Random Questions Thread

there's a thing that holds an artifact that indiana jones steals from. what was it called?

it looked something like this: [1]◊

A Petard? A Podium? A Shrine?

Isn't that a pedestal?

this is a really weird question but how exactly can someone dual wield chakrams? i was going to have one of my characters wield battle fans but it didn't seem to look right in my head.

Chakram is a throwing weapon, so probably it would be wielded exactly as other small projectiles, provided the person is ambidextrous, of course.

I have a question, too: what would be a good symbol for craftsmanship in general? I was thinking something along the lines of pincers crossed with blacksmith's hammer, but that's too specific.

A hammer is a common one. Or an anvil, or depending how old fashioned you want it, maybe nails? or some blueprint thing? —shrug—

Anything from a billow to a pile of hot coals would work. It also depends on what time period you're talking about, since blacksmithing techniques today are different than they were five hundred years ago.

I'm looking for something of Bronze age technology level.

And not just the blacksmithing, it should stand for a wide variety of craftsmanship: carpentry, scrimshaw, masonry, things like that.

A hammer is an almost universal tool for all these activities, but what else is? It should look cool when crossed with a hammer. Would a chisel work?

have you tried a sickle?

you could, alternatively, focus on, say, the hammer, and style it up or make it very obviously like, the hammer of the craftsmen and all that. rather than trying to make it too complex with multiple parts like other tools or whatnot, make it easily recognizable by stylizing it up and making it a bold, unique, unmistakable hammer, to the point where no one would take this, the hammer, for any other hammer.

(of course, the hammer-and-sickle actually prove my point. what other hammer and sickle would you have thought of, and look how simple the design is!)

edited 29th Sep '17 7:10:14 AM by ImmortalFaust

Funny thing is, I actually want to use the hammer-and-some-other-tool in part to emulate the Communist and Masonic symbols, for it to act as sort of a Visual Gag.

should someone always be punished for being a hero? meaning if a hero should always reap the inevitable consequences of being good and helping even those that don't deserve it?

edited 29th Sep '17 3:37:25 PM by ewolf2015

You mean as in No Good Deed Goes Unpunished? Something like that?

edited 29th Sep '17 3:39:04 PM by kkhohoho

There is a certain amount of admiration towards a person who keeps doing (what they believe is) the right thing regardless of how much shit they go through in the process (and afterwards). But as with all things, it's better not to overdo the punishment, since some readers like to see the heroes rewarded. On the other hand, some other readers like to see the heroism discouraged, and selfishness justified. The choice is yours. What do you want to show?

edited 29th Sep '17 3:47:48 PM by Millership

that trope in a nutshell. someone suggested that my character should have this motif that he tries to be the hero but ends up making things worse as a result. however, i don't want this to be recurring thing but at the same time i don't want john to come off as this does no wrong kind of guy. also, if i did agree with this, it might as well escalate to the point where an entire island is burnt a cinder by the bad guys.

I mean, he could have that motif, I guess, but there's no reason why he necessarily should. As always, it depends on what your story is trying to say. The "no good deed" is just one approach.

A hero in a conventional setting will usually have a positive impact overall on their environment, since, you know, they are helping people. That doesn't mean they are perfect. An imperfect person that helps others can still make a difference. In some stories, their flaws might lead to a city being destroyed or something, but again, that's only one possible way to do it.

Is it actually plausible to train a bird of prey to hunt a specific kind of animal, say, carrier pigeons?

From what I've dug up, falconry boils down to two things:

• Foster the bird from as young an age as possible, preferrably the hatchligs, so it will get used to humans and won't fly away with its kill saying "so long and thanks for all the fish".
• Before the actual hunt, don't feed the bird for about a week, then ride out into the plains, unleash it and hope that when it returns, its beak won't be full of dead mice.

I wonder how intelligent hunting birds actually are, and whether there were successful uses of them in counterintelligence, to intercept the messages sent by pigeons. I imagine that this scenario is not uncommon: a spy on horseback stays on the probable path of the enemy carrier pigeon, unleashes the hawk, and it attacks the (unseen to the spy) quail on the ground in the pigeon's general direction.

Yeah we did that all the time in WW 1

so i'm going to transition to underground where the main villains are introduced but considering it's a spec script, how can a convey it without making weird? i want to transition but the rules of spec script dicate that i can not use camera shots or the we statement

edited 1st Oct '17 12:42:17 PM by ewolf2015

Back on that "heroism being punished" thing... I should just point out that there are two basic ways to approach it narratively, with very different implications.

In one approach, there's nothing wrong with heroism per se, but the universe seems to take a perverse joy in making this particular hero suffer. This is the venue of No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: everything the hero tries to do causes them or someone they care about grief, to the point where you'd think the story simply doesn't want to let them win. This is likely to generate sympathy from the audience and is a great way to lose any Aesop you intended to create. There's no moral lesson; you're just punishing the hero for trying to be a hero. It's especially blatant if there are other heroes in the story or in the same 'verse who get along just fine. Sometimes this can be the hero's shtick, as in Spider-Man, but you have to let them win sometimes or you'll lose the audience.

In another approach, one can deconstruct the underlying problems with heroism in a realistic world. The police may hate the vigilante hero for polluting evidence and/or ruining investigations. Collateral damage may spawn massive lawsuits. People may start to rely on the hero instead of finding their own solutions to problems — or conversely, hate the hero because criminals keep getting off due to their defense attorneys claiming lack of due process and whatnot. PTSD, scarring, constant injury, and other side-effects may manifest. Would-be wrongdoers may target the hero and their friends/family for retribution, figuring that since they work outside the law, turnabout is fair play. The heroes may find themselves becoming as vicious and violent as the people they fight. This is more believable but will make your world pretty grey morality-wise, and could turn off readers who like uncomplicated stories.

To summarize: you can have your story actively punish the hero for trying to do good deeds, or you can have the world of your story treat heroism with realistic consequences.

edited 2nd Oct '17 6:26:24 AM by Fighteer

Solution? Try reconstruction.

Yeah, it isn't limited like that. "Lets look how laws would realistically react to vigilante heroes" does not mean that those problems will remain there forever - there will be a very trying period, but the heroes and procedures can adapt to each other with time. See Wearing The Cape series for example - heroes are basically subcontracted to police and they have regulations and rules to follow to assist to the best of their capabilities.

For example, at one point, main heroine is invited to use her enhanced senses to assist in an investigation. She does not do it alone, there is a full police team in there. She flies in, very carefully doesn't touch anything and only points out details that would be very hard to spot with regular human eyeballs. The properly trained CSI people then move in and deal with them.

Don't do grimderp everything sucks forever, it's boring.

edited 2nd Oct '17 7:15:48 AM by Adannor

Yes, heroes contracting to law enforcement and military makes a lot of sense in a reconstruction of the genre. But it's also just as likely for some of them to decide that they are superior to any human authority and start trying to take over the world.

Are we talking about superheroes, though, or just ordinary folks who dress in weird costumes and beat up criminals at night?

edited 2nd Oct '17 7:31:32 AM by Fighteer

For context: john is part of a team of legendary nature defenders known as the Xeiru warriors. There share some tropes associated with magical girls and what not with John being able to transform into a anthro butterfly. Most of the missions they do take place on the island of edona that is located in the world of mynara that can only be accessed if they shrink to buy size or through a portal.

Need help in writing a script. How many times are you allowed to use "cont'd" or "continuing" when it comes to the same speaker talking more than once?

You see, the script I'm writing for is for a radio drama, and the first lines of the script have the narrator talking three times before the actual characters appear. This is what I'm referring to:

http://gearlegacy.tripod.com/rtt/id6.html

Now then, how do I turn that with the normal format for scripts, with this an example of a script following the usual format:

http://www.imsdb.com/scripts/Buffy-the-Vampire-Slayer.html

Perhaps some sort of awl/other pointy tool? I think that similar tools are used in a variety of crafts, and a sufficiently thin one, crossed with a hammer, might recall the Masonic compasses.