ataniell93 observed that there'd been a good bit of personality issues with me lately. And, well, yeah.

Recap: We were born one soul to the customer, and all was well until school hit. Being called by one name at home and another at school, an environment I was not prepared to handle as myself, served to create a distinct but subtle personality difference. Then adolescence came, and unleashed the usual complement of hell upon my unsuspecting body chemistry. Hello, bouquet of new personalities. Nice to meet you. Things finally simmered down, and the last few years have been fairly stable. pyrogenic met the old gang at the point where things were getting very intense, so he's not likely to view anything short of complete dissolution and crying screaming rages and extreme suicidal ideation and disturbing fiction as anything entirely out of the ordinary. (Fifteen and sixteen were not good years, aside from CTY.)

We copy ourselves for protection. We create a backup personality to come out and handle the crap that life throws at us. Seems that Naomi's been having a chance to geek out more, good. Marah has either essentially gone into hibernation or merged with me most of the time. (I am not sure which it is, but she is not currently very active at all as such.) Work is such that garnetdagger feels as if she ought to be the one out, but that is not a good idea for any number of reasons, the most notable of which... well...

Those who have recently read A Wind from the South will note the rather straightforward, proactive, and forthright manner with which Mati deals with those people who are causing difficulty to her. Now. Who is garnetdagger's Patroness, again? Heh. Imagine the difficulties that the attitude could cause in a work environment.

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garnetdagger, as part of how she operates, classifies people in five ways: Allies, Clients, Civilians, Liabilities, and Adversaries. It's not boxes, but a Venn Diagram, though some categories tend to be mutually exclusive, though there's no guarantee that anyone will stay in the same category for any length of time. There is, of course, the large "Unclassified" sector of people who have not showed up on her radar enough (in general, or for the specific situation) to be sorted into the circles.

Allies, of course, are those people who have either equal skill, complementary skill, or are just plain the sort of people who you want in your corner when the situation starts to get sticky. They can be partners, backup, or even semi-neutrals off to the side offering the choice bit of advice (perhaps while drinking those drinks with the fruit on sticks). But they're trained professionals themselves, generally, and know how things work. While they may not be depended upon to be involved, whatever level of involvement they do have will be dependable.

Clients are those you're helping out, usually the people caught in the sticky situation. They can be of any skill level (from master+ to nonexistant), but they are the one who you are Assigned to help. A Trainee-Client (a Junior) tends to start out as a Civilian, but will with all good luck proceeds to become an Ally.

Civilians are those who are either not part of a situation, or must be shielded from a situation, but are not actively involved in it. They largely do not tend to have high skill levels, because the community of high-skill individuals is relatively small, and if someone of high skill comes close enough to the situation to be classified, they will tend to fall into one of the other categories.

Liabilities are those who tend to either actively or passively make a situation far more complex than it need be, though usually not maliciously. They could be the cause of a situation, or they could be only a complication, but whatever it is that they are, they tend to be right in the way doing the wrong things at the wrong times. Some Liabilities become your Clients, especially when end-user education to make sure that this person is not a Liability again becomes necessary. If they don't turn into yours, they should probably be someone's Client, just to keep loose cannons under control.

Adversaries are not only in the way and making the situation worse than it ought to be, they're often the cause of a situation, and they're doing it on purpose and it's generally malicious. Adversaries generally probably ought to be someone's Client, just as Liabilities should be, even if they never become yours. Adversaries do not, as a rule, intersect with Allies.