Random Questions Thread

Everybody expects them to be a god-bashing jerk but they're a perfectly chill person?

yay pagetopper

edited 29th Dec '16 8:58:30 PM by Adannor

The atheist's reasoning for not believing in God — stereotypically, their wife or kid died — is masking an incredible entitlement complex, where they think things ought to go their way if God exists. "A benevolent god would give me stuff." They don't want to admit how selfish they are and hide behind parroting the problem of evil over and over again. (Best shown next to a well-adjusted atheist for contrast.)

That's not really a deconstruction.

Somehow, I don't think you can "deconstruct" atheism at all.

Now, if you want to deconstruct an atheist president, you may want to show how vicious and deranged the opposition to him/her is from religious circles.

Why not?

When applied to tropes or other aspects of fiction, deconstruction means to take apart a trope so as to better understand its meaning and relevance to us in Real Life. This often means pursuing a trope's inherent contradictions and the difference between how the trope appears in this one work and how it compares to other relevant tropes or ideas both in fiction and Real Life.

Atheism is not per se a trope. Hollywood Atheist and Straw Character are, they can be deconstructed. And stereotyping will annoy people.

edited 30th Dec '16 7:27:27 AM by SeptimusHeap

Religious circles that are deranged and vicious already, thank you very much. I'm religious and I don't care if my premier is atheistic.

I think, by how Tera describes the atheist in question, that he probably means the Hollywood Atheist instead of normal atheism.

Anyhow, I'm writing a Real Robot-ish story set in the world's equivalent of the Napoleonic Wars but in their equivalent of a 20th century. Would a junior officier that basically hijacks a Super Prototype (one that's not even officially sanctioned by the government, to boot) mecha in order to stall for time be court-martial'ed or otherwise get in trouble?

edited 30th Dec '16 7:29:45 AM by handlere

Yeah, that's insubordination at the very least. Without some serious personal intervention from someone pretty high up the chain that's a dishonorable discharge at the very least.

There was a Military Order of Maria Theresa around the time of Napoleonic Wars, which, to quote The Other Wiki, "was given for successful military acts of essential impact to a campaign that were undertaken on [the officer's] own initiative, and might have been omitted by an honorable officer without reproach. This gave rise to a popular myth that it was awarded for (successfully) acting against an explicit order. It is considered to be the highest honor for a soldier in the Austrian armed services."

To elaborate, the Super Prototype basically is a project personally sponsored by a mildly delusional military officer of noble birth that wasn't all too popular with the rest of the military (hence, him getting Reassigned to Antarctica, or in this case, to a (seemingly) unimportant island base). The project was shot down almost immediately by High Command, considering it relies too much on unproven magitek and the fact that the guy who has pitched it in the first place hasn't got the best track record.

Also, at the start of the series, the military base was suddenly attacked by a far superior force from the France analogue, and the main protagonist (the aforementioned junior officer) literally only knew about the Super Prototype's existence after he tried to retrieve his superior officer (the guy who sponsored the Super Prototype). Which failed, considering the superior officer is killed in the first minutes of the attack.

Does this change anything or would my protagonist sill be kicked out the army?

That's pretty interesting, thank you.

edited 30th Dec '16 12:35:21 PM by handlere

Basically, he's simply using privately acquired equipment to gain an edge in combat. There are often rules about using non-standard equipment, but if he demonstrates that this new prototype is useful in battle, I doubt anyone would prosecute.

Aye, as long as he wasn't given specific orders not to use said prototype, I imagine it would be simple for someone higher up to excuse it. Especially if it opens up new tactical avenues or proves beneficial to the cause.

Suppose a minister of a regional government wants their territory to join another country, but they need to be covert (because he lacks internal support, and both countries involved would shut him down in a flash if they knew what he was up to). What are some techniques he could use to sway public opinion to his side, and make it seem both justified and "spontaneous"?

Found some good ideas in this Grauniad article, but since Russia has no need for subtlety many of them won't work. I'm leaning towards a kind of fake grassroots campaign (anonymous leaflets, graffiti) coupled with staged attacks on local traders by "our oppressors". Any suggestions?

...And for the record, I started on this plot in October 2013. Crimea was just a (horrible) coincidence.

Tap into the minority that genuinely does want to join the larger country and just start a long and subtle media campaign to make the opinion normalized until it becomes a real option.

I can see the fake grassroots campaign going very badly. Without official support it could easily interpreted as a coup or prelude to a civil war.

As for actually joining another country. I can't think of any "subtle" way of achieving that, military occupation is the opposite of subtle, so are political marriages, joining involves paperwork, drafting rule sets, and the consent of almost the entirety of both governments. Political identity and sovereignty is serious business and in order to make something like that work there'll probably need to be liberal Artistic License.

Well, that's good in a way, since the real intent of the minister's backer is to provoke a war or at the very least break the alliance between the two countries. Quick summary: country A and country B are relatively friendly, though three years ago they nearly went to war. Country B shares a frontier with a small exclave of country A - think Spain and Gibraltar. (This territory has been isolated for a long time and is considering peaceful secession from its parent.) A politician from country B - let's call him X - wants to shatter the alliance between A and B, so he reaches out to a minister in the exclave territory who is pro-A. X doesn't give a hoot about who holds the exclave: all he wants is discord.

The main characters have been sent from A to trace and extract the source of the trouble, and this will eventually lead them back to X. What's giving me trouble is the evidence trail - can't be too obvious, can't be too cunning. Thanks for your answers, you've given me more things to think about! I hadn't considered that point at all, even though there's a minority which is violently opposed to merging with A. Looks like I need to think about everyone else, too

Here's a question, is it possible for a massive alien force to take half of Earth in just two weeks?

In the backstory to Half-Life 2, the Combine took all of Earth in seven hours. It depends on how advanced you make the aliens, how hard or soft you're going with the sci-fi, etc.

edited 2nd Jan '17 9:07:43 AM by CrystalGlacia

Mine is borderline hard, being that the majority of the Alien army being formed by Clones.

Also, would the Allied Earth forces get quickly in shape if they suddenly gain most of their lost equipment back from deities?

So I'm about to start work on a new screenplay. First off, I need to decide between one of two equally awesome ideas. Then I need suggestions for movies to watch as research material. So with that said, here are the two ideas:

1. A movie where a disgraced knight gets revenge on the knight who framed him, and picks up a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits along the way. Think Pirates of the Caribbean but in Late-Medieval Europe.
2. A movie where a vampire has made a deal with the village by his castle: They pay him in their blood, and he protects them from the monsters that constantly threaten them. A Gunslinger Sheriff archetype set in Transylvania.

(Yes, I know they're both Eurocentric. I've got other ideas set elsewhere, but none of them are anywhere near ready to be written.)

@Luigisan 98- they could destroy half the Earth easily enough. Occupying half the Earth is a completly different thing- well nigh impossible, unless the humans surrendered under threat of bombardment. We talk about this kind of stuff over in "World Building/Sci-fi threads, you might want to ask oved there.

And however they get the first half under heel, they're going to get the other half even faster.

Keeping billions of humans under control, though, would require hundreds of millions of aliens. What could they get from Earth that would be worth the expense?

The aliens could rely on AI drones to form the bulk of their force.

Depending on what the aliens want, they could try to use the age old tactic of using the current power structures to control Earth, with the ultimatum of vassalage or orbital bombing.