Random Questions Thread

An important question here: is the reader aware of what kind of story we are reading at this point? In particular, does the reader know more about the vampires than what the protagonist's girlfriend is telling him? And are there any hints that this is not your typical teenage-hero story? Unreliable Narrator (or more precisely Unreliable Point of View) can be used to great effect here to make the character appear more misinformed than stupid.

After all, even if you are the right Genre Savvy, you can never know whether you are the hero or the Red Shirt.

@C105

There are several indications that this is not your average teenage Paranormal Romance—the biggest being that the main character’s girlfriend is a Fully-Embraced Fiend who kills for blood and is offended at the idea of becoming a “vegetarian”. She’s also quite manipulative and abusive, but that’s a different subject.

The reader is aware that there is a lot about the supernatural world/community she isn’t telling him, and that she isn’t even close to being the highest ranked or most powerful vampire. He sees her that way since she’s the only supernatural being he’s ever encountered but it’s clear she is a relatively small fish if not politically then definitely physically.

His encounter drives home that there is much he doesn’t know and dovetails into other plot points.

Edited by Swordofknowledge on Apr 12th 2021 at 5:18:16 AM

In one of my story drafts, a charater 1 is hiding in the crawlspace of character 2's house. A group of armed government people enters the premises to look for and kill him, and character 2 eventually tells them where character 1 is to save his own skin. Character 1 gets a headstart while they're still standing around in front of the house and, due to being in the middle of a field with nowhere to hide and panicking, slips into an outhouse on the opposite side of the house from the armed people and crawls into the hole while the armed people search the house, the field, the outhouse, and the ditches, and eventually leave. When they're gone and it's night, character 1 exits the outhouse by kicking at a decayed back wall until it breaks enough that he can crawl out. After a few hours on the run he gets sick^note  (mostly vomiting and does not appear to at least the character to be anything deadly), but finds a place to hole up in for a few days until it's mostly over.

Provided that you managed to enter the hole, would this work? Would the hole be a place where the searchers propably wouldn't look? How dangerous would that kind of exposure be?

Edited by Nukeli on Apr 12th 2021 at 1:50:46 PM

With regard to her being abusive, will that be touched upon, or used to provide An Aesop, or something different?

As for her being a vampire, is this a human-looking one or is it a case of A Form You Are Comfortable With, in the sense of her female vampire form is beautiful-looking to him but her real form is a perhaps graying, slightly wizened despite physically being a teenager, or something like that (at least that's an idea you could run with possibly... if it works.). The Vampires of Venice in Doctor Who with its fish-vampires gave me that idea.

Edited by Merseyuser1 on Apr 12th 2021 at 11:49:12 AM

@ Merseyuser 1:

Not exactly an Aesop per se, but it definitely explores certain issues. She is the first girlfriend he's ever had, human or otherwise, and he's also never been instructed or taught about relationships and abuse. So he doesn't see a lot of her manipulative and outright terrible behavior as particularly bad the way someone who had been "trained" to spot it would. He is certainly jarred and horrified by her more inhuman and predatory actions and behavior, but the "mundane" abuse flies over his head. As for her, it explores the attitude and motivations of an abuser—-since she is one of the four protagonists, we get her perspective a great deal throughout the story. She comes from a large and quite dysfunctional and emotionally abusive family, with her parents being the worst offenders. A lot of her maladaptive behaviors come from a lifetime of being subjected to belittlement, humiliation and intimidation, and now she is in a position of power over someone else. Plus there's the fact that she's a vampire and so sees humans as cattle, good only for food and slave labor.

No, she is definitely a human-looking vampire (well, for the most part, she definitely has inhuman features that identify her as a vampire but I digress). She's objectively a very beautiful teenage girl; the vampires in this are similar to those in Twilight in the fact that they are naturally inhumanly beautiful. It's an adaptive trait to aid in attracting and catching prey.

Is there a name for a trope where somebody is so determined to get something that he's willing to chase it while naked? Cause, at the end of the first episode of my "life and times of Eleanor" series, Eleanor pounces out of her bathtub to pursue a fox who stole her garlic bread. While she is naked when she's running after it, it's not for fanservice, mainly for laughs.

Edited by kinnikuniverse on Apr 13th 2021 at 6:49:32 AM

That would be Naked People Are Funny, but there does not seem to be a subtrope for this specific situation.

@Swordofknowledge: Based on the impression that I've gathered by reading your posts, I think that I'd less view the character as frustratingly stupid than as painfully un-/mis-informed.

It looks like a matter of dramatic irony: we, the reader, recognise the terrible danger that the character is in—but also that said character isn't in a position to spot said danger themselves.

As a result, if it's done well, we may be sitting there, achingly hoping that something will clue the character in, waiting anxiously to see how this dire situation will play out...

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Apr 13th 2021 at 6:29:22 PM

Is it plausible that having the power to do literally anything and eternity of lifetime to do everything can make a god depress and suicidal?

No.

Why?

Because it is a God.

Not a human being.

A God would just "go to sleep" and dream up "reality" until it stirs out from its slumber, ending the "dream" and then create a new one when going back to sleep again.

Edited by TitanJump on Apr 13th 2021 at 7:07:01 PM

I mean, it's definitely possible. Who Wants to Live Forever? could easily extend to gods. I think that the human element would have to be introduced somehow, though.

The only reason that suicidal-mindset would ever be applied to a God, is if it had a "human mindset" and then a new problem would arise since if it has a "human mindset" then it would be, in no way in the slightest, be a "God" to begin with.

Just a human being with way too much power at its hands.

This distinction is extremely important.

Edited by TitanJump on Apr 13th 2021 at 7:15:35 PM

Having a "human mindset" doesn't necessarily exclude a god from being an actual divine being, though. Not every god has to be the omniscient These Are Things Man Was Not Meant to Know type. Do you want to discuss this in PMs? I don't want to clog the thread.

Edited by Altris on Apr 13th 2021 at 10:18:32 AM

My standpoint on this on is pretty solid, so it will be up to the one making the question to decide how much worth it has as an potential answer to their question in the end.

...

@ Ars Thaumaturgis:

I guess it is a case of dramatic irony; I just always looked at it from the perspective of somene who really should know better, especially since, as I mentioned, being friendly towards someone he heavily suspected was a vampire is what got him tangled in the supernatural world to begin with.

But your point is a very good way of looking at it as well.

If it helps a little, the way it plays out is kind of like that. To explain, the main character greets the vampire, the man responds in kind. They have bit of small talk before the main character realizes that this vampire is probably the one responsible for draining a baby to death a few nights previous. It escalates from there as the boy tries to extricate himself from the situation and the vampire verbally slowly advances while keeping him standing there with innocent-seeming small talk. All while our hero realizes what a desperate mistake he's made.

If I'm being perfectly honest, the scene is actually an intentionally more horrifying homage to a similar situation in the Twilight Saga which this story was originally inspired by way back in the day.

x6 @ Andermann:

It depends, really, on what the god in question is like. Is he the god in charge of a specific facet of the universe/reality? Or is he a more "multipurpose god", with far more elaborate control over the universe? If so, does that affect how he sees himself and the world around him, and the boredom that comes with omnipotence?

His origins also affect how this would work out. If he is a timeless being from before there even was such a thing as time and matter, then it would stand to reason that he wouldn't be particularly affected by the concept of yawning eternity. Or at least it would be less believable since his point of view might be so alien that it wouldn't include emotions like sorrow or depression.

The most realistic scenario for this sort of thing, in my opinion, is a Deity of Human Origin. Perhaps a human hero who sought godhood and got it, only to realize that this isn't a victory at all, but a terrible curse (this is actually the plot of a video game that I won't name to avoid spoilers, but it goes deeply into this sort of thing happening to a hero, and what the boredom and eternity does to their mind).

I hope that helps.

Edited by Swordofknowledge on Apr 13th 2021 at 1:26:20 PM

Many origin stories for the universe involve an eternal being getting bored and splitting itself into parts so it can have someone to talk to.

Is it possible for an entire small town to simply disappear without anyone noticing for quite some time? I don't mean the buildings/structures, but the citizens themselves, all at the same time.

For slight details if this will make it easier:

• This incident happened 62 years before the events of my story, in 1946.

• It took place in the rural United States.

• The disappearance happened overnight and claimed the whole town, not sparing a single human inhabitant. Animals were left alone and untouched, although completely wild and traumatized with terror. There was a great deal of damage done to the interiors of buildings (furniture destroyed, doors knocked down, etc).

I do intend for it to be noticed of course, but it takes at least a few weeks for anyone to really notice anything is off, which is when investigations start and the rest is history.

Edited by Swordofknowledge on Apr 13th 2021 at 3:10:05 PM

Unclear. Does the disappearance happen in 1946 or 1884? If 1884, then sure. Communications were very poor and a tiny town could disappear for days or weeks. If 1946, it's trickier. Most places at least had telephones and electricity.

16x?

Edited by Nukeli on Apr 13th 2021 at 10:36:26 PM

@ Fighteer: Sorry, the mass-disappearance was in 1946; the present day of the story is in 2008. I figured that because the town in question was in a very rural and isolated place, the sudden disappearance wouldn't be noticed for a few weeks until people started to really miss the people who lived there. Especially since everyone was affected/taken at once.

@ Nukeli: Well, your situation paints everything as "dangerous", but I would say that your idea is plausible. IT depends on how well-trained these armed government troops are. If they are a specialized squad trained in hunting down and feretting out opposition/spies/traitors?etc then they are for sure going to look in the hole. Leave no stone unturned and always overestimate the resourcefulness of their enemy and all that.

However if these are little more than well-armed but ill-trained brownshirts, then no, they're not going to look in the hole. They will want this person dead or captured, and they will be thorough in their search...but they won't be too imaginative and that will give them the advantage they need to escape...filth-based diseases aside.

Edited by Swordofknowledge on Apr 13th 2021 at 3:44:41 PM

I'd say it depends on how rural the town is. If it's super isolated and impoverished, then it might be plausible. Heck, did "Hoovervilles" still exist in the 40s? If it's something like that, but in a super rural area, people probably wouldn't notice.

Maybe.

@ Warjay 77:

I had to look up what a "Hooverville" was actually before I could respond to this. No, the town isn't really one of those; it's a "proper" settlement, but it is supposed to be very, very small (only one church and gas station, no school). Sort of like those little hamlets where there are only a couple hundred people. It is/was also located off the beaten path, so while the location was public knowledge, they had little reason to receive visitors.

The obstacles I'm thinking of are things like if any of the residents have family outside the town who may come looking for their loved ones if they don't write in a while, and businesses and other workers that involve people leaving or entering the town more frequently than once every few weeks- like farmers selling their crops in nearby towns, shipments for the general store and bar, or even the mail. The average person in a town this small probably did not have ready access to a telephone- I had a college professor who grew up in the 1960s in a poor farming family, like 20 years after your time period, and he remembers what it was like when his street got a party line for the first time. Hell, I'm actually questioning if this town would have a gas station at all, or if it'd just be barrels of gasoline, kerosene, and diesel fuel at the general store for farmers' trucks and farm equipment.

It could be a perfect storm- the mail carrier only leaves/enters town once a week (or even less often) just because there isn't enough mail leaving/entering the town to justify leaving more often than that, not enough residents have family outside the town who would check on them, it's not the time of year for the farmers to harvest anything or be selling livestock and the town is pretty self-sufficient besides, the general store just got a shipment and isn't expecting another one for a couple weeks, the town's just really, really isolated, and so on.

In short, I think it's plausible.

Edited by CrystalGlacia on Apr 13th 2021 at 7:46:22 AM

Where is this town located, if I may ask? Like, what state? If it was somewhere in, like, Wyoming (Least Populated State) or Alaska (which wasn't a state at the time, but did exist as a populated territory), then it's even more plausible.

Double post, with my own question:

So, in my story, I want to have a comic relief chapter where the boys spend the night roaming London and attempting to have a fun night out, but having all their plans backfire (in the usual sitcom-y hijinks style). One of those ideas would be to visit one of London's many underground music clubs, since one of the boys is a musician themselves. When looking up these bars, I was trying to keep in mind places where all of them could get into...and get themselves kicked out of. Now, a lot of these bars have no sexual harassment policies, and they will kick you out if you're harassing anybody. Great for real life, wondering if I could incorporate it into the story and use it to get the boys booted...especially since they attempted to visit a bar before this point, and some of them are a bit buzzed.

My only issue is that I'm attempting to keep the story PG-13 (mostly, since obviously alcohol is on the table). I'm going for Original Flavor and don't want to push the boundaries too much, so I'm trying to keep it to the same standards and limitations of the actual show. I can drop some innuendos and imply sexual activity, but I'm not being outright about it. How can I get the boys kicked out for "sexual harassment" (AKA, completely accidental contact taken out of context or overblown) without being too blatant about what happened?

In other words, how can I make an Accidental Pervert situation occur while keeping the fic "in-bounds", so to speak?

Also, if ya'll have any opinions of a specific club they could hit up, feel free to suggest some. I might just invent my own, but it'd be fun to set the scene in an actual club and be able to give specific setting details to let people figure out where they are. (I'm also not trying to namedrop real-life things too much, so I'd prefer to just give context clues rather than outright say "They went to (Nightclub Name)." But that's not an issue, as long as I can look up where the club is located.)

Edited by WarJay77 on Apr 13th 2021 at 2:12:55 PM