Random Questions Thread

Assuming 5' 6" is average height for an adult human, hamsters are only around a few inches long, so for a roughly 30-day month, that'd be a little over two inches per day. How quickly they would notice depends on whether they have something to compare their height to on a daily basis, such as a person in their life who is shorter than them. For instance, if that happened to me (I'm 5' 3"), my shrinking rate would be near the same, and I'd probably notice I've shrunk after one day because my sister is one inch shorter than I am. Failing that, they'd probably notice after day two, because four inches is kind of significant in terms of personal height and pants that once fit their height would definitely be dragging by this point.

Can a reader who reads stories still criticize the stories even if they didn't create them?

Yes.

Most definitely. Critique and criticism is absolutely necessary for discussing stories in the first place. Some people dedicate their whole lives to reading, critiquing, discussing, and criticizing stories they themselves did not write.

If you've ever written even so much as a high school English class I can guarantee that at some point you've criticized someone else's work, unless of course your surname is Faulkner or Hemmingway.

That is a good point. I did go to English classes in school. Thanks for that clarity.

No problemo

Considering the restrictiveness for owning firearms and weapons in general in the UK, what weapons/equipment would a demon hunter conceivably use/improvise to take on the beast that haunts the countryside in a rural English town?

For context, this would be in present day with the hunting happening at night, in the countryside and out of view of the public. Also, the demon hunter hails from a family of demon hunters that go back at least 200 years.

At the moment, I'm thinking shotguns (which are common enough in rural England) and an heirloom weapon of some kind. Does anyone have any other suggestions of what would fit with the setting?

edited 22nd Jun '18 2:02:00 AM by peasant

The most important question for the demon hunter is to find a weapon that works against demons. Kinetic weapons like firearms are not by default effective against demons, after all. So we'd need to know what kind of weapon can incapacitate a demon.

What is the legal status of the demon hunters in your setting?

Hunting demons is a tad bit more important task than what firearms are generally used for, assuming the very existence of the humanity is at stake. So if the demon hunters are cooperating with the UK government, there would be no restrictions on using firearms or other kind of weapons, as long as they are aimed at the demons. If they are outlawed or acting in secrecy, then the only restriction would be the weapon's mobility and how easy it is to conceal it.

Why would the demon hunters even operate independently in the first place?

Why wouldn't they actually be part of the police or the government?

@Septimus Heap: The demon/beast in question is ultimately still flesh and bone, and so can feel pain. However, the demon hunter doesn't know of anything that can definitively kill it; hence why they have been fighting it for multiple centuries now. Part of the plot is of the hunter looking for something to kill it once and for all when the creature resurfaces.

@Millership: The demon hunter is working in secrecy and are ultimately just average people; and not particularly rich ones at that. As such, they wouldn't necessarily have the connections (or money) to access anything that's too deep in the black market.

There's always a reason to maintain The Masquerade.

In all seriousness, the basic idea would be that the beast hasn't really been sighted in a long time, there isn't much concrete evidence proving its existence and is for the most part a local threat rather than an existential one. Besides, local authorities are totally certain that the recent increase in deadly accidents is entirely coincidental.

edited 22nd Jun '18 4:19:38 AM by peasant

Sorry to interrupt, but what ethnic groups, extant or extinct, that live in cold areas with ice and snow. The ones that I can list from the top of my head are:

• Norse
• Inuit
• Ainu
• Sami
• Finns
• Beothuk
• Russians
• Chukchi

Nextdoor neighbors to the Inuit-Aleut are the Dene people.

Based on this list on The Other Wiki of ethnic groups in Russia, we can safely add all the groups speaking Uralic languages and all the groups based in Siberia (there's some overlap between the two).

You might want to take a look at societies that inhabit highland alpine tundras in the Southern Hemisphere as well. The Sherpa of Nepal, the Maori in New Zealand, the Quechua and Aymara in the Peruvian Andes and the Dani of the Papuan highlands are all examples of people whose lifestyles were formed in the liminal space between the tundras and the tropics/sub-tropics.

Not to sound self-centred but would it be possible to further explore my question in 15532? I think we were getting somewhere a little but nothing concrete yet. I'd be grateful for more ideas. The question is as follows:

"Considering the restrictiveness for owning firearms and weapons in general in the UK, what weapons/equipment would a demon hunter conceivably use/improvise to take on the beast that haunts the countryside in a rural English town?

For context, this would be in present day with the hunting happening at night, in the countryside and out of view of the public. Also, the demon hunter hails from a family of demon hunters that go back at least 200 years.

At the moment, I'm thinking shotguns (which are common enough in rural England) and an heirloom weapon of some kind. Does anyone have any other suggestions of what would fit with the setting?"

For clarification, the question isn't necessarily about what would work against the beast but what someone in their position could conceivably employ in their situation.

edited 23rd Jun '18 12:04:50 PM by peasant

Crossbows can be owned without any licence or documentation, though it's illegal to use them for hunting.

How is bitrate calculated when you're not using a binary code?

Specifically, my story has a technology that can transmit a single character anywhere instantaneously; they use six colored dots of nine different colors each, which comes out to 531,441 different combinations. How much information would be encoded, per character? And how would you calculate how much more information if they figured out how to do more colors?

Edited by Discar on Jul 1st 2018 at 10:08:17 AM

I don't think bitrate would be appropriate for this form of data transfer. Luckily for you, we also have symbol rate (AKA baud) which I think would be perfectly suited for this kind of thing.

Edited by CrystalGlacia on Jul 1st 2018 at 7:15:30 AM

would a Lovecraft/cthulu mythos inspired setting work in modern times?

I don't see why it wouldn't. Cosmic Horror largely deals with the unknown and things that should've stayed unknown, and the unknown isn't confined to any specific time period. Besides, in theory any idea can work if executed properly.

oh yes, easily. it's been done before. part of the reason you see all these cthulhlu related settings in the 20's is because that's when lovecraft was writing, and it's fun (and easy) for people to make stuff based off of that, more or less (no celebrities harmed, famous figures can be included without backlash, etc. besides, it's fun to imagine a flapper taking out a shoggoth with the double-barreled shotgun she just grabbed from her fellow investigator!).

if you know the spoilers for evangelion it counts as modern eldritch horror, more or less since it takes place in 2015 and the only real "fantastic" thing are the eva's themselves, and the tech level.

a game i will plug for days on end is the white chamber, a science fiction adventure mystery with heavy tones, and it's inspiration, in it's own right: the (first three ''numbered'') silent hill games dip into some of that on their own.

event horizon is science fiction but the point that you can extrapolate that existential dread into the future means that the present is totally applicable.

hell, for a humorous look at things, check out the tale of old man henderson, based on some incredibly hilarious trail of cthulhu sessions.

eldritch horror is about the unknown and our minuscule, absolute loneliness, and total inconsequential nature in a cruel, uncaring universe. that doesn't stop at flappers and noir reporters.

Edited by ImmortalFaust on Jul 7th 2018 at 1:54:50 AM

Does anyone know any good depiction of autism or Asperger's in fiction?

I sometimes lurk /r/aspergers, and the topic of good portrayals of high-functioning autism spectrum disorder comes up every so often- here's one post on the subject.

It's also worth noting that every real-life person with Asperger's or high-functioning autism is different and has their own unique set of challenges and quirks. High-functioning autism sort of has its own little spectrum unto itself, and it's very common for HFAs to have symptoms that one might associate with being from all parts of the spectrum.

There's a thread about Autism in the On-Topic subforum on This Very Wiki. Bonsai Forest often posts links to the articles regarding portrayals of people on the spectrum in the media.

I'm very fond of Failure to Communicate and An Unkindness of Ghosts for excellent autism portrayals in sci-fi books. Furthermore, actually autistic author Ada Hoffman writes reviews of portrayals of autism in all sorts of books, which you can find on her blog: http://www.ada-hoffmann.com

Edited by Strontiumsun on Jul 8th 2018 at 4:25:16 PM