Random Questions Thread

What if we factor in how the character is a Go-Getter Girl and The Perfectionist, who may be more than willing to re-allocate the amount of time that one would expect her to spend on making friendships with age peers and personal recreation like a normal person would do, instead dedicating it all to performing more and more personal achievements, all for the sake of feeding her ravening hunger for positive attention and praise to soothe her dismal self-esteem?

Yeah, I do often make use the simple handwave of "the limits on a human's potential ability are a 'bit' higher for fictional humans than they are for real-life humans" as a basic fact in my fictional settings. Still, said handwave would benefit from having a degree of Truth in Television that makes it easier to maintain WSOD.

edited 15th Dec '17 10:08:13 AM by MarqFJA

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

Does the precise number of languages matter that much? What storytelling purpose does her knowing additional languages would serve? Consider the needs of your target audience:

If it's to show that she's a genius, then people familiar with the series would already know that, it's a given. And if it's for an OC, then knowing more than two languages at her age is already impressive. And you actually would need to show them using the language for verisimilitude's sake. And that only would serve as nothing more than a Genius Bonus for the readers familiar with the language being used.

If it's for a plot point, where she needs to use the language to further the story, then considering who Asuka is, a Hand Wave would be enough, I think.

If you'll need an actuall number of languages, I suggest using Powell Janulus', at the age close to Asuka's, as an upper limit. More than that would stretch the disbelief too much. Polyglot geniuses are not exactly common knowledge.

edited 15th Dec '17 10:36:25 AM by Millership

Spiral out, keep going.

I'm not asking about precise numbers. Just a general range, e.g. "around a dozen languages is OK; around twenty would be stretching it; thirty or so languages is just too much".

I'm more than willing to provide Genius Bonus, actually.

I like to try minimizing Hand Waves as the trope is actually defined. Not sure if we're using it the same way here.

Yeah, see, the thing with Powell is that he managed to become proficient with 13 languages by his late teens without the methodology that he developed later for efficient learning of new languages, plus AFAIK he did not do that through being an obsessive overachiever who Sacrificed Basic Skill for Awesome Training, rather he was simply personally interested in learning new languages as a sort of hobby, and later got a job as a professional translator.

Now try imagining what someone who is an obsessive overachiever, is more than willing to become a case of Sacrificed Basic Skill for Awesome Training (with said Basic Skill being social skills) for the sake of covering up their crippled self-confidence, and lives in a country/supranational union that encourages multilinguality to the point of offering dedicated programmes for that purpose, can do with Powell's methodology, which has probably been refined over the decades since he first developed it... and that's without considering that perhaps other geniuses developed even better methodologies since then.

edited 15th Dec '17 11:01:51 AM by MarqFJA

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

It's your work. Come up with whatever justification you want. The idea is to avoid throwing your audience out of Willing Suspension of Disbelief by making a character too capable without any explanation and/or without any compensating disadvantage(s). There are certainly RL examples of teenage polyglots, so it can happen. Beyond that...

edited 15th Dec '17 11:43:44 AM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Under these conditions... I'd say that effort and methodology are not everything. Hard Work Hardly Works might come to factor. And even if the character has an exceptional linguistic intelligence (as, supposedly, Janulus did) I'd still recommend to not go above 15-20 languages, beause A) the character's younger than 18, B) That simply wouldn't be believable.

Personally, as a trilingual grown man, I can't fathom how a fourteen year-old can hold and maintain more than ten languages in her head.

Spiral out, keep going.

Well, I never said that she'd be native-level proficient in all twenty-plus languages, did I? The way I imagine it, she'd be on that level with only about a dozen or so languages that between them cover all of the families of European languages (and thus give her a mini-lingua francas for basically every linguistic region in Europe), and less so to variable degrees with languages that are related to the former ones.

Like I said: By sacrificing the huge amount of time and skills that a more well-adjusted person would normally use/have for things like maintaining a decent social life and/or engage in age-appropiate recreational activities. For example, as I imagine her, Asuka never went to an amusement park in all the 10 years since her mother committed suicide. Or played a video game. Or even a simple tabletop game like poker and all those card games. Except perhaps chess (for the intellectual challenge).

edited 15th Dec '17 2:09:32 PM by MarqFJA

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

Super quick question: I have this line that doesn't feel right but I can't think of a good way to fix it. Can anyone throw some advice/suggestions my way?

The line is "He could feel his classmates watching as he hustled down the aisle, like the eyes of a painting in a Gothic chateau." (The scene takes place in a school bus.)

I think my intention is obvious, but there's juuust enough room for pedantry re: whether it's him or his classmates that are like a painting, and I want to close that gap.

Is that a Wocket in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?

Just change up the order, maybe? "He could feel his classmates watching, like the eyes of paintings in some gothic chateau, as he hustled down the aisle," or "He hurried down the aisle, his classmates' eyes following him like the hall of portraits in some gothic manor."

Ooh, I like the first one. That's the kind of obvious solution I'm obstinate enough to overlook sometimes. Thank you!

Is that a Wocket in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?

A nuclear winter is caused by ash and soot in the atmosphere, right? How much ash would be required, exactly? I'm writing a story where half the human race is turned to ash, and I've calculated that's 9.5 million tons of ash. Would that cause a noticeable nuclear winter effect?

I'd look up how much ash volcanic eruptions produce and compare from that.

At a glance...

Given that this one wasn't a super-big volcano, 20x of that still probably won't blanket the earth all that much.

edited 21st Dec '17 8:54:25 PM by Adannor

Ash itself does not cause much of a volcanic winter. Sulfate aerosols do. 9.5 million tons ash are about 9.5 million cubic metres, orders of magnitudes too little to affect climate in a noticeable way, anyway. Also, the ash has to get to the stratosphere to have a noticeable impact on a global scale.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Yeah, you need two things to cause a "global winter": enough quantity of material and enough velocity imparted to that material to get it to the necessary altitude.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Nuclear winters aren't actually as much of a thing as people think they are anyway. Most effects are generally going to be localized, if there are any at all.

The bomb itself wouldn't produce enough ash to cause it to happen, the hypothetical city would have to firestorm and quite frankly they just don't do that anymore. Far too much metal and concrete to produce soot and ash in catastrophic quantities.

Oh really when?

The dust particles also need to have the right optical properties. If they are too large, they'll absorb more infrared than optical radiation and thus act more like a greenhouse gas than as a coolant.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Depending on the composition of the ejecta, you can have all sorts of effects. Material with a high albedo can reflect sunlight, cooling the earth. Material with high opaqueness can block sunlight from reaching the ground, cooling the earth. Material that absorbs or reflects infrared light can trap heat, warming the earth.

Most high-energy events such as volcanic eruptions and meteorite impacts have both sorts of effects, and they compete with each other to alter the planet's climate.

edited 24th Dec '17 2:05:53 PM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Generally speaking, the cooling effect prevails largely because larger particles fall out faster. That's for dust of course, water (as in cirrus clouds) and pure greenhouse gases wouldn't fall under that.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Has anyone else ever felt this way; you want to get back into writing a particular story, yet you currently feel lost about where you are in the story and have more or less forgotten about where you were originally going with it

Putting aside the scientific plausibility of superpowers, would it be scientifically plausible for someone with high-tier electrokinetic and magnetokinetic powers to be able to use them to create clouds out of ambient water vapor, dust particles and other typical components of clouds in the atmosphere, then make them rain and/or generate lightning, thus simulating true Weather Manipulation?

Also, what would it take for an electrokinetic to be capable of using that power to perform aerokinesis?

edited 26th Dec '17 8:00:43 PM by MarqFJA

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

I'd say no airbending moves - he'd need to turn the air into ionized plasma for it to be controlled, and then he's just throwing the lightning around anyway.

Creating a cloud from water takes a ton of water too. See here https://what-if.xkcd.com/12/ And then comes the question of how is he even going to ensure that it gets high enough and at sufficient speed and etc etc.

Technically, any substance can be magnetized if it is suspended in a very powerful magnetic field — see "magnetic levitation". However, the strength of this effect is orders of magnitude smaller than the field used to create it.

Rain forms when water vapor suspended in the atmosphere condenses around particulate matter — usually, dust. Generally there also needs to be some event: wind, passage of an aircraft, etc., to disturb the balance and trigger raindrop formation. See "cloud seeding" for more information.

Causing air to move via electrokinesis or magnetokinesis is certainly possible, but requires immense energy. Air is also a very good insulator, meaning that you have to generate enormous electrical potential energy to cause current to flow in it.

If a character's powers are strong enough to create lightning bolts, then they can certainly ionize air into a plasma — that is, after all, what lightning bolts do. Said ionized air could be manipulated magnetically, but only for incredibly brief intervals: fractions of a second.

edited 27th Dec '17 7:32:40 AM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Why is that?

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

Because it would cease to be ionized as the air molecules shed heat and return to their normal gaseous state.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Yeaah. Some napkin checking out of magnetic permeability values says that air is thousands of times more resistant to getting manipulated than iron. So if he is strong enough, he could manipulate air... Or could be absolutely unstoppable with iron.

edited 27th Dec '17 9:13:21 AM by Adannor

Also, I should add that ionizing air requires substantial energy input and would heat it up enough to cause serious damage intrinsically, never mind the potential to move it around magnetically. At that point, it would be moving all by itself due to thermal kinetic energy — rapidly outward, in fact, causing quite a substantial explosion.

The light and heat of lightning bolts aren't caused by the current directly, but rather by the intense heating of air molecules due to the current.

edited 27th Dec '17 9:49:12 AM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"