Random Questions Thread

It depends on the setting (is this taking place in a constructed world, or an actual Like Reality, Unless Noted location?) but in general, I think it's perfectly plausible. I remember reading in my African-American history class that pre-Atlantic Slave Trade, most African kingdoms kept slaves in the form of war prisoners, but their treatment was far less harsh than the chattel of the Americas that we think of today. Sometimes, slaves belonging to the ruling and upper-nobility classes who had gained their masters' trust were granted privileges greater than, or even power over some freedmen.

Your situation reads like one where the slave in question is 'technically' a slave under local laws that no longer align with how slaves are actually regarded (more as trusted servants who happen to be inheritable/sellable than dumb/disposable chattel), or where 'slavery' is more akin to the stuff exhibited in the pre-European African kingdoms.

edited 12th May '17 8:07:14 AM by CrystalGlacia

My setting is a constructed world, modelled after Ancient Grome. The idea is that scientific progress took a huge leap forward through external means a couple of generations ago and the development of the society is having a hard time catching up to that.

edited 12th May '17 8:13:16 AM by Millership

It sounds very plausible actually. In multiple times and places some slaves were allowed to have money and personal belongings (more specifically "domestic" slaves, as opposed to those used only for heavy labour).

And when it comes to the Americas, I know little about the US, but in Brazil urban slaves who managed to gather enough money and their owners' trust would more often than not buy slaves of their own instead of their freedom.

That could happen in Ancient Grome (Justinian's Code seemed to treat it like an extreme form of agency though, i.e. whatever the slave does, the master takes the punishment for it).

If you don't mind anachronisms, you could base it off of the Mamelukes or Janissaries who often had extensive privileges, and in the former case came to rule the state.

Echoing all the thoughts about slaves/freedmen so far.

Plus, a lot of people have this stereotype that slaves were ONLY used for basic labor or dirty work that nobody else wanted to do, but especially in the case of Indentured Servitude, skilled professionals were just as likely to be "slaves" as unskilled people. Hell, I ran into that accidental thinking with one of my own stories and realized "...Wait, my reluctant new queen makes one of her new debt-slaves her personal cupbearer to keep him from getting mistreated and everyone's fine because 1) she's queen, and 2) he's pretty." So yeah, I realized a huge number of the kingdom's indentured servants would be at least semi-skilled, if not outright professional.

Hell, half the fairy-tales we have right now have some royal/noble person Made a Slave and they luck out in terms of labor/masters because you DO NOT put a skilled seamstress/hunter/whatever in the fields where they cannot use their skills.

Anyone can be kidnapped, lose a war, or fall into hard times.

edited 12th May '17 3:50:14 PM by Sharysa

-ignore-

edited 14th May '17 9:00:27 PM by UltimateLazer

Is it acceptable to use deal life persons such as Richard Dawkins, Madalyn Murray O'Hair, Anton La Vey, Unabomber, Joseph Stalin and Luigi Galleani as evil villains.

ok i'll bite.

in short? no.

in length? you're going to piss off a lot of people if you want to count someone like richard dawkins as evil next to jospeh stalin. one was a dictator who killed millions of his own people and the other is simply an insufferable jackass.

edited 13th May '17 4:41:12 PM by ImmortalFaust

-ignore-

edited 14th May '17 9:00:14 PM by UltimateLazer

How long should an Action Prologue be in a typical fanfic? The style I'm imitating in my current fanfic is well-known for using them, but is ~1000 words too much, do you think?

edited 16th May '17 10:00:15 AM by TheGreatUnknown

A thousand words would be a little under two pages in a typical word document, so I'd say that's fine.

I can't believe I hadn't found this thread sooner

This might be an opinionated or not-so-specific question, but how long should one have to research on a particular religion or location in order to get the general gist, or at least be able to represent/use it appropriately in a work? I've got a world based off the idea of Agartha, except I'm planning on changing things up and making it a holy land for multiple religions, sorta. The only problem is that I'm not sure if going down this route would involve extensive knowledge on multiple faiths, or if I can get the basic understanding and run with it afterwards? Religion might be a touchy subject, and if anything, I don't want to get anything wrong. (Then again, asking this probably sounds kinda lazy and I'm worrying too much)

I'd say this really depends on how important a role the different religions are going to play in your story. If for instance the setting is just a background, with only occasional references to the various religions, only a cursory knowledge would be necessary. On the other hand, if the story focuses heavily on religions and their interactions (for instance, one or more characters are priests), then you won't be able to avoid some research.
It also depends whether you intend to use current or past religions. Readers are less likely to be put off if you make mistakes in portraying, say, the ancient Greek religion than Catholicism.

There's probably gonna be stuff like Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, stuff like that. It's not that there's necessary people that'll be based off of it or anything- religion is just a big part of one of the main communities (although Archangels will have a part in it). But, hey, thanks for the advice!

If you're interested in doing some real research, there's an excellent series of books called Myth and Mankind which cover just about every major religion out there. It doesn't go into into every minuscule detail, but it does cover the major myths and deities while also giving some insight into the cultures that gave birth to those myths. You can get most of them dirt cheap off of Amazon, so they're definitely worth a look.

edited 17th May '17 11:07:31 AM by kkhohoho

That's probably exactly what I need! If I can grab them, I'll definitely use them! Keeping things as accurate as I can is what I need the most, honestly- thanks again!

No problem. I've actually been using them for some of my own stuff I've been working on. That said, we also have a Mythology and Religion thread on This Very Wiki (more specifically, it's in On Topic Conversations,) so if you want more resources and info and whatnot, that's the place to ask.

On a superhero team, would you say it's (relatively) realistic for a Badass Normal to feel a degree of jealousy over the superheroes with incredible abilities?

Sure, a character might be a damn good archer that honed their skill with years of training, but they're on the same team with someone who has Super-Strength, another with Psychic Powers, and one with contact to Functional Magic — all of which were born with or given their abilities. Surely this could make one feel a little inadequate.

edited 17th May '17 1:09:28 PM by UltimateLazer

This was The Golden Age Atom's whole shtick, though you can't really blame him. Sure, he was incredibly strong for someone without any Superpowers to speak of, but compared to Flash, Green Lantern, or even Wonder Woman, he just couldn't stack up. This got so bad that he even compared himself to his fellow Badass Normals, lamenting that he couldn't fight as well as Wildcat or run as fast as Mr.Terrific. The man had an inferiority complex, one that stuck even after he got his Superpowers, because there was always something or someone to compare himself to.

edited 20th May '17 8:51:12 PM by kkhohoho

It's believable (and I consider "believable" more important than "realistic"), but, as usually said, make it consistent. Going off the example above, the character doesn't only compare their superhero acts with others, but their entire life too.

How do military personnel deal with conflicting orders? Let's say that a colonel is under the direct authority of a general, but another general of equal rank insists that his orders are more urgent. Is it plausible that the colonel could decide of his own accord to change his priority to General 2?

(The military is currently floundering in the wake of a natural-disaster-cum-invasion and neither the first general nor a higher-ranked arbiter can be reached. Right now the fate of the country may lie in the hands of our poor put-upon colonel.)

Your question would be better asked in the Military Thread, but AFAIK the officer should defer to the second general in such a situation, unless he already has orders since before the communications loss with his direct superior that would conflict with the second general's orders. If that is the case and no part of his officer training covered any similar situation, then he'd be stuck between a rock and a hard place.

I want to make a webcomic at some point and I want to make it distinct so: what is the rarest hero team size in these numbers: 4, 6, 7, 8?

You can create distinct story with a Five-Man Band, no problem - Tropes Are Tools and all that jazz. The more important question is whether you can create six, seven or eight distinct, interesting, engaging characters and give each of them enough page time to keep people interested in them. So the answer is - depends how many unique team members you can create.

If you really insist on a number, I'd say go with 7 - you can have a leader and three pairs of opposite personalities, and they'd look cool in group shots, since it's a webcomic and all that.

So, I've hit a wall with a story I'm writing.

Main character is planning a Major Crime and they have angsted at a psychologist about it, but been extremely vague in the detail they've given — no real detail beyond "it would be a crime." Now, physician-patient privilege is generally void if the medical profession believes the patient to be a danger to themselves or others, and due to everything else that was said (eg. "ah help I've had contact with an alien intelligence!"), the psychologist thinks this might be the case, and so has informed the UK police about it — but also vague in detail, because she doesn't actually know anything about what MC is planning.

So, MC gets a visit from a police officer who basically goes "we've heard you might be planning a crime, what's that all about?" so MC eventually goes "oh woe is me I've been having such a hard time and the temptation is to find a means of escape" (in the actual narrative the implication of drugs is a tad more explicit) — not remotely true, but less terrifying than the truth (ie. "I'm going to hijack GCHQ's processing centres so that the data they collect is passed on to an amoral alien god". Of course, MC didn't actually tell the psychologist that, mostly just "it's criminal and would be a crime").

My question is this: after the main character has implied that they've been thinking about committing some crime that is possibly related to drugs, what does the police officer do next? MC puts up a good enough performance to possibly raise sympathy, and otherwise is in general an upstanding member of the community (supposedly). I mean, /thinking about/ acquiring hard drugs is not a crime, and if anyone searched MC's house, they wouldn't find anything (because there's nothing to find that's remotely drug related) but do they just get told to Not Do Drugs and resources for mental health or what?