Random Questions Thread

@ M84:

That's an interesting comparison and I can see the parallels. Although in this case it isn't guilt as much as it's more deep fear of his own strength and what that strength can do in the hands of people who don't have his restraint or who are just outright evil. Definitely, definitely has the "My loved ones<The World" mentality, which I absolutely cannot abide.

Part of the reason I want to be so careful with this character is because I hate his position so much that I am afraid I'll accidentally turn him into some kind of caricature rather than a human being (well, not human but you get the idea...) with understandable and complex reasoning for what he did or didn't do.

Definitely not trying to turn this into an author tract pushing a certain type of behaving or idealogy.

"Fear is a tyrant and a despot, more terrible than the rack, more potent than the snake." —Edgar Wallace

Sword, I have a question.

Is your work unpublished or is it possible to read it somewhere?

In order to get a greater context of the setting of course and make it easier to answer any of your questions of course with the full info at hand.

And out of genuine interest for your story.

Edited by Trainbarrel on Mar 26th 2024 at 7:03:30 PM

"If there's problems, there's simple solutions."

@ Trainbarrel:

Unfortunately, no it isn't really anywhere. Currently it is just a a series of notes and ideas that I've been working on for over a decade now. The original version was once published somewhere (not officially) but it is completely different from the current version to the point that the characters might as well be people with the same names as the individuals in the current version.

So, I apologize for that.

"Fear is a tyrant and a despot, more terrible than the rack, more potent than the snake." —Edgar Wallace

No need to apologize.

I just realized it wouldn't hurt to ask.

"If there's problems, there's simple solutions."

@ Trainbarrel:

I understand. I try to provide little islands of context for some of my more complex questions or more often just figure them out myself using my own judgement. Sometimes I just have to get some outside opinions though, and they've been quite helpful.

"Fear is a tyrant and a despot, more terrible than the rack, more potent than the snake." —Edgar Wallace

I have a question about refining the social organization model of a fictional species. Is it appropriate to ask this here?

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

Does it seem likely to call for significant discussion? If so, then it might warrant a separate thread. If conversely it seems like it might reasonably be answered in a single post (or multiple single posts from multiple forum-members), then I imagine that it might fit into this thread.

That said, it might be argued to fit better in World Building than here, I think.

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Mar 27th 2024 at 9:38:52 PM

My Games & Writing

Yeah, I was wondering if World Building migth be better for this.

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

Morbid question: How would a forensic doctor identify that a victim died of a micro-explosive implanted in the brain instead of a natural brain hemorrhage from aneurysm, as claimed by the authorities?

Shrapnel would be my guess. Like residue left behind from the explosive that only used with specific microscopes can see (preferably something that normal cops or hospitals wouldn't have access to)

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Mar 28th 2024 at 6:05:47 AM

Depending of the size of the explosion, it may leave burns as well

"Enshittification truly is how platforms die"-Cory Doctorow

One of my inspirations, Knights of Sidonia, only showed people of Japanese descent on the titular ship. How do I portray the same except with different cultures (preferably by continent) on their own ships?

I'm not clear on the question: Are you asking how to incorporate other ships into your narrative? Or simply how to have a narrative with various ships segregated by geographic region? Or how such a thing might come about in-universe? Or something else...?

My Games & Writing

How do I have a narrative with various ships segregated by geographic region? My example was a bit confusing.

What are the pros and cons of writing a portal fantasy story?

I see—Thank you for clarifying!

Okay, the question is a bit broad, but I'll attempt an answer:

In and of itself, the fact that the groups are in starships and segregated by geographic origin is by and large irrelevant. Those are details that will inform the plot, characterisation, etc.

The main questions then, to my mind, are these:

• Is there's communication between ships?
  • And if so, what sort of communication?
• Are the groups intended to have equal page/screen -time?

I'm not sure that there are many inherent pros or cons, offhand.

The only ones that come to mind are that you'll primarily attract those who like Portal Fantasies, and that people who dislike (or who harbour prejudice against) them will avoid the story. Whether those are pros or cons I leave to you.

My Games & Writing

What's the right way to give a hero and a villain similar backstories without it coming off as lazy? I remember The Legend of Korra, back when it was still a miniseries, getting a ton of flack for repeatedly using the "my loved ones were murdered by a firebender" backstory, to the point fans joked about there being a serial killer named A. Firebender running around killing people's loved ones, and was actually a waterbender.

For context, in my story, one of the heroes is a former priestess who was excommunicated and branded a heretic for secretly studying draconic magic, an inherently volatile art. One of the villains went through the exact same thing ten years prior, the intention being to have the two characters serve as foils to each other by contrasting their responses.

Check out my YouTube channel! I make audiobooks and whatever else I feel like!

How about this?

The hero priestess made the choice of studying it for her own personal and amoral reasons, making the expulsion justified, and succeeded eventually as all the chaos unleashed down the line was of her choice and nobody else's as she lashed out with her new powers against "all who wronged her". However, she realized how much damage this power could do and did to people besides those she wanted to hurt and decided to make amends by trying to tone down in using them when on her current quest.

Sure, she will still use them occasionally, but have learned the lesson of "keep it at a minimum and only when there is no other option than to use them for yourself. Save yourself first. The others are secondary"-mentality.

But the villain priestess tried to study it for altruistic reasons, with zero interest of benefiting from the arts for herself but tried to help all the people around her instead by doing so, making her expulsion not justified. But down the line it ended up backfiring spectacularly and hurt so many people that she sunk deep into a sunk cost fallacy-mentality, STILL trying to do good with her powers by thinking in the "WHY CAN'T ANYONE SEE THE BIG PICTURE?!" way, making all of her evil a result of her willingness to do good but ineptitude to actually pull it off.

Also, this "good soul" still uses those powers freely without restraint, as she refuses to believe that all the time she put into studying, learning, and mastering them, have all been for naught. She WILL "help people" but refuses to realize the harm she is doing instead and has put her on a road that eventually will lead to her own demise, having failed to help a single person in her entire life despite the best of intentions.

How is this for a change of an identical backstory looking?

Edited by Trainbarrel on Mar 30th 2024 at 2:52:01 PM

"If there's problems, there's simple solutions."

Without spoilers, there are reasons that won't work, as I already have a concrete motivation set for the hero. However, this does give me a better idea on how to contrast the two characters. Thank you.

Check out my YouTube channel! I make audiobooks and whatever else I feel like!

I'm a little late to this, but:

With only two characters sharing the backstory, and those being used to contrast each other, I doubt that it would come across as lazy to many.

The main thing, I think, would be to make sure that the contrast and connection comes across.

(The exactitudes of which would depend of course on your specific goals for the characters, how they contrast, the nature of the narrative, the nature of the narration, etc. etc.)

My Games & Writing

I personally like it when the hero and villain have similar powers, backstories, and personalities.

But anyway, it may help if you have the heroes fight other BigBads who don't have anything in common with the hero, before the Evil Counterpart.

If the story has five BigBads, and only one of them is similar to the hero, then that one will look different and special.

If the story has five BigBads who are all an evil version of the hero somehow, then it may become repetitive.

................

But anyway, it all comes down to execution.

Edited by jawal on Mar 31st 2024 at 8:15:58 AM

Every Hero has his own way of eating yogurt

So, this question concerns my main character's grandfather again, but mercifully isn't related to his bizarre and self-destructive set of morals.

During the time the grandfather was Walking the Earth as a homeless drifter looking for a place to settle down and start a new life away from civilization, he did a number of various good deeds with his Story-Breaker Power as a way of atoning for the huge amounts of people he'd murdered in his Roaring Rampage of Revenge and the fact that he'd almost destroyed the world.

One of these deeds concerns him saving the life of a young werewolf who had been shot by drunken vampire using a silver bullet. The grandfather saves the child's life not by healing him but by completely removing the werewolf weakness to silver, whereupon the boy's Healing Factor just pushed the bullet out like an ordinary projectile of its caliber.

This is intended to both show that the grandfather was a kind person, but it's also intended to be massive Foreshadowing that his powers are not "just" the ability to mind control werewolves but to actually alter the structure of their bodies and very nature with just a thought.

The question I have is this—-is it realistic that no one ever found out about this and started spreading the rumors about just how insane this man's abilities are?

In the story this goes mostly unnoticed and unmentioned; the only person to ever find out about what he did (apart from those who witnessed it) is the Evil Mentor of one of the villains and it caused him to revere the grandfather as a "wandering god". Thinking on it, it made me realize that this incident should have gotten far more publicity and ruined his plans of keeping a low profile.

Edited by Swordofknowledge on Apr 1st 2024 at 8:20:50 AM

"Fear is a tyrant and a despot, more terrible than the rack, more potent than the snake." —Edgar Wallace

Well, weirder things have happened in fiction that nobody ever seems to notice. I still don't get how anybody doesn't believe in Santa Claus in The Santa Clause after the first film, especially in the TV series. I think it all depends on how well you sell it that word apparently never got around, especially depending on when and where it happens.

Check out my YouTube channel! I make audiobooks and whatever else I feel like!

@ Amateur Story Time:

Well that makes sense, in fiction there are a lot of things that go unnoticed that should definitely have gotten far more attention and indeed would have in real life.

In this particular case the incident happened in a small, isolated town in the southern US (in fact it was a candidate for the grandfather to settle down and just disappear until this happened). Also this was the 1950s and so communication and video recordings were not as ubiquitous as they are in this day and age. So I guess those could be used as reasons for why more people didn't notice.

The funny thing is that the grandfather could have technically erased everyone's memories of the incident and his presence and just left with no one being the wiser—-it's kind of how he settled down in the town he eventually chose for his second home. I just didn't think of it at the time.

"Fear is a tyrant and a despot, more terrible than the rack, more potent than the snake." —Edgar Wallace

That man is practically a living cryptid at this point.

Sure, some people may believe in his historical existence and still believe it to present time, but he will never be considered a "fact" like the rest of the cryptids are.

They are objects of faith and like all objects of faith, you don't need to confirm that they exist in order to believe in them.

It's up to each and every individual and have no need for the whole world to acknowledge them as such.

So basically, that grandfather is basically no different from the "Mothman".

"If there's problems, there's simple solutions."