Random Questions Thread

@Marques - Sounds like a sweet idea.

Hmm...would it make sense for an officer to bring his unit to a place that is good for ambushing enemy without telling his men, though?

A call to international tropers on this one.

This is the scenario: Superpower individuals have appeared world wide, while the powers and people they appeared in were different they were all physical reinforced, being far strong than their body would suggest, they also have a similar reaction to any danger to themselves, cripple, kill or otherwise incapacitate that person so they cannot be a threat to them again. In time some learned to control this but there were still many deaths. (think a school bully picking on his favourite victim only to get shoved though a wall.) The majority of people with powers want to keep leading their normal lives.

This is the question: What do you think your countries reaction to this would be?

Suggestion: To keep this neat I suggest adding 'International superpowers reaction' in a quote box and the country you are commenting about. If that method proves successful it might be a useful way to respond to other questions. Throw in a link to the original question if you are feeling especially generous.

edited 24th Sep '15 3:47:30 AM by MCE

Capture and study.

That'd be the reaction of just about any government

(Cross-posting from The Military Thread)

In a short story I'm working on that is set during World War II, there is character, Corporal Isaac Wojcik, an American soldier who happened to be Jewish and of Polish descent and hates Wehrmacht with furious passion.Now, I want to describe him as a type of guy whose violent obsession is getting unhealthy and his Character Development is him trying to be less vengeful towards his enemy.

What are some of the things this kind of character can do to show his vengeful attitude, kinds that borders on war crime?

Carving Swastikas onto soldier's faces is probably not a good idea because... you know.

@D Roy (12526): No, that would not be a good idea at all. I was assuming rule of cool- if you want to be more realistic then he's basically Captain Miller from "Saving Private Ryan"- he was just full of advice that worked in every situation.

(12529): Anything he does that goes beyond his orders would illustrate his anger. Even shooting an enemy before he was ordered to would get him in trouble and provide a motivation to begin his character development.

That sounds like a realistic yet illustrative nonetheless. Thanks.

@dRoy- Attitude shows a lot too. From my very limited understanding, it was pretty common during WWII to have various derogatory nicknames for the enemy forces, but if he never uses anything else, that says something about him.

A woman in her late teens or early twenties disappears without a trace for two days (long enough that people were concerned/looking for her, but not enough that the police had been called yet). She then shows up at her residence wearing new clothes but otherwise nothing is missing and she appears completely unharmed. She has no memory of where she's been, why she didn't come home, or what happened to her in the meantime (she's been turned into a vampire, but neither she nor anyone else knows that at this point).

My question is, if you were her roommate, how exactly would you proceed? I feel like the police couldn't really get involved, since there's no real evidence of a crime.

It depends on the relationship the roommate has with the woman ("oh, did not notice you were gone - I wondered why the dishes kept piling up"), but I'd urge her to visit a doctor at the very least. Memory loss could mean either that she's been drugged (and there should be traces of it in the bloodstream, not to mention some physical evidence of what she was possibly subjected to while under the influence) or that she suffers from some medical condition.

I'm not familiar with the US law (if this happens in the US), so I don't know what the police needs to be involved. I guess that the doctor finding evidence that she's been drugged would be enough for that.

Another lead would be trying to find where her new clothes come from, especially if they're brand new. If they manage to track the shop selling them (this of course assuming they are original enough, or that there are not too many shops around), maybe a clerk could remember her acquiring them and who was with her at the time.

And of course, this depends on whether the world and/or the roommate has some knowledge of the paranormal. I assumed this happens in a world where The Masquerade is in full force and the roommate is an average person with no special knowledge.

edited 25th Sep '15 3:54:27 AM by C105

My question is, if you were her roommate, how exactly would you proceed?

I'd recommend that she see a doctor, since the amnesia thing is probably dangerous. I probably wouldn't do anything beyond that, since I tend to not be very close to my roommates and there isn't much else to do.

Depending on how close I was with my room-mate, I might hug her, and would likely express that I was worried about her. After that, as others have said, I'd likely urge her to visit a doctor: I'm under the impression that memory loss could potentially be caused by a variety of things, some of which I feel are rather serious. (Others have mentioned drugs, and I believe that injury to the brain is another possibility.)

Come to think of it, you mentioned that she's now a vampire: would I perhaps notice then that she's cold? If so, that might at least be cause to get her something warm to drink, and perhaps more motivation for a visit to the doctor, depending on the weather outside.

edited 25th Sep '15 8:26:49 AM by ArsThaumaturgis

Nowadays, everyone would post the story online in an effort to see if anyone saw her during those two days. They might not learn anything, but everyone would know she had gone missing. If anyone else had gone missing and then showed up again like that, people would start wondering.

Your vampires need to be careful, I think.

edited 25th Sep '15 3:15:10 PM by DeMarquis

Okay, I only read the post right above me, so I spat out my drink at the last line.

Nowadays, everyone would post the story online in an effort to see if anyone saw her during those two days.

Not if you have a horribly asocial roomate like me. Roommate comes back after a lengthy absence? Cool, welcome back, here's your mail.

At least that would be my reaction up until you mention the memory loss thing, which is far more serious.

Scenario: Contemporary Earth is struck with an alien-made bioweapon that devastates the male human population such that only a tiny minority remain more or less unaffected on the one hand (with the rest either dead, emasculated/feminized, or otherwise so debilitated they're little more than bed-ridden cripples), and transforms the vast majority of the female human population into powerful, Long-Lived amazons of [[{{Brawn Hilda either]] kind (or such that they'll grow into amazons, in the case of female children), then within a handful of years the Scary Dogmatic Aliens behind said bioweapon invade with the express purpose of absorbing the amazonized female humans into their misandric Matriarchy, only for the majority of them outright rejecting the idea, with the resulting all-out war eventually bogging down into intermittent border skirmishes and raids between the coalition of free humans on one hand, the aliens and their human collaborators on the other hand, and the Wild Card "neutrals" who don't want to join either of the superpowers for one reason or the other on the other other hand.

The Question: What would you say would be a plausible amount of time for the free humans' many societies to completely shift into more or less a Patriarchy Flip-type Matriarchy, such that the current generation of humans would find the idea that the gender dynamics and the human species' sexual dimorphism used to be more or less the other way around to be utterly exotic and bewildering, with only the Long-Lived survivors of the older generation(s) remembering what the world used to be like and thus fully appreciating the reasons behind the war?

How can I make a soldier who frag her superior officer sympathetic, without making the said officer look like a totally despicable person?

Why did she frag her superior officer?

Her unit is composed of six soldiers who are malnourished, injured, and pretty much ran out of supplies such as ammo, that is stationed at a tactically unimportant town. The enemy force comes along, composed of almost 50 well trained and equipped men, and is known for treating their prisoners in a civil way. Despite that, the officer is helping on fighting to the last man and wouldn't listen to her, even though she is the second in command who is more competent and reliable than him.

Your office sounds like a hero, at least in conventional terms. You have your work cut out for you.

I think the way to go is not to paint the officer as being despicable, but to instead paint him as foolish or idealistic (maybe fresh out of the academy). He believes in the glorious ideal of fighting the last breath. She sees plainly that fighting will only result in them all dying - and since the strategic value of the location is negligible, dying for nothing.

But if they surrender, they live. Simple as that. She's the pragmatic type, one who has no interest in sacrificing herself pointlessly. Hell, if they're captured, they might even get a chance to turn the tables somewhere down the line. Dying serves no purpose but to deprive their own side of a perfectly good (if somewhat beaten-down) squad. So she does what she has to do - assume command by any means necessary. It's ugly, but hey, War Is Hell, right?

Or maybe she's just desperate to save the lives of their own soldiers, war be damned. She's past caring about anything but getting her and her squad home safely. If that means killing an officer who wanted them to throw their lives away for nothing, well...

You know, that would be interesting, because she doesn't think herself as a pragmatic person. When she got drafted, she was almost stereotypical wide eyed and tender hearted country girl. She is reliable not exactly because she is pragmatic, but because she is so compassionate about her comrades that she knows all their conditions and need....which does result in her becoming more competent, I guess?

Actually that gives me an idea; perhaps I could make the story about her growing more desperate about keeping her comrades alive and her fragging of the office can be a climax of her story arc: although she started being determined to save everyone, but in the end she chooses to sacrifice one so that others can live.

And it would certainly convey the theme of War Is Hell very well.

Sounds like a compelling character arc to me. She can save her comrades, but at the cost of her own innocence.

Question of my own. How practical/possible would it be to make bladed weapons out of silver? If the answer is "not at all," would it make more sense if it was just a silver layer over a steel core?

edited 26th Sep '15 7:00:04 PM by RBluefish

Yup.

Actually there is a dual character arc going on with two viewpoint characters. She is a soldier who wants to keep her humanity (at least, stay The Fettered) who ends up becoming ruthlessly pragmatic while another viewpoint character is a ruthless soldier with burning hatred towards enemy...who regains his humanity.

Sweet, I got the thematic structure, better get writing.

Thanks for the tips, folks. :)

As for your question, pure metal of anything tends to make a very fragile weapon. You might want to make it a coating, like you mentioned, or make it a sword made of composite metal that includes silver. Not a whole lot of quantity though.

I see, thanks.

Is there a name for a trope about a character being immortal and being angsty about it?