of the past to build models to predict the most probable future. She was a madwoman-but she was also the Archive.

"As a defense, the Archives began to distance themselves from other human beings, emotionally. They reasoned that if they could stop adding the weight of continuing lifetimes of experience and grief to the already immense burden of carrying so much knowledge, it might better enable them to function. And it did. The Archive keeps its host emotionally remote for a reason-because otherwise the passions and prejudices and hatreds and jealousies of thousands of lifetimes have the potential to distill themselves into a single being.

"Normally, an Archive would have her own lifetime of experience to insulate her against all these other emotions and memories, a baseline to contrast against them."

I suddenly got it. "But Ivy doesn't."

"Ivy doesn't," Luccio agreed. "Her grandmother was killed in a freak accident, an automobile crash, I believe. Her mother was a seventeen-year-old girl who was in love, and pregnant. She hated her mother for dying and cursing her to carry the Archive when she wanted to have her own life-and she hated the child for having a lifetime of freedom ahead of her. Ivy's mother killed herself rather than carry the Archive."

The issue is not HOW the Archive mantle is passed (in the what she gets and from whom sense), its the description Ivy gives in the passage you just put. She describes it as if giving birth to her specifically caused the mantle to flow and once that was done her mother essentially ceased to be. Now we find out later than not only is an Archive mantle meant to be passed to a woman who is fully grown, but also has already had a daughter of her own. The Grandmother would have led a full life, not dying in childbirth in order to conceive a new vessel for the Archive, and so on. The outlier here is Ivy's story, her grandmother died in an accident and her mother was much too young (and still pregnant) and didn't want the responsibility of a task she ought not to have had for another 15-20 years. So she killed herself and passed the power on to her newborn (or her death resulted in the pregnancy).

Either way we have two conflicting 'ways' and timelines of how an Archive is made. One has Ivy tell us it happens at childbirth, and then Luccio tells us you inherent in when you're a relatively grown woman with a family all your own. I get what you are saying about the gig part but its not really how the scene reads when she talks about everything flowing into her from her mother. Her birth is the reason it occurred, so she got the gig in every sense...responsibility AND construct.  Hence, ret-con.

[Mr. Death]

There's no fae word games. In Death Masks and in Small Favor, the explanations for how the Archive works are described in ways that are directly in conflict with one another and are mutually exclusive.

Ivy in Death Masks: Says she got it when she was born, and this is how the Archive has always worked.
Luccio in Small Favor: Ivy got the archive at her mother's death, which is how the Archive always worked.

Ivy in Death Masks: All Archives got it at birth.
Luccio: Ivy is extremely unusual and dangerous because to our knowledge she's the only Archive that got it at birth.

Ivy in Death Masks: Is comforted by the knowledge that her mother lives on in her head through her memories.
Luccio: Ivy knows that her mother killed herself to spite her.

None of those are at all compatible. Either Ivy told a pointless lie (seriously, "I don't want to tell you and I don't have to tell you," is leagues simpler and expected of some supernatural entity) and made up a story from wholecloth, or it's a Retcon. Retcon's just simpler.

[Quantus]

Still doesn't jive with the latter info in SmF:

The issue is not HOW the Archive mantle is passed (in the what she gets and from whom sense), its the description Ivy gives in the passage you just put. She describes it as if giving birth to her specifically caused the mantle to flow and once that was done her mother essentially ceased to be. Now we find out later than not only is an Archive mantle meant to be passed to a woman who is fully grown, but also has already had a daughter of her own. The Grandmother would have led a full life, not dying in childbirth in order to conceive a new vessel for the Archive, and so on. The outlier here is Ivy's story, her grandmother died in an accident and her mother was much too young (and still pregnant) and didn't want the responsibility of a task she ought not to have had for another 15-20 years. So she killed herself and passed the power on to her newborn (or her death resulted in the pregnancy).

Either way we have two conflicting 'ways' and timelines of how an Archive is made. One has Ivy tell us it happens at childbirth, and then Luccio tells us you inherent in when you're a relatively grown woman with a family all your own. I get what you are saying about the gig part but its not really how the scene reads when she talks about everything flowing into her from her mother. Her birth is the reason it occurred, so she got the gig in every sense...responsibility AND construct.  Hence, ret-con.

Precisely; That is one, and the most common, way to read her statement.  I was offering a differing interpretation that I believe would solve all the conflicts.  All it would take is the interpretation that nobody actually said the Archive construct always passed at birth, and that Ivy was telling Harry that She was Born with that Fate/Destiny/Job/Gig, and her mother was equally bound to said Fate at Birth.  A prince was still Born to be a King (ie the circumstances of his birth are the only requirements for that gig) even if he is not usually invested with the Full power at birth.

It's a little condescending of an explanation of a hereditary [insert synonym for "mantle" here, because it's not one of those specifically], but not actually a Lie. 

There's no fae word games. In Death Masks and in Small Favor, the explanations for how the Archive works are described in ways that are directly in conflict with one another and are mutually exclusive.

Ivy in Death Masks: Says she got it when she was born, and this is how the Archive has always worked.
Luccio in Small Favor: Ivy got the archive at her mother's death, which is how the Archive always worked.

Per the quote I posted, that's not what she said.  It is, I admit, the most common and arguably the most logical interpretation, however.

Ivy in Death Masks: All Archives got it at birth.
Luccio: Ivy is extremely unusual and dangerous because to our knowledge she's the only Archive that got it at birth.

Per the quote I posted, that's not explicitly/literally what she said.  It is, I admit, the most common and arguably the most logical interpretation, however.  It all hinges on whether she was interpreting the question of her "gig" as Archive being the Fate/Duty of it, or the actual

Ivy in Death Masks: Is comforted by the knowledge that her mother lives on in her head through her memories.
Luccio: Ivy knows that her mother killed herself to spite her.

  "Comforted" is a pretty big stretch.  That implies positive emotions, or really any emotions at all, which were not evident in that scene.  The closest she gets is referring to her mother as "Free of It".  Otherwise she jsut tells Harry that she has no need to be Sorry for her mother dying because she knows

[Eldest Gruff]

Precisely; That is one, and the most common, way to read her statement.  I was offering a differing interpretation that I believe would solve all the conflicts.  All it would take is the interpretation that nobody actually said the Archive construct always passed at birth, and that Ivy was telling Harry that She was Born with that Fate/Destiny/Job/Gig, and her mother was equally bound to said Fate at Birth.  A prince was still Born to be a King (ie the circumstances of his birth are the only requirements for that gig) even if he is not usually invested with the Full power at birth.

'With it' in the abstract sense certainly. But not 'with it' in actuality. For two reasons, A) a prince can be born destined to be a King but die young and never reach that potential and B) because she wasn't born with a destiny per that description on her part...she was born with it ALL, her mother emptied like a cup and flowed it all into her as she was being pushed out. So while I understand the interpretation, within your own supporting passage is the same girl saying she was born with it all wholesale...not just a destiny but an actuality.

"Comforted" is a pretty big stretch.  That implies positive emotions, or really any emotions at all, which were not evident in that scene.  The closest she gets is referring to her mother as "Free of It".  Otherwise she jsut tells Harry that she has no need to be Sorry for her mother dying because she knows

Well if her eyes turning 'wistful and distant' are any indicator she was perfectly capable of feeling at least sadness and probably no small degree of regret for what ultimately reads like a child who knows full well that she is the reason her mother died and essentially that she killed her by absorbing the Archive away from her mother at birth. As opposed to, as we find out later, a girl who knows her mother killed herself rather than be Ivy's mother...who isn't in a persistent vegetative state but gone entirely and who didn't die an essentially noble death, letting all that she was flow into her daughter so that she might have life but a girl who saddled her unborn (or barely born) child with this burden.

The tones are off in the two conversations (especially Ivy's) to fit the 'facts' as we know them per Luccio into the interpretation of the scene with Harry and Ivy, (without a level of hurdling that while I don't fault you if you'd rather see it that way to try and reconcile the scenes, I can't), when the most likely and obvious answer is Jim changed his mind and now we're stuck with a bit of a discrepancy.