Random Questions Thread

I haven't seen the movie, but bear in mind that "characters having sex" is not the same as "sex scene". "Alice and Bob embrace and get into bed, fade to black" serves the exact same purpose as an actual sex scene, but without the sex scene. Actually showing the characters having sex is usually not necessary. I mean, I'm all for No Lewdness No Prudishness, but consider also the Law of Conservation of Detail. As well as the old adage, "If a scene can be cut, cut it." Which means your film or book or story or whatever should not have anything that it doesn't need to have. If you can cut a scene, you should; the story shouldn't contain anything that isn't necessary for the story to work. And 99/100 times, it's not necessary for us to watch two people having sex. We just need to know that they did.

The only exceptions I can think of is when the work is actually about sex and sexuality, like Shortbus, where sex is actually the core focus of the film, or cases where something important happens during the sex, like in Queer As Folk when Emmett's boyfriend has a heart attack and dies while they're having sex (oh hey, there's another sex scene that was actually needed for the plot).

edited 15th Apr '15 4:29:27 PM by SolipSchism

Random question: is it possible to black out during sex? Like, what if you have a character who experienced a sexual trauma? Is it plausible?

Also, if you're going to write conflicting feelings, what's the best way to write them without being either too wishy-washy or polarized so the reader doesn't get the other side of the character? Or is it better to be upfront?

Example: said character reveals feelings to love interest, who returns them; said character feels excited but is afraid of the excitement since has not really felt like this before in a really long time; almost as if character can't distinguish excitement from fear...would it be better to focus on the excitement or the fear?

Are you familiar with the characters Kin and Minmax from "Goblins: Life Through Their Eyes?" They were depicted in a situation very similar to what you describe. It fear was dominant at first (on the part of both parties) but love won out eventually (well, before being ruined by a magical effect, but before then...).

DeMarquis has a good idea; start with one emotion and transition into the one that wins out.

It depends on how you want the work and the character to come across, I'd say. For example, if you want the character to seem more mature, you might have them acknowledge their fear but combat it, or maybe analyze it to figure out why they're so afraid before making a decision.

Or if you want the character to seem weaker and more impulsive, they could give into the excitement but back out at the last second due to fear.

Generally speaking, Show, Don't Tell is a good rule; you should think about what those emotions would make the character do, rather than just writing an internal monologue about how "I'm scared but I'm excited but I'm scared but I'm excited but I'm scared but I'm excited but but but..." Because unless you do that just right, it could come off as just masturbatory stream-of-consciousness author-wanking.

Case in point: I loved Frank herbert's Dune novels, but God-Emperor of Dune was really fucking hard to get through because 99% of the book is just characters Contemplating Their Navels.

edited 16th Apr '15 8:56:13 AM by SolipSchism

I haven't read it, although the premise sounds interesting.

At least in this story I'm working on both characters are afraid. Ironically, this one character is much less afraid than the other, but it's figuring out how to express love that is the problem.

So the problem is saying that she finds these feelings uncomfortable (it's first person) when in reality it's because she doesn't know what to do about them. If she knew she'd give it her all, but since she doesn't it just sounds like she's scared and annoyed and cynical about love.

Another super random question: where are fire escapes located in city apartments? Or can there be multiple ones near different rooms? (I don't live in a city area so I don't know)

edited 16th Apr '15 9:08:48 AM by Coujagkin

They are located in the rear of the building. Each apartment will have a door that lets out to the fire escape (or the balcony if the FE is attached to that).

I've asked this in Quickie Questions, but all I got was a damn [1] reference. So I'll ask it here, in hopes of getting a much better answer-where did the concept of the Wendigo having a deer skull for a head come from?

edited 16th Apr '15 6:00:38 PM by SciFiSlasher

"Somehow the hated have to walk a tightrope, while those who hate do not."

I've never heard that they did. I always thought Wendigo were human in appearance, though severely emaciated. They're supposed to represent starvation and cannibalism, aren't they?

It's possible that the description of the creature was changed when white authors wrote stories featuring them which became well known. Algernon Blackwood wrote a very influential version of the myth, it's possible that the description you are familiar with came from him.

While I'm not sufficiently educated in the relevant stories to have an answer, I'm curious: where did you encounter that depiction?

(As with De Marquis, I don't think that I've previously encountered the description that you give, but then my exposure to stories regarding the wendigo might be a little limited, and I may easily have simply missed it.)

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My experience with stories about the Wendigo is... Supernatural. That's it. :p

Actually, a quick search turned up this page on the "The Monster Attacks: The Series" wiki, and in particular the following "trivia" item:

Perhaps the depiction in question started with this work?

(I don't know the work in question; we don't seem to have a page for it here, and I'm struggling to find useful information on the wiki to which I linked above. :/)

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I like the whole idea of a standard High Fantasy setting with Kings and nobles and the like but I want these kingdoms to have some stability and benevolence towards the common man. How can I do this when kings are rulers? Could I say maybe that the nobles keep the king in check, while the soldiers keep the nobles in check?

Basically, I'm stuck on how to make a monarchy seem good in a fantasy setting. Also, I like the whole idea of a Warrior King so a constitutional monarchy probably wouldn't work out since I don't think kings have military power with such a monarchy.

The general approach is to make the King sympathetic and a fair ruler. Done.

It's not like there's a rule that monarchy is always viewed as inherently evil. It's often portrayed positively in fiction. Or in some cases, it's subverted by the Evil Usurper, but as soon as the rightful king regains the throne everything is sunshine and rainbows.

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That's not really the same thing as what they're asking about.

Stop reading Game of Thrones and pick up...practically any other fantasy work.

More seriously, all government is based on consent at some level. Any leader requires the loyalty of a portion of his followers, if only to keep the rest at bay. No leader has managed to accomplish great things solely with fear. Hitler offered a sense of purpose and progress. Stalin assumed the leadership of a country on the brink of being irrelevant and promised that he would pull it up by its shoelaces; because in ten years it would either be modernized or perish. (As it turned out, he was right.) Shaka and Oda Nobunga commanded the loyalty of their armies with good treatment, promotion by merit, and the knowledge that under their leadership even the most faint hope of victory would soon be a reality.

Julius Caesar got by on his personal charisma and his ability to pick good allies; in the end he was not politically shrewd at all and it cost him his life, but his ability to motivate men on and off the battlefield was nothing less than supernatural. Augustus was probably the greatest political operator in the history of the world, creating the Roman Empire while convincing everyone else he was doing it with their consent and for their benefit. The man who set the stage for them, decades before, Sulla...he tried to make it just on fear, tried to ensure that men like Augustus and Julius would never be able to succeed in overthrowing the Republic. Instead he made its overthrow inevitable by eliminating the slack left in the system.

You must offer benefits, real or perceived, immediate or future, to some portion of your people. Or you will not last long.

edited 18th Apr '15 12:16:50 AM by Night

Nous restons ici.

x5/x6/x7/x8 This illustration◊.

The Wendigo from the 2001 eponymous film is deer skull-headed.

In Grimm, the Wendigo is a Wesen that looks more live a savage humanoid, but in the Season 1 DVD Packaging, there is mention of a skeletal deer like Wesen called the Spokelseshorn, so it might be a reference by the creators.

That's all I have.

edited 18th Apr '15 9:59:03 AM by SciFiSlasher

"Somehow the hated have to walk a tightrope, while those who hate do not."

Interesting. Indeed, looking at Deviant ART proper, I see several other such depictions. Funnily enough, while some of the works in question provide descriptions in their artist's statements, I don't think that I saw one that either described the creature as having a deer-skull head or otherwise gave a reason for depicting as such... o_0

(here's the link to the proper Deviant ART page for that image, by the way)

I have a question of my own: I'm currently working on a fantasy story with a fairly serious tone—it's not grim-dark, but it's not comic fantasy, either. In such a work, does the term "magic map" seem silly?

I have a character who possesses such an artefact, and keep finding myself wanting to cringe a little at the term "magic map", despite the fact that a "magic map" is exactly what it is... :/

edited 18th Apr '15 1:59:33 PM by ArsThaumaturgis

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How about enchanted map?

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Hmm... Honestly, in this context I seem to feel much the same about the word "enchanted" as I do about "magic"... :/

(It might also be argued to be a little less accurate: it's an item that produces a map by magic, rather than a map that has been put under an enchantment; put another way, it's a magic map and an enchanted parchment.)

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You could lampshade it. Does the character with the map share your issues with the term? They could say something like "and this magic map. Which isn't a map but more the result of auto-scrying parchment answering my subconscious desire to know where the hell I am."

Or the narrator if they have a strong personality/exist.

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I would go this route, but probably because self-referencing can sometimes be fun.

If anyone has time, I do have a question about general development: how appropriate is it to develop characters as the plot is being written? I've been developing a character whose motivation is all over the place. It's mainly because he doesn't have a particularly solid motivation other than sheer curiosity to understand the world around him, given he's a rather sheltered character.

Would it be better to start diagramming the character and then work with that for the rest of the story, or should I just write the story with the character and then try to edit it later based on trends I see? Right now I'm finding him rather bland and would like to give him more flaws or personality, but it's kind of hard at the stage of writing I'm at.

edited 18th Apr '15 8:37:24 PM by Coujagkin

Different things work for different people, but my approach would be sketch the character out, give a rough diagram of how you want them to develop, and start plotting.

At that point, their development should be pretty central to the plot, and chances are good they will take a swerve and do something unexpected, and force you to rewrite much of the plot to account for their decision.

Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.

I've been scouring Google for a while now and I haven't found anything useful, so I'm asking here:

What's the average distance (mean or median) across the continental United States (Atlantic to Pacific)?

edited 19th Apr '15 6:49:52 PM by AwSamWeston

Award-winning screenwriter. Directed some movies. Trying to earn a Creator page. I do feedback here.

I used Google Maps to chart distance of a coast in Massachusetts to Oregon and I got around 2,633 miles. From Virginia to California, it's 2,492 miles. From New York City to the coast near Portland, it's 2,505 miles. On average, 2,543 miles.

Life is hard, that's why no one survives.

@Luthen and Coujagkin: Neither really works here, I don't think: the characters don't have an issue with the term, and there's no lemony narrator. I think that it's really just that "magic X" sounds to me a little like something out of the cheesier tales of our world, rather than an in-universe problem.

Ah well, nevermind; I'm going to leave it at "magic map" when the term is called for, I think.

Thank you for the suggestions, however!

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