Plotbunnies
Jan. 6th, 2024 05:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysabetwordsmithI was granting a wish for lebateleur as part of ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
snowflake_challenge and realized that 1) I want to save these and 2) other people would probably enjoy them also. DO NOT read with mouth full.
>> Hm. I'm in a writing rut, so how about this—Do you have a prompt for: (list of fandoms in stickypost) <<
RELEASE THE PLOTBUNNIES!
Current Obsessions:
Good Omens
* If you want to succeed as a writer -- any kind of writer -- London is the place to go. Nobody knows quite why, just that it massively raises your chances of sudden success.
Why: because Aziraphale secretly loves writing workshops and author events and all that bookworm stuff, and he hands out little miracles like they are candy. You still have to finish your manuscripts and submit them, but from there he's got you covered.
* Crowley goes on a tremendous tear about humans driving plant species to extinction and curses the shite out of someone he deems responsible. Because we all love seeing Crowley totally losing it.
Forever Fandoms:
Discworld: All of the Deaths at an amusement park trying to figure out what "amusement" is. The most successful is the Death of Rats, who meets Templeton the Rat (from Charlotte's Web) and learns about the joys of gluttony. Of course, now he's going to be singing that song forever...
Farscape: Moya likes to compose treatises about the evils of slavery. But for someone who thinks in colors and quantum physics, they're a little difficult to translate into something that humanoid species can understand.
Lord of the Rings: If you are a crafter of anything whatsoever, you know how ... messy ... the creative process is. So what happened to all the rough drafts that Annatar and Celebrimbor flung all over the forge? "Let's use an opal, that's fiery--" "Are you DAFT? Opals are fragile, it'll crack. We'll use a diamond." "What? No, everybody and his dog uses diamonds." *throws rough draft across room*
X-Files: In the age of "alternative facts" and deepfakes, Mulder attempts to come up with a program that can distinguish "the truth is out there" from nonsense. And his program becomes sapient, whereupon it ravages society because humans actually HATE the truth. Scully tears her hair out trying to do damage control without, you know, actually taking the side of internet trolls.
My Fandoms of One:
Paraic O'Donnell's The House on Vesper Sands: Connect the missing girls in this novel with other aspects of violence against women, e.g. global sex trafficking, missing and murdered indigenous women, attacks on female-presenting gender-variant people, etc. None of that is new, it will all have its own variations in the Victorian setting. They've always been targets, always "disappeared" into the cracks ... and sometimes strange things result.
Sugiura Shiho's 終点unknown: That which is unknown is powerful. Knowledge is power, but it is always limited. What is unknown is unlimited, and therefore stronger. To know is to hold a tiny candle in a vast, windy darkness. You can never know everything; there will always be more than you don't know than what you do know. And that's maddening for characters who seek to make the unknown into the known.
Old Flames:
Bleach: This show is a lot about self-awareness, because the powers are basically expressions of your inner self. And it's mostly handled with a fairly serious take on meditation, martial arts practice, etc. Now there's one exercise that is downright notorious for that sort of thing: The Doorway Exercise. It's maddening and everyone knows this. Enter We Didn't Playtest This at All. You have to do things like shout "Aaah! Zombies!" at the beginning of your turn or zombies will eat your brain and you lose. Suddenly the mindfulness is hilarious instead of tedious. Now what is that going to do to a character's manifestation of combat powers?
Firefly: Two by Two, hands of blue. The thing about a group of characters who always do the same thing is it's a huge vulnerability. So let's find the factory where the blue gloves are made -- because you know there's only one, it's got to be a secret -- and pour contact poison into the process. Something slow-acting that takes days to show symptoms. Then watch these extremely uncreative people scramble around trying to figure out why their operatives are suddenly dropping dead.
Harry Potter: The stories just make me want to drown every adult in Wizarding Britain. So let's just cross this with Hy-Brasil and say that some magical accident is causing Britain to sink.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: After the release of all potential Slayers, it turns out that magic runs on identity not presentation. So now there are scads of trans and other gender-variant Slayers running around, not all of whom conventionally look like "girls."
MCU: Erik Lensherr and Steve Rogers meet, secretly, in coffeeshops to reminisce over a time that few others remember. One day, Steve shows up with a battered Bucky in tow. "Found him." "And you brought him here because...?" "Well, first, he's from my time too. And second, I figure if anyone knows about fixing busted-up supervillains, it'd be you."
Enduring Interests
Anime: Let's have some fanservice! I want to see a blowoff of a male character doing a nekkid transformation with a sparkly star covering where his dangle should be. Like The Hawkeye Initiative, but anime.
Books: America is in a book-burning mood again. Pretty much every bibliophile knows the Curse of Ashes -- if you burn books, their ideas fly away on the wind to inspire other people far out reach from the arsonists. Because ideas never die. But what if someone discovered the Blessing of Ashes instead? You cast it, reach into the ashes, and pull out a previously burned book. Now watch the censors lose every last speck of their shit. This should work in any magical setting, but particularly bookshop canon or AU, magical school, or monster hunters who use reference books.
Calligraphy & fountain pens: We've all seen "modern person (often self-insert) gets dropped into historic/fantasy setting" AU stories. Now I don't know about you, but I'd be all, "WTF no, I am not spending the rest of my life writing with a goose feather. You there, smith! This is what a metal nib looks like. This is what a ballpoint nib looks like. Is there a chemist in the house? We're gonna need some new ink, I don't know how it's made but I can describe its performance properties. A fountain pen has a package of ink inside it, so does a ballpoint pen. This is what a screw press looks like. I don't have a fancier printing press permed but here is how movable type works. Is there another linguist in the house? We need your language's alphabet in order of frequency." "Erm ... we're going on a quest? To slay a dragon?" "Oh right, yeah, gimme a minute and I'll barf up a xenobiology text on dragons and how to analyze any species for weak points. But first, let me finish revolutionizing your literacy tools, kthxbye."
Foreign language learning: Suzette Haden Elgin once observed that "Writers will put their characters through any horrible experience, except learning a foreign language." LOL no, that is one of my favorite challenges. I especially love dumping characters on an alien planet where they don't speak the language and have to get by "somehow." No universal translator, no Babelfish, no Spell of Tongues, zip-nada. You have your brain and your senses, any human languages you may know, so good luck prying open the window that evolution painted shut when you were 7 or so. For bonus points, include a thumbnail sample of the alien language, how it does at least one thing that no (known, surviving) human language does, and how the characters melt down trying to cope with that.
Gardening: In a permaculture, sometimes Gaia throws in things you didn't actually pay for and plant yourself. So what if She's busy, tired, and forgets which plants or animals belong in which dimension and puts something in the "wrong" garden? Believe me, after the wild grapes, elderberries, cup plants, and a pair of bald eagles using my yard as a romantic carpet under their courting flight ... I wouldn't be that surprised to walk out one morning and find a symurgh staring at me from an enchanted fruit tree. "Ah you better not have brought any invasive species with you, you fluffy bugger! Are there any pests on that tree? Any pollinators or do you expect me to come up there with a paintbrush?" *Symurgh gives a flustered ruffle and inches away*
Irish traditional music: An enchanted harp bestows the Bardic Gift on those who play it ... but only works for vision-impaired players.
Manga: In order to make the spellbook work, you have to read it "backwards" from your usual language. So everyone thinks it's a fake and doesn't work, until the otaku picks it up and opens the back cover by sheer habit.
Roleplaying games: My rule for character construction was that you can build whatever you are able to build, and play it -- and I will scale the challenges to match. So I thought it'd be fun to make a megascale roleplaying game where each player is running a different deity (fantasy or horror setting) or force of nature (science / SF setting) and your collective job is to construct a world (realm, universe, solar system, world tree, whatever) together. You might be lighting stars, sculpting planets, trying to figure out how to keep the planes of Fire and Water from exploding each other, designing lifeforms, drafting laws of magic or science -- whatever floats your boat. To make this accurate to what we know of science and of cosmologies from world religions, each player character has at least one other PC they can't stand and at least one other PC they ally with consistently. This campaign is run not by a Dungeonmaster but by The Highest Power.
Tabletop gaming: Design a pocket game. The game engine must fit on one sheet of 8.5x11" paper (can be printed on both sides). Any additional tools must also fit into a typical pocket (a real masculine pocket, not a fake ladypocket or one you can't fit your damn hand into), such as a d6 and a pencil. Your smartphone counts if you wish to code an app instead of drafting a hardcopy game, but the game must be playable on a table not on the phone itself. Part of the game mechanics is that it incorporates some number of small portable objects found in the immediate vicinity (e.g. what they players have in their pockets or purse, what is visible in the room and can be commandeered without causing a problem), which you then place upon your table and use in some fashion to play the game. You must include a summary of at least 5 broad categories of objects (e.g. diningware, jewelry, game loose parts, currency, trash from a garbage can) and how each category performs in the game. (Note that pocket games tend to sell really well on Kickstarter, if anyone wants to build this.)
Tarot: The deity of divination has spilled their deck. Only some of their cards remain usable. To simulate this effect, the game master shuffles a Tarot deck and then removes at least 1/4 of the cards without looking. Next, turn over and write down which cards are removed from play. Now it's up to the players to determine 1) which cards have been removed and no longer perform divination in the material world and 2) how to devise a new divinatory tool that can take the place of Tarot without using the concepts from the "lost" cards.
Yoga: Describe a set of at least 10 asanas or mudras for a nonhuman species who does not possess the same number and orientation of limbs, digits, etc. as a standard human but who desperately wants to do yoga with human friends. If you're into high school or college tropes, the motivation is ready-made young people want to do what their friends are doing; for adults you might need to stretch a bit further.
>> Send it my way! I can't say if or when it will ever become a finished piece of writing, but I'll do my best and appreciate having the nudge no matter the outcome.<<
If you do write something, I would love to get a link for it so I can read it.
(And that goes for anyone else who might decide to play with these.)
lebateleur as part of snowflake_challenge and realized that 1) I want to save these and 2) other people would probably enjoy them also. DO NOT read with mouth full.>> Hm. I'm in a writing rut, so how about this—Do you have a prompt for: (list of fandoms in stickypost) <<
RELEASE THE PLOTBUNNIES!
Current Obsessions:
Good Omens
* If you want to succeed as a writer -- any kind of writer -- London is the place to go. Nobody knows quite why, just that it massively raises your chances of sudden success.
Why: because Aziraphale secretly loves writing workshops and author events and all that bookworm stuff, and he hands out little miracles like they are candy. You still have to finish your manuscripts and submit them, but from there he's got you covered.
* Crowley goes on a tremendous tear about humans driving plant species to extinction and curses the shite out of someone he deems responsible. Because we all love seeing Crowley totally losing it.
Forever Fandoms:
Discworld: All of the Deaths at an amusement park trying to figure out what "amusement" is. The most successful is the Death of Rats, who meets Templeton the Rat (from Charlotte's Web) and learns about the joys of gluttony. Of course, now he's going to be singing that song forever...
Farscape: Moya likes to compose treatises about the evils of slavery. But for someone who thinks in colors and quantum physics, they're a little difficult to translate into something that humanoid species can understand.
Lord of the Rings: If you are a crafter of anything whatsoever, you know how ... messy ... the creative process is. So what happened to all the rough drafts that Annatar and Celebrimbor flung all over the forge? "Let's use an opal, that's fiery--" "Are you DAFT? Opals are fragile, it'll crack. We'll use a diamond." "What? No, everybody and his dog uses diamonds." *throws rough draft across room*
X-Files: In the age of "alternative facts" and deepfakes, Mulder attempts to come up with a program that can distinguish "the truth is out there" from nonsense. And his program becomes sapient, whereupon it ravages society because humans actually HATE the truth. Scully tears her hair out trying to do damage control without, you know, actually taking the side of internet trolls.
My Fandoms of One:
Paraic O'Donnell's The House on Vesper Sands: Connect the missing girls in this novel with other aspects of violence against women, e.g. global sex trafficking, missing and murdered indigenous women, attacks on female-presenting gender-variant people, etc. None of that is new, it will all have its own variations in the Victorian setting. They've always been targets, always "disappeared" into the cracks ... and sometimes strange things result.
Sugiura Shiho's 終点unknown: That which is unknown is powerful. Knowledge is power, but it is always limited. What is unknown is unlimited, and therefore stronger. To know is to hold a tiny candle in a vast, windy darkness. You can never know everything; there will always be more than you don't know than what you do know. And that's maddening for characters who seek to make the unknown into the known.
Old Flames:
Bleach: This show is a lot about self-awareness, because the powers are basically expressions of your inner self. And it's mostly handled with a fairly serious take on meditation, martial arts practice, etc. Now there's one exercise that is downright notorious for that sort of thing: The Doorway Exercise. It's maddening and everyone knows this. Enter We Didn't Playtest This at All. You have to do things like shout "Aaah! Zombies!" at the beginning of your turn or zombies will eat your brain and you lose. Suddenly the mindfulness is hilarious instead of tedious. Now what is that going to do to a character's manifestation of combat powers?
Firefly: Two by Two, hands of blue. The thing about a group of characters who always do the same thing is it's a huge vulnerability. So let's find the factory where the blue gloves are made -- because you know there's only one, it's got to be a secret -- and pour contact poison into the process. Something slow-acting that takes days to show symptoms. Then watch these extremely uncreative people scramble around trying to figure out why their operatives are suddenly dropping dead.
Harry Potter: The stories just make me want to drown every adult in Wizarding Britain. So let's just cross this with Hy-Brasil and say that some magical accident is causing Britain to sink.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: After the release of all potential Slayers, it turns out that magic runs on identity not presentation. So now there are scads of trans and other gender-variant Slayers running around, not all of whom conventionally look like "girls."
MCU: Erik Lensherr and Steve Rogers meet, secretly, in coffeeshops to reminisce over a time that few others remember. One day, Steve shows up with a battered Bucky in tow. "Found him." "And you brought him here because...?" "Well, first, he's from my time too. And second, I figure if anyone knows about fixing busted-up supervillains, it'd be you."
Enduring Interests
Anime: Let's have some fanservice! I want to see a blowoff of a male character doing a nekkid transformation with a sparkly star covering where his dangle should be. Like The Hawkeye Initiative, but anime.
Books: America is in a book-burning mood again. Pretty much every bibliophile knows the Curse of Ashes -- if you burn books, their ideas fly away on the wind to inspire other people far out reach from the arsonists. Because ideas never die. But what if someone discovered the Blessing of Ashes instead? You cast it, reach into the ashes, and pull out a previously burned book. Now watch the censors lose every last speck of their shit. This should work in any magical setting, but particularly bookshop canon or AU, magical school, or monster hunters who use reference books.
Calligraphy & fountain pens: We've all seen "modern person (often self-insert) gets dropped into historic/fantasy setting" AU stories. Now I don't know about you, but I'd be all, "WTF no, I am not spending the rest of my life writing with a goose feather. You there, smith! This is what a metal nib looks like. This is what a ballpoint nib looks like. Is there a chemist in the house? We're gonna need some new ink, I don't know how it's made but I can describe its performance properties. A fountain pen has a package of ink inside it, so does a ballpoint pen. This is what a screw press looks like. I don't have a fancier printing press permed but here is how movable type works. Is there another linguist in the house? We need your language's alphabet in order of frequency." "Erm ... we're going on a quest? To slay a dragon?" "Oh right, yeah, gimme a minute and I'll barf up a xenobiology text on dragons and how to analyze any species for weak points. But first, let me finish revolutionizing your literacy tools, kthxbye."
Foreign language learning: Suzette Haden Elgin once observed that "Writers will put their characters through any horrible experience, except learning a foreign language." LOL no, that is one of my favorite challenges. I especially love dumping characters on an alien planet where they don't speak the language and have to get by "somehow." No universal translator, no Babelfish, no Spell of Tongues, zip-nada. You have your brain and your senses, any human languages you may know, so good luck prying open the window that evolution painted shut when you were 7 or so. For bonus points, include a thumbnail sample of the alien language, how it does at least one thing that no (known, surviving) human language does, and how the characters melt down trying to cope with that.
Gardening: In a permaculture, sometimes Gaia throws in things you didn't actually pay for and plant yourself. So what if She's busy, tired, and forgets which plants or animals belong in which dimension and puts something in the "wrong" garden? Believe me, after the wild grapes, elderberries, cup plants, and a pair of bald eagles using my yard as a romantic carpet under their courting flight ... I wouldn't be that surprised to walk out one morning and find a symurgh staring at me from an enchanted fruit tree. "Ah you better not have brought any invasive species with you, you fluffy bugger! Are there any pests on that tree? Any pollinators or do you expect me to come up there with a paintbrush?" *Symurgh gives a flustered ruffle and inches away*
Irish traditional music: An enchanted harp bestows the Bardic Gift on those who play it ... but only works for vision-impaired players.
Manga: In order to make the spellbook work, you have to read it "backwards" from your usual language. So everyone thinks it's a fake and doesn't work, until the otaku picks it up and opens the back cover by sheer habit.
Roleplaying games: My rule for character construction was that you can build whatever you are able to build, and play it -- and I will scale the challenges to match. So I thought it'd be fun to make a megascale roleplaying game where each player is running a different deity (fantasy or horror setting) or force of nature (science / SF setting) and your collective job is to construct a world (realm, universe, solar system, world tree, whatever) together. You might be lighting stars, sculpting planets, trying to figure out how to keep the planes of Fire and Water from exploding each other, designing lifeforms, drafting laws of magic or science -- whatever floats your boat. To make this accurate to what we know of science and of cosmologies from world religions, each player character has at least one other PC they can't stand and at least one other PC they ally with consistently. This campaign is run not by a Dungeonmaster but by The Highest Power.
Tabletop gaming: Design a pocket game. The game engine must fit on one sheet of 8.5x11" paper (can be printed on both sides). Any additional tools must also fit into a typical pocket (a real masculine pocket, not a fake ladypocket or one you can't fit your damn hand into), such as a d6 and a pencil. Your smartphone counts if you wish to code an app instead of drafting a hardcopy game, but the game must be playable on a table not on the phone itself. Part of the game mechanics is that it incorporates some number of small portable objects found in the immediate vicinity (e.g. what they players have in their pockets or purse, what is visible in the room and can be commandeered without causing a problem), which you then place upon your table and use in some fashion to play the game. You must include a summary of at least 5 broad categories of objects (e.g. diningware, jewelry, game loose parts, currency, trash from a garbage can) and how each category performs in the game. (Note that pocket games tend to sell really well on Kickstarter, if anyone wants to build this.)
Tarot: The deity of divination has spilled their deck. Only some of their cards remain usable. To simulate this effect, the game master shuffles a Tarot deck and then removes at least 1/4 of the cards without looking. Next, turn over and write down which cards are removed from play. Now it's up to the players to determine 1) which cards have been removed and no longer perform divination in the material world and 2) how to devise a new divinatory tool that can take the place of Tarot without using the concepts from the "lost" cards.
Yoga: Describe a set of at least 10 asanas or mudras for a nonhuman species who does not possess the same number and orientation of limbs, digits, etc. as a standard human but who desperately wants to do yoga with human friends. If you're into high school or college tropes, the motivation is ready-made young people want to do what their friends are doing; for adults you might need to stretch a bit further.
>> Send it my way! I can't say if or when it will ever become a finished piece of writing, but I'll do my best and appreciate having the nudge no matter the outcome.<<
If you do write something, I would love to get a link for it so I can read it.
(And that goes for anyone else who might decide to play with these.)
(no subject)
Date: 2024-01-07 12:30 am (UTC)Yes ...
Date: 2024-01-07 01:30 am (UTC)Me, my window is still somewhat open. It's an energy hog and a major distraction in a multilingual environment. But I wouldn't trade it for the world.
... or you can always hop in the sack and create a linguistic expert. ;)
Re: Yes ...
Date: 2024-01-07 01:41 am (UTC)Evolution took a wrong turn with me... I'm equally bad at learning all languages, including the one I was born into. I mean, I sorta muddle along on half-assed guesses and whatever experience, but it does not come fluently.
I dunno, maybe I was meant to be telepathic or something, but I haven't got those neural circuits either.
Re: Yes ...
Date: 2024-01-09 03:33 am (UTC)For the rest of it:
- With language there are interpreters, phrasebooks, and translation apps, which all have advantages and disadvantages depending on individual needs and preferences.
- With communication [other than language] there are other options. Art skills, acting skills and social skills can all be used to compensate for lack of linguistic capability to some degree.
Also, I observe that people are quite often absolutely delighted with an attempt to use their language, even if it is only a handful of awkwardly-spoken words. ("Hello" "please" and "thank you") are good choices.
Ultimately, if your skills work for you, than it is fine. If your skills are failing to meet your goals and expectations, there are a lot of workarounds that might get whatever the desired result is, without your having to be able to learn a new language.
(no subject)
Date: 2024-01-07 01:46 am (UTC)You know a lot of Alchemical texts were written backwards, had all kinds of hidden or missing steps and so on... I can just see some Otaku who's a chemist nerd getting hold of one of those and making it work...
(no subject)
Date: 2024-01-07 04:43 am (UTC)Ascendance of a Bookworm is a anime series that was adapted from a manga adapted from a light novel series. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascendance_of_a_Bookworm
The basic idea is that a modern Japanese girl who was going to be a librarian is dumped into a different world but she is in the body of a sickly child. She has to deal with her new body, not knowing the language, culture and worse of all not having access to any books! Her family is pretty much illiterate due to their status & the culture.
I highly recommend it in any form. I first watched the anime but I've also read some of the novels as they were available at my library. The novels go into more detail on some things liek cultural practices. Plus the novels are complete. The show has several seasons with the next one confirmed but not out yet.
(no subject)
Date: 2024-01-07 07:04 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2024-01-07 06:29 pm (UTC)Had a DM once who set up a side campaign where we were "us". Essentially transported to the fantasy world with our knowledge and skills intact. Bodies got a bit of a boost to get us up to "average" an areas we were particularly weak.
The results were a bit scary as some of us had retained *way* to much science/engineering know-how.
I figured out how to make calcium carbide and got rich selling explosion proof lamps to miners.
We will draw a curtain over the nuclear reactor plans... :-)
(no subject)
Date: 2024-01-07 10:37 pm (UTC)I can do simple prestidigitation (palming a coin) and I know a fair bit of guerilla chemistry (having once read Abby Hoffman's Steal this Book. I could probably develop a decent career out of using electrical tricks to convince people I'm a powerful sorceress. I also know a fair bit of midwifery and general first aid. And I have a lot of ability to improvise food from random ingredients. In a quasi-medieval setting, I could do a lot of Crone things.
(no subject)
Date: 2024-01-09 03:37 am (UTC)Murdoch Mysteries used that in an episode once. (For anyone unfamiliar with the series, it is basically CSI set in the 1890s.)
>>I figured out how to make calcium carbide and got rich selling explosion proof lamps to miners.<<
Did you ever read any of the Ring of Fire books? The time travelers essentially ended up doing a lot of stuff like that.
>>We will draw a curtain over the nuclear reactor plans... :-) <<
And the glow-in-the-dark makeup plans? ;)
(no subject)
Date: 2024-01-09 08:16 pm (UTC)But yes, I've got most of them and have read the first dozen or so. (too many books, too little time)
No glow-in-the-dark makeup. Though our plans (never done) did involve using captured orcs and the like as slave labor in the more dangerous jobs.
(no subject)
Date: 2024-01-09 11:08 pm (UTC)I'd suggest using nonliving constructs - Zombis, golems, hommunculi for such things, but I suppose that it would run into the same problems as with tech in our world:
1) to pricey or labor-intensive to make
2) not detail-capable enough (or not without a ton of work)
3) at some point they become sophonts, and people historically are terrible at respecting that line
(no subject)
Date: 2024-01-10 07:25 am (UTC)A 2 book series where Orcs reproduced in an especially horrifying way (think of some parasitic wasps).
And a few books where they do do things from the "bad guy" point of view.
And then there's the series about an Otaku who winds up in a "game" world and is forced to be a succubus. The I Became a Succubus, and the Only Way to Level is to... What?! series by Jammin' Rabbit.
(no subject)
Date: 2024-01-11 04:35 am (UTC)Or alternately, they aren't evil, just different in such a confusing way that it takes a really long time and a lot of work to even begin to establish any sort of trusting amicable relationship. Like, one group has no property law, or they only recognize select subgroups of the population as having rights, or they fundamentally misunderstand the lived experience of the other group(s) in the setting.
At least with the Tolkienesque orcs, he didn't think they were irredeemable, but couldn't seem to figure out how to make them be good again.
The Urgals from the Inheritance Cycle were well-done I think - we mostly see them from across the battlelines, and the main viewpoint character hates them from seeing the leaving-behind of that violence. He doesn't chill out with the Fantastic Racism until he essentially does a mind-meld with some of them, and even then, he has no way to explain his change of heart to his similarly-prejudiced friends.
>>The I Became a Succubus, and the Only Way to Level is to... What?! series by Jammin' Rabbit.<<
There are various examples of Vegan Vampires of all sorts.
For the video-game specific example, I would also wonder if there is a way to gain valuable skills outside of the levelling up protocol. For example, can you max some stats independently of level, use high-level gear, or join a team and barter stockpiled goods, knowledge, etc?
(no subject)
Date: 2024-01-11 08:27 am (UTC)One thing she finds is that while you can't reduce the default 1 point in the various skills and abilities (there are *hundreds of them) if you *add* a point and *then* reduce it, you can reduce it to 0 and get extra points to applies to other things.
So she does that for *everything* except the half dozen of so attributes (Strength, Dexterity, etc). and she adds all those points to Luck.
Which means she has the default rating of 5 in the base attributes, and zero in all the secondary skills. But 7300 in Luck!!!
This makes for a *very* unique character. One that breaks a lot of the system. :-)
She gets thru her early encounters because the monsters die in various unlikely ways when they attack her. and since they were attacking, she gets experience when they die.
At one point she encounters a major boss (Demon Lord who controls all the demons he's been importing to conq1uer the world). He decides she's a danger and tries to kill her. Except by sheer luck a small meteor goes thru his head and kills him.
Which make her the new Demon Lord with control of all the demons. And an insane number of points.
The NPCs (natives) can't do that because there's a timeout on the setup screen, and it gets presented to *them* when they are born. So they can't modify anything until they're a teen and start leveling up. and even then they don't get *that* screen.
(no subject)
Date: 2024-01-11 03:08 pm (UTC)Reminds me of something I read on the internet once:
Q: If you wound up in a video game, what is the first thing you would do?
A: Look at my stats to find out what is wrong with me.
(no subject)
Date: 2024-01-11 03:09 pm (UTC)Reminds me of something I read on the internet once:
Q: If you wound up in a video game, what is the first thing you would do?
A: Look at my stats to find out what is wrong with me.
(no subject)
Date: 2024-01-07 06:33 pm (UTC)If destroying a book is on par with melting down a car and recovering the metals from it, that's going to make it a lot less common.
(no subject)
Date: 2024-01-09 03:39 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2024-01-07 10:54 pm (UTC)Humans have been able to learn each other's languages since we figured out where the exit from the Rift Valley was. Pointing and charades, shouting and arm-waving, and lots of show and tell.
Aliens who have cephalopod bodies. Inventing yoga for octopods might be fun. And to me the unknown is exciting - it's a huge stack of unimaginable holiday presents, just waiting for someone to come along who knows how to open them.
And I want the Blessing of Ashes. An endless supply of books I haven't read yet!
(no subject)
Date: 2024-01-09 03:41 am (UTC)Yup. And as long as no-one ends up getting attacked, then you're doing pretty well.
>>Aliens who have cephalopod bodies.<<
https://suberic.net/~dmm/rikchik/intro.html
(no subject)
Date: 2024-01-09 03:26 am (UTC)The world being crafting castoffs would explain a lot. Also, what if there is an Island of Misfit Toys-esque world for all the odd projects that failed to make the cut or just plain failed?
>>And his program becomes sapient, whereupon it ravages society because humans actually HATE the truth.<<
This part has been done. See the early scifi story A Logic Named Joe, by Murray Leinster (Which also predicted the invention of personal computers, internet...and some of the issues with those things.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Logic_Named_Joe
Come to think of it, you could also look at Fae, truth spells, and moral obligations of truthspeaking.
>>This show is a lot about self-awareness, because the powers are basically expressions of your inner self. And it's mostly handled with a fairly serious take on meditation, martial arts practice, etc.<<
This sort of thing could be played as a Disability Superpower. Like:
- someone who has massive mood swings can regulate their emotions in a mood-sensitive Fisher-King Otherworld better than a normie.
- Ditto for the person that gets possessed by a demon who tries to corrupt them - but fails, because dealing with obsessive thoughts is the same skillset whether it is OCD or an irritating demon joyriding your brain.
- And someone with shapeshifting powers might be unexpectedly good at operating multiple very different brains if they are used to having different mental-state personas.
>>The stories just make me want to drown every adult in Wizarding Britain.<<
A lot of that could be explained by cultural differences...so now I want to see a HP fanfic where there is a Culture Clash between the Elizabethan Divine Right of Kings wizards who consider public executions to be family fun and workhouses to be dangerously innovative with the Muggles who have laws against animal cruelty (and cruelty against children), state-funded healthcare, and health-and-building codes.
While I have seen fanfics that incorporate bits of this, I don't think I've seen one where it was the main focus.
Also, even if Dumbledore's logic was "Welp, the Dursleys are better than a workhouse/Dickensian orphanage," that still doesn't mean I think his decision was right.
>>Erik Lensherr and Steve Rogers meet, secretly, in coffeeshops to reminisce over a time that few others remember.<<
Somewhere there's a good genderbent fic where Stephanie Rogers (among her other activities) befriends an elderly WWII veteran in the present day, because they both understand their shared experience in a way most other people alive cannot.
>>Let's have some fanservice! I want to see a blowoff of a male character...<<
Not an anime, but I did read something once whare the guy got himself morphlocked in a way that resulted in him wearing being stuck fanservice-y clothing that was basically strategically-placed fabric and jewelry. Then the whole situation was basically used as an Aesop about how sexual harassment is bad...and insisting that people being harassed have to be nice about it is, mildly put, inadvisable.
>>We've all seen "modern person (often self-insert) gets dropped into historic/fantasy setting" AU stories.<<
...very few of which illustrate the difficulty folks would have with all sorts of things: language barriers, different tech (skinning game and cooking it over a fire, for one example), dealing with problems (improvising menstrual products or losing adaptive equipment), being unaware of hazards (don't pet the fart squirrels, cobras /do/ spit poison), etc, etc.
(For some reason they do seem to love to play with the "Socialized to a different culture -> get attacked by the current likely-superstitious culture.")
>>Is there another linguist in the house? We need your language's alphabet in order of frequency."<<
Speaking of inventing linguistic stuff, I wonder if it would be possible to invent a writing system for a tactile-modality language. (Current tactile writing encodes verbal languages, and while people have experimented with visual-modality writing, I don't think there is one in particular that has caught overwhelming popularity yet.)
>>"WTF no, I am not spending the rest of my life writing with a goose feather.<<
Why does no-one in these settings ever seem to complin about the quality of rushlight vs candlelight, or have trouble with using the quill-pen, and so on?
>>Foreign language learning: Suzette Haden Elgin once observed that "Writers will put their characters through any horrible experience, except learning a foreign language."<<
Well, you need a scenario where it makes sense, and furthers the story. Also, if using something that doesn't go through Google Translate, any foreign dialogue takes longer to write because you have to translate it manually, and that assumes it is even a language that can be written down.
Seriously, try writing sign-language dialogue that is being observed by a non-signing focal character. If you want to do anything more complicated that "..and with that, Bob shooed them out of the room with a teasing grin," you need to know enough about the individual signs, and sign language grammar, and be good at descriptions. Even then, you might mess up if you are using a sign language you are not fluent in!
That said, there are a handful of good stories that use this concept, and there are also a handful of tricks that can be used to play with languages in a way that is both realistic and interesting to readers.
This might be an interesting topic to write a post on, if you are interested in doing so.
>>For bonus points, include a thumbnail sample of the alien language, how it does at least one thing that no (known, surviving) human language does, and how the characters melt down trying to cope with that.<<
Meltdown frequency would likely be affected by other languages known, prior experience in language-learning, general communication skills, and the record-breaking-ness of the alien language on human brains.
>>The game engine must fit on one sheet of 8.5x11" paper (can be printed on both sides).<<
I could cheat by using a mini-notebook. Art skills for the win!
>>Any additional tools must also fit into a typical pocket (a real masculine pocket, not a fake ladypocket or one you can't fit your damn hand into),...<<
Maybe this could be Extreme Mode?
Seriously, there's a reason I keep altering my pants to have actual, sensibly-sized and working pockets...
>>Describe a set of at least 10 asanas or mudras for a nonhuman species who does not possess the same number and orientation of limbs, digits, etc. as a standard human but who desperately wants to do yoga with human friends.<<
That sounds interesting...if I knew the yoga poses and didn't have do desinn the aliens.
I did try coming up with body languague for beings with different bodyplans once. That was fun!
>>If you're into high school or college tropes, the motivation is ready-made young people want to do what their friends are doing; for adults you might need to stretch a bit further.<<
Social bonding or curiosity might still get someone to try at least a single session. Their coming back might depend on additional incentives (like "humans who do yoga have such relaxing auras" or something).
(no subject)
Date: 2024-01-09 08:38 pm (UTC)But they both *did* speak Klingon. So most of the courtship and early marriage was conducted in Klingon until they'd picked up enough of each other's language.
Yes ...
Date: 2024-01-09 08:49 pm (UTC)The same thing has happened with Esperanto and Sindarin. Probably Esperanto has the largest number of native speakers because it's an auxiliary language.
Re: Yes ...
Date: 2024-01-09 11:03 pm (UTC)Language programs are also doing lessons for stuff like the Game of Thrones conlangs.
I don't know if anyone's bothered to compile stats on number of speakers and number of native speakers for conlangs. That would be interesting to see.
(no subject)
Date: 2024-01-09 11:01 pm (UTC)I think I heard somewhere that sign languages are supposed to be more mutually intelligible than spoken ones.
(no subject)
Date: 2024-01-11 02:08 am (UTC)Anyone with anxiety that they deal with pretty well gets, like, +473 to Fear spells, because that's basically Tuesday
likewise people with depression, & 'everything is hopeless' spells. yanno, I wonder if that's part of why Eowyn did so damn well with the Nazgul ...
Yes ...
Date: 2024-01-11 02:14 am (UTC)Nazgul: "I am a creepy old man sent to destroy you."
Eowyn: *gives zero fucks* *STAB STAB STAB* "I've been wanting to do that for ages!"
Faramir: "Badass woman is HAWT."
Re: Yes ...
Date: 2024-01-11 02:20 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2024-01-11 04:24 am (UTC)Anxiety can also make someone good with planning - my brain sometimes troubleshoots potential unlikely problems while I'm doing something else. Plus if they've known about their issues for awhile, likely very practiced with grounding skills.
>>likewise people with depression, & 'everything is hopeless' spells. yanno, I wonder if that's part of why Eowyn did so damn well with the Nazgul ...<<
Actually, now that I am thinking about it, there are at least two other depression-examples from media:
- In Steven Universe, the character Lapis Lazuli can shrug off a grief Emotion Bomb that incapacitates every other person in range, due to having severe trauma (at the very least she seems to be depressed).
- Also, in the first Trolls movie, Branch (who seems to have depression, anxiety and PTSD) actually manages to save the day, due to being the only one who can function once everyone else hits the 'go limp' phase of being trapped and hopeless.
Seriously, it would be so cool to see a setting where someone can switch the mood disorder, neurodivergence, etc to the ableist person who has been whining all day. I betcha aleist person would be more or less nonfunctional all day, and formerly less-abled person would go "Wow, my brain is so quiet now! ...I'm gonna go take a nap!" (Or alternately, if formerly depressed or having a personality disorder have a whole Limb Sensation Fascination thing with actually having a full array of healthful emotions.)
Thoughts
Date: 2024-01-11 09:14 am (UTC)I actually have a character, Anxiety Girl, whose superpower is seeing things that could go wrong so other people can fix them.
Here she is freaking out professionally in "When You Strike and Overcome Him." In "Think First of the Action" she's running the Anxiety Relief Station after the Big One.
>> Seriously, it would be so cool to see a setting where someone can switch the mood disorder, neurodivergence, etc to the ableist person who has been whining all day. I betcha aleist person would be more or less nonfunctional all day, and formerly less-abled person would go "Wow, my brain is so quiet now! ...I'm gonna go take a nap!" (Or alternately, if formerly depressed or having a personality disorder have a whole Limb Sensation Fascination thing with actually having a full array of healthful emotions.) <<
That could work as a superpower in Terramagne or a spell in Quorth. Write it down and keep it for any relevant prompt call.
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2024-01-11 03:34 pm (UTC)Another example is people who are anxious prepare for things. So they're the one with emergency snacks, flashlight, tampons, and whatnot availible on an ordinary Tuesday. (And then your social circle catches on and tries hitting you up for everything from food to meds...)
>>That could work as a superpower in Terramagne or a spell in Quorth. Write it down and keep it for any relevant prompt call.<<
An empath power in Terramagne could have that effect, consensually or otherwise.
Hm, an empath letting someone 'link up' to their brain as therapy would likely be the safest way to expose a personality-disordered person to missing emotions like compassion, guilt, or safety/trust.
I can just imagine someone with a dramatic personality disorder getting the tiniest bit of affective empathy or guilt and going completely off the rails if they don't have someone more experienced to help them regulate it.
(Although knowing what I do about emotions and brain structure, the feelings would likely not be perceptible once the minds split apart - unless there is a power that alters the brain structure.)
Less positively, the power/spell could be either irritation ("Let's see how you like it!") or straight up self defense (the compassionate person shoves their conscience into an attacker, which leaves the attacker emotionally oversensitive and hyperventilating, but the victim numb and dismotivated).
That could also be a useful defensive area effect spell. If the emotion-based people are all dismotivated, and the emotionless people are all panicking, it will have a similar mental effect as, say, turning everyone into crows mid-fight.
And yeah, logical cognitive motivation is very different than emotional motivation, and while it is possible to sub in one for the other it can be pretty hard to turn on the alternate process, nevermind makeing it do what you want. Plus it doesn't seem to be a skill most people are skilled at, unless they do a lot of mind-and-emotion work.
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2024-01-12 03:32 am (UTC)That'd be Jeffery Kemp in "Constantly Tossed About" and "The Aftermath of Disaster."
>> Hm, an empath letting someone 'link up' to their brain as therapy would likely be the safest way to expose a personality-disordered person to missing emotions like compassion, guilt, or safety/trust. <<
Most effective, maybe, but not necessarily safe. It can be the record that breaks the record player.
>> I can just imagine someone with a dramatic personality disorder getting the tiniest bit of affective empathy or guilt and going completely off the rails if they don't have someone more experienced to help them regulate it.<<
And that's why it is not safe.
>> (Although knowing what I do about emotions and brain structure, the feelings would likely not be perceptible once the minds split apart - unless there is a power that alters the brain structure.) <<
This depends on the mechanism of lack and mechanism of conveying what is missing. If you have a biochemical lack and a superpower casting an emotional illusion, it will break the moment the empath lets go or gets distracted. But if the replacement is also biochemical (e.g. stimulating the body to produce certain hormones) then you have to wait for it to wear off. If what you have is an inability to understand an emotion, and that understanding is artificially added, then the change can be permanent, lik one of those visual puzzles where you can't see the rabbit until it's pointed out but then you can't stop seeing it.
>> Less positively, the power/spell could be either irritation ("Let's see how you like it!") or straight up self defense (the compassionate person shoves their conscience into an attacker, which leaves the attacker emotionally oversensitive and hyperventilating, but the victim numb and dismotivated).<<
Fire a compassion spell into an evil army and watch them all double over in mortal agony. Or fall on their swords in remorse. Or both.
>>And yeah, logical cognitive motivation is very different than emotional motivation, and while it is possible to sub in one for the other it can be pretty hard to turn on the alternate process, nevermind makeing it do what you want. Plus it doesn't seem to be a skill most people are skilled at, unless they do a lot of mind-and-emotion work.<<
The logical version is something that T-America teaches to people born without a conscience. They may not have the feeling of guilt, but can often still grasp logical framing like, "If you do not finish your homework, the whole group will fail the assignment and you will not get into that sport team you want" or "If one person steals, that encourages more people steal, then nobody's property will be safe and that will be awful for everyone."
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2024-01-16 04:39 pm (UTC)Of course a downside to that is that it sometimes annoys people, or causes a mismatch of expectations when one party is crazy-prepared, and the other wants to wing it.
>>Most effective, maybe, but not necessarily safe. It can be the record that breaks the record player.<<
I imagine that could also go both ways. Just as my brain might be poison to a psychopath, the psychopath's brain might cause adverse effects in me.
Ideally, doing that would be consensual, part of structured therapy, done in a safe and supportive environment /with failsafes/, and at least one of the parties will have prior experience with training.
I also expect that prior experience working with very nonhuman minds and/or human minds that are nonstandard in various ways could count as useful experience.
>>And that's why it is not safe.<<
Another option is that if the person with the personality disorder actually trusts whoever they are mind-meshed with, they might end up emotionally glomping on to the more empathic partner. Kind of like how scared toddlers or people having mental breakdowns cling to whoever they consider to be their safe person.
Of course if Safe Person doesn't have any sort of emotional regulation training they might freak out too (but at least that is a problem of degree, not an Outside-Context Problem).
>>This depends on the mechanism of lack and mechanism of conveying what is missing.<<
I was assuming a situation where the brain hardware is incapable of processing empathy, etc. (Psychopathy does seem to correlate with less development in or damage to the prefrontal cortex, and I would guess that people with other personality disorders may have different odd setups in their brains.)
So in that case, it would be akin to a blind or deaf person mind-meshing with someone to try and perceive what sight/hearing are like. Ditto for if, say, Aida wanted to ride-along in Steel or Moderato's brain to hear the cetacean languages properly (since compared to cetaceans, humans are at least half-deaf.)
You would, while using the other person's brain to 'run the program' and 'crunch the data' for the sight/hearing/expanded hearing/empathy/sense of security/whatever else be able to understand the Whatever, and you might even be able to understand bits of the Whatever... but once back in the brain that isn't set up to handle the Whatever, the memory would likely be incomplete and it might be more difficult to process with it. Like, a psychopath might remember that empathy is this amazing feeling of connection, or that hurting a normie's feelings is excruciatingly painful for the normie, but probably wouldn't be able to immerse himself in the actual feeling.
Kinda - compare how mood disorders work. Someone who is manic feels like nothing bad will happen, even if their brain tells them otherwise, or they can cognitively process that "the last time I did X it hurt me later". Someone who is depressed can believe that happiness and motivation exist, but they cannot remember what happiness feels like. Someone having a panic attack might still be able to process stuff like there's nothing to be afraid of, this will end eventually, you are safe and so on, but the panic part of panic attack overwhelms all of the logic and other feelings.
Basically, someone can learn how to change their thoughts, or affect whatever feelings they have to some degree, but you can't think yourself out of a biochemical imbalance or wonkily-built mental hardware. So the empath linkup thing would be most useful for giving people perspective on "this is how you feel," and "this is how other people feel" and then using that information to help set goals and build skills /that work with the brain you have./
(Also, apparently being able to analyze one's own emotions is a rarer skill, or so someone once told me. I thought everyone did that? At least a bit? But apparently not...)
>>If you have a biochemical lack...<<
This could be one of several mood or mood-regulation disorders, and possibly some of the things that cause hallucinations. Or even some physical disorders.
>>...and a superpower casting an emotional illusion, it will break the moment the empath lets go or gets distracted. But if the replacement is also biochemical (e.g. stimulating the body to produce certain hormones) then you have to wait for it to wear off.<<
I suppose it is also possible to have an illusion that causes the body to form natural neurotransmitters. Think like the illusionary version of a massage, where you're all chill afterwards because of natural hormones. Heck, I suspect anyone with decent enough illusion abilities and socioemotional skills could hack that, if they're willing to invest in the training.
>>If what you have is an inability to understand an emotion,...<<
This is called alexithymia.
Also compare and contrast with having a lack of cognitive empathy. Basically, an inability to do affective empathy is a sociopath, narcissist, etc, while someone with affective empathy but poor cognitive empathy comes across as a self-centered jerk, because they do not understand other people's emotions. Basically, the poor cognitive empathy impedes perception of other people's feelings, so the person substitutes their own feelings, which...yeah, not great as far as social skills go. Fortunately, someone with affective empathy and poor cognitive empathy will generally care about the other person's feelings /once they understand what those feelings are/ and cognitive empathy is a skill that can be learned to some degree.
>>...and that understanding is artificially added, then the change can be permanent, lik one of those visual puzzles where you can't see the rabbit until it's pointed out but then you can't stop seeing it.<<
There's actually an app for that. Not up to Kraken standards of course, but still pretty impressive.
But you do still have to do the work the slow way. There's no cheat coat of someone crawling into your mind with a label-maker. Though that would be an amazingly useful form of therapy for many different issues.
>>Fire a compassion spell into an evil army and watch them all double over in mortal agony. Or fall on their swords in remorse. Or both.<<
I think the Inheritance Cycle did that to the Big Bad.
A tricky issue with this is that sometimes the Mooks are not horrible people but they are doing bad things for whatever reason. Soldiers kill people as part of their job, orcs are raised to follow Sauron, shanghaied slavers would often start out being very unhappy with working on slave ships, and so on. And there are plenty of examples of people who did what they thought was necessary, only for their minds to snap.
So that's a tricky ethical issue. And now I am exhibiting the opposite issue, which is expressing empathy towards everyone. Great for prosocial behavior, not great for dealing with the Evil Army coming to kill everyone...
>>They may not have the feeling of guilt, but can often still grasp logical framing like, "If you do not finish your homework, the whole group will fail the assignment and you will not get into that sport team you want" or "If one person steals, that encourages more people steal, then nobody's property will be safe and that will be awful for everyone."<<
Yeah, but you still generally need enough functional emotions to want stuff. So if they just lack affective empathy and guilt, but still feel joy and fear-of-pain, etc that will work. If it's straight-up apathy... :/
On a more cheerful note, it can be useful to have a dash of logical frameworking for when emotions or thought patterns are unreliable. I wonder if Terramagne uses it to teach people to work around stuff like panic attacks, depression and mood swings?
(no subject)
Date: 2024-01-13 03:46 am (UTC)Yup yup, this is why my contingency plans have contingency plans. It's contingency plans all the way down!
Yes ...
Date: 2024-01-13 04:15 am (UTC)Re: Yes ...
Date: 2024-01-13 04:25 am (UTC)Frex, I keep several varieties of small hand tools in my van that don't even _fit_ anything on my van (in addition to all the ones that _do_) just in case someone _else's_ vehicle breaks down. Or I have another use for em. That, plus lots of time spent watching MacGyver when I was a kid? I can duct tape my way out of almost ANYTHING.
(I occasionally garner HILARIOUS expressions from people when they're like 'ugh I need an X' & I'm like 'just a sec' & then hand it to em)
Re: Yes ...
Date: 2024-01-16 04:58 pm (UTC)Cars are a useful place to keep your toolkit. You will have it with you most of the time, you will definitely have it if you need to fix your car randomly, and its safe inside a locked metal box. (Of course, one of the people who raised me had a career as a mechanic for awhile, so...)
>>That, plus lots of time spent watching MacGyver when I was a kid? I can duct tape my way out of almost ANYTHING.<<
I once tried to fix someone's bike with cardboard and duct tape. They were less than impressed. (an attachment was too big, so I tried wrapping carboard underneath and taping it in place. Nothing structural!)
I do keep a bit of duct tape in my purse - officially to use as waterproof bandages*, but it is useful for labels, small tape jobs, etc.
*Anyone who wants to try this, please be sure to put the dressing on first, and also don't use if the patient has especially delicate skin or an allergy to the glue. But it is very useful for bandaging up hand injuries before doing a lot of messy work with your hands.
>>(I occasionally garner HILARIOUS expressions from people when they're like 'ugh I need an X' & I'm like 'just a sec' & then hand it to em)<<
That face is hilarious!