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quote:Imagine a wild west world where lead, or more accurately lead bullets, are illegal. Why? Because there is a safer option: Mercyium. A metal which has the odd property of going though air and other inaminate perfectly normaly, but cannot penertrate biological material very well, due to a bizzare chemical reaction. This would be the worst idea ever and it doesn't take a moment of thought to figure that out, which is apparently more than this troper could spare. If anyone misses their shot, it's just going to keep going through walls and dirt and so forth until it hits something living. So these bullets are way less safe than lead. quote:Most things in the Zaran il Legio world, from internal heating to flying ships, runs on a phlebotinum called soul stones. Soul stones are made from crystallized soulstuff. The ethical implications of using someones life-essence to power your car is not really explored. This is just loving lazy. "Bloo bloo bloo, ethical implications aren't fun to write about, I just want wacky pseudoscience, a bloo" wants to make me punch this guy. None of this is world building, it's just a big ol' pile of mutual masturbation as they tell each other how super clever they are for trope tropey troping troper tropely tropes.
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Nov 15, 2013 04:50
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WickedHate posted:Mercyium? Are you kidding? That's like calling the stuff Captain America's shield is made out of "stronganite". Yeah instead it has the totally realistic and scientific name of adamantium  But yeah even by comic book standards "mercyium" is incredibly stupid and awkward to read or pronounce. Is it like mercy, or mer-kium? Or mer-CY-um?
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Nov 15, 2013 04:57
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Fuego Fish posted:This would be the worst idea ever and it doesn't take a moment of thought to figure that out, which is apparently more than this troper could spare. If anyone misses their shot, it's just going to keep going through walls and dirt and so forth until it hits something living. So these bullets are way less safe than lead.
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Nov 15, 2013 05:13
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Calaveron posted:Yeah instead it has the totally realistic and scientific name of adamantium I never noticed that, because at least adamant isn't something people hear often. WickedHate fucked around with this message at 00:00 on Jun 27, 2014 |
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Nov 15, 2013 05:15
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"Adamantine" is also a rather old word to refer to any kind of hard material, and adamant itself has also had a history of meaning "diamond".
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Nov 15, 2013 05:24
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WickedHate posted:Actually, adamantium is what Wolverine's skeleton is coated in. Cap's shield is vibranium. I never noticed the adamant part, though. Cap's shield isn't vibranium. It's vibranium alloyed with another metal or metals. It is not adamantium as you stated, though it has been erroneously stated as being adamantium several times in comics. 
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Nov 15, 2013 05:27
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Sham bam bamina! posted:Nah, it just goes through them "normally"; the important part is that it can't kill people. The real question is why anyone would want "safe" bullets in the first place. I wonder if maybe it's because the There's also the fact that the energy has to go somewhere, and the concussive force of a bullet bouncing off your head or chest would probably be fatal anyway.
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Nov 15, 2013 05:43
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Sham bam bamina! posted:Nah, it just goes through them "normally"; the important part is that it can't kill people. The real question is why anyone would want "safe" bullets in the first place. I wonder if maybe it's because the Oh, well, that's somehow even stupider. At least magic phasing bullets, while a severely terrible idea, would be interesting as a kind of secret assassin's tool. But turning gunfights into steampunk paintball matches? That's just kind of sad.
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Nov 15, 2013 05:51
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Fuego Fish posted:Oh, well, that's somehow even stupider. At least magic phasing bullets, while a severely terrible idea, would be interesting as a kind of secret assassin's tool. But turning gunfights into steampunk paintball matches? That's just kind of sad. I really fail to see any point whatsoever in non-lethal bullets in the old west.
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Nov 15, 2013 05:52
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You all have wonderful questions, and I think this will answer them:quote:It usually bounces off human skin painfully, usually hard enough to seriously damage bone if aimed at the right spot. If fired point blank, it can break through the skin, making more vicous gunfights end up close. The wild west was known for its troubles with communism, of course.
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Nov 15, 2013 05:54
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quote:Lead smuggling is very serious business, after all, with big consenquences for those who the law, or for that matter, the smugglers themselves... Did they forget what they were writing mid-sentence? 
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Nov 15, 2013 05:56
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Fuego Fish posted:This is just loving lazy. "Bloo bloo bloo, ethical implications aren't fun to write about, I just want wacky pseudoscience, a bloo" wants to make me punch this guy. Even worse, hasn't this been done a shitton of times even in the few media tropers actually like and pay attention to? Plus the whole "life is good at the cost of X individuals having it lovely" is downright cliché, even if you're a troper and pretend "Those Who Walk Away From Omelas" doesn't exist.
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Nov 15, 2013 06:01
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Flesnolk posted:Even worse, hasn't this been done a shitton of times even in the few media tropers actually like and pay attention to? Plus the whole "life is good at the cost of X individuals having it lovely" is downright cliché, even if you're a troper and pretend "Those Who Walk Away From Omelas" doesn't exist. It was the entire driving forced behind the plot of Fullmetal Alchemist.
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Nov 15, 2013 06:07
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Flesnolk posted:Even worse, hasn't this been done a shitton of times even in the few media tropers actually like and pay attention to? Plus the whole "life is good at the cost of X individuals having it lovely" is downright cliché, even if you're a troper and pretend "Those Who Walk Away From Omelas" doesn't exist. Well, I don't know. Was there a horrible underage hentai about it? Because if not, then there's probably a fair amount of tropers unaware of it being a cliche.
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Nov 15, 2013 06:09
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I kind of admire how fundamentally bad you have to be at Westerns to think "hey, let's do a Western where bullets pose almost no threat and people can shoot each other all drat day, because it's not like the lethality of gunfights matters at all to these narratives!" Everyone knows a quick-draw contest would be much more interesting if both fighters were able to unload their entire revolvers into each other before someone falls down with a broken rib. EDIT: The saddest part of this is that the dude is probably reading his worldbuilding quirk, smirking, and thinking to himself "deadly gunfights in Westerns? Trope subverted."  How can these guys hang out at a site whose only purpose is vivisecting art into a fine mist and still not be able to identify which tropes are valuable and which are superfluous?
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Nov 15, 2013 06:11
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Flesnolk posted:Even worse, hasn't this been done a shitton of times even in the few media tropers actually like and pay attention to? Plus the whole "life is good at the cost of X individuals having it lovely" is downright cliché, even if you're a troper and pretend "Those Who Walk Away From Omelas" doesn't exist. That's literally soulgems from The Elder Scrolls games. Except that Skyrim actually had a quest that explored some of the ethical implications of trapping a human's soul inside of a crystal. They're not just ripping off Elder Scrolls, they're doing it without any of the nuance of a literary classic like Azura's Daedric quest in Skyrim. Edit: Troper's favorite lines are endlessly amusing, because these are the ones they really liked. quote:Next to the door, a staircase leads up to a huge, high-backed marble throne covered in intricate carvings. quote:It doesn't matter if you believe in the Gods, because they believe quite firmly in themselves.  quote:There is outliving your usefulness, and then there is smothering your usefulness with a pillow as it sleeps. You somehow managed to tie down your usefulness in its basement and burn its house down. quote:'We've got five layers of concrete wall between them and us, trust me, we are completely safe.' Djeser fucked around with this message at 06:21 on Nov 15, 2013 |
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Nov 15, 2013 06:13
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Antivehicular posted:How can these guys hang out at a site whose only purpose is vivisecting art into a fine mist and still not be able to identify which tropes are valuable and which are superfluous? You make the assumption that they understand how these tropes apply to fiction in any basic way.
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Nov 15, 2013 06:18
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I can't stop reading this thread so here's some other brilliant ideas:quote:Years are no longer used to date things, instead a unit called the "anko" (which is just about 1.5 Earth years) is used. In reality, it's the length of the year of the planet that became humanity's hub after they ditched Earth. But since the planet that the protagonists are on IS Earth (they don't actually know it) everyone is taught some weird explanation about how time moves in an outward spiral and an anko is supposed to be a section of that. quote:Every time period looks like what that time- in our world- thought the future would be like. In other words, the Victorian period was very Steam Punk, the 80s and early 90s were Cyber Punk, and for the present, well, everything looks like an iPod. quote:Scientology evolved differently and some of the harsher parts of it are different and a bit more reasonable and it doesn't cost anything. quote:The equator goes North/South instead of East/West. The North and South poles are hot, and the parts of the world farthest to the East and West are freezing. But my favorite, I think, is quote:Half-elves work off of real gentics, so there is no standard. They can be anywhere from particularly long lived humans. Or have human-like bones but an elfs strength, leading to a lot of broken bones. Or they can even have elf level magic, and human level ability to control it (read: none). Half-elves work off of real gentics.
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Nov 15, 2013 06:32
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crowfeathers posted:Years are no longer used to date things, instead a unit called the "anko" (which is just about 1.5 Earth years) is used. In reality, it's the length of the year of the planet that became humanity's hub after they ditched Earth. But since the planet that the protagonists are on IS Earth (they don't actually know it) everyone is taught some weird explanation about how time moves in an outward spiral and an anko is supposed to be a section of that. What.
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Nov 15, 2013 06:34
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DStecks posted:What. "I think complicating things for no reason is better"
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Nov 15, 2013 06:42
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Improbable Lobster posted:"I think complicating things for no reason is better" But it doesn't even make sense! The "anko" is 1.5 Earth years. But it is really that long because it is equal to the time of a year on their planet. Which is Earth. Which means that an Earth year is equivalent to 1.5 Earth years.
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Nov 15, 2013 06:46
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crowfeathers posted:But it doesn't even make sense! The "anko" is 1.5 Earth years. But it is really that long because it is equal to the time of a year on their planet. Which is Earth. Which means that an Earth year is equivalent to 1.5 Earth years. No. Humanity abandoned Earth and settled on Anko, where the year is 1.5 years, and the calendar adjusted accordingly. Now the protagonists have landed on a strange new planet, and don't know yet that it's Earth. It's like Tunnel in the Sky but with worthless extra measurements. When I was in grade four I wrote a scifi story that listed conversion factors for the alien units to eight decimal places, but I've outgrown that stupidity. Tropers think it'll hurt verisimilitude too much if the metric system is still around.
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Nov 15, 2013 06:51
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Improbable Lobster posted:"I think complicating things for no reason is better" I actually think this is an excerpt from Time Cube.
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Nov 15, 2013 06:51
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Do tropers do community projects? I want to see a dozen brilliant worldbuilders nipping at each other, trying to claim their own bit of space.
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Nov 15, 2013 06:53
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Djeser posted:god i want to be douglas adams so bad crowfeathers posted:
Sham bam bamina! fucked around with this message at 07:15 on Nov 15, 2013 |
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Nov 15, 2013 07:12
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BKPR posted:Do tropers do community projects? I want to see a dozen brilliant worldbuilders nipping at each other, trying to claim their own bit of space. Let's make a harem show! posted:LADIES AND GENTLEMEN They've had other projects too, like "Let's make a shounen manga" and "Let's make a magical girl show". Tropers are experts in a wide variety of genres.
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Nov 15, 2013 07:39
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Pretty sure they actually do have a worldbuilding forum in which they're building a fantasy world by committee, too. I imagine it isn't going well.
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Nov 15, 2013 07:41
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Tropers never took geography, did they?
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Nov 15, 2013 07:42
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Arcsquad12 posted:Tropers never took geography, did they? 
Sham bam bamina! fucked around with this message at 07:48 on Nov 15, 2013 |
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Nov 15, 2013 07:44
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Sham bam bamina! posted:Uh... "farthest to the East and West"? What? But actually, someone asked that exact question, and the writer responded: quote:This could happen if you took an Earth-like planet and hit it from the "bottom"-ish area with a large asteroid or something, causing it to spin "forwards" instead of "sideways", but have it revolve around the sun the same as before. This would create a new equator that would cover the North and South poles, making them among the warmest places on the planet. Don't you know that Earth is four directional Time Cube?
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Nov 15, 2013 07:59
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Do they not get that the earth's rotation is directed by the sun's gravitational pull? Sure, the earth's axis is tilted, but it spins the way it does for a bloody reason. And if the planet did spin "top to bottom", as this idiot believes, all he has actually done is flipped the continents around and turned his Solar system diagram 90 degrees.
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Nov 15, 2013 08:07
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Arcsquad12 posted:Do they not get that the earth's rotation is directed by the sun's gravitational pull? Sure, the earth's axis is tilted, but it spins the way it does for a bloody reason. And if the planet did spin "top to bottom", as this idiot believes, all he has actually done is flipped the continents around and turned his Solar system diagram 90 degrees. It is possible for a planet to spin on its side, in fact Uranus does. It's just that this author seems too stupid to understand the implications of that. Or the author might want to simply rotate the map of Earth and let the planet have the same spin, so that means Ecuador would be under an ice cap while Antarctica is a tropical rainforest.
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Nov 15, 2013 08:11
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crowfeathers posted:
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Nov 15, 2013 08:11
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e. beaten I think I get it: the axial pole shifted 90° while the magnetic poles remained the same. It's not completely implausible, I mean, just look at the magnetic situation on Mars. The real question is, what could this possibly add to the story? Oh, wait. Worldbuilding uber alles. Never mind. Also, any impact strong enough to knock the earth off its axis would also be enough to kill everything on the planet several times over.
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Nov 15, 2013 08:13
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crowfeathers posted:But actually, someone asked that exact question, and the writer responded: So basically they're proposing a planet whose axis of rotation lies in its plane of revolution. What they don't realize is that all points on the "equator" (read: the set of points that are moved fastest by rotation, and are furthest from the points fixed by rotation) are effectively indistinguishable, so the "North Pole" and "South Pole" would no longer be poles or have any special properties and from a sunlight perspective would be exactly like all other points on the former Prime Meridian (or whatever other meridian became the new equator). Meanwhile, the points fixed by rotation (which they call the "points furthest east and west", but which would actually be the poles with the new axis of rotation) would actually be special. Each would spend a large part of the year directly under the sun in perpetual day and part of the year directly opposite the sun in perpetual night (and would gradually shift between these two states, cycling once per year). Effectively, they would be like our poles are now, except the night months might be colder (I'm not sure whether getting even less sunlight during the winter months would cancel out getting so much sunlight during the summer months, and it would probably depend on how much of the region is water and how much is landmass since water holds heat better), and the day months would be extremely hot from the endless day instead of "not quite as cold but still really cold". Anything capable of living in such an environment would need to have some way of surviving for months at a time under what would effectively be two very different climates. It would actually be pretty neat except tropers know jack poo poo about anything so they just say "North and South Poles are now Lethal Lava Land, East and West places are now Slippy Slidey Icy World, worldbuilding complete!" e: beaten several times over, but whatever e2: everywhere on the new equator would cycle twice per year between an extreme day/night cycle (like our own equator at the equinox) and perpetual twilight (like our poles at the equinox). Nowhere on the planet would have a stable day/night cycle for the entire year, and people probably wouldn't even think of days the same way we do. The more I think about it the more interesting this world sounds, if only someone with a brain were writing it. Lottery of Babylon fucked around with this message at 08:24 on Nov 15, 2013 |
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Nov 15, 2013 08:14
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AATREK CURES KIDS posted:It is possible for a planet to spin on its side, in fact Uranus does. It's just that this author seems too stupid to understand the implications of that. It comes of only looking at maps and not globes. You start thinking that north and south are just directions like east and west, on this flat rectangle of oceans and land. Whereas really you have to understand the whole concept of a sphere rotating. Maybe tropers can't think in three dimensions. I mean they have a lot of trouble understanding character depth, that much is obvious AATREK CURES KIDS posted:Or the author might want to simply rotate the map of Earth and let the planet have the same spin, so that means Ecuador would be under an ice cap while Antarctica is a tropical rainforest. Haha, no, because that's an interesting idea, and tropers don't even have ideas, let alone interesting ones.
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Nov 15, 2013 08:15
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AATREK CURES KIDS posted:It is possible for a planet to spin on its side, in fact Uranus does. It's just that this author seems too stupid to understand the implications of that. Or the author might want to simply rotate the map of Earth and let the planet have the same spin, so that means Ecuador would be under an ice cap while Antarctica is a tropical rainforest. Huh, how about that. Pretty neat. I'm not even going to begin to declare myself some genius on astrophysics or planetary rotations. I'm probably the least qualified person to be making a statement on such things. But at least I have something over tropers. Common loving sense.
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Nov 15, 2013 08:17
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Lottery of Babylon posted:e2: everywhere on the new equator would cycle twice per year between an extreme day/night cycle (like our own equator at the equinox) and perpetual twilight (like our poles at the equinox). Nowhere on the planet would have a stable day/night cycle for the entire year, and people probably wouldn't even think of days the same way we do. The more I think about it the more interesting this world sounds, if only someone with a brain were writing it. The degree of axial tilt is a big factor here. With a tilt of 0 or near-0, a narrow band near the equator would be constantly habitable in a perpetual twilight. With a more pronounced axial tilt, I think people would have to nomadically travel to locations with the right temperature to survive.
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Nov 15, 2013 08:32
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AATREK CURES KIDS posted:The degree of axial tilt is a big factor here. With a tilt of 0 or near-0, a narrow band near the equator would be constantly habitable in a perpetual twilight. With a more pronounced axial tilt, I think people would have to nomadically travel to locations with the right temperature to survive. 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. I love the nomadic travel idea - you have people constantly following the sun just to remain in a region where days are things that exist.
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Nov 15, 2013 08:39
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Lottery of Babylon posted:They've had other projects too, like "Let's make a shounen manga" and "Let's make a magical girl show". Tropers are experts in a wide variety of genres. 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.
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Nov 15, 2013 08:44
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