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supers and strength
Mar. 26th, 2023 07:07 pmHow strong are your supers?
This is a really important question, turning on various powers -- including super-strength -- and the number of supers, in which, actually, there is not strength in numbers.
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This is a really important question, turning on various powers -- including super-strength -- and the number of supers, in which, actually, there is not strength in numbers.
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supers and the source
Mar. 25th, 2023 10:02 pmWhere do you get your powers from, when you get them?
This is perhaps one of the greatest questions of super world-building. It can influence or even determine politics. It can implicate metaphysics. It can raise grave questions in ethics. It can box in theme.
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This is perhaps one of the greatest questions of super world-building. It can influence or even determine politics. It can implicate metaphysics. It can raise grave questions in ethics. It can box in theme.
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the geopolitics of magic
Oct. 4th, 2022 10:55 pmAfter a time, the evil necromancers face an invasion by an army. Our hero gets to escape during it.
So there has to be some time -- absolute necessity for plot reasons and to motivate our hero -- and I ponder why the delay. The hero doesn't know at first, but other point of view characters do, and the hero will learn it in time.
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So there has to be some time -- absolute necessity for plot reasons and to motivate our hero -- and I ponder why the delay. The hero doesn't know at first, but other point of view characters do, and the hero will learn it in time.
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sword & sorcery goes to war
Jul. 23rd, 2021 07:55 pmWhen sorcery goes to war, what would it do? How would the kingdom use wizards? How would wizards work in kingdoms? Like, becoming king? (And, come to think of it, superpowers would have much the same effect.)
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history and the superpower
Dec. 22nd, 2019 12:20 amThe thing about superpowers is that it's hard to project them too far back in time unless you want to change the world. Alternate history is generally close enough to history that you can recognize it.
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the metaorigin
May. 26th, 2019 07:47 pmIs it possible to write an original superhero universe novel without a metaorigin?
DC and Marvel don't have 'em, of course. Then, both have grown up over decades accumulating aliens from other planets, magicians hanging out in NYC, supertrained women from all-female utopia with gifts from gods, victims of radioactive spiders or explosions, etc. And even they have a concentration of origins between mutants and the "metagene". The lack's a bit much to handwave in a single novel.
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DC and Marvel don't have 'em, of course. Then, both have grown up over decades accumulating aliens from other planets, magicians hanging out in NYC, supertrained women from all-female utopia with gifts from gods, victims of radioactive spiders or explosions, etc. And even they have a concentration of origins between mutants and the "metagene". The lack's a bit much to handwave in a single novel.
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evil overlord Lord Shang
Nov. 4th, 2017 01:34 amLord Shang would be an interesting model for an Evil Overlord.
For one thing, he was all for stern laws, strict punishment of minor offenses, encouraging people to inform on each other, etc. And blamed the destruction of the state on the "lice" which include sophistry, but also, on one hand, music and beauty, and reading the Odes, and on the other, brotherly loyalty, caring for the aged, and reading the Histories.
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For one thing, he was all for stern laws, strict punishment of minor offenses, encouraging people to inform on each other, etc. And blamed the destruction of the state on the "lice" which include sophistry, but also, on one hand, music and beauty, and reading the Odes, and on the other, brotherly loyalty, caring for the aged, and reading the Histories.
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The Great Learning
Oct. 29th, 2017 10:27 pmThe Great Learning by Tsai Chih Chung
A graphic novel version of a Confucian classic, with an opening attributed to Confucius (posthumously written down by his disciples) and a commentary by Zhu Xi. The importance of self-cultivation, many variations on the principle of not treating people as you would not want to be treated by a person in the same relationship to you, and some about government.
A graphic novel version of a Confucian classic, with an opening attributed to Confucius (posthumously written down by his disciples) and a commentary by Zhu Xi. The importance of self-cultivation, many variations on the principle of not treating people as you would not want to be treated by a person in the same relationship to you, and some about government.
politics and point of view
Nov. 20th, 2016 11:10 pmA plotline is starting to come clear to me. The reason why one character is talking with the main character -- in her arch unpleasant way -- is that she realizes that certain people who threw her out of their plan in the early stages went on with it, and wants to use her as a spanner in the works.
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miracle cures in urban fantasy
Feb. 28th, 2016 09:14 pmOne thing that keeps the setting stable in urban fantasy is that there are no miracle cures for werewolfery or any of the other curses and afflictions of the genre. . . but what if there were?
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irreality in fantasy
Feb. 14th, 2016 10:32 pmSome fantasy worlds fail in that they do not realistically react to the magic in their midst.
Take RPG worlds. Where you know that characters have real Detect Good, Detect Evil, Detect Lies spells. Politics are not going to have as much of a chance to get complicated as in reality. Perhaps it's why they have so many good kings and thorough-going tyrants; unless you opt for the latter, you're not going to keep your kingdom from having the former.
Take RPG worlds. Where you know that characters have real Detect Good, Detect Evil, Detect Lies spells. Politics are not going to have as much of a chance to get complicated as in reality. Perhaps it's why they have so many good kings and thorough-going tyrants; unless you opt for the latter, you're not going to keep your kingdom from having the former.
wizardry and guilds
Jan. 10th, 2016 05:11 pmRead a D&D article talking of rigid and powerful guilds, with a handful of masterships, dangled before the journeymen but in reality given only to the children of masters, keeping all the wizards under a rigid list of spells. . . talked of late medieval guilds that worked like that.
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denouement
Jul. 14th, 2015 11:03 pmA story is slowly taking form. I poked at the denouement at a few times -- you don't have to begin at the beginning for development -- and contemplated what the heroine might do with a magnificent superhero making machine.
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naming the city
Jun. 26th, 2015 12:26 amI'm usually as bad at naming cities as any other location -- that is, bad, but one city in particular raises issues. A magical city.
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military campaigns
Jun. 10th, 2015 11:05 pmPhilosophically considering geography. If the story requires the fight the hero's involved in -- I think as organizing the supply train -- be off in an odd corner of the world, that's going to have some other requirements.
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constitutional monarchy
Apr. 12th, 2015 11:26 pmAmong the things that are not the adventures of writing -- how to explain the constitutional limits of the main character's powers.
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settings and politics and Star Wars
Jan. 25th, 2015 11:45 pmThe moral schema of Star Wars is simple enough: Rebellion/Republic good, Empire bad.
There's a certain amount of amusement value, what with the Senate and the other indicators this is like the Roman Republic turning to the Roman Empire, when you consider that Augustus Caesar's seizure of power was for most Romans an improvement. There had been a lot of violence and trouble with the late republic.
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There's a certain amount of amusement value, what with the Senate and the other indicators this is like the Roman Republic turning to the Roman Empire, when you consider that Augustus Caesar's seizure of power was for most Romans an improvement. There had been a lot of violence and trouble with the late republic.
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Le choix du roi
Jun. 13th, 2014 10:56 pmIn Paris to the Moon, Adam Gopnik recounts how, when his wife became pregnant in Paris -- a girl, after they had had a boy -- everyone kept saying, "Le choix du roi!" until he finally snapped when a taxi driver said it and demanded to know what it meant.
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