Series drift is usually blamed on the model, the way a delayed traveller blames the road. Read the log instead. The character was described from memory at every stop, and memory edits as it travels: “long black hair” at the first station becomes “dark flowing hair” three stops later, and the audience watches a stranger quietly take over the itinerary. The repair is clerical, not technical. Write the traveller down once, on a card you paste rather than retype.
Five fixed entries, always in order
A working route card holds five things. Age — a number, always 25 or over. Hair — colour, length and one habitual style. Build — two or three words, no more. Face — one or two details that endure every crop. Signature — the mole, the ring, the mark that survives even a tight frame. Everything else belongs to the itinerary line: outfit, city, hour, light, pose. Itinerary lines are meant to change at every stop. Card entries are not.
Two habits keep the card healthy on a long route. Entries are stated plainly and positively — “long jet-black hair in a loose crown braid” survives generation, while “beautiful hair” is reinterpreted at every attempt. And the card is versioned. When the traveller is deliberately changed — a new cut, a new signature — the new text is saved as version two with a date, so an old set can still be remade exactly as it was first logged.
Travelling from the card
Production then becomes a calm routine. Pair the card with itinerary lines that share one setting and one light, and generate the set at the standard model’s 6-credit fare. Keep the best third. Spend on repairs, transfers and upscales only after the cull. When a frame returns off character, the cause is almost always visible in the log: an itinerary line contradicted a card entry, or an entry was too vague to hold. Both are fixed on paper, at the desk — not by hunting through settings at the station.
What a card cannot do
It cannot hold a traveller who was never decided. If the entries are adjectives — lovely, striking, perfect — no system on any route will keep her. Decide her on paper first. The route card is not where the imagination happens; it is where the imagination is kept, stop after stop.