Random Questions Thread

I'm writing a Transformers Dark Fic not set in any particular verse. It's trying to be action horror with a leaning towards the horror. It's less physical and more psychological type horror and also about how war and power can force (or encourage) good or at least normal people into monstrous deeds.

It's set in an Alternate Universe where the Combiner transformers don't occur naturally, but are instead suffering abominations Decepticon mad scientists are creating by mutilating and forcing random bots' bodies together and melding their brains, all in an attempt to win the war.

The protagonists are two Autobot scouts who end up stranded in Decepticon territory, two Decepticon defectors, and an amnesiac civilian who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. They learn of the experiments and decide to, instead of escaping, stop the Decepticons and put the monsters out of their misery. They face horrifying things and strong, monstrous enemies, and the main Autobot slowly learns that his companions all have skeletons in their closets, and interests, missions, and ethics that contradict with his.

I'm not sure how to title the WIP. Does Dark Designs sound good or cliched?

Edited by Nukeli on Nov 8th 2020 at 10:56:40 PM

What virtues would be associated with each element? So far, I have listed a few:

Water could be strength and vitality, and I would have actually also associated adaptability to it.

Ice could be steadfastness.

Aether could be compassion (since it encompasses everything).

I would second the association between "Water" and "Adaptability"—I tend to associate "Water" with change, even chaos.

Rather than "Air", I might suggest associating "Patience" with "Ice"—think of the long, slow process of mountainsides being ground to dust by glaciers, and the cracking of stones by frost. That also seems to me to connect well with the idea of things slowing, even becoming dormant, under the cold of ice—think of bears in winter dens, and seeds quiescent under the snow.

However, if not that, then perhaps "Ice" could be associated with "Optimism", given the tendency of ice to bob to the top of a body of water, rather than sinking to the depths.

If "Patience" is moved to "Ice", then perhaps "Air" might become "Honesty"—think of transparency, and of words carried by the wind.

"Aether" I might associate with "Spirituality".

"Metal"... Hmm... Metal is perhaps most notable (pre-electricity) for being malleable, being something that can be forged. So perhaps "Metal" might be associated with "Scholarship" or "Studiousness".

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Nov 9th 2020 at 6:03:26 PM

So I'm trying to establish my protagonist as an Upper-Class Twit and generally a bad person (I'll put her through Break the Haughty soon, I promise). What I've established so far is that she's at not-Hogwarts in The Empire, and in the empire the three "tiers" of magic determine one's general social standing. The protagonist inherited one of the highest-tier types of it, and I plan to make her belittle other students who inherited lower-tier types while palling around with her friends who behave similarly, and generally establish that these Teens Are Monsters because of the class system. What I'm wondering is if the above is enough to establish her as a character and how to spread the further class implications out throughout the story and go into how that mindset affects her over the course of the story.

I was double-checking if Sherlock Holmes really is in the public domain, and i was left confused. Apparently some of the stories are still under copyright and some aren't, and USA and England have different copyright laws concerning the years there has to be from the author's death for the work to become public domain.

Additionally i'm not sure if the original work being British but the work i have come up with being Finnish and it apparently having been an American court who ruled that Sherlock Holmes was public domain (ie. two different countries making or not making different decisions, and me writing in a third country) affect whether or not i'm allowed to publish a novel about Sherlock Holmes at all/without paying to the Doyle estate^note  Also the fact that just this summer the estate sued a movie they didn't like[1] has me uncertain about my work, especially the fact that Holmes and Watson are gay in my draft. The estate might not like that. Are they really allowed to sue people over interprations of a character they no longer own the right to?

Edited by Nukeli on Nov 10th 2020 at 12:31:03 PM

It's complicated - basically, anything post-1923 is off-limits. About the Enola Holmes thing, the suit is arguing that Holmes having emotions is a result of Doyle's experiences in World War I, and such belongs to that post-1923 period. Basically, they're nixing any Adaptational Personality Change, which is a bit baffling to me because Holmes is both a hardcore jerk and a real product of his times (ie kind of sexist) and Enola Holmes changed him to ...be nice to his sister, which is really common decency today. I believe the suit is ongoing, so I'd advise following it yourself.

...wait, is that seriously the argument? I kind of thought it was a joke when it heard it somewhere else, because Holmes clearly shows emotions in some pre-WWI stories. Just not often.

Gotta squeeze every last penny out of the IP before it goes into public domain.

Holmes demonstrates the emotion of enthusiasm in his very first meeting with Watson:

""Ha! Ha! He cried, clapping his hands, and looking as delighted as a child with a new toy." (A Study In Scarlet)

For context, Holmes just successfully demonstrated a chemical test for hemoglobin.

Didn't the BBC have issues with them too? Sherlock could become quite emotional at times, especially in season 3 onwards.

The BBC paid license fees, yes.

Is there a reason why people wouldn't call the police after someone broke into their house?

Here's the scenario:

In the fanfic I'm writing, one of the villains just broke into one of the character's houses and left empty-handed, but the implication is that he was there to get his hands on something or someone. Only the character's little sister was there at the time and she managed to hide until he left. The father is an ex-con who's out on parole and there's an established cop character in the story who does know the villain, but at least one of the characters involved doesn't really trust said cop because of events that happened in the actual show.

I'm trying to think of a reason why they wouldn't call the police, and if the one character's lack of trust would be enough justification. If there's no real justification I'll just go with the more realistic answer and have the cops be called, even if it's not really the route I want to take it.

Maybe the break-in takes place during a blackout, so there is no way for the police to be called.

Well, I already wrote that part- I'm doing a minor timeskip to the next day. It's too late to incorporate something like that since it'd conflict with everything else I just wrote. ^note I'm a bit of a pantser if you can't tell; I don't like to plot ahead and prefer to just wing it It's the scene's POV character returning after getting notified by his sister about it, and then they tell their father who gets home after. His girlfriend is also there- she's the one who doesn't trust the cop. At this point I wrote that they didn't call the police, and then stopped, because I wasn't sure how to explain that decision on their part.

Edited by WarJay77 on Nov 11th 2020 at 8:41:14 AM

The one character's lack of trust might be sufficient, if they can convince the other characters not to call the cops on those grounds.

It might be as easy as having them ask "how exactly do you even expect the cops to help, here?"

Slightly more complicated than that but since she does have a very valid reason to dislike the specific cop character in the story and her boyfriend knows why and the father is also kind of involved (but is pretending to not be, which makes an open discussion kind of impossible), her arguing that it won't help might actually be what does it, especially since nothing technically happened.

In my medieval European fantasy setting^note  (where they believe in the miasma theory), a random plague doctor notices that the outbreaks are linked to rats, but that not all rats seem to carry the disease. He takes a closer look at the rats and notices fleas that are clearly a different species from the local fleas and guesses they must be the cause for the disease^note  (though he doesn't understand bacteria and viruses, he assumes the fleas do it because it feels like a reasonable conclusion), and links the fleas to the heavy trade with a faraway country because they only appeared after the trade started.

How realistic would it be for a random, uneducated but intelligent person from the miasma theory era to reach these conclusions, and how should he try to sell his theory to the decision-makers in a way they could believe it? What do you think medievally thinking people who believed it would try to do about it?

Edited by Nukeli on Nov 12th 2020 at 6:43:22 PM

It's pretty believable actually. I can't list the exact examples off the top of my head, but I recall an example in Right for the Wrong Reasons where it was observed that an ancient Greek (Philosopher? Scientist?) figured out that the Earth revolved around the Sun, not the other way around, although his reasoning was...pretty wild. My point is that it is not impossible for someone in those times to come up with an idea of how the plague is carried, or at least some inkling, just through the use of observation and sense.

Now, whether or not they can sell it to the authorities of the time period is another story. That is where you can start getting into trouble. If you are writing a historical fiction novel, then the outcome is obviously a Foregone Conclusion and you have no choice but to have the authorities turn this person's ideas down. However if you are just writing an Alternate History or some other sort of fiction with counterparts to real-world events, then by all means that is your choice to make.

Edited by Swordofknowledge on Nov 12th 2020 at 3:00:02 PM

Yeah, the challenge is in proving it. Your character can point out the correlation between the plague and the fleas, but the relationship won't be perfect, and other things will have occurred at the same time that offer rival explanations. A comet (let's say) in the sky is also being blamed for the plague, so how can your character prove it's the fleas and not the comet? Without a proper knowledge of disease theory and a working microscope, he really can't.

It's a deconstruction of Standard Fantasy Setting and not historical fiction.

What i meant by "how should he try to sell his theory to the decision-makers in a way they could believe it?" was 'how should he try to present this to stupid/superstitious people in a way they could be ready to believe while still keeping the point intact?'.

Also, what do you think the kind of people who populate this type of setting would do to protect themselves/get rid of the plague if succesfully convinced that it's caused by foreign fleas?

The doctor could present the fleas as being possessed or cursed by a foul miasma or spirit that causes the disease, particularly if the ruling authorities and indeed the populace as a whole believes the plague to be caused by such an agent/entity.

If they still did not believe, then he could present them with evidence using a simplified version of the scientific method—simply use observation of who is infected and the nature of the rats/fleas around their dwelling. On a darker note, he could just procure condemned prisoners and have them bitten by fleas and get infected, proving his point beyond the necessity of an explanation entirely.

The thing is, if I'm not much mistaken the people of the mediaeval period weren't stupid.

One could make a case for "superstitious"—but I'm not convinced that it was to the degree that they wouldn't listen to a solid argument, especially one with evidence. Perhaps more so if anything in the case of the rulers and suchlike, who were more likely to be educated.

(Indeed, miasma theory itself came about via observation of the information that they had available, if I have it correctly: they noticed that disease correlated strongly with foul smells. Lacking microscopes, they weren't likely to discover germs, and so concluded that the smells caused the diseases.)

That said, I do confess to not being an expert in this area, and so stand to be corrected on any of the above.

And if we're talking specifically about fantasy settings, and not the historical mediaeval period... then there seem to me to be plenty of such settings in which the people aren't stupid at all. Indeed, in some they have arguably rather modern perspectives!

The problem being that, given the information available at the time, the comet hypothesis isn't stupid at all.

How do I describe an extremely loud, boisterous, and theatric warrior character in a novel?

Basically, he is introduced and dies screaming his own name, and his friends joke that their ears automatically start to bleed in his presence and he intimidates a damn dragon by yelling at it. If he was actually voiced, his (voice) actor would probably ruin his throat. In fact, his voice is so loud and fierce that it even has combat applications of disorientation and demoralization.

My first instinct is to type all his lines in all capitals or use a lot of exclamation points, but I'm pretty darn sure neither of them is grammatically acceptable. XP

Edited by dRoy on Nov 15th 2020 at 8:51:05 PM