Random Questions Thread

Ahh, fair enough! That does make some sense—thank you for explaining! ^_^

(I haven't seen Fullmetal Alchemist, aside from one live-action movie, so I don't know the character Nina Tucker.)

Hmm... Yeah, simply in terms of the processes described, I do think that the current setup of "animal heads for second generation, merged features for third generation" makes the most intuitive sense to me.

My feelings regarding the thematic sense do still stand. Although you might be able to get around them by simply describing the second generation as having animal heads—but high foreheads, thus signifying greater space for an intelligent brain.

Wow, that's brilliant! It's so simple yet it solves both problems at once! It works especially well because, like I mentioned earlier, the aurochsen are famous for their prowess in the field of astronomy.

Thanks so much for suggesting such a simple yet effective solution!

There are some depictions of minotaurs with a human face. I think they are all modern, but the more human ones might look more like a faun, but with bovine instead of goat features.

I have a suggestion for the name. Replace Mino with the Greek word for free, as in freedman: Eleutheros. Now that is a bit long, and I don't have the linguistic knowledge to put them together. Maybe eleutaur works.

So, this is a long and complex question, so I apologize. This concerns a completely different setting than the vampire/werewolf one just to get that out of the way. It requires quite a bit of context first.

In a story I am thinking of, there are two characters, Mirri and Sala, both of them lovers. To give a brief backstory, Mirri and Sala are a successful Childhood Friend Romance, two young girls who slowly grew to have romantic feelings for one another as they got older.

However, due to the customs and culture of their society, their same-sex relationship was deeply frowned upon. To remedy this, Mirri joined a group of warriors who wield a great deal of prestige and power among their people, so that she and Sala could carry on their relationship due to these warriors being exempt from some of the strictures of their society.

Their society is eventually attacked by a far more powerful nation as part of a religious crusade and subject to genocide. Their villages are destroyed, many of their people slaughtered and the survivors scattered or absorbed into the attacking country and forced to convert to its religion. Mirri watches as her friends, family and eventually Sala is killed in a brutal attack on their village, and she is swept up among the refugees.

She then uses her skills as a warrior to exact brutal revenge against the nation that destroyed everything she had and killed her lover. However...things are not as they seem. Eventually there is a large reveal that Mirri is the one who died in the assault on their village, struck down while fighting against the invaders.

The person traveling as a deadly wandering swordswoman is Sala who took up Mirri's weapon and vowed to avenge her and their people. She trained herself to wield Mirri's sword, learn her skills and overall fight like her. More than just acting like her, Sala actually lost her own identity and began to think of herself as Mirri out of a mixture of overwhelming grief and sheer trauma from losing her home and loved ones.

Here is where my question comes in at last. I'm trying to think of Foreshadowing to show "Mirri's" true identity as Sala before the big twist comes in. The biggest reason that no one realizes the truth is because everyone who knew Mirri and Sala are dead at this point, and so even other survivors of their people don't know the difference. Just little things or maybe big things that let people know that this person isn't quite who they seem even if they don't understand the full scope and magnitude of Sala's delusions.  

Edited by Swordofknowledge on Mar 25th 2024 at 3:16:13 PM

You should definitely have hints, at least hints that something is not what it seems. Otherwise the reader wont like it. Twists shouldn't come out of nowhere, and they should have a point. It is better when the events before the reveal make more sense after the reveal.

@ ry4n:

Yes, definitely. I'm just trying to think of what those hints would be considering that there's no one who should reasonably know that "Mirri" is really a delusional and traumatized Sala. And since Sala herself obviously doesn't know what's going on, she won't be of any help.

Maybe they could have different dominant hands or something, with some "throwaway" lines regarding "Mirri" holding her sword in a particular way. Additionally if Sala wasn't the original warrior, she probably didn't get formal training and may have a less disciplined or standardized fighting style.

@ War Jay 77:

Thanks, that is a good idea; I didn't even think about little things like hands or the way they hold their swords.

I had something like this and am curious if the following falls under the umbrella of this overall theme. Sala tends to use poisons to assist her in killing her enemies; she coats her crossbow bolts with varying mixtures that have a number of detrimental effects. This is something that Mirri would never do since it goes against the code held by the order of warriors she was part of. In fact, one survivor of their people actually shows great disdain for Sala when he sees her doing this.

The reason is that Sala's family were herbalists and so she knows all about different plants and other such things and what they can be used for. She doesn't remember that life (at least not until she is forced to confront the truth) but it carries over into how she conducts herself (such as also being able to make a lot of first-aid equipment for herself to cut down on expenses).

@ry4n.

Meant to say "dress armor commission", but to elaborate I had elected to have someone commission an dress-like armor from the dwarves as the imperitus for the trip. It is basically just an inciting-incident type thing.

Regarding the swans. I already had an idea in mind. They are free coming in the maze which has both ponds, rivers and sunroofs for light. Basically a less gross version of an Absurdly Spacious Sewer with ways to get light in.

They are somewhat magical though as they are among the dungeon's guardians.

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Mar 25th 2024 at 7:55:09 AM

I had a thought regarding those swan feathers and why they would be in a dungeon.

"Who says that swan-feathers must belong to actual swans?"

It could belong a swan-based monster living in the dungeon, like a "swayvern" (swan + wyvern) that lives in the dungeon as a resting spot between its immigration across the world in accordance to the seasons.

Which would make for quite a beautiful yet exotic addition to the dungeon.

I'll consider the idea, thank you.

Does anyone else have ideas about this question?

How about a pair-accessory as a token of their relationship?

Like a pair of rings, or something similar. Both different from each other in the details but same in the base structure.

One have the (X)-ring on her finger and the other the (Y)-ring on hers. (Insert something each for "X" and "Y" at your choice.)

And the one who had the (X)-ring was the one who was believed to have died, and the owner of the (Y)-ring carrying out the vendetta.

However, it is revealed that the owner have both rings on her person. With the (X)-ring on her finger and the (Y)-ring strapped to a necklace, kept extremely close to her heart.

A small detail like that perhaps?

@ Trainbarrel:

Yes, something like that could definitely work. I might not have it be a necklace though, more likely the extra ring would be "hidden" in some part of Sala's armor and unseen by her until The Reveal.

To explain a little better—-Sala is the main character so it's all from her point of view complete with her delusions of being Mirri. It could be that when she was still somewhat sane, she took Mirri's ring and tucked it away but as her sense of self waned she just never opens that pocket/compartment/ring-holder, always finding excuses and reasons to leave it closed.

I just figure a necklace would indicate some awareness of the extra ring and hence it's meaning but hidden away would show how thoroughly she fooled herself.

Edited by Swordofknowledge on Mar 25th 2024 at 1:52:01 PM

So, a bit complicated again, sorry. But it concerns one of the most personally frustrating characters I've ever created, so I do need an "outside" perspective on something.

My main character's grandfather (aka most frustrating character ever) possessed a Story-Breaker Power capable of making him the closest thing the story has to a god and even destroying the world (well, the world's society to be more precise) on a whim.

His family was murdered by a powerful and ancient organization that is the self-proclaimed protector of the divide between humans and supernaturals and showed zero remorse or empathy when they carried out these atrocities. He used his powers against them to take revenge, but hesitated at the last moment when he realized that he was dangerously close to destroying the world out of pure spite.

Rather than just finish off the group's leadership and be satisfied, he abandoned the mission entirely and spared them, leaving with a petty threat about destroying the world if they ever went after him. A threat that he had no intention of carrying out, it was completely idle.

Worse yet, he "locked" his powers so that none of his descendants could ever really use them unless an intentionally impossible set of requirements were met, to prevent anyone else from using these abilities to endanger the world. Thus in doing this, he condemned all of his second family to death at some point in the future when the group gets over its fear and goes after them again.

Here is my question—-do the grandfather's actions make any sort of sense? His reasoning is that he was terribly afraid of his own powers and their potential and he saw them as too much of a threat for anyone to be able to wield. He wanted to protect the world as a whole, and even though he loved the second family he started, he was willing to risk their future destruction if that meant keeping the world safe as a whole.

He's intended to be a sharp contrast to the main protagonist who is perfectly willing to sacrifice anyone and anything to keep his loved ones safe, but I want his motives to seem understandable and realistic even if they are self-defeating. I don't want to create a "strawman" just to provide a supernatural and philosophical obstacle.

Nah, he is a strawman.

The only way he would be a threat towards the world, is if destroyed it in order to take out these KKK-expies as collateral.

He could easily have removed these people from the equation and stopped right there but clearly he didn't think that far ahead when going after them.

This "All or nothing" mentality is self-defeating by nature and not a healthy one.

And going "All or nothing" is what caused the situation in the current time with the descendant, as these people the grandfather spared DIDN'T LEARN A SINGLE THING from back then, only to kick-start the apocalypse further down the line by someone who is fine with making destroying the world as well just to get rid off them, rather than just get rid off them and stop there.

The grandfather's actions might have made sense in his mind, but to anyone else, it was just asking for these people to come back and make things worse down the line.

And willing to let his whole bloodline suffer across the generations at the hands of the SAME enemy he spared just so he could "have the moral high ground"?

That is not going to earn any sympathy-points from anyone.

Just saying.

Edited by Trainbarrel on Mar 26th 2024 at 3:38:43 PM

@ Trainbarrel:

Thanks for the feedback. Yes his motivations definitely aren't intended to be noble or even sympathetic, just...I guess logical is the best word I have. I wanted him to operate on some kind of plausible internal reasoning and not just "the plot needs this to happen".

The grandfather's mindset more or less comes down to this—-he realized in an instant that he was literally a thought away from destroying the world and plunging billions of people into chaos and suffering, all because of his revenge. It shattered him that one person had the power to do that and he became terrified of his own abilities.

Plus, he was terrified that anyone who later held this power wouldn't have the same restraint he did, so he tried to "bury" the powers as best as he could.

It wasn't intended but I guess this could be an Aesop for this story, at least part of it. Both the main character and his grandfather have incredibly zero-sum mentalities where this is concerned (although the main character has a little more justification for it) and both of them decide to operate from that mindset to the detriment of those around them.

Is it common for toku shows to take place in fantasy worlds rather than in the real world?

One way that could work, but I'm not sure if that is possible in your setting, is if the grandfather had actually started to use his powers to their full extent and realised halfway through what it meant. Maybe for instance when he saw some innocent families being destroyed and realised he was no better than those he was fighting against.

@ C105:

Yes this is actually exactly what happened. He killed a lot of people, innocent and guilty alike on his rampage of revenge and he learned more and more about his abilities as he used them constantly.

By the time he confronted the leaders of his family's killers, he realized he could send the whole world into chaos and intended to do it out of pure spite (since their goal is keeping peace between the humans and supernaturals). But he realized at that moment the sheer magnitude of what he was about to do and then right after that realized how dangerous it would be if this power fell into anyone else's hands after his death.

It's what made him so timid about using his powers (he went from grandiose displays of might to small little "tricks") and what made him decide to "seal" the powers away from any future descendants unless they went through a ton of impossible hoops.

In a way it was less about a moral high ground in terms of being just as bad as his enemies, and more about him realizing that no one should have the ability to alter the fate of billions of people on a whim like that. He felt, wrongly or rightly, that abolishing such a power was worth more than himself or any loved ones he may have in the future.

If he is that powerful, then why didn't he just use his powers to erase the source of his powers all together and turn back to a normal muggle, alongside the rest of his bloodline?

Basically, removing the problem all together before it even starts.

...

This is one example from a story where one of the minor villains of a setting managed to reach Godhood instead of the major Antagonist, but after having a talk with the dying protagonist about what he was supposed to do with all this power, realized that he was too powerful for the universe to handle and decided to erase himself all together and reset the timeline before his presence in it could make an impact, effectively removing the Main Antagonist in the process as without this minor villain, the Main Antagonist would never even get as far as they did in pursuing Godhood.

And moments before getting removed, he also saved the protagonist's soul in the process and let it pass on peacefully into the afterlife while the character that would have become the protagonist in the old timeline, was now allowed to live their life peacefully and normally like any other person without having to deal with conflicting and painful memories of the old timeline.

The protagonist's friends however, still vaguely could remember what had happened but decided to let the protagonist live a happy life by gradually reintroducing themselves to them, reforming the friendships from scratch in a new world without the threat of the antagonists burdening them.

My point is: If you are a god's worth of power, then why not use it to solve your own problem before it starts?

Edited by Trainbarrel on Mar 26th 2024 at 4:50:24 PM

I'd say that locking his powers in a way that makes them nigh impossible to use is as close as you can get to your suggestion if his powers are not powerful enough to allow him to remove himself from the timeline. Having the power of a god does not necessarily mean you are omnipotent (well that's another debate that is way beyond the scope of this discussion).

Yes, got sidetracked by your example, but the point still stands: if he can't simply remove his powers, locking them away seems to be the next best thing.

Edited by C105 on Mar 26th 2024 at 5:18:02 PM

Actually, the suggestion was "Why doesn't he use his powers to remove the source of his powers all together from himself and his bloodline?"

Not that the grandfather should remove himself from the equation, that was just an example from a different story.

Aside from that, the Grandfather's actions makes sense considering that at the end of the day, he is just a human being like anyone else. Flawed, irrational, prone to make a LOT of mistakes in life and not meant for godhood in the slightest.

Of course mistakes are made on faulty logic, everyone does that from time to time.

It just so happens that his mistakes could result in an apocalypse that doesn't include nuclear-winter, that's all.

Edited by Trainbarrel on Mar 26th 2024 at 5:35:01 PM

Sorry I arrived late to the party .

Trainbarrel's example and concept of the grandfather removing the powers brings up a good point that I didn't mention since I didn't think it was relevant to the question I was asking.

The grandfather can't remove the powers from his bloodline exactly, but he could remove his unique ability from his family forever. It would just require him to kill himself in a very unique and painful way, but it would erase any trace of his particular power forever. People in his family would still be born with supernatural abilities, but never his specific one.

The obvious issue with that was that he wanted to live, and wanted to raise his new family and just continue his life in peace until the inevitable moment that the organization came for them again. Which didn't happen in his lifetime, but that was his reasoning.

I should also mention that while I say his power his "godlike" it's only in the scope of this story where supernatural powers are very much "toned down". He can't shape the fabric of the universe or travel through time (the closest to that he can do is go through the memories of others) or any other truly cosmic things.

The grandfather and later the main protagonist are essentially the Hive Queen of every single werewolf on the planet, which means they have absolute unbreakable control over all of them at any given moment. Which considering how many werewolves exist makes them incredibly dangerous.

Yes, I was trying to create some sort of middle ground where he was committed to defusing the "nuke" that is his powers without ending his own life and destroying any chance of having a somewhat happy ending for himself after all he'd been through.

Thanks, because that really is what I was going for. He wasn't supposed to be justified or wrong, just a character with his own motivations based upon his sense of morality and mental state. I just wanted it to see like the "logic" of a real person rather than a cardboard character made just to be an obstacle in the main character's way.

Seems a lot like the First King's reasoning from Attack on Titan for hiding the Coordinate power behind a walled city regardless of what would happen to the rest of his people.

So yeah, the grandfather comes off as someone projecting his own guilt complex with others paying the price for it.

Heck, the Coordinate is also a power that grants absolute control over a bunch of powerful monsters that can destroy the world.

Edited by M84 on Mar 27th 2024 at 1:44:30 AM