Random Questions Thread

OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH (airhorn sounds)

Like, wow. That's gotta be scarring. I love it!

EDIT: I'm just gonna make it even crueler and say, "Your pen is sharper than your sword."

Edited by dRoy on Nov 21st 2020 at 7:27:30 PM

I find this to be a really cool idea—I'm a little intrigued!

Similar to the radiodonts mentioned above, I might suggest:

• Eurypterids, a.k.a "sea-scorpions"—some of which could be longer than a human being is tall
• And Anomalocaris, which looks sort of like a cross between a shrimp and a preying mantis.

And finally, I would like to suggest a personal favourite: Hallucigenia—possibly not the most imposing, being more or less a worm walking about on little legs, but it does at least have some tentacles, and some spike-like appendages.

I figured out the theme of my super hero story. "Compassion."

How exactly do I implement this into my work?

I would suggest thinking about what, specifically, you want to say about compassion, and then finding ways to show that thing or those things in action.

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Nov 21st 2020 at 4:50:25 PM

@Droy: Thanks. Dont forget to add the "sir"— the gratuitous courtesy really nails it.

What are the other "stock" races in fantasy (Tolkien-inspired and Dn D-inspired fantasy in particular) besides humans, orcs, elves, and dwarves?

Edited by Nukeli on Nov 21st 2020 at 12:48:10 PM

Gnomes, hobbits/halfings, and Petting Zoo People. That last one can be anything, but cat people and bird people are popular picks.

There's a difference between dwarves and gnomes? Weren't hobbits basically dwarves with a different name?

Are you asking D&D, Lot R, or generic-fantasy?

Lotr (mostly) and Dn D-inspired, because i intend to mock them.

...In that case, you should definitely use gnomes, because they've suffered for the entire history of D&D from not having a meaningfully distinct identity compared to dwarves and halflings. That's ripe for parody.

...you know, between this and the Superhero thing, I'm getting the sense you enjoy mocking or belittling beloved genres for your own amusement.

Edited by kkhohoho on Nov 21st 2020 at 5:08:19 AM

The superhero thing wasn't mocking, it was taking things to their natural conclusions.

I like fantasy. I'm poking at Tolkien-inspired fantasy because i find some of it a little questionable.

Edited by Nukeli on Nov 21st 2020 at 1:23:36 PM

"I'm getting the sense you enjoy mocking or belittling beloved genres for your own amusement."

And there is nothing at all wrong with that.

Edited by DeMarquis on Nov 21st 2020 at 8:34:31 AM

Eh, I decided against posting this one. My apologies for the wasted space

Edited by Swordofknowledge on Nov 22nd 2020 at 1:39:21 PM

Does Officer Clarke sound like a transphobic mother?

What I'm trying to get across is that she knows and cares that Liz is trans, calling her by her preferred name and such (as shown earlier), but is in this instance intentionally trying to misgender her to identify her.

Yes, it's transphobic to misgender a person for any reason (barring lack of knowledge about the person's gender identity).

Definitely. Maybe I should change it to something like "so—sorry, daughter."

Yeah, that can show that she's aware of the situation and is trying to be correct, but slips sometimes.

Is Bruce Stormer a good or a bad name? What do you think of when you hear it?

It sounds a bit juvenile, like something a kid would come up with for a big scary thug. Stormer is a real surname, and both that and the name Bruce are relatively innocuous on their own, but combining them into one name sounds a bit like a child's idea of a scary name.

Then i missed by a mile, as it's supposed to be the name of a serious villain. He's American and was born somewhere between ww1 and the interwar period. The surname has to be Stormer because he's another character's son^note  I had picked "Bruce" because of the r and c sounds in order to invoke a kind-of Alliterative Name, similiar to how i named another character Jan Brandt.

I think it sounds alright. It might be a little on-the-nose (though I think that's just the surname's fault), but there's nothing wrong with it. It's just the sort of name you'd expect attached to a tough-guy character, and you wouldn't expect to see Bruce Stormer in, say, a boring office somewhere.

Granted, my names aren't perfect so I'm not exactly criticizing; I got ones like Robin Ivy, Silver Amador, and Rainy Hart, so hey. Not every name can be brilliant; as long as they'd fit the character's upbringing and don't sound utterly ridiculous, it's no big deal.

Fun fact about Rainy's name. He's loosely based on my Warrior Cats RP character Stormheart, and I also adapted his best friend Savageflight as Rudolf Savage (who just goes by Savage). So their names are a little silly because their original versions had entirely different naming conventions and I didn't want to completely change their names. I did later learn that "Rainy" is actually a girls name, but I'm just rolling with it because gender roles are whack and it's suiting because he's not a super masculine dude anyway.

Edited by WarJay77 on Nov 24th 2020 at 5:52:27 AM

It feels very comic-booky to me, with perhaps a slight lean towards the supervillain rather than superhero end of the scale.

Edited by nrjxll on Nov 24th 2020 at 5:03:47 AM

Well, he IS a supervillain, but while i'm going for a comic-booky feel, i'm trying to avoid sliding into overt ridiculousness. The reader has to be able to take the characters seriously.