Q&A: Boyd’s look post-Aleixo

In 2013 on our Santino & Ais Goodreads group, I had gotten a question regarding Boyd and his looks and why he might have chosen to do certain things in Fade. I realized today that it’s too difficult to direct-link to that individual comment, and I didn’t want to forget or lose the more in-depth answer.

The question and answer are both behind a cut below due to major spoilers for Fade.

(By the way, I did answer the Kassian part of her question later too and at first I was going to just leave that alone and potentially put it in another post, but in rereading my initial answer I remembered that on Lorraine’s request I had followed up with a longer answer, mixing in the Kassian part. So I just did both in this post. It makes it really long but if you’re interested in Boyd’s motivations or psychology, you might enjoy this.)

ICoS: random research/note

I just found this randomly super detailed note in a really old file I hadn’t touched in years. I don’t know if it’s of interest to anyone, but this is what I had.

---

BOYD

owns a 2009 Audi A4 Saloon, exterior color phantom black, pearl effect, w/ black interior with milano leather, engine SE 3.2 FSI 265 PS 6 speed manual transmission

Note: contains Bang & Olufsen sound system designed specifically for A4, w/ surround-sound reproduction w/ dynamic-noise compensation, 14 high-performance loudspeakers (505 watt) and 10-channel amplifier. BLAIR may be interested in this and freak over it (check reviews on quality of sound — even if crappy sounding, he’d be interested in the idea of the system made specifically for that)

Q&A: Boyd and fighting, post-Fade

After Fade/ICoS finished, some readers had questions about Boyd and how well he could fight following the series. I thought I had already done a post on this but in retrospect, I don’t think I did; I think I just answered people here and there on the topic.

The specific question and the answer are both behind a cut below due to a major spoiler for Fade.

Anon Question: ICoS, Boyd and psychological effect of the Aleixo mission

I received the below question from an anon at tumblr, and since I wrote a really long answer I thought people here may be interested in it too.

Hi!
I answer below the cut to avoid any potential spoilers, but since I know a lot of people won’t click that I want to highlight something before I answer.

Please check out the below links—and research more—to find out more about human trafficking and sex trafficking that’s happening right now in the world. Some of these links lead to organizations you can support through donation or advocacy, and others tell you ways you can help fight the issue on your own.

• Polaris Project: fighting to end modern slavery. (Their founding story is good to read)
• Not For Sale campaign
• 20 Ways you can help fight human trafficking
• Human Trafficking: How You Can Help
• I also highly recommend you check your Slavery Footprint— one really cool thing about it is as the end it also lets you send notes to the big companies that affected your score. (My count was 45 😦 )

If we ever were to publish Fade, I would really like to be able to include some of these links in the book for people to get involved if they were affected by anything in the story itself.

Okay! Onto the answer. (and once again it’s super long, I’m sorry)

Anon Question: ICoS, Boyd and brainwashing

Since I completely geeked out on my answer to the below anon ask I received at tumblr, I figured I may as well share it here too.

Hi! That’s a great question but I feel a little hesitant to give you an exact timeline without having done a ton more research. Also, I’m sorry I took a day to respond but I wanted a chance to think about the best answer and also to gather some of the different topics into one place.

Sorry this is the longest answer ever, especially considering it’s probably not the answer you were hoping to get 😦

The reason I can’t give a super succinct answer is there are actually a lot of background pieces to this topic.

WIP Files 10/18/14: RESEARCH, Vivienne, Cedrick and Julian Jones

 

It’s funny how many tabs and various pieces of media I collect when researching. And how starting with one question pushes me back one step, and then another.

For example, I know certain aspects of Vivienne and Cedrick’s lives, but I have been sitting down and finalizing dates and details in order to continue writing Julian Files (Cedrick and his friend Julian from 2005-2006), and to write Domino (Vivienne’s backstory from childhood to 1/27 anthology).

I know Vivienne worked for the CIA prior to the Agency. I’ve been determining the exact title she held, how long she worked there, and more.

• This means I’m looking at the requirements of working for the CIA, two important points of which are that you must be a US citizen and at least 18 years old.
• The question then is when did Vivienne gain US citizenship (and trying to make it realistic).
• This question gets into types of citizenship in the US: birthright or dual citizenship. No one in her family had American citizenship, so she has to do naturalization.
• Looking at the timeline for that is dependent in part on whether she is married to a US citizen.
• That leads to the question of whether that includes dual citizenship, and whether Cedrick was able to have that.
• This gets back to Cedrick’s situation: while he was born in Canada (as I have it now), his mother was American and so was all of her family.
• In researching whether he could have dual citizenship, it will fall in part on whether or not his mother could have dual citizenship in the US and Canada or, barring that, if she was able to remain an American citizen while living in Canada.
• Which then gets to the question of when she would have become a dual citizen, if ever, whether she was able to do so, and thus at what time in her life did she meet Braeden, and at what age did she move to Canada.
• Knowing that (as I have it now) Cedrick and his siblings were all born in Canada, that means that most likely the timeline has to be before 1976 or between around 1976 (when Amy and Braeden were married) and 1977 (when Riley was born).
  • Cedrick (and Vivienne) weren’t born until 1980, and then Aiden was born 1983.
• Meanwhile, I know that Vivienne had Boyd in 1999 (at age 19)

Incidentally, Jesus. The Beaulieu family is cursed. Whenever I look at the genealogy I wrote, I remember how much both sides of Boyd’s family were fucked as far as not having long lifespans. A lot of his family died young, in accidents, or they lived to an old age but it was before Boyd was born. By the time Boyd is born, his living family members are very, very few– and the ones who know of him even fewer, and of those the ones who want anything to do with him are down to one: Cedrick. Just Cedrick.

I also realized how awful the end of  the 1990s were for Cedrick:

• 1994: paternal grandparents Olivia and Bevan die in their home from carbon monoxide poisoning
• 1996:
  • maternal grandfather William Daniels dies of a heart attack
  • paternal great-uncle Damon Beaulieu dies of natural causes
• 1998: younger brother Aiden Jacob Beaulieu killed by a drunk driver in an accident. Age: 15. Driver gets off on almost nothing in court.
• 1999:
  • maternal grandmother Evelyn dies of a stroke
  • Cedrick’s only remaining family killed in the Lexington bombs (mother Amy, father Braeden, brother Riley)

And then Vivienne… her life will be fun to write, but I need more proper research materials. Once I answer all these questions about dual citizenship and CIA and the like, it’s going to be frustrating because I’ll need to focus more on the French aspect of her life, and I really wanted to have better source materials for that.

As it is, I’ll have some wikipedia articles but… I wish there was an equivalent of Born Rich or The One Percent for the wealthy French.

Because Vivienne was really fucking rich in France.

I don’t know if it’s ever been properly explained in the series–probably not, since she rarely talks about herself or her life. If someone wanted to call her princess, while they would be incorrect as far as her not being royalty, they would not be far off as far as considering the amount of wealth, privilege, but also responsibilities, pressure, and expectations she had as a child/young woman. At least, after her parents were killed. Her parents had protected her from that life but their deaths took that more simplistic, loving atmosphere away from her for good.

If anyone knows of good documentaries, or films, (in French with English subtitles is ideal, but I could get away with Spanish subtitles too) or books in English that talk about the wealthy or privileged in France I would LOVE it.

Fade research: chapter 40/41

This is the research I compiled regarding the huge spoiler for Fade chapter 40/41. For those of you who have read the series, this is regarding the thing that has major personal ramifications for one of the characters. Note: the research behind this cut may be uncomfortable for anyone who has particular feelings on the topic.

DO NOT READ BELOW IF YOU HAVE NOT READ THROUGH FADE CHAPTER 41. This information is a HUGE SPOILER. I’m serious.

Note: if you follow my blog on Goodreads, I posted this there as well on April 22, 2013. In fact, the rest of this post is a direct copy of that entry.

Evenfall research: safe house examples, ch 37

Google streetview made the editing of the Monterrey arc of Evenfall about a thousand times easier and more accurate. This entry contains minor spoilers for around Evenfall chapter 37 so I’ve put it behind a cut.

Q&A: Chinese characters for Hsin’s name?

Q: How do you write Hsin’s name/what is the Chinese character used for Hsin?

A: This question has been asked by various people over the years. Below is a post taken from when this was first answered, on September 10, 2011, at our forum. Read the original post if you’d like.

Original post:
A few people have asked this question recently on AFFN reviews and possibly elsewhere. I can’t recall whether we ever answered this somewhere else on the forum, so for the moment I’m doing the answer here.

Hsin is Xin in Mandarin. The specific character is this:

or this if it’s drawn a little less pretty:

It’s pronounced roughly like if you combined ‘shin’ and ‘sheen’ in English; originally we were told it was more like ‘shin’ and then some native speakers said it’s more like ‘sheen,’ which does seem to be the case when you listen to it. It’s easiest to hear people pronounce it themselves. Listen to these options: youtube, pronouncenames, and hantrainerpro.

[**full disclosure, I updated the above paragraph in October 2017 after hearing it pronounced more like ‘sheen’ than ‘shin’ over the years. When we first wrote ICoS, the internet wasn’t nearly as global in the amount of specific things you could find, like multiple sources recording themselves pronouncing the name Xin. We had to go based on forums and descriptions, and back then I understood it to sound a little more like ‘shin’ than ‘sheen.’ If you look back at old answers to this question, I did say it was more like ‘shin.’ I wanted to note this so there isn’t any confusion.**]

There are several meanings to it and I’m sure even the ones I list will be debated by native speakers. But the ones I saw were:

letter / true / to believe / sign / evidence

That’s in Mandarin, which is his native language.

A side note from my Japanese kanji dictionary: that same character is used in Japanese, where it means trust, believe. It consists of word (second part) and person (first). “A person’s word is something which can be believed and trusted” is the way to remember it.

For those of you who have read Fade chapter 7, that (信) is the pertinent character.

What seems to be Hsin’s middle name is technically his last name in China. That’s Liu, which is this:

So if you were to write his name out directly the way it’s said in English it would be this:

Hsin Liu Vega
信 刘 Vega

Clicking the images will bring you to the direct link of where we found them.

Also note that I asked a number of native speakers for help with identifying the proper Chinese characters for Hsin’s name. Since neither Sonny nor I are fluent in any dialect of Chinese we obviously can’t easily verify things ourselves, but we had several very nice, very helpful people aid us in the identification of options for the characters. Ultimately, Sonny had the last say in what was used. The funny thing is, he chose the same character for Hsin I would have also chosen from the list I provided him.

Q&A: cracking OTP encryption?

On October 13, 2008 , in the course of an email chain with a reader B.L. (name redacted for privacy)  we received the following question. This post is placed behind a cut for minor spoilers through about Evenfall chapter 17.

Note: the conversation we had back and forth following the initial question/answer might be interesting for people to read so I included the reader’s question and my answer, and then after that included our back and forth. It’s labeled B.L. for the reader and Ais for me (if that last part wouldn’t have been, you know, self-evident or anything ^_~).

Since this conversation happened years ago I didn’t get express permission from the reader to repost this. I am hoping that it is acceptable to share this since there are no identifying details, but if you are the reader and wish for me to remove the conversation please let me know and I will do so immediately. Thank you!