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Lottery of Babylon posted:I've been assuming 0 axial tilt. I guess I don't have a good idea of whether perpetual twilight is actually habitable or not - our poles are in perpetual twilight around our equinoxes, and they aren't exactly habitable then, but they also don't have equator-style sunlight at other times of year. You're right, the North Pole rarely goes above 0 Celsius even in Midnight Sun season. There would be a band of permafrost at the equator, and somewhat further sunward, hardy winter plants. North of that you get cold farmland, warm farmland, and staggeringly hot farmland. Constant convection currents bring cold moist air from the dark side. Weather would exist because of wind variation, so occasionally people could survive going farther than the normal temperature ranges allow. It is a concept that could make for an interesting sic-fi story, but That Troper doesn't have a clue what it all means.
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Nov 15, 2013 08:46
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AATREK CURES KIDS posted:You're right, the North Pole rarely goes above 0 Celsius even in Midnight Sun season. There would be a band of permafrost at the equator, and somewhat further sunward, hardy winter plants.
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Nov 15, 2013 08:50
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Strudel Man posted:Depends on how close to the star the planet is. If it's close enough, you could probably have a habitable twilight band, though of course that would mean the sunward direction would get uninhabitable faster. Certainly, but at Earth distance I think the habitable zone would be in constant light. It's a good thing, since that's more hospitable to plant life. I wonder if there would be a lot of fog between the layer of ice and the warmer areas, but I think the answer is no.
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Nov 15, 2013 08:52
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Assuming the atmosphere is still there. If the planet is tidally locked with one side having permanent day and the other having permanent night, the atmosphere will start freezing out on the cold side. Even if you added some rotation to this situation, you might still end up with the atmosphere freezing out, as gases released as sunrise thaws the ice out could quickly be refrozen on the night side. You could get around this by dumping some greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to retain heat, but if it's an inhabited planet, plant life runs the risk of using all the available CO2, plunging the planet into an unrecoverable ice age, almost like life managed to do on Earth ~700 million years ago.
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Nov 15, 2013 08:53
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Venusian Weasel posted:Assuming the atmosphere is still there. If the planet is tidally locked with one side having permanent day and the other having permanent night, the atmosphere will start freezing out on the cold side. Hmm. Dang. Could air currents from the sun side keep the dark side warm enough to avoid freezing out the atmosphere? CO2 freezes at -78, and Antarctica sometimes gets that cold. O2 and N2, composing most of the atmosphere, don't freeze until at least -183. I think partial pressure would cause carbon dioxide to gradually move to the CO2-deprived parts of the atmosphere, so if the dark pole is always below -78 that's a serious problem.
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Nov 15, 2013 08:58
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Not that this isn't vastly more interesting than complaining about tropers being stupid, but can we get back on track? There's still more idiocy to be found, I'm sure.
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Nov 15, 2013 08:58
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Venusian Weasel posted:If the planet is tidally locked with one side having permanent day and the other having permanent night... Is that even a thing that can happen? I'd have thought the rotation of the planet would mess with that.
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Nov 15, 2013 08:59
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Flesnolk posted:Is that even a thing that can happen? I'd have thought the rotation of the planet would mess with that. It can happen. The moon is tidal locked to the Earth. The concept has been used a couple times in science fiction. The first one that springs to mind is the planet Ryloth from Star Wars, where the Twileks can only live on a small band of land caught between eternal, frozen night and scorching hot day.
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Nov 15, 2013 09:06
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Heath posted:Why does everybody use the same set of like 10 Japanese names? There are more names available than Midori or Aoi. It's like a story about Americans where everybody is named Josh, Heather or Stephen. There's a trope for that! Apparently tropers can't think of foreign names and don't bother to look them up, so they pick names based on historical figures. It seems to be a rare case of an entirely negative trope: quote:A Famous-Named Foreigner is a character hailing from some foreign nation who, due to the authors not knowing anything about local naming conventions and/or thinking it would make their nationality more recognizable and/or just being lazy, is named after some very famous person from the respective nation's history or culture. Which most of the time sounds pretty ridiculous to the local ear, due to those names often being quite rare and primarily associated with those same famous persons. Flesnolk posted:Is that even a thing that can happen? I'd have thought the rotation of the planet would mess with that. Yes it can, Luna is tidally locked with Earth, which is why we always see the same side of the Moon. It's also possible for a planet to spin on its side, like Uranus, so that one pole is always in daylight. OK I promise to stop talking about planets, let's go to the Amateur Astronomy thread.
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Nov 15, 2013 09:08
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^ good idea *snip*
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Nov 15, 2013 09:13
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I remember seeing a troper-made RPG world somewhere. It was as terrible as you'd expect.
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Nov 15, 2013 09:20
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Arcsquad12 posted:It can happen. The moon is tidal locked to the Earth. The concept has been used a couple times in science fiction. The first one that springs to mind is the planet Ryloth from Star Wars, where the Twileks can only live on a small band of land caught between eternal, frozen night and scorching hot day. Also used in Warhammer 40k with one of the famous Imperial Guard regiments as well. Which is where I recognize the concept from at least.
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Nov 15, 2013 10:58
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Tropes like noirs -- or rather, they like the idea of noirs, because I am pretty sure most of them have never seen the drat things. Case in point: Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye. The film mimics 1940s noirs, but uses them to depict a character left behind by the modern world; his lack of connection to and tenuous relation with 1970s modern society essentially symbolize the pointlessness of trying to recreate that era in the modern day. He also spends a lot of time trying to find his cat, but never does. Basically, what I'm trying to say is that it's sort of a deconstruction of traditional film noir, and I don't think anyone who has seen the thing would ever consider the protagonist a guy you'd want to emulate. But of course, most tropers haven't seen it. They know, though, that it has noir stuff in it... so it's probably really cool and badass. quote:Deadpan Snarker: Practically everything Marlowe says is a snark. quote:Police Are Useless quote:Smoking Is Cool: Marlowe smokes cigarettes incessantly and in nearly every scene. quote:Badass in a Nice Suit: Marlowe is a professional — he's always got that suit.  Phillip Marlowe wears his nice suit to the grocery store to buy discount cat food. So badass
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Nov 15, 2013 11:23
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Animorphs was mentioned earlier in this thread as a thing tropers are obsessed with, which I guess I never noticed before, I figured it was mostly british fantasy novels and animu. I have fond memories of those books, let's see what tropers remember by starting at the tippity-top of the Fridge page. Fridge/Animorphs posted:Fridge Horror: In Visser, it's said that Hork-Bajir are a Class Three species because they are not numerous enough and they can't be quickly bred. That means they breed the creatures they take as hosts. Obviously, this is not explored in the series, but in the books where the horrible future of Yeerks completely taking over humans is shown, this means that aliens in those humans' brains are making them have sex with each other so those aliens can conquer the galaxy. Well, that is extremely creepy, but it's a story about body-possessing brainslugs, and that is a thing that's mentioned, so I guess it's fair to mention it. Moving on... ...wait, this entry has like five bullets under it. More than any other entry on the page. You've said all there is to say, faintly-implied-sex-through-brain-slavery is grody, so just-- quote:Want to take the horror a step further? No.  quote:Yeerks have really poor senses in their natural bodies and get drunk on the senses of their hosts, they explore them and indulge them for pleasure. Think about how eager just normal people tend to be regarding having sex, because it feels so good, now add in a sensation starved parasite in charge of the decision making process and thousands of others in the exact same situation for them to experiment with. And the host has absolutely no say in it whatsoever but still has to experience it. The brainslugs in Animorphs are characterized as extremely disciplined, joyless and militaristic. The "getting drunk on senses" is explicitly limited to "I'm born blind and deaf and now I can see and hear by possessing your brain" thing. It's repeatedly reinforced that they have zero attraction to humans, just other brainslugs that they die when reproducing with, and frivolous activity not required to maintain their cover is prohibited. This is some completely unrelated creepiness that frankly looks like it was written to be fetishized-- quote:You'd be getting raped until the Yeerk gets bored of it, if ever, and possibly they may not care about the age of the hosts involved.  Oh. That's what this is about. "If only I were possessed by an Animorphs brainslug so I could have sex with underage girls but it would be against my will and therefore okay."  "We removed all the pedophilia from TV Tropes, really! Don't call us creepy!"  I went to one page. ONE PAGE. <  >FAKE EDIT: oh good more bullets and not even about on-topic-brainslug-sex but just making-characters-gently caress-in-general quote:This Troper sort of operates under the assumption that a lot of hosts might form relationships during their brief periods of freedom while their Yeerks are feeding—it would explain why Jara and Jet already consider themselves married when they first escape. (Admittedly, sex in a cage with a bunch of other people would be awkward...but maybe Hork-Bajir at least, having lived this way their whole lives, find it less so.)  They consider themselves married not because they were slaves bonding as people in the short times they had to themselves when not being brain-infested, no, it's because clearly they were boning in their cages in front of other prisoners, they boned so often they considered themselves married! ...I liked those books. 
Jay O fucked around with this message at 12:54 on Nov 15, 2013 |
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Nov 15, 2013 12:49
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Jay O posted:Animorphs was mentioned earlier in this thread as a thing tropers are obsessed with, which I guess I never noticed before, I figured it was mostly british fantasy novels and animu.  Deboss posted:Shakespeare was the most unpleasant work I've ever been exposed to. I've seen most of Uwe Bol and Seltzer Burger work, and I'm including it in that statement. Part of the unpleasantness comes from the idea that it's impossible to dislike it, and the answer is greater exposure to Shakespeare. The sooner the works of Shakespeare are forgotten, the better. Given the power, I'd make teaching it a capitol offense And Ninety Nine Cents posted:When the screaming infomercial finally reaches the point of telling you the price you can be sure that price won't be a round number. Nothing will be sold for $10.00, $50.00 or $100.00. Every price will end with .95, .98 or .99.
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Nov 15, 2013 14:27
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What happened to Deboss? He was one of the funniest tropers.
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Nov 15, 2013 14:38
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I like to think he got scared off when people vandalised his page over and over until it got perma-locked, including a few instances of the entire works of Shakespeare being pasted onto it. Like any good cockroach, though, he's probably still creeping around.
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Nov 15, 2013 14:45
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Saint Drogo posted:
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Nov 15, 2013 16:22
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I really hate to bring back up astronomychat but there was a book by Dave Duncan called West of January whose premise is that people colonized a world that takes a year to rotate so that half the world is frozen and the other half is sun-blasted wasteland with only a small habitable strip that's constantly moving where people can survive. It's been a really long time since I read it so I can't comment on how good it is but people were wondering what a writer who's at least competent enough to get professionally published could do with the concept so there you go.
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Nov 15, 2013 16:36
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Saint Drogo posted:Shakespeare was the most unpleasant work I've ever been exposed to. I've seen most of Uwe Bol and Seltzer Burger work, and I'm including it in that statement. Part of the unpleasantness comes from the idea that it's impossible to dislike it, and the answer is greater exposure to Shakespeare. The sooner the works of Shakespeare are forgotten, the better. Given the power, I'd make teaching it a capitol offense Is this guy literally 14?
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Nov 15, 2013 16:49
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DStecks posted:Is this guy literally 14? Nope! He has an engineering degree and is gainfully employed moving carts from one place to another in Home Depot parking lots.
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Nov 15, 2013 16:52
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Mors Rattus posted:Nope! He has an engineering degree and is gainfully employed moving carts from one place to another in Home Depot parking lots. He's an engineer that doesn't value innovation. He thinks that engineering never changes. 
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Nov 15, 2013 16:53
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Joshlemagne posted:I really hate to bring back up astronomychat but there was a book by Dave Duncan called West of January whose premise is that people colonized a world that takes a year to rotate so that half the world is frozen and the other half is sun-blasted wasteland with only a small habitable strip that's constantly moving where people can survive. It's been a really long time since I read it so I can't comment on how good it is but people were wondering what a writer who's at least competent enough to get professionally published could do with the concept so there you go. A good writer can do all sorts of things with unusual or un-earthlike cosmologies. Fixed habitable bands in tidally locked worlds, complex binary systems with predictable climate variation on 1000+ year cycles, slow moving habitable zones requiring a nomadic lifestyle, untilted axes, super tilted axes, horizontal axes, worlds with no night, worlds with no day, a dozen variations on artificial worlds where days and seasons can be more or less whatever the writer fancies. The concepts aren't the problem, the problem is lovely writers who conflate worldbuilding with storytelling and lovely worldbuilders who don't know how science works but pretend they do.
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Nov 15, 2013 16:57
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DStecks posted:Is this guy literally 14? I take offense to that. I didn't understand most of Shakespeare at 14 either, but that didn't make me hate Shakespeare. It just made me want to learn more about the plays (I even took a college class on Shakespeare's plays and have read a few for fun [I have a very vivid imagination, so I can picture how the play unfolds in my mind]). What's his excuse?
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Nov 15, 2013 17:03
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Fatkraken posted:A good writer can do all sorts of things with unusual or un-earthlike cosmologies. Fixed habitable bands in tidally locked worlds, complex binary systems with predictable climate variation on 1000+ year cycles, slow moving habitable zones requiring a nomadic lifestyle, untilted axes, super tilted axes, horizontal axes, worlds with no night, worlds with no day, a dozen variations on artificial worlds where days and seasons can be more or less whatever the writer fancies. The concepts aren't the problem, the problem is lovely writers who conflate worldbuilding with storytelling and lovely worldbuilders who don't know how science works but pretend they do. I think you misread my post? Someone specifically wondered how that specific concept would be handled by a professional writer and I happened to know of an example of that. That's all I was responding to. I agree with what your saying. It's like the guy who says that the technology of the world runs on the souls of dead children or whatever but the implications of that aren't explored. At best it's an extraneous detail that adds nothing to the story, and at worst it's a huge distraction where your readers say "Wait, what? It runs on the souls of dead children? Maybe you should address that instead of whatever stupid thing you're doing instead." And like the sideways world thing shows if you get it wrong it causes some serious problems with suspension of disbelief. And the more of these dumb, insignificant details you stack on (as tropers love to do) the worse it gets. DStecks posted:Is this guy literally 14? I seems like he's doing the thing where everyone likes something so you prove how cool and independent you are by hating it. As though saying you're too emotionally or artistically stunted to understand a great work of art somehow makes you superior 
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Nov 15, 2013 17:26
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If it was him complaining about, say, Ethan Frome or the Scarlet Letter, I could certainly understand where he's coming from (those two were the only ones I ever had to force myself to read that were required reading, I hated them that drat badly ). But dissing on the likes of Macbeth and Hamlet? Sure, they use rather archaic language, but they were so fun to analyze and write papers for. Then again, what do I know, I'm just a liberal arts major.
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Nov 15, 2013 17:28
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Fatkraken posted:A good writer can do all sorts of things with unusual or un-earthlike cosmologies. Fixed habitable bands in tidally locked worlds, complex binary systems with predictable climate variation on 1000+ year cycles, slow moving habitable zones requiring a nomadic lifestyle, untilted axes, super tilted axes, horizontal axes, worlds with no night, worlds with no day, a dozen variations on artificial worlds where days and seasons can be more or less whatever the writer fancies. The concepts aren't the problem, the problem is lovely writers who conflate worldbuilding with storytelling and lovely worldbuilders who don't know how science works but pretend they do. GRRM made a world where summers last years and winters last decades, and he never bothered to explain how that works scientifically because it doesn't loving matter. Good worldbuilding makes the reader go "sounds legit" and not think too hard about it, much like stage building in a theater makes them go "that sure is an Italian market" and not look too close to see that it is actually just painted cardboard. GRRM went "alright, winter is coming" and wondered what that meant for his characters and how society would react to that. Tropers go "but how does that work" and ignore everything else.
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Nov 15, 2013 17:29
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Smoking Crow posted:He's an engineer that doesn't value innovation. Since I'm assuming this is computer software engineering, not industrial engineering, I would greatly enjoy seeing him begin working at a place like Google, or Apple, or Microsoft, and gradually come to experience sheer horror as he sees that he actually has look at other people's opinions with something other than contempt, if he actually wanted to keep his job.
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Nov 15, 2013 17:36
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Joshlemagne posted:I seems like he's doing the thing where everyone likes something so you prove how cool and independent you are by hating it. As though saying you're too emotionally or artistically stunted to understand a great work of art somehow makes you superior I'm specifically referring to how he's complaining about being "forced" to read Shakespeare, which sounds like a 14 year old bitching about having to read Macbeth in English class instead of Spiderman comics.
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Nov 15, 2013 18:55
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Joshlemagne posted:I think you misread my post? Someone specifically wondered how that specific concept would be handled by a professional writer and I happened to know of an example of that. That's all I was responding to. Except he's not. It's worse than that. It's "well, animorphs sells like hotcakes, therefore superior in the only possibly objective measure of quality"
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Nov 15, 2013 19:10
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Well, I guess that makes Twilight a better book series than Animorphs.
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Nov 15, 2013 19:24
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Venusian Weasel posted:Well, I guess that makes Twilight a better book series than Animorphs. Based on that, the Bible is the best book ever written
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Nov 15, 2013 19:27
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Exercu posted:Except he's not. It's worse than that. It's "well, animorphs sells like hotcakes, therefore superior in the only possibly objective measure of quality" I hate that philosophy, because that means that any of the Transformers movies are superior to cult classic movies like Dredd, which piss me off. This troper also does not seem to understand that the a lot of the works of Shakespeare are plays, and better seen than read IMO. Is he taking theater gates into consideration? Doubtful.
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Nov 15, 2013 19:30
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wins.
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PassTheRemote posted:I hate that philosophy, because that means that any of the Transformers movies are superior to cult classic movies like Dredd, which piss me off. Animorphs also have the advantage of there being like a hundred of them and them never being collected. His math is probably along the lines of "This guy bought 50 Animorphs books, that's 50 points for Animorphs, this other guy bought 1 'The Complete Works of Shakespeare', that's 1 point for Shakespeare."
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Nov 15, 2013 19:35
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Smoking Crow posted:Based on that, the Bible is the best book ever written The Bible, you say? Tv Tropes posted:
And then there's the assorted Nightmare Fuel, HoYay, and WMG/YMMV subpages, which are pretty much what you'd expect.
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Nov 15, 2013 19:46
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PassTheRemote posted:This troper also does not seem to understand that the a lot of the works of Shakespeare are plays, and better seen than read IMO. Is he taking theater gates into consideration? Doubtful. I've heard it conjectured that Hamlet was at least partially written to be read, and that Shakespeare's company may have never actually performed the unabridged version. I don't know what evidence this is all based on, but I know part of it is that Hamlet is stupidly long, even by the standards of the day. Also, a number of scenes in Macbeth are universally agreed-upon to have been added later by some jackass, specifically, the entire character of Hekate. It's actually obvious as gently caress when you read it, because whenever Hekate enters a scene, the writing takes a massive nosedive in quality. You don't even need to be any kind of expert in Shakespeare to notice it, it is seriously obvious. And yet, lots of theatre companies still perform those scenes.
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Nov 15, 2013 19:58
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DStecks posted:I've heard it conjectured that Hamlet was at least partially written to be read, and that Shakespeare's company may have never actually performed the unabridged version. I don't know what evidence this is all based on, but I know part of it is that Hamlet is stupidly long, even by the standards of the day. I had heard about the MacBeth additions, especially the bit with the three witches and Hecate (The Cauldron scene). You are right, it's really obvious. The meter was the first thing I noticed. Also, one of the Hecate scenes seems to spell out the scene where MacBeth goes to get more prophecies.
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Nov 15, 2013 20:35
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Alopex posted:The Bible, you say? God dammit, there's a crowning moment of funny page for the Bible and also a character sheet and fanfiction recommendations. My point is that there are no words to describe this. quote:Shipping Fics Shipping fanfiction for the Bible. This is a thing that actually exists. EDIT: They got me. I immediately saw Shipping, immediately went "what the hell" and didn't see Comedy & Paradise Lost. Testekill fucked around with this message at 01:52 on Nov 16, 2013 |
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Nov 16, 2013 01:18
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Let me guess: Satan's a Draco in Leather Pants?
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Nov 16, 2013 01:23
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I remember from my time as a troper that their page on the Bible was meant to be taken as a joke, the joke being "How many inane tropes does the Bible arguably have, by technicality?" The joke isn't as funny now that every page is about cramming in every trope that a work has only in the most technical, stretching the definition sense.
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Nov 16, 2013 01:32
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