Hello, fellow writers! Got any question that you can't find answer from Google or Wikipedia, but you don't think it needs a separate thread for? You came to the right place!
Don't be shy, and just ask away. The nice folks here, writers and non-writers, experts and non-experts, will do their best to help you.
The folder below contains links for special interest threads, mostly at OTC, but also from Yack Fest and Troper Coven.
- Aircrafts and Aviation
- Computer
- Economics
- General Religion, Mythology, and Theology
- General Science Thread
- Chemistry
- Earth Science, including Meteorology
- Medicine
- Physics
- Space
- Just don't talk about space warfare over there; use Sci-fi Warfare thread below instead.
- Chemistry
- History
- Martial arts
- Military
- Police and Law Enforcements
- Politics
- The opening post of the linked thread includes links to political threads on specific countries as well.
- Philosophy
- Psychology
- Sci-fi Warfare
Also take a look at Useful Notes on various topics. They can be pretty useful.
Now, bring on the questions, baby!
edited 11th Apr '18 6:31:51 PM by dRoy
I don't think I will go into such details in the story, but my current ideas is to either use an electric motor with an electromagnetic clutch on the backside of the 'slug'. The clutch would disengage, or the first coil might just overpower it when it pulls. The motor might need bearings but that isn't really a problem.
The other option is to use the 'slug' itself as a rotor. Then it would pretty much levitate in the middle of the stator/"chamber". There would be a mechanism to but the 'slug' in the chamber, but after that it would no longer have any physical contact with the chamber, barrel or any other part of the gun.
Ie the only moving part would be the slug itself and that wouldn't come in contact with anything.
edited 27th Dec '13 2:27:43 PM by m8e
This is for one of my roleplay characters. I wonder which backstory would be more interesting\plausible, if either of the two.
- She was an archer, her eye and her left arm were injured in the same accident that killed her friend who used to want to be a runner. She decided to practice running in her memory and either came to enjoy it or wants to be a winner out of a need to try to fulfill her late best friend's dreams.
or
- She has always been a runner, didn't take take it seriously (she practiced sports for fun, never joined any teams) despite being good, decided to be the best to honor her hard working rival's memory".
Does anyone know much about the effects of an asteroid hitting a forest? Is it plausible for nearby trees to be completely incinerated even if they're not particularly dry? Could a glass bottle survive, and if so, what state would it be in?
The closest I've found was the Tunguska event, which exploded in midair, and the Encore nuclear test, which was detonated at a large distance from an artificial forest.
edited 28th Dec '13 8:00:06 AM by storyyeller
Blind Final Fantasy 6 Let's PlayIt depends heavily on specifics. The Tunguska event was an air-burst, but I would venture that a normal crater-forming impact would lead to similar effects over a smaller area, surrounding an area in which trees were destroyed entirely due to fire, surrounding the crater itself.
Shinigan (Naruto fanfic)I think Alethiophile's bang on the money. I would offer further comment, but my areas of expertise are rather limited.
That could also work (and avoids the awkward issue of figuring out where my protagonist will live, though on further thought he could live with a friend who makes up the final dimension of my protagonist triad).
I'm still having some trouble with this, but the responses have been very helpful - that and it doesn't feel particularly right to keep harping on when as far as I can see people have given me reasonable answers & I keep piling new questions on top of this one.
I'll try to puzzle it out, see where that gets me.
Locking you up on radar since '09The main thing in an impact event is blast, and that's something with some weird foibles. Blast waves can follow terrain, jump over crevices, reflect and refract off obstacles, and/or interfere with itself in strange ways. If it's a fair distance from the impact site, it's plausible if unusual for a sturdy glass bottle to have survived, for instance if some piece of terrain shielded it from the blast wave.
Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.Crossposting.
The maij character of a story I'm working on can use partial Sherlock Scan. In the first chapter, he uses it to figure out that someone he met is a drug addict with a possible gambling habbits and has a lot of debt.
Whst are some physical details that could reveal these traits?
What are some details that might reveal these kinds of information?
edited 28th Dec '13 10:28:00 PM by dRoy
Continuously reading, studying, and (hopefully) growing.
For the drug habit, there are physiological signs that one can look out for. While the exact constellation of signs and symptoms will depend on the substance of dependence, common things to look for are things like shivering, irritability, cold sweats, anxiety, etc. Then, there are classic things like track marks (multiple injection marks) along the veins or traces of powder on the person's clothes and body.
For gambling, things one might find include casino chits, lucky charms and/or complex notes calculating the slot machine patterns. And depending on the gambler, s/he might also be carrying concealed cards to cheat at games.
Hope that helps.
My question:
In the event a person is taken into custody with his/her clothes and shoes taken as evidence, what clothes would said person be given in return? Both, while in custody and once s/he is let out (if said clothes are different). And will this include footwear?
edited 29th Dec '13 6:21:41 AM by peasant
While they're in custody, they'll be given a prison jumpsuit (the old standby is broad black-and-white horizontal stripes, the new standard is international orange) and shoes (probably flip-flops or something similar) whether their clothes are evidence or not.
If their clothes were entered into evidence, they would be told that they'll need to have someone bring them a set of clothes to wear on their release.
For debt, one thing might be dramatically excessive wear on a wallet or the pocket in which it is kept - i.e. they use it a lot and therefore spend a lot of money (in relatively small individual amounts), but have not spent it on maintaining their clothing. In the presence of other indicators (most directly that they care about their appearance, say, or some other conspicuously absent expenditure sink), that would suggest spending money which they can't really afford - ergo, debt.
Many purchases of no obvious use is already suggestive of a gambling habit, but that could also just be explained by the drug addiction. A charm bracelet or zodiac jewellery might suggest a strong belief in luck and magical thinking, which could suggest that the idea may have some merit of its own.
ERROR: The current state of the world is unacceptable. Save anyway? YES/NOI was wondering if I could have an opinion of two of my main characters' reactions to a situation.
One of them is a teenage girl who works in a herb store run by her family. She's basically merchant class, with no royal title to her name or anything. Her only real exposure to higher classes of society is the soldiers and knights that help out around town on occasions, and the random court member who's looking for treatment for some ailment of theirs (she lives in the capital of the country).
My other character (who is a knight) is often assigned to her area to assist with packages and shipments from the docks, so they have become friendly over the past year or so. One day, she and her grandmother are called to the castle to help the injured after a break in the night before. While there, she recognizes that her knight friend is actually the Crown Prince, having used a psuedoname to keep his identity when they were together.
The plot demands that they now have to travel together with a few other people to get help with a problem immediately after, forcing them to be in relatively close proximity most of the time. How would they act around each other after the reveal? They're both around 16-17, and neither are very volatile in personality if that helps.
I think it depends on where you want to take the story and how you want them to develop since most would probably make sense given the factors you've described. Age-wise, a romantic relationship is plausible. Or, they can continue to remain friends. Or, there might be tension as the girl might see the knight's deception a betrayal of trust.
@Madrugada: Cheers for the description. But just to check, would she still be made to wear the orange jumpsuit even if she's just been brought in for questioning? Also, in my story, she doesn't really have anyone who can go pick up street clothes for her due to time and lack of contacts in the area.
They have to take her clothes as evidence, even though she isnt a suspect? Sounds like the plot to a raunchy comedy.
re the Crown Prince and the Merchant Girl- depends on how rigid the social hierarchy is. At certain times during the late Middle Ages, a member of one of the lower orders would have been literally forbidden to say anything to the Heir (and double that if said member is a woman). Under more relaxed conditions, maybe they can have casual conversations. In most historical feudal settings, a young man and a young woman of position couldn't really interact in private, without supervision. So the adults around them would probably set the boundaries to what they can do, rather than it being a function of their own shyness. If your setting is so relaxed that the two of them developing a relationship doesnt bother anyone (not historical, but typical in fictional settings) then I would imagine that they would respond as typical modern teenagers: "Hey! You're the Crown Prince! No way!!"
edited 29th Dec '13 5:00:45 PM by demarquis
I'm done trying to sound smart. "Clear" is the new smart.If they needed her clothing as evidence, something would be provided for her, or she would be permitted/required to send someone to get her something. But I'm having trouble coming up with a situation where they'd need her clothing as evidence but she wouldn't be either in the hospital or in custody.
![]()
,![]()
![]()
The time period is at the equivalent of just coming out of the Rennessance Age, like right around Victorian. And the royalty was just newly installed after a war about 20 years before(his father is literally the first king of their kingdom), so court boundaries aren't as tight as they could be yet. A common soldier would have a good chance at getting a title if he did something impresive, for example. The setting is progressive enough that a female can be an active knight and no one would care.
The prince has gained a slight crush on her, but she does not reciprocate it at all so far, even after realizing it. He doesn't try to persue it either because he's unsure if having that kind of relationship is even possible due to status issues. I think I'm most likely to go with the trust issues thing, and then try to build up their bond again over the course of the journey. A serious romantic relationship would take place possibly after they come back and things get settled again.
edited 29th Dec '13 9:44:30 PM by ScorpioRat
If your work is set in a world like the Three Musketeers, he will sweep her off her feet and carry her off, with her enthusiastic encouragement. If it's set in a world like "Moll Flanders", they will carry on a secret liaison behind the scenes while fooling everyone into thinking they hate each other. If it's set during the "Regency", then they will secretly pine for each other without ever bothering to tell the other one, maybe for years. If this is a YA fantasy novel, then something will attack the kingdom and they have to work together to save everyone. If this is more like Game of Thrones, well, they die.
It all depends on the tone you want to set.
I'm done trying to sound smart. "Clear" is the new smart.![]()
I guess you could say they're in a combination of the Enlightenment and Renaissance periods, since it actually takes place After the End.
Their reason for going on the journey is to break a bunch of curses placed on the other main characters, including one on the prince that will affect his ability to ascend to the throne. This requires hunting down the one who did it in the first place personally so the kingdom doesn't collapse. So yeah, a classic YA fantasy novel. Thank for the help.
@Madrugada: Basically, the character stumbles onto a gruesome crime scene and accidentally gets blood all over her when she finds the severed head (hence why they confiscate her clothes as evidence). As she was the only person there, she isa person of interest by the investigators and taken in for questioning though an unrelated eyewitness soon vindicates her by corroborating her alibi for the time of the murder.
If there's enough blood on the scene that she gets it "all over herself" just by being there, they don't need her clothes as evidence. It's not evidence of anything except her presence at the scene and as soon as she's not a suspect anymore, they have no need of it. They'd only keep her clothes as evidence if they took her into custody, and then, well, it's prison-jumpsuit time.
edited 30th Dec '13 5:19:50 PM by Madrugada
True. Though, I feel it does give them an excuse to confiscate her clothes. And in the story, the cops in question are a bunch of dicks who do so (and a bunch of other things aimed at keeping her uncomfortable) in the hopes of intimidating a confession out of her. Or at least, so she thinks. The reality is far worse in that they were instead trying to cover up the true events so that the public wouldn't look too closely at the murder, and they were hoping to use her as the fall guy (or in this case, girl).
If the cops are actually actively trying to frame her, she's going to have a bad time. They may not be able to force it through a jury trial, or even persuade a DA to press charges if the evidence is thin; however, they could certainly hold her as a suspect for quite some time, and there are various unpleasantnesses that can happen there.
Shinigan (Naruto fanfic)

I'm not sure it's feasible to do that; you'd need some sort of bearing or something, and that wouldn't be super-amenable to firing it. Might as well use a plain rifled barrel.
Shinigan (Naruto fanfic)