General Writer's Block thread

it's alive

MIA

Well, you obviously have done your research and have hit upon the reason that chemical weapons didnt really become a thing until the development of long range artillary. I find neither of your methods to be very likely. One contrary wind and more of the villans are going to get it than the heros. Probably your best best is to lure them into a large open building like a warehouse, and release it through pipes.The heros reaction to this completely unprecidented form of attack will be interesting as well.

I definitely want to make this work somehow because of the unique reaction of the heroes (as you mentioned) and also the shock value of it unleashing devastation just as the heroes have been believing that they were clearly winning their war. I think you've convinced me that the gas release has to be inside a building(s?), and the ventilation of the gas through pipes idea seems like a perfectly good and initially unnoticeable means of doing that (I'll have to work out the logistics of how they'll get the gas into those pipes efficiently while minimizing the risk to the villains' health, but that doesn't sound impossible).

Although, I think I may have an alternative to the containers-of-poison-dropped-from-above idea where the containers are dropped by a mechanism activated from outside, maybe by pulling or cutting rope(s) which removes what's supporting the containers above the heroes' heads. The reason I'm considering this is because I think the sudden shock of glass containers shattering everywhere (adding glass wounds to the whole scenario) would leave the heroes extremely confused over the initially baffling move ("They're dropping glass on us? I mean, ouch, but don't they have, like, lots of guns and explosives?") before they notice the strong smell of fresh hay and the complete horror starts.

I guess whatever I go with will depend on whether I want subtle, escalating horror or incomprehensible chaos in the moment. (Either way, the surviving heroes aren't going to know why everyone's lungs melted inside of them, at least for a while. It'll shake them up a little bit I think).

edited 29th Sep '16 5:49:21 PM by Stegomasaurus

In the case of a Physical God of Human Origin who desires to lead humanity out of an apocalyptic cataclysm and on to the path for a eutopian future, but insists to everyone that they're not and should never be seen as a god and adamantly clamps down at attempts to start a religion around their person, what ways would you suggest to convince this character that their active denial of their godhood is not only futile, but inherently paradoxical with their goal to help humanity?

edited 17th Oct '16 1:34:08 PM by MarqFJA

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

It's an interesting question. Is it really futile and/or paradoxical? Is there (in this world) no way to lead humanity forward in a way that sees them embracing their own power and ability to learn and know and choose, rather than relying on a God to lay down the authority we shall obey? In short, you're saying that the only way for these people to better themselves in this post-apocalyptic world is by subjugating themselves to a deity (and they choose this character)?

Well, I can certainly see why the character would be against it. Supposing they believe There Is No God, they'd probably be loathe to take a role they associate with superstition and deceit. Supposing they believe there is a God, but that it isn't them, they'd be loathe to pretend to a position they believe is already filled. Or they could just object to the idea that people need subjugation more than they need enlightened free choice - or that people are incapable of the latter. Be it all as it may, I can think of a few ways to make this reluctant godling come around.

If they believe in God and that God's not them, maybe they can have a convincing dream or vision, or series of coincidences that lead them to believe they've been chosen somehow to play that role? Maybe some seeming seer or prophet makes predictions, and the signs keep coming true, pointing to "Wake up! You're God! You really really are!" Perhaps on an unconscious level the person is making these things happen - both the seers previsions and the events fulfilling.

If they object to being God because they feel there's no such thing, maybe they can come to realize that people need god, and that by playing that role, they can give them the good (positive social values and direction) without the bad (harmful or useless biases and taboos).

Or no matter what they believe, depending on what divine powers they have they could end up coming around on pure pragmatic grounds. If the kind of god they are is the kind whose power grows based on people pouring faith and belief into them - based on being worshipped as a god - they may have to swallow their personal revulsion and encourage that faith, because the power they get means they can do more for the people.

I once ran a bull shop in Chinatown. Curious business

First off: I really should've thought better than to post my question just a bit before I went to sleep. In hindsight, I could've given a better picture of the scenario if I had waited until I woke up from a good night's sleep.

Considering that the setting is more or less midway between Cosmic Horror Story and Lovecraft Lite, with plenty of Things Man Was Not Meant to Know that most mortals, even well-educated ones, would not know better than to deal with until it was too late...

Well, not exactly. In the short-term? No, they can handle themselves just fine. In the long term? Humans Are Flawed will likely lead to the less savory sorts (e.g. greedy plutocrats) getting their claws even deeper into the post-apocalyptic world's societies than they used to in the pre-apocalyptic one. In the very long-term, while assuming that the best-case long-term scenario unfolded? Eldritch abominations will eat them whole.

... That said, what's with equating religious worship with subjugation? It's like you're assuming that worship necessarily entails that the object of worship will exert totalitarian control over the worshippers.

Again with the "religious worship = subjugation" thing.

Well, the character is technically both the "child" and the physical avatar of a Sentient Cosmic Force that personifies the universe (think of it as similar to the relationship between Jesus and God in Trinitarian Christianity ^note Ironically, I never managed to wrap my mind around the Trinitarian conception of God. Then again, IINM the average Trinitarian Christian — and that's including the clergy — doesn't bother trying to make sense of it.). This fact has been revealed to them already, so they do "believe in God" and know that they're pretty much an aspect of said God, and thus that whether or not they're God is largely an issue of semantics.

Also, the character's beef with being deified and accordingly becoming an object of worship is as follows:

• In their eyes, being seen as a god will inevitably cause people to distance themselves from the deified individual. They fear that everybody would treat them like they're so removed from mortality that they lack any of the psychological needs that are typical to mortals. Or, in trope terms, they don't want to end up Lonely at the Top.
• They're afraid of getting Drunk On Power and going Knight Templar without realizing it until it's too late. (Ironically, they're worrying over nothing in this particular case. The Sentient Cosmic Force that "gave birth" to them made sure to preclude the possibility of that ever happening by making them Incorruptible Pure Pureness.)
• They're wary of religious extremists using their godhood to justify committing atrocities in their name.

Yeah, in this setting the power of religious faith is real, and while the Physical God character has a base level of power they can never go below (notwithstanding energy expenditures or deliberately burning themselves out, that is), they can get stronger if they're the object of worship.

edited 18th Oct '16 3:01:59 AM by MarqFJA

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

There may be a better word than "subjugation," but in terms of a person's relation to a deity, I associate it to mean "subject to the dominion of." Not necessarily a bad thing, submission to the will of the divine, depending on the divine (particularly how big they are on free will).

I'm a lot clearer on the concept now, though, far as your world goes! So basically, yes, the people do need this person-god to step up and help them win through the eldritch mess. And the person-god knows full well they are God! They resist it because they don't want to be separated from humanity.

I like this setup a lot better than what I'd thought, which was that they just didn't know, or weren't sure, and were fighting against it. It's kind of interesting to have them know full well but still insist others deny it/not recognize it. It's also interesting that despite their incorruptible pure pure nature, they're still well able to foot-drag and resist the call. They have free will, it seems it is their choice - to take up or reject their destined role, or at least, to stall long enough that everything might go to heck as a result. So: how to get them to realize what they must do!

One way to force their hand could be if the third fear comes true. If despite their efforts to not be worshipped as a god, people in areas they've passed through are setting up cults, unsupervised, going wild, interpreting little things said or done into bizarre and twisted forms and rites, it could become necessary to hitch on the god pants just to slap down / shut down these extremists, perpetrating vile abominations in one's name.

The romantic interest could also be a good prompt, if there is one. One particular person who above all others, they're particularly afraid of being alienated from, and so reluctant to pursue or assume divinity. What if that person DIES because of that reluctance, because they did not take big enough action, or were not able to because of the insufficient use of their divine power? Bonus, once they take up godhood, do they resurrect the loved one? Can they? Or maybe this is no big deal - if they go around resurrecting people offhand already, it may not be as big an over-the-top moment as I'm thinking. But it could have some dramatic impact, to demonstrate the enormity of the change, if first they go full-on god mode to kick ass making up for where they failed to, and then after kicking ass, in the aftermath they realize "hey, wait. As long as I'm god anyway...can't I just...?"

Maybe the most natural route is just that as the hero dawdles, the odds get more and more dire to the point where they realize the only way they can boost their power level to the point where humanity even has a chance is to be worshiped en masse.

It should be an interesting, potentially awkward sales pitch, to explain it to the masses! Especially those allies who have accepted the constant nope-not-god insistence, and who may even have been reassured by it. Now, suddenly the same person is saying "OK, I'M GOD!" Could leave room for a cunning enemy to exploit the about-face.

I once ran a bull shop in Chinatown. Curious business

Actually all three of those could work in together.

Is there a romantic interest, by the way? It could be interesting if that person has some kind of strong opposition to / reservations over the whole godhood idea, especially if it ends up they owe their life to it being true, and finally fully embraced. Could their ideological opposition be so strong that saving them means losing them forever?

Beg pardon, wandering thoughts. Anyway, it definitely sounds like a cool treatment however you resolve the main self-conflict.

I once ran a bull shop in Chinatown. Curious business

Yeah, "submission" has considerably less in the way of the immediate negative connotation than "subjugation"; the latter is typically used in such constructions as "X subjugated Y", whereas the former is typically in the form of "Y submitted himself to X", often implying willingness on part of Y (e.g. a knight submitting himself to the authority of the newly crowned king).

Another alternative word is "deference".

Well, you can blame the character's dad and (absent) granddad for that; the latter is the Emperor of Mankind, who had a really bad first-hand experience with religion ^* he's implied to have started up some real-life religions to influence humanity positively, only for it to backfire when they started getting Knight Templar and deification ^* The galactic civil war known as the Horus Heresy started off because one of his superhuman clone-sons deified him and began preaching about his beliefs, and the Emperor giving him the Humiliating Conga Line treatment over the issue caused him to turn to worshipping the Ruinous Powers of Chaos. After the Horus Heresy, the near-dead Emperor became the center of an Imperial cult that worships him as a god... which, ironically, is one reason why the humans of Imperium survived for the following 10,000 years (namely, sufficient religious faith has supernatural power that wards off the corruption of Chaos to some degree or another)., and the former is likely to have had this mentality passed on to him.

... Then again, the Emperor's son did get married to a benign Physical Goddess (Tenchi Muyo!'s Washu, to be specific) in my story (who is kinda stuck in mortal form due to lingering injuries/damage from a past cosmic conflict), so he probably has conflicting feelings about the whole issue. (And before you ask, they first met long after the WH40Kverse went kaput in a cosmic cataclysm that the Emperor's son was more or less the sole survivor of, and he was suffering amnesia when he got dumped in a new universe and until a long time after getting married.)

... And it just hit me that I need to clarify the character's parentage. The Emperor's Son and Washu are her^note I have no idea why I had refrained from clarifying the character's sex until now. Maybe I wanted to avoid it having impact on the answers. biological parents; the aforementioned Sentient Cosmic Force created the character's soul to exact specifications, thus technically qualifying as a third parent.

With all that being said, I am open to ideas that involve the character's personal struggle with her divine nature never actually ending with her deciding that rejecting deification like her father and grandfather is indeed the appropiate response.

Hey, "incorruptible" doesn't mean "flawless". And you could have free will while still being destined to do something; after all, what to some people seems like a multi-choice question may not be so to another, because to the latter all but one of the options are completely and nonnegotiably unacceptable to them for one reason or the other.

Funnily enough, she has multiple Love Interests — two who are technically human (technically because they're Physical God-level in power, but not quite the same level as their wife), and one who is a Physical God-level demon that used to serve the forces of evil as an Anti-Villain ^note His Heel–Face Turn involved him unknowingly falling in love with his future wife while he was trying to kill her per his liege's orders (and kept failing because he couldn't bring himself to deal the final blow).. The society she grew up in is polygamous, so she does end up getting married to them all.

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

It's beginning to sound like you're working out, at a metaphorical level, some of the realistic implications of the biblical story of Jesus. Like what might have been going on that didn't get recorded in the Gospels. Even if this isn't your intention, the parallel is close enough that I think many readers will make the connection. Something to be aware of.

... Ironically enough, I've been taking some inspiration from the Christian conception of Jesus when I was working on this character's semi-divine aspect. Maybe that's why you're seeing those parallels.

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

Knew it!!

I'm trying to flesh out an idea I had for what essentially would be poltergeists of nature, that is spirits formed by the accumulation of life force rather than belonging to an individual. I'm trying desperately to avoid Nature Spirit, so I don't mean, for example:

a) when individual trees/plants etc. have spirits, as seen in the Narnia books and many others b) the spirit of a Genius Loci, e.g. the forest as a single living organism manifested into a spirit

Just that the general to-ing and fro-ing of life in a location over enough time creates a spirit, its own entity. Forests would have more, and bigger ones, mountains and plateaus would have fewer and they would be smaller because there is less life in those locations - after all Hogwarts has been around for 1000 years with thousands of students and it's only ever generated Peeves.

I was hoping that it could be explained that these spirits were the inspiration for various folklore creatures, but I'm worried the idea might make not sense, or I'm overcomplicating things and this really is just Nature Spirit.

Avatar from here.

That's more or less an animistic world-view, so you have plenty of mythologies to draw upon. I would question your assumption that mountains and plateus have "less life" than forests, however. There may be less biomass per kilometer, but the things that do live there must have strong spirits to survive.

Maybe you should consult biologists for ideas, as well as studing mythology. I am a biology graduation student, and here is one idea:

Find a paralel between "lifeforce" and something more physical, like transference of energy and biomass by photosynthesis, predation or symbiosis, and take a look at the ecology, geology and survival mechanisms found in different enviornments.

For example, in places like jungles where there is a large supply of energy and biomass, natural selection is generally dictated by competition and predation instead of inability to withstand abiotic stresses. Different species of all kinds push one another either into very specialized niches or towards extinction, and survival is a battle of tooth against nail and bark against root, but also a surging force of diversification as each species finds a way to survive and prosper. I think a spirit born of such energies would be fast, aggressive, passionate, and very, very creative when it comes to Xanatos Speed Chess, and be more likely to interact with mortals or leave its den, for good or ill.

On more stressful enviorments, however, while competition may be a powerful force so are the abiotic factors, which impose harder limits on what is possible and what isn't, as well as making survival techniques based on profiting from conditions created by precursor species more common. I imagine such spirits would be slower, calmer and more patient, as well as less likely to interact with mortals or leave their homes, but maybe more respectful of those who prove themselves useful.

edited 4th Nov '16 3:32:43 PM by EternaMemoria

"The dried flowers are so beautiful, and it applies to all things living and dead."

wow that is very interesting. Do you mind if I take this as inspiration, please.

MIA

I don't really mind. On fact, I encourage you of taking inspiration when you feel it. Specially if it leads you to research into obscure yet fascinating areas

"The dried flowers are so beautiful, and it applies to all things living and dead."

thanks. I had a bit of an interesting idea concerning world one day. I was thinking of making Darwooa forest like a bubble of sorts, it's small from the outside but a large expansive world on the inside.

MIA

Alright, in my story I have angels (aeliths) and succubi battling it out in an interstellar war. I was planning on introducing the original Aelith as being a huge entity called Salvanth, which is roughly the size of a local mountain and it resembles a living organic cavern... Kotone and Rose (the heroes) get their computer disc accidentally devoured by the beast and must venture directly into the Salvanth dramatically to get their item back. The main problems are how to describe the potential and horrific hazards that Kotone and Rose might face inside the Salvanth itself... Since they both spend 2/3 of a chapter inside the creature.

edited 6th Nov '16 3:48:52 AM by sabrina_diamond

In an anime, I'll be the Tsundere Dark Magical Girl who likes purple MY own profile is actually HERE!

@ewolf: sounds like the setting of The Blair Witch Project.

minus the scare factor well actually think of it as portal to another world or something.

MIA

Some very interesting thoughts there, thanks so much. I hadn't even got to the point of considering how they might act, just whether it would even work as an idea. But of course De Marquis is right, it's essentially animism so it's already an idea, I would just have to play about with it, see what feels right.

Avatar from here.

I don't know if this is the right thread for it, so tell me if I'm wrong.

Have you ever try to publish a story, but the publisher demand a story that promotes the national/local culture? That is my dilemma. So far, all publishers that I have met demand a story that do just that. It's like the trope "Tokyo is the center of the universe" just replace Tokyo with the capital of your country. Its setting has to be my nation, its protag has to be my people, and so on. I will be annoyed, but I can accept it if the story can be objective or has a grey vs grey morality. (I think white vs black morality isn't only unrealistic, but boring.) Unfortunately, that isn't what they demanded. I must sound unpatriotic or something like that, but I don't like this borderline propaganda stuff. The publishers even want me to create either something like generic shonen stuff (of course, after I replace Japan with my country) or even something like Zipang (of course, after I replace Japan with my country.) *sigh*

Only an experienced editor who has a name possesses the ability to truly understand my work - What 90% of writers I'm in charge of said.

You could try publishing in the US or Europe, where that sort of thing is less of a problem.

Hey, for the Hero Critique thread, are we allowed to post more than one character if the story has more than one Po V character, or is it One Review One Character? I haven't made up my mind whether or not I'm going to post at all since at this point it's less of me trying to get feedback for developing my characters and more of becoming more comfortable about talking openly about the details of my story, but still.

edited 16th Nov '16 9:56:32 PM by randomdude4

"Can't make an omelette without breaking some children." -Bur