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#76
30th Jan 2016 at 7:37 PM
Last edited by ewenk7 : 30th Jan 2016 at 11:04 PM.
30th Jan 2016 at 7:37 PM
Last edited by ewenk7 : 30th Jan 2016 at 11:04 PM.
Posts: 1,019
Thanks: 35 in 3 Posts
Quote: Originally posted by hugbug993
| Well, it's Greek, so it would probably have a Greek name. |
It's more my own thing which is vaguely inspired by traditional notions about divinity. It first shows up in the first story, in Oman of all places, as Iblis used it to become immortal. It's mainly associated with the djinn up to the point I've written. It originally comes from their homeworld (for a loose definition of the term, as they evolved on a star).
Quote: Originally posted by hugbug993
| I do like the idea of tying a lot of Greek myths together like the first one did (mostly because I researched it), but the second one is a lot simpler. Still, while the simple version does cut out the stuff about South America, it doesn't necessarily mean cutting out the stuff about Tartarus and the Neanderthals. |
I feel kinda bad to say I'm leaning toward ditching it, then. Last night, I had a stroke of inspiration and came up with a plot that I think is a much stronger story, more character driven, and less formulaic. It's more heavily based on the second idea, though it's not the same.
That said, the South America angle is something I'm sticking with. That was certain from the start. I may keep the Neanderthals, too, as they're pretty strongly linked in the popular consciousness with prehistoric Europe, and I'm already making a bunch of character models for archaic humans of varying species for my other projects in the series anyway. Plus, a Neanderthal civilisation is an interesting concept in its own right. I don't see a way to sanely bring in Tartarus and the Hesperides on top of this, but I may be able to bring in some other Greek myths in the third part, since it's set in Athens.
For reference's sake, the story I've got in mind now is this (new elements in bold):
Plumbob Scumthorpe and the Kingdom of the Copper Sea (alternate title, which probably makes more sense, is and the Atlas Skull, but I prefer this one):
-After a side adventure in the Saharan Atlas, Plumbob goes to Giza to stop MorcuCorp from excavating the Egyptian Hall of Records. MorcuCorp is looking for the Atlas Skull, one of the thirteen crystal skulls which the Hall houses, and which contains the location of Atlantis.
-Plumbob is forced to destroy the skull to prevent MorcuCorp from getting their hands on it.
-Monica, the girlfriend of Paul (Plumbob's brother), gets tired of his crap and defects to the Resistance.
-Alaric leaves to do an errand in Tibet.
-Paul decides to acquire the Atlas Skull from the Hall of Records in Mexico, in order to impress his father.
-Plumbob and Monica head to Mexico to get the skull before Paul does.
-After a lot of stalling on Monica's part, they find the entrance to the Hall of Records, and Monica pulls a gun on Plumbob, revealing that she was sent by Paul to slow her down.
-Paul and MorcuCorp show up and open the Hall.
-The skull isn't there.
-An angry gunfight ensues, and Paul and Monica chase Plumbob into the catacombs.
-Alaric arrives on scene, and tells Paul to pull back and seal the way behind him, leaving Monica and Plumbob trapped.
-Back in Setra, Alaric berates Paul for wasting company resources on a wild goose chase. Alaric excavated Beimini years ago and found the Atlas Skull there, too damaged to be usable.
-Cliffhanger ending.
Plumbob Scumthorpe and the Fountain of Youth
-A MorcuCorp agent, currently unnamed, recovers the Atlas Skull from the Bahamian Hall of Records.
-Plumbob and Monica escape the ruins and travel to Setra.
-At Setra, it's discovered that MorcuCorp is already in the process of excavating Atlantis. Alaric is about to leave to check it out; Plumbob and Monica stow away on his zeppelin.
-The zeppelin arrives in Argentina. Everyone disembarks.
-The characters run around Atlantis for a while.
-Plumbob and Monica confront Alaric and Paul in the city's central temple.
-Paul and Monica have a confrontation.
-Alaric shoots Monica dead.
-Alaric complains about the apparent lack of fountains of youth and explains his motivations.
-Plumbob expresses her bafflement that he expected to find the fountain of youth there to begin with.
-Alaric explains that his research in Beimini lead him to believe he could find it there. Plumbob finds his logic questionable. A nameless goon expresses his confusion over the fact that the company's files on Beimini are over sixty-five years old, seemingly older than Alaric himself.
-Alaric orders the temple blown up, hoping to find the fountain underneath.
-The temple is evacuated and the charges are set.
-Alaric executes the goon for knowing too much.
-The temple is blown up. There's no fountain there.
-Plumbob slips away and everyone else leaves.
-Anticlimactic ending.
Plumbob Scumthorpe and the Warlike Men
-Plumbob has a side adventure of presently undetermined nature.
-Plumbob is called in to MorcuCorp HQ.
-Paul, angry that his father never intended to give the company to him, has betrayed MorcuCorp, gone on a rampage, put his father in the hospital, and stolen a bunch of MorcuCorp assets.
-MorcuCorp wants to work together with the Resistance to bring him down.
-Plumbob finds out that the MorcuCorp agent assigned to work with her is her childhood friend Cindy. She obviously doesn't approve of her chosen career.
-They track Paul to Athens.
-They confront Paul at the Athenian Acropolis.
-Paul actually did the reading his father assigned him for the Atlantis project, and found that Alaric had totally overlooked the possibility of an ancient Athenian civilisation. Paul figures that this is his chance to get rich.
-With the resources of a rogue MorcuCorp division at his disposal, Paul, despite being a moron, has actually managed to find a site which proper researchers missed. Furthermore, it's somehow the site he was actually looking for.
-Paul slips away and heads down into the caves containing the ruins. Plumbob and Cindy follow.
-Stuff happens.
-Paul finds some kind of "gate to the underworld", leading even deeper into the caves.
-There's a confrontation there.
-The Maggot Men (the Hollow-Earth-dwelling dwarfs from my other storyline) show up and attack.
-Paul manages to avoid being dragged off and eaten, and shoots them dead. He falls over a cliff in the process, however.
-Paul's neck is twisted at an unnatural angle. Plumbob and Cindy figure he's dead. (He is, but he comes back eventually.)
-Plumbob convinces Cindy to quit her job.
-They go their separate ways.
-The end.
Quote: Originally posted by hugbug993
| Anyway, the city itself isn't lost anymore. They found it - well, a few - in the Xingu National Park in Brazil. The site is known as Kuhikugu. It was inhabited from about 200 AD to about 400 years ago, and the people there were almost wiped out by the diseases the conquistadors brought. There's enough stuff left behind that archaeologists can make some pretty good guesses about how they lived - which is surprisingly similar to how their modern-day descendants (Kuikuro) do things. |
Interesting. That may or may not put a damper on things. I can always do what I did with the Iram storyline and de-conflate them.
Quote: Originally posted by hugbug993
|
For Tiberium, there is one thing that might indicate it. The Kuikuro believe in the itseke, which seem to be a category of beings and phenomena. Some of them seem to be beings that live in the forest and the waters, which bring illness and death. Those seem to include monstrous animals. Of course, other itseke seem to be things like an abnormally bright moon, so it could be their term for the supernatural. I wasn't able to find that much on them and some of the information was contradictory. So you could have an argument that there's Tiberium there, if you assume that some of the itseke are caches of Tiberium or Tiberium-mutated animals. Still, there's not that much to the legend besides a lot of people dying to find it and the idea that it's El Dorado probably wouldn't interest anyone searching for immortality. |
Well, the idea in this case was that it's more of a side project, anyway. Maybe even something Alaric started years ago and found a new and urgent lead on. Anyway, thanks. Looks like I'm gonna need to research this further.
Quote: Originally posted by hugbug993
| And Seven Veils? Does he happen to be with an attractive woman who ends up betraying him? |
Heh. Well, there is one character who sort of fit the bill, but in theory, the title referred to an entirely original concept. Basically, Z is actually D, more commonly known as Ceiba. It's an ancient Celtic colony in the Amazon. "The Seven Veils" refers to their system of magic, which involves the use of different preternatural "veils". One of them is visibility. Another is memory. I don't remember most of them. The seventh veil was life and death, as Merlin informs Indy when he has a near-death experience at the end of the book. Rob MacGregor's Indy books weren't bad, but they got a little weird at times.
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#77
4th Feb 2016 at 12:56 AM
Last edited by hugbug993 : 4th Feb 2016 at 6:46 AM.
4th Feb 2016 at 12:56 AM
Last edited by hugbug993 : 4th Feb 2016 at 6:46 AM.
Posts: 1,807
Sorry for taking so long. I've been having a rough time.
I meant in-story. It belongs to a society that's Grecian, or would be found through ancient Athens writings. That or SA tribe languages, but those are much more of a pain to look up than ancient Greek (or even PIE). Anyway, the name they found for it through Grecian writings would probably be in Greek.
It does sound like a pretty good story, overall.
Evil Overlord's List
#13. All slain enemies will be cremated, or at least have several rounds of ammunition emptied into them, not left for dead at the bottom of the cliff. The announcement of their deaths, as well as any accompanying celebration, will be deferred until after the aforementioned disposal.
But then, I doubt MorcuCorp ever read the list. Just mentioned it because it amused me.
A little weird?
My MTS writing group, The Story Board
Quote: Originally posted by ewenk7
| It's more my own thing which is vaguely inspired by traditional notions about divinity. It first shows up in the first story, in Oman of all places, as Iblis used it to become immortal. It's mainly associated with the djinn up to the point I've written. It originally comes from their homeworld (for a loose definition of the term, as they evolved on a star). |
I meant in-story. It belongs to a society that's Grecian, or would be found through ancient Athens writings. That or SA tribe languages, but those are much more of a pain to look up than ancient Greek (or even PIE). Anyway, the name they found for it through Grecian writings would probably be in Greek.
Quote: Originally posted by ewenk7
| [plot outlines] |
It does sound like a pretty good story, overall.
Quote: Originally posted by ewenk7
|
-Paul manages to avoid being dragged off and eaten, and shoots them dead. He falls over a cliff in the process, however.
-Paul's neck is twisted at an unnatural angle. Plumbob and Cindy figure he's dead. (He is, but he comes back eventually.) |
Evil Overlord's List
#13. All slain enemies will be cremated, or at least have several rounds of ammunition emptied into them, not left for dead at the bottom of the cliff. The announcement of their deaths, as well as any accompanying celebration, will be deferred until after the aforementioned disposal.
But then, I doubt MorcuCorp ever read the list. Just mentioned it because it amused me.
Quote: Originally posted by ewenk7
| Heh. Well, there is one character who sort of fit the bill, but in theory, the title referred to an entirely original concept. Basically, Z is actually D, more commonly known as Ceiba. It's an ancient Celtic colony in the Amazon. "The Seven Veils" refers to their system of magic, which involves the use of different preternatural "veils". One of them is visibility. Another is memory. I don't remember most of them. The seventh veil was life and death, as Merlin informs Indy when he has a near-death experience at the end of the book. Rob MacGregor's Indy books weren't bad, but they got a little weird at times. |
A little weird?
My MTS writing group, The Story Board
#78
5th Feb 2016 at 2:27 AM
5th Feb 2016 at 2:27 AM
Posts: 1,019
Thanks: 35 in 3 Posts
Quote: Originally posted by hugbug993
| Sorry for taking so long. I've been having a rough time. |
I'm probably about the least justified in complaining on either account. Hope you're feeling better.
Quote: Originally posted by hugbug993
| I meant in-story. It belongs to a society that's Grecian, or would be found through ancient Athens writings. That or SA tribe languages, but those are much more of a pain to look up than ancient Greek (or even PIE). Anyway, the name they found for it through Grecian writings would probably be in Greek. |
Ah. My mistake. Honestly, the best name at this point would probably be something in ancient djinni, but unfortunately, that's even less something I can look up, and I'm not great with invented languages. The only untranslated terms which appear so far are names, anyway; Iblis, and something apparently sounding vaguely similar to Amanda. 'Amand, perhaps? I dunno. I haven't given it much thought.
Quote: Originally posted by hugbug993
| It does sound like a pretty good story, overall. |
Thanks. That's good to hear. Now I just have to figure out how to make a decent-looking Giza necropolis.
Quote: Originally posted by hugbug993
|
Evil Overlord's List #13. All slain enemies will be cremated, or at least have several rounds of ammunition emptied into them, not left for dead at the bottom of the cliff. The announcement of their deaths, as well as any accompanying celebration, will be deferred until after the aforementioned disposal. But then, I doubt MorcuCorp ever read the list. Just mentioned it because it amused me. |
Heh. MorcuCorp hasn't, at present. A future villain is a little more likely to have, as they're meant to be scarily competent, with the exception of their failure to kill Plumbob in their first encounter.
In any case, Paul is genuinely dead (for the time being), at least, so they're not completely incompetent. Just mostly.
Quote: Originally posted by hugbug993
| A[*]little[*] weird? |
You think that's bizarre? Check out the final entry in his part of the series.
With the exception of the first, his were all bizarre, but the weirdest was by far Indiana Jones and the Interior World (not to be confused with Indiana Jones and the Hollow Earth, a later book by a different author, which dealt with similar elements in a much better way). Indy is kidnapped by the crew of the ghost ship Caleuche, who turn out to be fishermen from the Hollow Earth. Leading them is Indy's double from the Hollow Earth, who is also a princess who Indy has sex with at one point (because of course he does). She recruits Indy in a quest to stop Hitler's sorcerous double from taking over both worlds by manipulating the Nazis (including regular Hitler, which is especially hypocritical as the double is non-Caucasian) and also using the cursed alicorn which Indy stupidly threw into a portal at the end of a previous book. There's lots of running around both worlds (plus a diversion through a shapeshifting, sentient, sadistic, border realm which is heavily implied to be both Hell and Satan), battles with a dragon and a Hollywood Tyrannosaur, and a finale which involves of jumping onto a herd of migrating, teleporting, unicorns. From there, it reaches a climax as Indy and Hitler's alternate universe double have a fistfight over the alicorn atop the Statue of Liberty, which ends in said villain being eaten by the aforementioned Hell place.
Yeah, that was a weird one. It's so weird, in fact, that it's almost universally the most hated of the series. Personally, it's actually my favourite of the ones by that author (and his were by no means bad), but we've established that my taste is nonstandard. If anything, I'd say the worst was a tie between the two Martin Caidin books. It's not that they were bad, although the writing could be dry at times. They were actually pretty good*. It's just that they weren't very Indy-ish.
*Well, mostly. The villains were the hilariously cheesy "Enterprise Ventures International, Limited", or "E.V.I.L.", for short. No, really. Made especially bizarre by the fact that they were more well-intentioned extremists than outright evil.
Yeah, as you might guess, I'm a huge fan of the Indiana Jones franchise. I've seen pretty much everything in the series except non-English works, the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles subseries, the video games based on the films, and the vast majority of the crappy "Find Your Fate" (a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure knockoff) books. (And, to my great shame, a couple of the more obscure games, …and His Desktop Adventures, and …in Revenge of the Ancients. Also, the "action" version of … and the Fate of Atlantis, but that doesn't count.) There's a very good reason I went the direction I did with my new Scumthorpe branch.
#79
5th Feb 2016 at 5:08 AM
5th Feb 2016 at 5:08 AM
Posts: 1,807
Quote: Originally posted by ewenk7
| Ah. My mistake. Honestly, the best name at this point would probably be something in ancient djinni, but unfortunately, that's even less something I can look up, and I'm not great with invented languages. The only untranslated terms which appear so far are names, anyway; Iblis, and something apparently sounding vaguely similar to Amanda. 'Amand, perhaps? I dunno. I haven't given it much thought. |
...'Iblis' is Greek. Well, it's an Arabic modification of the Greek word, 'diabolos'. That one originally meant 'slanderer', but came to mean 'devil' after the introduction of Christianity. From there, it migrated to Arabic, where it meant exclusively demons and devils, so it had to have been imported to the language sometime after Christianity developed, making it less than 2,000 years old.
Quote: Originally posted by ewenk7
| A future villain is a little more likely to have, as they're meant to be scarily competent, with the exception of their failure to kill Plumbob in their first encounter. |
That sounds interesting. I want to hear more about that.
Quote: Originally posted by ewenk7
|
You think that's bizarre? Check out the final entry in his part of the series. With the exception of the first, his were all bizarre, but the weirdest was by far Indiana Jones and the Interior World (not to be confused with Indiana Jones and the Hollow Earth, a later book by a different author, which dealt with similar elements in a much better way). Indy is kidnapped by the crew of the ghost ship Caleuche, who turn out to be fishermen from the Hollow Earth. Leading them is Indy's double from the Hollow Earth, who is also a princess who Indy has sex with at one point (because of course he does). She recruits Indy in a quest to stop Hitler's sorcerous double from taking over both worlds by manipulating the Nazis (including regular Hitler, which is especially hypocritical as the double is non-Caucasian) and also using the cursed alicorn which Indy stupidly threw into a portal at the end of a previous book. There's lots of running around both worlds (plus a diversion through a shapeshifting, sentient, sadistic, border realm which is heavily implied to be both Hell and Satan), battles with a dragon and a Hollywood Tyrannosaur, and a finale which involves of jumping onto a herd of migrating, teleporting, unicorns. From there, it reaches a climax as Indy and Hitler's alternate universe double have a fistfight over the alicorn atop the Statue of Liberty, which ends in said villain being eaten by the aforementioned Hell place. |
Okay, that does sound far more insane. So the doubles are alternate-universe selves who live inside the planet? Or did the double at the end come from an alternate universe where he was also Hitler's double? And why are they doubles if they're opposite-sex, let alone different races?
Am confused. The rest of it sounds awesome enough to skate by on Rule of Cool.
My MTS writing group, The Story Board
#80
5th Feb 2016 at 7:36 PM
5th Feb 2016 at 7:36 PM
Posts: 1,019
Thanks: 35 in 3 Posts
Quote: Originally posted by hugbug993
| ...'Iblis' is Greek. Well, it's an Arabic modification of the Greek word, 'diabolos'. That one originally meant 'slanderer', but came to mean 'devil' after the introduction of Christianity. From there, it migrated to Arabic, where it meant exclusively demons and devils, so it had to have been imported to the language sometime after Christianity developed, making it less than 2,000 years old. |
Is it, now? Well, to be fair, the name Iblis never actually appears in the dialogue of the story. The closest thing we get is his pseudonym, I. Bliss, and he's already established as having a penchant for trolling.
Quote: Originally posted by hugbug993
| That sounds interesting. I want to hear more about that. |
That would be Alaric's mother Rhea. The earlier parts of the story seem to strongly imply that Alaric murdered her, but that turns out to not quite be the case.
You see, when I was creating the character models, I initially created a filler character in order to make the game recognise Alaric as the grandson of Morrison Cuvier, the company's (alleged) founder. I had no use for this character in the story, though, and tossed her aside.
Then, as I was planning out the long-term story arc, I realised that I wanted to continue the story past Alaric's death, which was originally supposed to be the grand finale. I needed someone else to inherit MorcuCorp, though, and at the time, Paul was planned to have long since been eaten by Maggot Men. So I quietly pulled Rhea into canon.
Throughout the first half of the series, there are occasional references to a top-secret research division that Alaric was running prior to his assuming control of the company. For the longest time, it isn't even clear if this project even existed, but toward the end, some of the characters stumble across some incomplete information about what happened—horrifying human experimentation into cryogenic stasis. The implications of this aren't made entirely clear, and I hope to have the reader write it off as simply a case of Alaric being terrible.
Also, there's another suspicious loose end. The MorcuCorp vault has already made a brief appearance, housing such things as soulpeace statues, Thor's hammer, and the Ark of the Covenant. But what hasn't been made quite clear yet, though I hope to bring it up in a story sometime soon, is that there is actually more than one vault. Directly opposite the main vault is the Ghost Vault, a second full-sized vault that isn't even acknowledged in company files. MorcuCorp employees love to speculate wildly about what's in it, but the general consensus is simply that it's meant to be used when the main vault gets full.
I think you can see where I'm going with this.
Alaric does have a genuine sense of loyalty to the family company. At the time he seizes control, he doesn't plan to have any heirs, so instead of killing his mother, he has her kidnapped and stuffed in a cryogenic containment unit, set to automatically thaw out if he dies. This is, of course, located in the Ghost Vault. The idea is that if he dies without producing an heir, there will be a genuine Scumthorpe ready to take the reins of the company.
So Alaric gets himself killed, and Rhea is released from containment. MorcuCorp was last seen in a state of crippling confusion, so the Resistance lets their guard down and doesn't notice as Rhea takes over.
The first villain of this new "phase" of stories is actually Iblis/Satan/whatever, who has escaped from his imprisonment at the end of Burning Sands, and vowed to take his vengeance. He's actually the villain for most of a story arc, and manages to be quite threatening as he steals a super villain's old cache of antimatter bombs and tries to initiate the apocalypse.
Rhea's first act as the new big bad is to stroll in out of nowhere, use the Seal of Solomon to imprison Iblis, stealing his power in the process, and then hijack his cache of antimatter bombs. She also imprisons Plumbob's recurring djinni love interest in the process, in a manner which leaves some question as to whether she's even still alive. She then informs Plumbob in no uncertain terms that unlike her son, she has no sentimental ties to her, and if Plumbob tries to interfere with any of her plans, she will kill her.
Rhea is basically supposed to be everything that Alaric wanted to be, but wasn't. Though Alaric didn't know it, Rhea actually already is immortal, and now that she's stolen Iblis' power, she's doubly so. Her goal at this point isn't even to become wealthy—she's already plenty wealthy. She quite simply wants to control as much as possible, up to and including the universe itself. (It's possible that this is because the cryogenic containment drove her a little bit insane, but I wouldn't be sure. I plan to establish that she ran a secret MorcuCorp space program inspired out-of-universe by the Lost Cosmonauts conspiracy theories, and while that was probably for interplanetary mining purposes, it's entirely possible that that wasn't the only thing she had in mind.)
She's supposed to be the most ridiculously threatening character in the series (possibly excepting a serial-killing maniac from an earlier short). Her very first act is to hijack the plans of Satan, for crying out loud, and it's only meant to get worse from there. While she isn't typically interested in ancient history, she finds some value in Alaric's old files, and thus goes after such things as the Book of Thoth and the frigging Tablet of Destinies. Eventually she gets sick of her non-progress on Earth (possibly having already succeeded in basically taking over the world), blows up MorcuCorp HQ, transfers her HQ to her interplanetary space zeppelin, and starts flying around the Solar System conquering other planets and searching for a collection of alien artefacts which is believed to hold the power to take over the galaxy. And she's meant to succeed in this venture. She's only eventually defeated because she's thrown into a black hole (or maybe the Sun—something with a deep gravity well she can't escape on her own).
Quote: Originally posted by hugbug993
|
Okay, that does sound far more insane. So the doubles are alternate-universe selves who live inside the planet? Or did the double at the end come from an alternate universe where he was also Hitler's double? And why are they doubles if they're opposite-sex, let alone different races? Am confused. The rest of it sounds awesome enough to skate by on Rule of Cool. |
Essentially, everyone in the interior world, Pincoya, is a reflection of someone on Earth. While there are subtle personality things, ultimately, this just means that they have the same soul. The term "soul-sibling" might have been more accurate, but it's not the terminology the book uses. Alt-Hitler, real name Maleiwa, is the ruler of some foreign kingdom in a distant part of Pincoya. I can't remember if it's more Polynesian or Middle Eastern in aesthetic, though. He's also a former friend and, if I'm remembering correctly, lover, of Indy's double Salandra.
Actually, an alternate universe is probably a more accurate way of looking at it. The only time Pincoya appears as a traditional Hollow Earth is as they're going through the portal, which almost makes one suspect something like gravitational lensing in a wormhole-like structure. It's left pretty vague, though. That's just a thought I had the other day.
#81
7th Feb 2016 at 2:37 AM
7th Feb 2016 at 2:37 AM
Posts: 1,807
Quote: Originally posted by ewenk7
| Is it, now? Well, to be fair, the name Iblis never actually appears in the dialogue of the story. The closest thing we get is his pseudonym, I. Bliss, and he's already established as having a penchant for trolling. |
Back to the original point, there are a couple ways you could go with that. The first is to try and make it sound like Arabic, but not quite. For that, you could research Proto-Semitic, which is where Arabic comes from (as well as Hebrew and a few others in that cluster). You might also look up how the sounds of the words are typically used.
Then there's just making stuff up. If you're only going to do a few words in the language, it doesn't matter much as long as the words you do use are consistent (like not using the quar- prefix to mean both fire and toenails). The other major consideration is whether the djinn natural form is capable of making sounds that humans could reproduce. I mean, you did say they evolved on a star. If they are capable of making sounds similar to human speech, but still difficult to reproduce, then the people they came in contact with would probably try to change it into something easier to pronounce, like Diabolos -> Iblis. Looking up Proto-Semitic words might be helpful as it would give you a place to start in figuring out which sounds you can use.
Then again, if they hear the name of the place directly from Mr. I. Bliss or Plumbob's love interest, then the people who hear it would try to render it using English sounds (or whatever the language they're speaking is). Of course, if they're looking it up in Greek documents, then it would probably be rendered in Greek sounds.
Basically, pick a language (ancient Arabic, Greek, English, whatever the characters speak) and use the sounds from that language to construct fictional words.
I sort of did a combination of the two for the language in my current book. I looked up the PIE translations of words and then looked for their descendants to figure out how they may have been pronounced. Then I picked a set of sounds that could and couldn't be used (as well as a few grammar rules like having a dual form as well as singular and plural) and modified the words to fit them. I think they came out sounding more like the Indian languages then I'd intended, but I'm okay with that. Still, it hits the sweet spot of being too lazy to make a full language, but not lazy enough to create a full language for them.
And then, after saving that much time, I do weird things like calculate exactly how much longer an Alyiran day is from an Earth day, and chalk it down to the difference between a meter and a kretipode (which is between a meter and a yard) because the kretipode is based on the leg measurements of the True Emperor (semi-mythical figure who is the ancestor of the current kings and united the world, but his descendants are not allowed to claim the title 'emperor' because he will one day return so it still belongs to him and all the rulers are given the lesser title of 'king'), so I research the leg heights of a slightly-tall man. Then, because the meter is about the length a pendulum needs to be in order to have to have a half-period of exactly one second, the Alyiran second is as long as the half-period of a pendulum that is one kretipode long. Then there are 40 seconds in a minute, 100 minutes in an hour, and 30 hours in a day, which makes it about a day and a half long on Earth. All of that happened because I wanted it to be a day and a half long so that it would be easier to calculate how long it would take to recover from extreme depressurization for a storyline that I'm probably not even going to use.
I put way too much thought into things sometimes. There was one time I thought of fanfic for a TV show, and then wondered how people would react if that were the real course of events in the show, and then imagined someone making fanfic off of incomplete knowledge of the story's main twist. That includes responding to comments and to the inevitable reveal and deciding to continue it anyway because it got good reception.
My brain is weird.
Quote: Originally posted by ewenk7
| Eventually she gets sick of her non-progress on Earth (possibly having already succeeded in basically taking over the world), blows up MorcuCorp HQ, transfers her HQ to her interplanetary space zeppelin, and starts flying around the Solar System conquering other planets and searching for a collection of alien artefacts which is believed to hold the power to take over the galaxy. And she's meant to succeed in this venture. She's only eventually defeated because she's thrown into a black hole (or maybe the Sun—something with a deep gravity well she can't escape on her own). |
Would Plumbob have something to do with her getting thrown into the gravity well, and does this mean that the series will continue into space?
Quote: Originally posted by ewenk7
| [explanation] |
That makes much more sense. Now the fact that he slept with his double is making me think of a recent Skin Horse arc, where a character travels to an alternate universe and meets his opposite-sex self, who is very similar to himself. They both want to have sex, though that got derailed because of genetics, which probably doesn't apply in the Indy story.
My MTS writing group, The Story Board
#82
7th Feb 2016 at 4:38 AM
7th Feb 2016 at 4:38 AM
Posts: 1,019
Thanks: 35 in 3 Posts
Quote: Originally posted by hugbug993
| The other major consideration is whether the djinn natural form is capable of making sounds that humans could reproduce. I mean, you did say they evolved on a star. |
Wow. Wow, I am dumb.
Yeah, they're naturally energy-based. Why on Earth would they have language that we could recognise, if at all? Even living on Earth, they only need language to interact with humans, and we have our own language.
This does resolve the plot hole of Amanda's name. Iblis seems to recognise it, but why on Earth would someone who hates humans so much give his daughter (yes, she's his daughter) a human name? I mean, I'm basing his characterisation largely off of traditional and popular accounts, and it's common, at least in Judeo-Christian tradition, to portray Satan as a hypocrite who is fond of human art, but that only goes so far. But if it was a pseudonym adopted in antiquity, then it makes perfect sense. It also saves me the trouble of thinking up an alternate name for Iblis himself.
Quote: Originally posted by hugbug993
|
I put way too much thought into things sometimes. There was one time I thought of fanfic for a TV show, and then wondered how people would react if that were the real course of events in the show, and then imagined someone making fanfic off of incomplete knowledge of the story's main twist. That includes responding to comments and to the inevitable reveal and deciding to continue it anyway because it got good reception. My brain is weird. |
Might I ask what show?
Quote: Originally posted by hugbug993
| Would Plumbob have something to do with her getting thrown into the gravity well… |
Yeah. I haven't planned things out much, but I'm thinking that by the end, she should be powerful enough to take her on. If necessary, I'll come up with an eleventh-hour superpower, but I'm thinking it might not be necessary. See, due to Alaric's incompetence, Plumbob gets doused in the elixir of life in the phase one conclusion, and while I was originally thinking that that just made people ageless, I'm now thinking it might be more convenient to make it outright deathlessness. Of course, one might worry that that might remove any future dramatic tension, but I'm pretty sure that the main character dying isn't really a huge source of dramatic tension in this kind of story to begin with, and I can think of plenty of other things that could be worse than death for an immortal even if I'm wrong about that.
Quote: Originally posted by hugbug993
| …and does this mean that the series will continue into space? |
Yup. My plan with this series of stories is to pay tribute to as many old pulp-ish adventure genres as I can, and near the top of that list for me is Burroughs-style planetary romance. I'm thinking the so-called "finale" arc for the second phase will take up something like half of the phase's total length. The idea I've got in mind is that there's this series of crystal orbs, with one orb representing every planet in the Solar System, and together they unlock… something. Maybe some kind of alien temple inside the Vulcanoid orbital zone. I'm not sure. So this at least means that I want to feature a storyline for every planet, but there I run into difficulties.
-Mars. There's this storyline that's been brewing around in my head for a while, dealing with first contact between humans and an alien culture obsessed with warfare, with the humans playing the role of the wise older race, but I'm worried that it's either offensive, moronic, cheesy, anvilicious, or some combination thereof. It also conflicts with my plans for Mars' setting and the Martian biology, but I might get around that by moving the storyline to Venus or something.
-Gas giants. As much fun as I'm having making various moons in CaW, I was really hoping to avert the tendency in things like this to use moons instead of the planets themselves. Gas giants are really interesting places. But I can't come up with a way to make a CaW world that's nothing but sky. I suppose I could screw with the lighting a lot and fake it for Neptune and Hades*, by putting things up in the air, putting fog spawners everywhere, and turning the lighting way down. Maybe?
-Sky/lighting stuff for Mars (and possibly some other worlds, but mostly Mars). I'm gonna have to figure out how to mess with those things in CaW, because I'm fairly certain there's no mod that can reasonably approximate the appearance of the Martian sky.
Honestly, at one point, I was planning to scale things down and just go with either the major moons of Saturn or the Galilean moons (quickly settled on the Galilean moons once I realised I didn't want to have to deal with making crap up for a bunch of generic airless balls of rock--at least all of Jupiter's major moons have an interior ocean of some kind, albeit not necessarily a water one), but I decided that I really wanted to feature some TNOs, so I ditched that idea. Still not sure how I'll make that work, to be honest. Maybe there's an artefact for every object of planetary mass or higher? I was thinking about one for the Sun. Still, that's a lot of artefacts to gather. Maybe their corresponding world's mass is proportional to their power?
*Or whatever they decide to call it once they make a proper discovery. I realise they're kind of running out of nicknames for Planet X, having gone through Planet X, Planet W, Tyche, Telisto, Persephone, and probably a bunch of others, but "Planet Nine" is just lame, if technically descriptive. Personally, I think they should call it "Dispiter", from Dis Pater and Jupiter, but that's just me having an unhealthy liking for bad puns.
#83
7th Feb 2016 at 9:05 AM
7th Feb 2016 at 9:05 AM
Posts: 1,807
Quote: Originally posted by ewenk7
| This does resolve the plot hole of Amanda's name. Iblis seems to recognise it, but why on Earth would someone who hates humans so much give his daughter (yes, she's his daughter) a human name? I mean, I'm basing his characterisation largely off of traditional and popular accounts, and it's common, at least in Judeo-Christian tradition, to portray Satan as a hypocrite who is fond of human art, but that only goes so far. But if it was a pseudonym adopted in antiquity, then it makes perfect sense. It also saves me the trouble of thinking up an alternate name for Iblis himself. |
Speaking of Amanda's name, I think I found something in the Arabic language that might work: أَمَان. This is pronounced 'aman'. It means security, shelter, safeguarding, peace, etc. A name based on that might work.
There's also the meaning of the name Amanda itself. It descends from the Latin word amo, which means 'to love'. However, it can also mean having an obligation to something. Both meanings would be similar enough to 'aman'.
Another name that might work is the Hebrew Amana, which means 'faithful' or 'loyal'. It probably has a different pronunciation of the middle A, but it could be similar enough.
Now, I have no idea what her personality is, but any of those sound like something that a person would name their daughter, or that someone would want to name themselves.
Quote: Originally posted by ewenk7
| Might I ask what show? |
Stargate Atlantis, with some crossover with SG-1. I've been a pretty big fan since it came out. I've never actually written any of the fanfic down - just kept it in my head - which is probably a good thing. Saved me a LOT of embarrassment over the years, and that's just the stuff I can remember.
For example, an original character ascends to another plane of existence and uses that to knock herself up (don't ask) by way of one of the male cast members. The spawn liked to chant about the ways everyone on each inhabited planet of the galaxy would die while she tore apart dolls, and also liked to set things on fire with her mind. This behavior was supposed to be cute because she giggled so adorably while she did it and everyone loved her. Basically, Renesmee with the powers of Adria (but without either's rapid growth), and I somehow came up with that before either of them were actually put out into the world.
And I have ones that are far worse.
And I have ones that are far worse.
My more recent ones aren't bad, I guess, but I do have a tendency
Quote: Originally posted by ewenk7
| -Mars. There's this storyline that's been brewing around in my head for a while, dealing with first contact between humans and an alien culture obsessed with warfare, with the humans playing the role of the wise older race, but I'm worried that it's either offensive, moronic, cheesy, anvilicious, or some combination thereof. It also conflicts with my plans for Mars' setting and the Martian biology, but I might get around that by moving the storyline to Venus or something. |
Well, I know of a few cases where it's been done very badly. TNG's The Last Outpost springs to mind. You know, the episode where they first introduce the Ferengi as menacing villains? Of course, that failure probably had a lot more to do with the first season's smug attitudes and Gene's demands than the concept itself.
Still, I would like a deconstruction on that point: some characters come in and try to be smug about no longer being obsessed with warfare, and then the aliens pop their egos by pointing out humanity's hypocrisy on that point. Or the characters try to 'fix' the other culture and it backfires horribly, the culture is apathetic to them, or they manage to do something like make it impossible for the other culture to breed, depending on biology.
Quote: Originally posted by ewenk7
| -Gas giants. As much fun as I'm having making various moons in CaW, I was really hoping to avert the tendency in things like this to use moons instead of the planets themselves. Gas giants are really interesting places. But I can't come up with a way to make a CaW world that's nothing but sky. I suppose I could screw with the lighting a lot and fake it for Neptune and Hades*, by putting things up in the air, putting fog spawners everywhere, and turning the lighting way down. Maybe? |
Well, the problem with doing gas giants is that people going there have nowhere to stand on and explore. You'd pretty much have to either give them something to stand on - like a floating platform? - or make it so that they actually do have places to stand. You mentioned that a lot of the planet was unknown to humanity because they had a weirdness censor. Maybe that also applies to gas giants, or at least some of them.
Quote: Originally posted by ewenk7
| Honestly, at one point, I was planning to scale things down and just go with either the major moons of Saturn or the Galilean moons (quickly settled on the Galilean moons once I realised I didn't want to have to deal with making crap up for a bunch of generic airless balls of rock--at least all of Jupiter's major moons have an interior ocean of some kind, albeit not necessarily a water one), but I decided that I really wanted to feature some TNOs, so I ditched that idea. Still not sure how I'll make that work, to be honest. Maybe there's an artefact for every object of planetary mass or higher? I was thinking about one for the Sun. Still, that's a lot of artefacts to gather. Maybe their corresponding world's mass is proportional to their power? |
Well, that depends on what exactly the artifacts are for. Maybe they don't need to be powerful on their own.
If their power corresponds to their planet's mass, then maybe they're related to the overall gravity well?
Oh, I have an idea: the artifacts are part of some giant 'all planets in alignment' machine. Once every XXXXX years, the planets align, the artifacts activate, and they power something big. Maybe it keeps everyone in the solar system from getting wiped out by a stray radiation wave or black hole - or is designed to wipe out the whole solar system after a certain amount of time, if you want to inject some Lovecraft into the story. This might be where the TNOs come in, since adding them lengthens the amount of time between perfect alignment. The furthest named one (Sedna?) takes over 10,000 years to complete a single orbit, right?
Anyway, if the artifacts need to be in alignment to work, that doesn't stop someone with enough spaceships from activating them. Nab 'em all, send the spaceships out to where they need to be for alignment, and showtime.
There could be a central artifact in the sun, which is the one that activates. The ones on the planets are just hands on the clock.
This might also be a reason why they would be on some planets' moons, since the moons are the only rocky things that the artifacts can be placed on.
That's the best idea I can think of at the moment.
My MTS writing group, The Story Board
#84
9th Feb 2016 at 4:04 AM
9th Feb 2016 at 4:04 AM
Posts: 1,019
Thanks: 35 in 3 Posts
Quote: Originally posted by hugbug993
| Now, I have no idea what her personality is, but any of those sound like something that a person would name their daughter, or that someone would want to name themselves. |
The "loyalty" one is quite fitting in terms of irony, if nothing else. Her father is rather frustrated by her lack of obedience.
On a side note, any thoughts on how I might go about doing a short with any of the various mound-building cultures of the U.S. (Mississippian, Hopewell, Adena, Fort Ancient, etc.)? Their architecture doesn't exactly lend itself to tomb exploration. All I'm managing to come up with is something involving Hopewell art being sold on the black market, but there's got to be something better I can do along those lines.
Quote: Originally posted by hugbug993
| Stargate Atlantis, with some crossover with SG-1. I've been a pretty big fan since it came out. I've never actually written any of the fanfic down - just kept it in my head - which is probably a good thing. Saved me a LOT of embarrassment over the years, and that's just the stuff I can remember. |
While I was never huge on SGA (it wasn't bad, but I think I only bothered to get about halfway through the series), oddly enough, a lot of my earlier serious thoughts in the direction of fanfiction were toward SG1 (nothing was ever written, though).
For one, I've always been fascinated by the Tok'ra; I felt they were a huge wasted opportunity in SG1. Particularly their adopted homeworld from Continuum. Most gorgeous planet in the series, hands-down. I often found myself wanting to set a romance there. On an only vaguely similar note, at one point, I was thinking of a plot where a group of relatively sane Goa'uld started feeling guilty about their nature, but rather than defecting to the Tok'ra, they made things even worse by using genetic engineering to remove their ability to sense their hosts' minds, and then managing to delude themselves over time into buying into their own "nothing remains of the host" propaganda.
After watching Ark of Truth, I remember coming up with an elaborate plot where a my-species-doth-protest-too-much member of the Milky Way Replicators from a universe where they'd conquered everything managed to snag a corpse of one of its human allies and escape to the SGC in our universe, only for things to backfire as the "evil" Replicators came through after them, leading to a new Replicator war. I liked the plot enough that, realising that I didn't want to attempt to actually write fanfic at the time, I tried to recycle some of the elements into an original concept, combining it with a plot idea I had about a sentient alien computer virus from a planet orbiting Altair, until finally it became utterly unrecognisable beyond the core concept, and I eventually abandoned it and recycled some of the ideas to create volume 2 of my Scumthorpe super hero thing.
After watching Ark of Truth, I remember coming up with an elaborate plot where a my-species-doth-protest-too-much member of the Milky Way Replicators from a universe where they'd conquered everything managed to snag a corpse of one of its human allies and escape to the SGC in our universe, only for things to backfire as the "evil" Replicators came through after them, leading to a new Replicator war. I liked the plot enough that, realising that I didn't want to attempt to actually write fanfic at the time, I tried to recycle some of the elements into an original concept, combining it with a plot idea I had about a sentient alien computer virus from a planet orbiting Altair, until finally it became utterly unrecognisable beyond the core concept, and I eventually abandoned it and recycled some of the ideas to create volume 2 of my Scumthorpe super hero thing.
Quote: Originally posted by hugbug993
| For example, an original character ascends to another plane of existence and uses that to knock herself up (don't ask) by way of one of the male cast members. The spawn liked to chant about the ways everyone on each inhabited planet of the galaxy would die while she tore apart dolls, and also liked to set things on fire with her mind. This behavior was supposed to be cute because she giggled so adorably while she did it and everyone loved her. Basically, Renesmee with the powers of Adria (but without either's rapid growth), and I somehow came up with that before either of them were actually put out into the world. |
Gah, that is pretty awful. I'm not even sure what to say about that. You didn't actually write it, did you?
Quote: Originally posted by hugbug993
|
And I have ones that are far worse. My more recent ones aren't bad, I guess, but I do have a tendency |
Do you have an FFN or AO3 account, might I ask? Assuming it's not too embarrassing.
Honestly, I want to write some fanfic of my own sometime. If nothing else, I promised myself that next time I play through the Mass Effect games, I'd take notes for an epilogue fic, and with the new game coming out this year, I'm itching to replay them. And then there's that Star Wars: Legends epic I've had on the back burner for a while… Okay, I really shouldn't ramble on about this. Should save it for the hypothetical future fanfic thread, I guess.
Quote: Originally posted by hugbug993
|
Well, I know of a few cases where it's been done very badly. TNG's The Last Outpost springs to mind. You know, the episode where they first introduce the Ferengi as menacing villains? Of course, that failure probably had a lot more to do with the first season's smug attitudes and Gene's demands than the concept itself. Still, I would like a deconstruction on that point: some characters come in and try to be smug about no longer being obsessed with warfare, and then the aliens pop their egos by pointing out humanity's hypocrisy on that point. Or the characters try to 'fix' the other culture and it backfires horribly, the culture is apathetic to them, or they manage to do something like make it impossible for the other culture to breed, depending on biology. |
The idea came to mind after taking one too many history classes on the conflicts of the 20th century. Basically, I found myself thinking it would be fun to have a story where we learned something from it, and it wasn't all in vain. Of course, real life kind of screws over that point, but this is a Sims story, and things don't have to follow real life precisely. Know anything about the military career branches? Does the Simnation have a history of war? Then again, Star Trek is supposed to be in a similar place, and you say they messed it up. (I wouldn't know; I haven't watched TNG.)
It is worth noting that my focus was specifically on nuclear weaponry, and we haven't deployed such weaponry in war since the forties. If I went with Mars, I was already thinking of a plot where Phobos was some kind of weapons platform. Heck, maybe the Martians already nuked themselves into dust, and the surviving Martians are teaming up with the humans to convince some other race that deploying nukes in warfare is a terrible idea. I dunno. It'd be interesting to make work, but I don't know if I can.
Quote: Originally posted by hugbug993
| Well, the problem with doing gas giants is that people going there have nowhere to stand on and explore. You'd pretty much have to either give them something to stand on - like a floating platform? - or make it so that they actually do have places to stand. You mentioned that a lot of the planet was unknown to humanity because they had a weirdness censor. Maybe that also applies to gas giants, or at least some of them. |
That is actually an interesting thought, but I was more leaning toward using Jovian planets as they actually are, for the most part. There could be floating cities. In the case of the ice giants, I keep imagining a fleet of derelict spacecraft floating in the atmosphere on emergency power. Could work well for Neptune. Picture it: A ragged, decrepit starship, barely visible in the eternal darkness at the edge of the Solar System. Constant supersonic winds batter the wreckage, causing the battered chassis to rattle as the ship sails aimlessly upon a sea of clouds.
Look at some of this. Can't you just picture it (?):
http://sirgerg.deviantart.com/art/N...ies-132487027?q
http://justv23.deviantart.com/art/W...ptune-325707153
http://justv23.deviantart.com/art/I...oon-298536650?q
I've done some experimentation with the idea since the last post, and I think I've managed to pull off a reasonable Jovian look. If nothing else, I can make a Neptunian dark spot; I've managed to work out how to make the sea just basically appear as a featureless black void, and then a dark starfield above gets the look down pretty much right. Messing with environmental settings mods, though, I'm pretty sure I can pull off a traditional gas giant look, too. Especially if the Galilean moons set someone made a while back becomes available for download once again soon. Io would perfectly make the look for Jupiter if I could get everything else looking right.
Initially, for Jupiter and Saturn, I had considered going with the hydrogen seas, but ultimately decided that the setting was too alien. Not to mention pretty much impossible to render in the game.
I also considered antigravity suits or something else that could allow for interaction with the world without solid ground.
Quote: Originally posted by hugbug993
|
Well, that depends on what exactly the artifacts are for. Maybe they don't need to be powerful on their own. If their power corresponds to their planet's mass, then maybe they're related to the overall gravity well? |
That's possible. That's one way I considered bringing in Sag A. Thing is, while I feel that rabbit hole content from Seasons would fit pretty well with the idea, I don't know that I can actually fathom any way to pull off a galactic nucleus set in-game. I'm leaning at this point toward just going with the Sun, though of course it is a while off. Heck, if the artefacts are meant to open something, maybe she just gets imprisoned inside.
Quote: Originally posted by hugbug993
|
Oh, I have an idea: the artifacts are part of some giant 'all planets in alignment' machine. Once every XXXXX years, the planets align, the artifacts activate, and they power something big. Maybe it keeps everyone in the solar system from getting wiped out by a stray radiation wave or black hole - or is designed to wipe out the whole solar system after a certain amount of time, if you want to inject some Lovecraft into the story. This might be where the TNOs come in, since adding them lengthens the amount of time between perfect alignment. The furthest named one (Sedna?) takes over 10,000 years to complete a single orbit, right? Anyway, if the artifacts need to be in alignment to work, that doesn't stop someone with enough spaceships from activating them. Nab 'em all, send the spaceships out to where they need to be for alignment, and showtime. There could be a central artifact in the sun, which is the one that activates. The ones on the planets are just hands on the clock. This might also be a reason why they would be on some planets' moons, since the moons are the only rocky things that the artifacts can be placed on. |
Brilliant. I might just wind up going with something along those lines, if you don't mind. And Sedna, nothing. I could bring in the oligarchs to make it even longer. Who knows how long their orbits would be, if they exist? And on the same level as Sedna, if this Planet Nine/Hades thing pans out, they're talking about a period of 15,000 ± 5,000 years.
To be honest, I was kind of already going a vaguely similar route. The artefacts were supposed to be part of an alien orrery, basically. Well, I guess that's not that similar. It's just that both concepts remind me of the first Tomb Raider movie.
And that's a great segue into another problem I have with this. One common criticism of the plot of that particular movie was that the syzygy depicted wasn't really physically possible. If I'm bringing in TNOs, I could face similar problems. Of course, the problem in that case was that Pluto's orbit intersects Neptune's, so it could just be a matter of avoiding planet-crossers, although I had kind of hoped to do Pluto, and if Planet Nine exists, Sedna crosses its orbit by definition, though not nearly as closely as Pluto does Neptune's.
I dunno. I might end up spending absurd amounts of time getting the physics on this right. Oh, well. Might be fun.
Then again, if the syzygy was meant to unlock something, then someone wanting to keep it sealed might have deliberately moved some of the objects to keep it locked.
#85
9th Feb 2016 at 11:04 AM
9th Feb 2016 at 11:04 AM
Posts: 1,807
Quote: Originally posted by ewenk7
| On a side note, any thoughts on how I might go about doing a short with any of the various mound-building cultures of the U.S. (Mississippian, Hopewell, Adena, Fort Ancient, etc.)? Their architecture doesn't exactly lend itself to tomb exploration. All I'm managing to come up with is something involving Hopewell art being sold on the black market, but there's got to be something better I can do along those lines. |
Well, the mounds tended to be in a flat-topped pyramid or cone shape, and they were for burying important people. You might be able to draw some parallels between them and the Egyptians, like suggesting that the two cultures came in contact. Of course, the real reason pyramids were so popular is that they can withstand being built out of any material, including soft limestone or dirt. Because the volume of each layer is drastically smaller than the one below it - the top half of the Great Pyramid has only 1/8 of the total mass/volume - the layers that are higher up are more able to bear the weight of the ones above it.
But that's boring. Conspiracy theories away!
Actually, there was a theory going around that Africans visited the Americas sometime way before Leif Erikson came over. I don't remember the particulars, but I believe there was something about stone heads that resembled the people found in Africa. Might be able to do something with that.
Or you can say that the pyramids are inspired by aliens. That works, too.
Quote: Originally posted by ewenk7
| For one, I've always been fascinated by the Tok'ra; I felt they were a huge wasted opportunity in SG1. |
For me, it seems like they weren't that well thought out. I think they were taking the Tok'ra thing season by season, with just enough continuity added in to not completely screw everything up.
I also think it would have been much more interesting if they'd done something with them. Sure, they did pop up in a few episodes to enable the plot, but it was mostly them being in the background, getting mentioned, getting excuses as to why they weren't doing anything, and they just didn't do that much.
Quote: Originally posted by ewenk7
|
Gah, that is pretty awful. I'm not even sure what to say about that. You didn't actually write it, did you? Do you have an FFN or AO3 account, might I ask? Assuming it's not too embarrassing. |
No to both. Like I said, I've never actually written down my fanfics. Partly because there's really no reason to write down something I'm going to keep to myself (and I get embarrassed every time I send stuff out, so I wouldn't have put any of it out) and partly because I want to save most of my writing time for stuff that I might actually publish.
Also, I do kind of recycle some of the ideas (better ones, I promise) and names that I've come up with in those stories and I don't want people to think I'm publishing my fanfic.
For instance, the Sidai a few pages (and months) back were originally a species that I came up with there. Their original incarnation was a race that had colonized an entire galactic cluster and were looking to expand to a few others. The OCs (a couple) had been sent out on a scouting mission, but somehow managed to crash their ship into a black hole (it may have been deliberately sabotaged by someone back home), destroying half of it and taking out the ship's power source (a small star), so they were stranded in the Pegasus galaxy. They had no idea how to fix it, since they were chosen because they were immortal and the ship had been largely self-maintaining. They decided their best option was to construct a portal back to their home galaxy so they could get someone through to fix it. Problem was, they didn't have a power source, but they did have the technology to construct a generator that would use a nearby star to power the portal. Biggest problem with that was that the process required energy to do, and it would take them at least a century to do so, so they decided to find power sources within the galaxy, which would take it down to a few years.
That is what brought them into contact with the SGA cast: the two groups started clashing over ZPMs. Eventually (after a fairly long plot where one of the Sidai gets badly injured in a Wraith attack and taken back to Atlantis for treatment, causing the other one to think he was kidnapped and then she storms the city, gets captured, escapes and takes over the city, and then gets backed into a corner with a hostage) they compromise and the Sidai are allowed use of the ZPMs except during crises, with the agreement that the Atlantis team gets the generator once the Sidai finish repairing their ship and leave. That takes a few years to happen, during which time the Sidai manage to make the situation with the Pegasus Replicators and the Asgard far worse, but at least the Atlantis team has some new and interesting technology to deal with it.
Afterwards, the portal is finished and they make contact with the Sidai Empire, which causes even more problems, because the young child of one of the Sidai royalty gets kidnapped by a group on Earth (probably The Trust or another government agency) and ends up having her spine snapped when someone (a teenager affiliated with the kidnappers) starts swinging her around by her tail. That pisses off the mother of the child, who literally rips the spine out of the person who did that and beats him to death with it. Because it was televised, that reveals the existence of alien life to Earth. Also, the empire is not happy about what happened, and it is more than capable of wiping out all life in the Milky Way in a matter of hours. It demands that the mother not be charged for killing the teen, because what she did was much more mild than their typical punishment for willfully threatening the life of a child, but there's still a lot of public outrage on Earth over the death which gets even worse when the governments capitulate. Anyway, that legal problem and the fact that everyone now knows exactly what was being kept from them ends up causing a lot of chaos on Earth, and some other factions of the empire start using that to try and take over the planet. That's about where I sort of stopped thinking about it and moved on to something new.
That is what brought them into contact with the SGA cast: the two groups started clashing over ZPMs. Eventually (after a fairly long plot where one of the Sidai gets badly injured in a Wraith attack and taken back to Atlantis for treatment, causing the other one to think he was kidnapped and then she storms the city, gets captured, escapes and takes over the city, and then gets backed into a corner with a hostage) they compromise and the Sidai are allowed use of the ZPMs except during crises, with the agreement that the Atlantis team gets the generator once the Sidai finish repairing their ship and leave. That takes a few years to happen, during which time the Sidai manage to make the situation with the Pegasus Replicators and the Asgard far worse, but at least the Atlantis team has some new and interesting technology to deal with it.
Afterwards, the portal is finished and they make contact with the Sidai Empire, which causes even more problems, because the young child of one of the Sidai royalty gets kidnapped by a group on Earth (probably The Trust or another government agency) and ends up having her spine snapped when someone (a teenager affiliated with the kidnappers) starts swinging her around by her tail. That pisses off the mother of the child, who literally rips the spine out of the person who did that and beats him to death with it. Because it was televised, that reveals the existence of alien life to Earth. Also, the empire is not happy about what happened, and it is more than capable of wiping out all life in the Milky Way in a matter of hours. It demands that the mother not be charged for killing the teen, because what she did was much more mild than their typical punishment for willfully threatening the life of a child, but there's still a lot of public outrage on Earth over the death which gets even worse when the governments capitulate. Anyway, that legal problem and the fact that everyone now knows exactly what was being kept from them ends up causing a lot of chaos on Earth, and some other factions of the empire start using that to try and take over the planet. That's about where I sort of stopped thinking about it and moved on to something new.
That's one of the more recent ideas I've had, while the previous example was a very, very early work. I think that was sometime during Season 2, when I was a baby writer.
Still, there are a couple I could probably use for fanfic. One of them sticks close to canon, mostly, but is still about my OCs and filling a gap in one sub/plot more than about the main cast. I would have to rename the characters, though, since I reused their names in another story. Then there's the one that turns the concept of the uber-Mary Sue into a horror story before wandering off to a destroyed civilization. Also, it may or may not involve someone's muscles turning to bone.
Quote: Originally posted by ewenk7
| The idea came to mind after taking one too many history classes on the conflicts of the 20th century. Basically, I found myself thinking it would be fun to have a story where we learned something from it, and it wasn't all in vain. Of course, real life kind of screws over that point, but this is a Sims story, and things don't have to follow real life precisely. Know anything about the military career branches? Does the Simnation have a history of war? Then again, Star Trek is supposed to be in a similar place, and you say they messed it up. (I wouldn't know; I haven't watched TNG.) |
Actually, the military branches are rather inconsistent on that, even within the same game. They appear to be in the middle of the Cold War in TS2, judging by the references to RedCity, but other things say that they're actively deploying soldiers. Given the background of the Cold War, it seems likely that they have a similar history of warfare. But then, the games aren't that consistent on anything, given that TS3 is supposed to be a prequel and everyone comes with a cellphone. Anyway, here's the relevant information.
[infobutton]Description for Level 5, Counter-Intelligence, TS1 and TS2:
"Tracking the enemy with the latest equipment is your whole life right now. You know enough about the enemy strategy for them to really want to kill you--so you have to stay one step ahead of them for your sake and that of your troops. Work on your mechanical skill to keep those highly sensitive machines in top working order and logic skills to interpret all the data you're downloading."
Level 6, Flight Officer, TS1 and TS2:
"Somebody has to drop those troops, deliver that cargo, and guard the air space over Sim City."
Chance Card for Level 4, Junior Officer:
"<Sim> has been placed in command of a 30-soldier brigade of highly trained soldiers. Since it is peacetime, his/her unit enjoys a regimented yet regular life - that is, until rioting breaks out in his/her unit's deployment region."
Chance Card for Level 5, Counter-Intelligence:
"<Sim> has been assigned to launch targeted counter-intelligence measures, but with the highly classified nature of all information within the agency, <Sim> finds himself/herself in the embarrassing position of not knowing exactly who the "enemy" is. He/She tosses a few subtle questions out while in the lunch line, but begins to get the distinct feeling that no one in the bureau has any idea who or what it is that they are fighting against."
Chance Card for Level 6, Flight Officer:
"Growing weary of all the "Peacetime" restrictions..."
Chance Card for Level 8, Commander:
"One dreary morning, <Sim> receives a confidential memo informing him/her that several recruits have been accused of leaking sensitive government information to enemy factions."
Chance Card for Level 9, Astronaut:
"<Sim> and his/her crew have been training to command the first remote probe to land on the surface of Venus, but recent satellite images have revealed what may be the final stages of a mobile launch platform in the heart of RedCity. This could be bad for <Sim>'s career; it appears as though RedCity may beat him/her in the space race."[/infobutton]
Quote: Originally posted by ewenk7
| That is actually an interesting thought, but I was more leaning toward using Jovian planets as they actually are, for the most part. There could be floating cities. |
Speaking of which, you could also do floating cities for Venus. Apparently, there's one point in the atmosphere where oxygen floats, and it's a very nice 84 degrees F.
Quote: Originally posted by ewenk7
| In the case of the ice giants, I keep imagining a fleet of derelict spacecraft floating in the atmosphere on emergency power. Could work well for Neptune. Picture it: A ragged, decrepit starship, barely visible in the eternal darkness at the edge of the Solar System. Constant supersonic winds batter the wreckage, causing the battered chassis to rattle as the ship sails aimlessly upon a sea of clouds. |
That would be really cool. It would also give the main characters somewhere to go in Neptune, if the artifact were aboard one of those. It might also explain any misplaced artifacts.
Quote: Originally posted by ewenk7
| And that's a great segue into another problem I have with this. One common criticism of the plot of that particular movie was that the syzygy depicted wasn't really physically possible. If I'm bringing in TNOs, I could face similar problems. Of course, the problem in that case was that Pluto's orbit intersects Neptune's, so it could just be a matter of avoiding planet-crossers, although I had kind of hoped to do Pluto, and if Planet Nine exists, Sedna crosses its orbit by definition, though not nearly as closely as Pluto does Neptune's. |
It doesn't necessarily have to be the planets in alignment with each other, though, and especially not all lined up in a neat row. If there's a central artifact, then they only need to be in a particular place relative to the sun.
Of course, the whole thing about Pluto and other planets that cross each other's orbit might be a last-minute save. If the bad guys figure out where the artifacts are supposed to be by looking at a top-down map (relative to the main eight planets), they might think that the artifact belonging to Pluto belongs in Neptune's spot and vise versa. There's probably a better example in some of the TNOs, though.
My MTS writing group, The Story Board
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