General Writer's Block thread

Probably easier to answer your question if you tell us how old your kid is.

Not a lawyer, but any rich person worth their salt would set up a will that dictates what happens to their assets / estate after they die. For a kid, they'd probably set it up so that the kid inherits the estate when they come of age (18 in the US). In the mean time, they'd probably hold their assets in a trust where someone else would manage things until the kid is old enough to take ownership.

You may have better luck asking a website that specializes in New York law.

Pretty much this.

Any good will is specific about these kinds of situations because the last thing you ever want to happen to your estate, be you rich or poor, is for it to have to go to probate.

Because that's a huge pain in the ass and usually results in nobody getting what you wanted them to.

What would be a plausible scenario set in the near future (say, no further than 30-50 years from now) where the world wakes up one day to discover that someone(s) managed to create a full-fledged world-spanning MegaCorp with enough power and influence to both economically and militarily challenge the governments of the incumbent superpowers as an equal if not a superior under everyone else's noses, and has chosen now to reveal said megacorp's existence and start wielding its power and influence to conduct their personal agenda (for good or bad)?

There'd be no way to keep even a fraction of such an economic and military footprint secret in any way.

Best bet would be a more gradual takeover of an existing superpower through continued privatization and acquisition of government property and services and then decide to stop pretending the actual government is anything more than a shell used to let them hang out at the UN.

What about a combination of the following?

• Gradual erosion of antitrust laws around the world — whether due to the would-be megacorp's own influence or not — leading to the emergence of quasi-megacorps.
• The megacorp being kept for decades legally divided as separate lesser companies that, while individually concerning to the respective governments of the countries they're based on, aren't perceived as an imminent threat to said governments' sovereignty or national interests.
• A multitude of other concerns pushing the aforementioned lesser companies downward on the list of priorities for at least the bigger governments like the USA, especially if they perceive said companies as potential assets in addressing those concerns.
• A number of intelligence agency veterans from around the world defecting/deserting for one reason or another, evading capture/assassination, and ultimately finding their way (intentionally or not) to the clique behind the would-be megacorp, and forming the backbone of a private intelligence agency that plays a critical role in the eventual rise of the megacorp.

Edited by MarqFJA on Oct 25th 2021 at 6:50:28 PM

The thing is to challenge any of the superpowers militarily you will need all or at least most of the following;

>A bare minimum six digit strong standing army with an experienced officer corp and arms, armor, and logistics material for all of them. That includes several thousand trucks, tanks, anti air equipment, radars, etc.

How are you going to recruit this many people and keep them combat ready without attracting attention?

>Facilities to constantly be training and taking care of these people and housing them.

How will you hide these from satellite observation?

>An extensive communications and satellite network and launching facilities for them.

How will you do this in secret?

>A large airforce of both mixed air superiority aircraft, multiroles, bombers, and nuclear delivery capable aircraft (we'll get to nukes later). Buying them on the cheap from third world countries or corrupt governments won't give you the airframes you need, you need modern 4.5th and 5th gen aircraft. Even the most evil of corporations like Dassault will have a hard time providing them to you in secret.

How are you going to hide the acquisition of military aircraft?

>An extensive early warning radar system for detecting ballistic missile launches and approaching enemy aircraft.

All of these are easily visible from space and very obvious in their design and purpose, how will you construct massive over the horizon radar stations in secret?

>A powerful navy either including either aircraft carriers or more likely for this scenario a well made submarine armada, ideally nuclear.

The construction of these vessels cannot be hidden from satellite observation, nor could they possibly be hidden as a civilian project. The deployments and movements and even basic maintenance schedules of surface vessels is also impossible to hide.

What's your plan for hiding these kind of projects?

And finally, and this is the biggest one.

>Nuclear weapons and their delivery systems.

If you do not have nukes, you cannot ever threaten one of the superpowers, not in a serious way that matters. Not in the way the USSR and NATO could threaten one another in the Cold War. Any and all examples of smaller countries defeating or even delaying one of the superpowers came from either social convention or the threat of nuclear retaliation from another superpower.

If you do not have nukes or are protected under someone's nuclear umbrella then you as a nation exist solely on the whims and mercy of those who do. There is nothing stopping them from deciding they don't want to play by international law except the threat of violence. Look at what the Russians did in Crimea for an example of that.

—

Even if the acquisition of a lot of this technology and equipment could somehow be done on the downlow the requirements of maintaining a standing army would make any sort of big reveal and surprise impossible, everything here is obvious to every military on earth and would require decades of work just to get running and then it'd need to stay running for many years before it'd be capable of challenging any superpower militarily

Edited by LeGarcon on Oct 25th 2021 at 12:24:22 PM

Mind you, it is possible for the mega-corp to achieve power not because of its own military strength but thanks to its control of other countries.

Let us assume for instance that this mega-corp would have managed to centralise, through various subsidiaries, the manufacturing of all computer chips across the world, including the military ones (this is not as far-fetched as it sounds: currently a large part of all semiconductor chips are manufactured by a single company). Now, if your setting allows for some degree of Hollywood Hacking, the mega-corp could have added some backdoor in all their chips allowing to fry them at will (and, if you authorise more Hollywood Hacking, take their control). A couple of decades would be enough to ensure that most chips in the world belong to them, meaning they now have the power to send any city, country, or military unit back into the stone age at will. Nuclear or military power is not that meaningful now.

Add some healthy dose of information control into the mix (just imagine what a company with access to the combined information available to the Big Five of today could be), and you can achieve power far superior to what any country could hope to achieve by military power or intelligence.

Whether through some sort of contrivance like , the ultimate question is this.

When this corporations starts being a serious threat to the sovereignty of the national governments what's their plan for surviving a JSOW through their corporate office window?

What are they gonna do when their staff start being considered enemy combatants and not civilian workers? When arrest warrants and lawsuits start being assassination attempts from three letter agencies and physical blockades?

You're either gonna need some sort of button like or something similar or you're going to need to be able to successfully survive and repel full on military assaults from the great powers of the world.

so i am hitting a writer's block on answering a specific question for a VN i am writing, My Boyfriend's a Werecat, questions surrounding the broader nature of the wercat curse, and more broadly, the were-creature (Called Therians in my story) community:

see the arc i have planned for my MC is discovering he is a werecat in act 1, trying to figure out why with no real answers/trying to remove the curse with no real success. and then in act 2, learning to live with, accept, and finally love his werecat status.

and part of that is in act 1 having both the kinda traumatic event of having your body rapidly transform with no real cause or explanation the characters can definitely come up with, and the inherent isolation and fear discovering something new about yourself, but having no real shared reference point with anyone around to help you relate thru it. so for that, the MC doesn't find out about Therians as a group/community until act 2, but this is causing me a few problems.

basically, as I have plotted, by the end of act 1 there are several question, such as how the curse works and why the MC just came down with it one random day (which i know what those answers are already), and why they couldn't find out those answers initially in act 1 (which i currently do not have answers for).

and to figure out those answers, i need to nail down what i want the Therians to be like, socially. how does society view them, etc etc. and i have already decided a few things. I know this setting is very much similar to our world in the broad strokes, but with its occasional magical/mystical element, like the therians. and i know roughly what i would want the history of them to be, up to like, the 20th century, as it is easily able to model that based on human real life prejudices and assumptions (we were execute people for being perceived as werewolves all they up to like the 17th century. not hard to imagine how that would function if werewolves were real), but what i want to do starts to break down once i get near modern day, trying to decide what answers would best work for this story.

questions like: how well known is therian curse and those afflicted with it in the mainstream? how would it relate to other marginalized identities (lgbtq in specific because plot reasons) what does the government think about them? what do furries think about them? all important questions.

and originally, the answer i had gone with in world building this story, was just kinda a blanket Masquerade. you know, the usual, muggles don't know about the few magical things in this world because the government is suppressing that info. in this case their rounding up all the therians it can find and tossing them in a secret encampment somewhere in the mountains or whatever. but the more that I've sat on that idea the less of liked it. one would be the logical nightmare of the government doing something of that scale for decades and no one knowing about it (no one caring about it, sadly believable, but no one knowing about it? less so), and the other being that its a bit too dark for what is ultimately a fluffy rom com about cute guys turning into cute cats, and self discovery.

so the other idea is make it less rigidly and forcefully oppressed, and parallel more real world minority oppression more closely, which i am kind leaning towards, but that still leaves several questions in the plotting of my story i need to resolve.

does anyone else know how else i can resolve this block?

If feasible, I'd suggest setting those questions aside and working on other aspects of the VN for a while. Then, later, perhaps returning to said questions and asking them of yourself again (presuming that inspiration hasn't hit in the meanwhile).

Otherwise, perhaps try interviewing a character: Sit down and imagine one of the characters in your story—one who would likely know the sort of answers that you're seeking. The ask of them your questions, allowing them to answer freely without attempting to come up with the answers yourself.

And finally, perhaps look for someone with whom you can discuss these points, whether just a person who you can bounce thoughts off of or someone who might provide suggestions. (And indeed, in the latter case, a forum-thread here might be helpful.)

thats what i did like year+ ago when i put those questions to the aside to focus on the parts of the VN i could work on. so for me, now is that later time XD

as for an interview, that would work if i had any characters who did know anything unfortunately. the cast as is is super minimal (4 people), and as I have it currently written, none of them know anything about this stuff. so I'd either need to create a new character who does know the info needed, or rework one of the cast to have this knowledge, both of which would kinda require me to know the answers to my own questions already. X/

I posted here looking for maybe some fresh perspectives/people to bounce ideas off of til i come to something i think works/i enjoy. is this forum not the correct one for that?

It's NaNo month, ya'll. Who else is trying it? I have two story ideas and I'm not sure which one I'll do.

As to "later", ah, fair enough!

As to the interviews, hmm... If none of your characters know this stuff, then does it really impact the story? After all, if they came into contact with these matters then they'd (presumably) know about them.

(Note that I'd suggest interviewing them as of the end of the story, rather than the beginning, so that they have more information.)

As to the forum, this forum is in fact a good place, I do think—indeed, I suggested starting a thread for it!

so it impacts the story because one character discovers he is a a werecat, and tries to find out why that is, and how that effects his place in the world. and I know the answers to the first question, but the 2nd one i am stumped on. also i guess worth noting is that these questions are effectively carried over 2 novels. the first one being completely drafted and in mid editing stages rn, while the 2nd one where those answers are given, still in a vague concept stage with little solidified beyond the main character arcs (and maybe some scenes floating in the aether)

but yeah, i'll make a thread with all the current thoughts and concepts as they are rn to try and get feeedback.

Since answers are given in the second part, can you not interview your characters as they are at the end of the story, rather than as they are at the beginning? At that point they presumably do know at least some of this stuff.

You ever just end up writing a story that even makes you confused? I love writing time travel stories because it's such a fun concept to play with, but my current one is making my head hurt . Currently trying to figure out how the situation would effect the world around the characters... because the current premise is that there's like, an infinite number of these characters all following the exact same path just a few minutes behind each-other (since, being the same people, they'll naturally think the same way as each other), and it seems like I've just unleashed an army of clones into this universe and I'm trying to wrap my head around exactly how normal people living their daily lives will react to this, or if they'll even notice the repetition.

The only way I can think to break the loop is to have at least one iteration of them suffer from an outside source that causes a discrepancy, like getting hit by a car when sprinting across the road.

Hmmm...

This is why I like NaNo though. I've been pretty much exclusively writing my fanfic for about a year now, and it's really refreshing to just dive into an entirely new story with new characters and just let my weird side take over for a while.

That's actually part of the plot in Dark (2017) — you see the infinite loop playing out over and over. Eventually it is broken but only due to some characters figuring it out and pulling major spoilery stuff.

Interesting. Right now my characters are already extremely aware of the loop, to the point of the protag being able to point out when certain features of a room have clearly already been used, and her uncle decided to order a drink on his way out of a restaurant just to preserve the loop, as he was handed a drink another version of himself ordered after sitting down. So the key here is less that they don't know they're stuck in a loop, but that they can't break out of it with their own free will (because, naturally, any choice they make is sort of pre-determined at this point, since they're doing what they'd naturally do anyway).

Could a random event (say, a geiger counter readout) be truly random and thus change from one iteration to another?

Sure. It depends on where they are and what's happening around them. One scene involved the characters sprinting across an empty street; at a different time of day they could've been hit getting across, or forced to wait long enough that something else changed. That's what I mean by "random"- things involving nature or other, non-affected people just going about their daily lives.

Chapter 3 of our Miraculous Ladybug fanfic is almost ready to post. Just need to fill in one missing scene and do our final editing pass.

...

*ignores that and starts writing chapter 4 instead*

Any advice on expanding story blocks? I'm doing some writing, and I'm very good at like, making "event bullet points" of how the story should play out, but when I want to add a sentence about the scenery or dialogue I'm meeting at impass. I can imagine things in my head, but describing them somehow drains my entire energy or comes off as rather childish. I'd like to move on from "X does Y" lists. I guess doing academic work and not communicating verbally much does that to you.

Oof, yeah, I've never been great at scenery details either...

One thing I have found that can help is try writing it, no matter how bad it seems to you, and then come back some time afterwards and try to fix it, again and again. Nothing can beat practice, even if it seems very hard at first.

Another thing that helps when imagining the scene in your head is trying to describe what you are seeing while focusing on one particular aspect of the scene. What is the character doing while they speak? Are they smiling, tilting their head, drinking from their glass? Is the sun shining through the window or is the sky grey? And so on.

I do have to warn however that this last piece of advice may not lead to the best writing possible as it leads me to using a lot of adverbs when describing people moving or talking, which I gathered is not a good thing.

Edited by C105 on Jan 19th 2022 at 10:12:58 AM