30 KiB
[deleted by user]
-
Author: u/None *
-
URL:
-
Score: 12
-
Created: 2016-04-13T04:10:13
Post:
[removed]
Comments:
u/GaBeRockKing [+11] Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857 (51 minutes later)
reductionist magic systems. Where complex and useful behavior can be derived from a comparatively simple set of rules, and there's never a need to say "a wizard did it" or "because magic."
u/Sinity [+4] (3 hours later)
Can you link some examples of that?
u/None [+8] (7 hours later)
[deleted]
u/Empiricist_or_not [+1] Aspiring polite Hegemonizing swarm (19 hours later)
Which series do you mean?
u/None [+7] (3 hours later)
Mathematics :) (except the second part)
u/GaBeRockKing [+3] Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857 (14 hours later)
Flashbacks to my calc 2 teatcher.
u/None [+5] (8 hours later)
u/GaBeRockKing [+4] Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857 (11 hours later)
Ra (the web serial), the inheritance cycle (to a certain point), Worm (at least by my standards for "magic"). I'll add more stories if I can think of them. You can also find a few examples on this sub if you search for "magic system."
u/Sinity [+1] (12 hours later)
Thanks! I knew Ra, but none of the other stuff. I will check it out.
u/GaBeRockKing [+3] Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857 (12 hours later)
Just fyi, the inheritance cycle (AKA Eragon) isn't really rational, and deserves a fair bit of the criticism it gets. I love it out of nostalgia, and the magic system really is put together well, but it was written by a teenager and it shows.
u/None [+3] (a day later)
[deleted]
u/GaBeRockKing [+4] Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857 (a day later)
eh, the plot similarities are a little overblown, beyond the fact that both follow the hero's journey.
No doubt Paolini was heavily inspired by Star Wars, but Star Wars was inspired by the lord of the ring, was inspired by T.S. Elliot's the sword in the stone, was inspired by an incredibly long literary tradition.
u/whywhisperwhy [+2] (a day later)
The vast majority of stories had other works as influences, but I'm arguing that Eragon has a much higher degree of parallelism to A New Hope than most stories. The Hero's Journey is a pretty general pattern, as you say there are lots of books that follow it, but I wouldn't claim anywhere near the same resemblance between most of those and Eragon. Lilo & Stitch is a textbook example of the Hero's Journey, for one, but which looks nothing like Eragon.
Meanwhile, from memory- a farm boy raised in a backwater area by his uncle with no knowledge of his father, amidst an evil Empire, leaves home and returns to find his farm and family destroyed. Flees with a wise, eccentric old man who turns out to have been a member of the powerful magical order of which no one else remains because the Emperor and his right hand (who used to be a promising part of that order and ends up being the farmboy's father) murdered them all and overthrew the old republic.
The first scene? Princess carrying the key to beating the Empire gets ambushed by the Empire and manages to randomly cast her key until it reaches the main character, setting everything in motion.
A quick web search shows that apparently others have thought this as well and done more in-depth comparisons if that helps. I wouldn't say he plagiarized it by any means as there are some differences and he very much made the story his own.
I'm also not saying this is necessarily an extremely negative thing, because it led to something very different and original, but that doesn't mean I should dismiss it either.
Edit: Also, obviously your examples are debatable, but I don't see how using examples of other works that copy each other is a good argument. It doesn't matter if everyone falls back down to Earth after jumping, gravity still clearly exists.
u/None [+9] (8 hours later)
[deleted]
u/ZeroNihilist [+8] (13 hours later)
I get my thrill for this from watching competitive video games. There's probably a similar level of strategy with physical sports, but it's more opaque to me.
One pet example: in the game DotA 2 there are two teams of 5 players controlling "heroes" (each with a unique sets of skills, picked before the game begins in a strategic draft) attempting to destroy the other's ancient (hence the name, "Defense of the Ancients").
The standard way to do this was, for a long time, trying to win a massive 5v5 fight and attack the enemy base. Do this enough and you would destroy their ancient.
Some teams, notably Alliance, realised that you didn't actually have to do the "massive 5v5 fight" part, you could just go straight to destroying the base.
So they more or less used guerrilla warfare, splitting their force so that one group could tentatively engage the enemy team while the other attacked the enemy base. If the enemy team tried to disengage so they could defend their base, the engaging force could prevent that.
The strategy was extremely successful. Opposing teams often wasted their bans in the pre-game draft phase to counter heroes often picked for this strategy, which gave teams known for their ability to utilise it an early advantage (able to get key heroes for other, more traditional strategies).
"Ratting", as it became known, has waxed and waned in popularity along with changes to the game's balance, but it's been a fascinating inclusion in the game's meta.
I'm skipping a lot of the detail here as it's likely extremely boring to anyone who isn't already interested in the game. Hopefully it illustrates that you can find examples of military strategies writ small in competitive video games.
u/None [+3] (13 hours later)
I really enjoy books like enders game, the laser tag was my favorite part. and in methods i loved the war games the most. any large scale conflict is something ill enjoy reading about, but roman style war is my all time favorite. 5v5 is just a little to small for me
u/ZeroNihilist [+2] (13 hours later)
Fair enough. Large-scale conflicts do add a lot of complexity, especially with morale and supply lines and other things that can decide a war irrespective of the relative military might of the combatants.
u/None [+1] (14 hours later)
yea, its fun to see it all fit together.
u/None [+5] (8 hours later)
I like to think about how to rationalize biological humans outside the solar system, and how a human-AI war might at all be balanced.
It turns out that these two problems actually solve each other:
Enter a second cold war. Humans build automated underground bases.
One of these bases is given too much autonomy and starts a secret development branch for weaponry.
This base launches an attack on all other military bases in an effort to remove all military threats on the planet.
Humans manage to thwart the attack by quickly adapting to non-electronic machinery and blasting AI-controlled areas with EMP, employing microwave weapons, etc.
AI weapons now require heavy electronic shielding in order to operate, which reduce some of the advantages AI weaponry have over humans, such as the need for heavy life-support systems, maximum G's, etc.
The war drags on, the AI finally gets the upper hand, and humans send colony ships into space to escape destruction.
The AI, having achieved its objective, stays on Earth and continues to invest in greater computing capacity and researching more advanced weaponry, as commanded by its programming.
Humans spread a small distance into the galaxy over the following centuries.
The AI exhausts the resources on Earth and the solar system, looks outward, and decides humans are still a threat.
The AI builds space fleets, but humans already have an established presence and can bring the combined resources of a hundred systems to bear on the superior AI technology.
Over the following milennia, humans continue to run deeper into the galaxy, while trying to destroy the AI. Meanwhile, the AI continues to expand, its intellect growing larger over time.
Hundreds of thousands of years later, the entire galaxy is occupied by the two warring forces, both sides having completely optimized weaponry, tactics, and strategy.
War has been perfected, and will not change until the galaxy finally fades into darkness as the stars cool and entropy ultimately strangles the last warrior on some scarred planet orbiting a cold, dead, star.
u/Dwood15 [+2] (16 hours later)
Interesting thought and my idea would be for an adversarial ai which would be designed for the destruction of the original and then sending it out to distract the original ai while we utterly surround the ai and begin to annihilate everything in the surrounded area.
u/Noumero [+1] Self-Appointed Court Statistician (a day later)
Except AI would think about fleeing human ships at the step seven, and will send countless relativistic projectiles in their general direction, just to be sure.
u/mhd-hbd [+4] Writes 'The World is Your Oyster, The Universe is Your Namesake' (7 hours later)
My favorite subject is the societal implications of rules changing. Scarcity of magical healing, to give an example.
u/Dwood15 [+1] (11 hours later)
You mean like a society once filled with mana and healers suddenly finding it in short supply?
u/mhd-hbd [+3] Writes 'The World is Your Oyster, The Universe is Your Namesake' (13 hours later)
No, I mean if someone suddenly got the power to heal in our society, how would people react?
u/Dwood15 [+1] (16 hours later)
Hmm, that's an interesting thought. The other thing that comes to mind is s what limits there would be?
u/OrzBrain [+2] Fingers to dance, hands to catch, arms to pull (17 hours later)
How about Panacea from Worm? Hands on healing of anything in a fairly short time, limits are no "wellness plague" or creation of magic nanotech equivalent, no self healer/power cloning. Just one of you who can heal any illness (including old age) or reshape someone's body however they want, a requirement of two to ten minutes per patient depending on complexity of request, and seven billion people needing your attention. Feel like committing suicide yet?
I've spent some time thinking about how a person like that might go about becoming emperor of the world since they are the only supply of the most valuable thing on earth.
Or suppose you got Clair's power from the otherwise moronic show, "Heroes." You regenerate like Wolverine and injecting a drop or two of your blood into someone else will heal them of anything, including being dead but not yet decomposed. Would not the most moral course be to allow yourself to be strapped into a giant blood suction/nutrient input machine 24/7 for the rest of eternity (or until technology can do the same, which it probably never will since there will be no profit in the research)?
u/FuguofAnotherWorld [+3] Roll the Dice on Fate (18 hours later)
Would not the most moral course be to allow yourself to be strapped into a giant blood suction/nutrient input machine 24/7 for the rest of eternity (or until technology can do the same, which it probably never will since there will be no profit in the research)?
Technically speaking, there's no need for the suction/nutrient machine to be particularly troublesome to a regenerator of Clair's level of power. A few tubes stuck into your back leading into a backpack which contains some tech, and you're good to go. You use most of the absurd amounts of money you could make from selling perfect healing with a side of effective immortality if regularly dosed to spend money on medical research. Smaller amounts of money are spent guaranteeing your own continued freedom and generally living a pretty great life. You're essentially immortal, so you've got very good chances of living long enough to see the need for your blood taper down to nothing, at which point you're one of the richest people on the planet. J K Rowling has got nothing on you.
u/OrzBrain [+2] Fingers to dance, hands to catch, arms to pull (19 hours later)
A few tubes stuck into your back leading into a backpack which contains some tech, and you're good to go.
Ahem. I think a backpack a day, or even an hour, or even every ten minutes would do little for more than SEVEN BILLION people. However, a regenerator of Clair's level might be able to come close to supplying enough for everyone. It seems to me it would take a whole lot more than a few backpacks per day, and I don't think she would be doing any walking while losing that much mass per minute, but she might be able to do it. . .
u/FuguofAnotherWorld [+2] Roll the Dice on Fate (19 hours later)
I don't think a backpack a day, or even an hour, or even every ten minutes would do little for more than SEVEN BILLION people.
The regen has some maximum flow rate of blood, and given the amounts of money we're talking here you could pay people to stand around and change out the containers in your backpack every minute of the day if that's what needed, or if that's impractical then set up a fixed feed. Yes it might be a bit annoying, yes it'd look a bit weird, but it's still a whole lot better than the alternative which I'm given to understand is basically being strapped to a table for eternity.
u/OrzBrain [+2] Fingers to dance, hands to catch, arms to pull (20 hours later)
Would it be allowed, though? Panacea would be a problem -- she could either refuse to heal or else put deadly time delay breakdowns in anyone important she heals and then hold them for ransom. But Clair can't stop making more blood if she's injured. What's to stop a government from cutting off her arms and legs and hooking her up to vacuum pumps in order to maximize production in the name of the greater good, or something equally gruesome? And even if they didn't do that, why would they pay her lots? I would at least expect the government to notice the massive flow of funds and impose a 99.9% windfall profits tax or something like that come next budget crisis.
u/FuguofAnotherWorld [+4] Roll the Dice on Fate (21 hours later)
That's why it's important to be smart about the money you spend to guarantee your own freedom. The first step is to make a shit-load of money reasonably covertly. It really is amazing what a sufficiently large pile of money can accomplish. Next, you make massive campaign contributions to every politician, focusing on the ones who have more say over areas that affect you. You simultaneously go public and pay for large, expensive public awareness campaigns that spin a narrative that makes locking you up morally abhorrent to a large percentage of the populace. Shouldn't be a hard sell, relatively few people are utilitarians. It should also include the fact (lie) that you are already giving blood at the maximum rate physically possible without long term effects.
At the same time you hire a truly excessively large guard detail, comprising of members from at least 3 different companies and set up a series of well-known and not-so-well-known contingencies that will send out information implicating whoever attacks you for public backlash purposes. Make it so that you will be seen as a martyr if you go down, and everybody knows that. Next you set up a trust (or five) whose job would be to perpetually campaign for your freedom if you are ever captured. Then you put away some money to set up a series of bounties on your own head, promising a million dollars per person to anyone who works as part of a force to free you. If there is any feat you can do as the prime regenerator that no-one else can do, you should do it in public as frequently as practical. Best to keep a schedule in fact. That way it becomes extremely obvious if you've been replaced. You attempt to become friends/allies with the non-political figures of power in your chosen country, and possibly some other countries as well.
You want it to be political suicide to try such a thing. You want it to be extremely difficult to physically accomplish. You want it to have large and clearly outlined consequences even in the case of success. You want most people to believe that it wouldn't accomplish anything even if they succeeded. None of this is a guarantee of freedom, but it most certainly improves your chances a great deal.
That, is the power of properly applied money.
u/OrzBrain [+1] Fingers to dance, hands to catch, arms to pull (22 hours later)
Damn, now I want to read a book/story with this premise. . .
u/Dwood15 [+1] (17 hours later)
Yeah that would be the base line. What about limits such as: no mental healing, limb restoration, etc?
u/mhd-hbd [+2] Writes 'The World is Your Oyster, The Universe is Your Namesake' (21 hours later)
The story I am writing is a Steven Universe fanfic.
The healing powers in that one is a fountain's worth of water that does not really regenerate, and the saliva glands of a young boy. Said liquid will cure most things incrementally, up to and including aging if given in large enough doses. We're talking a glass of water, here.
Not many people you can save that way.
In fact, the characters reason about the healing saliva power and come to the conclusion that healing sick people in hospitals would be counterproductive; in a direct expy to Worm's Panacea.
u/Dwood15 [+1] (22 hours later)
Very interesting! The character would have to balance their power, or rather, decide when and where it could/should be used wisely or risk some major retaliation by well meaning but misunderstanding people.
u/mhd-hbd [+1] Writes 'The World is Your Oyster, The Universe is Your Namesake' (a day later)
That's a major plot thread: his late (and functionally immortal) mother had the same power, and her (also functionally immortal) trusted confidantes are teaching him the ins-and-outs.
A notable lesson is them pulling him aside the first time he heals someone who isn't family and explicitly informing him that this might be a problem.
u/gabbalis [+4] (13 hours later)
Speaking of animorphs...
Xenofiction, inhuman viewpoints. Preferably as inhuman as possible. Humanity is yesterday's news!
u/vakusdrake [+1] (2 days later)
Recently I have thought a lot about how I would exploit R!animorphs morphing ability if I was after an invasion or if I somehow ended up with the cube and I'm not in the animorphs universe.
My main thought is that I would go to mexico and find a bunch of drug cartels (being full of ruthless murderers at the highest levels, and being very wealthy these are good targets), I would infiltrate the organizations with morphing to steal money, and I would kidnap ruthless cartel members I could justify killing and force them to stay morphed as me until the timer ran out.
Effectively given how morphing works in R!animorphs if you can find people you are willing to kill you can force them to stay morphed as you and then you end up with clones of yourself.
If I had this power on vanilla earth I could use it to gain control of a massive number of oppressive regimes and would end up with hundreds of forks of myself and probably thousands of forks total when you include the forks of the other people who are working with me.
Hell once I have control over several governments (all high ranking members being forks of me or my friends) then I can go through their prisons converting criminals who are utterly irredeemable into more clones. After a few months I suspect I would control what would collectively be the most powerful nation on earth, and I would have hundreds of thousands of clones working for my organization.
Hmm after looking at how many countries have serious human rights violations or lack of freedom of speech by my standards for oppressive I would end up controlling most of asia, africa and the middle east. Any advice on implementing democracies in countries, once you already have total control over their governments?
u/Dwood15 [+1] (3 days later)
(Note: I don't know if R! animorphs changes the rules of the universe at all, but here's my take on the standard animorphs universe)
You make it sound easy though. What about secret pass codes or phrases these groups use to verify that everyone is who they say they are?
There's a lot to be said about the stuff you don't know about people.
And the having so many clones of yourself running about would be insane. Personally, instead of that, I would try to bring over at least two yeerks(?) with me, and convince them to be a part of my plan, so that I could have some allies along with me, and they could literally be the people I need for the moment.
The second part, is that I would have the ruthless leaders of these bad groups kidnapped and be forced to be clones of the 'yeerked' people. Sure, I'd have a couple of my own clones running around, but instead I would morph into the form which my yeerk friend is controlling, so that in the event of some kind of failure, I would have a way of getting out of the situation.
The last thing, would be to have the person be tricked into freely morphing into a form (say a sexy model) and then drug them past the 2 hr limit.
u/vakusdrake [+1] (3 days later)
Ok so just to clarify the main difference in morphing in the R!animorphs is that when you morph into someone you are literally morphing into a copy of them, with all the memories you had when you copied their dna and you are basically puppeting their body exactly like a yerk, apparently the means of controlling your morph was modelled after yerks.
So if someone stays in a form past the 2 hour limit they basically die and the morph they were controlling is now able to control it's own body. If I am the only group who can dispense morphing ability then I don't need passcodes, I will be able to communicate with my conspirators telepathically (you get that ability when you get morphing, but you can only do it while morphed, but you can morph into yourself)
Also you don't need yerks for any part of my plan even if they exist. When you morph into someone you are basically controlling a copy of them like a yerk, and you can actually get information out of them this way.
As I said in my plan I would have allies, however because I can't trust more than a dozen people, everyone working for me who I gave morphing powers, would have to be a clone of one of them.
If you are overthrowing oppressive regimes they don't know to protect against shapeshifting. You could have a bunch of your guys turn into insects to sneak into all the high ranking officials houses, then bam you've overthrown the government overnight. Once you control everybody then nobody will be suspicious that nobody goes longer than 2 hours without excusing themselves to the bathroom to remorph.
Again I can't stress enough how overpowered morphing abilities are when going up against enemies who don't even know morphing exists.
u/Dwood15 [+1] (3 days later)
All right. The R! animorphs morphs makes a ton of sense. So basically by morphing into someone, you're essentially a yeerk for 2 hours or you risk becoming that person completely.
The clones of myself thing would be a ton of fun, but if you are giving others access to your memories by forcing them to morph into you, that could backfire horrendously. I would force these people to morph into someone that didn't know the rules of morphing, so that they wouldn't be able to morph back out, as there is no way to stop them from going back and forth on their own without their choice.
Then there are other ways, such as letting them destroy themselves, by giving lower members of these groups the power of the cube and telling them that they can become anyone just by touching and thinking about it, without telling them of the 2 hour rule.
u/vakusdrake [+1] (4 days later)
It took the people in the story quite a while to figure out what morphing really is. So I really doubt somebody would figure it out all on their own over the course of 2 hours, which they would need to do in order to trawl through the morph of you's memories.
Also your mind is separate from the morph you're controlling and stays in extradimensional space. Unless you know how stuff works you're just puppeting a body just like in non R!animorphs.
My plan goes like this: Abduct someone touch them with the cube, get them to acquire and morph into you, drug them unconscious and wait.
Also touching people without telling them the limit is a terrible method of murder, as a end result you might end up with an addition version of some random person. Plus you have morphing you can just turn into a bear and fucking maul their ass, there's so many ways to kill somebody this way without giving them powers.
u/Dwood15 [+1] (4 days later)
The other thing about R! Animorphs i'd like to ask, is how does it handle half-morphs. Animorphs, being stuck halfway was a legitimate concern. Is that a thing in R! ?
You're right for outright killing people, but I wouldn't just want people to be wiped out, I would want them to destroy themselves. Having 3-4 che guevera's running around still alive, trying to convince everyone they're the real one would do damage the the cause of che guevera than just killing him.
I think that having even more could utterly discredit the movement, you know? The other problem would be if the individual che's decided to work together. Therefore, I guess, I would rather have the person morph into a form of someone else who isn't a part of those movements. It's easier to take apart a gang by separating the people than it is to deal with a whole group.
The other interesting thing about people with the morphing ability, is that I bet you'd wind up with a lot of people walking around as their own spouses/children/grandchildren/sexually desired partners or pets, not so much random people, but people the person works with and touches on a daily basis.
If I was given morphing powers and had no idea about the rules of said morphing powers, I would think I'd end up as my girlfriend or some hot girl I had met and somehow touched/shook their hand more than I would anyone else. Especially if I was drunk, and my inhibitions were lowered to a fault.
u/vakusdrake [+2] (4 days later)
Again to be very clear: in order to have an easy time taking over the world, I NEED to make sure nobody knows about morphing and thus nobody taking precautions against it.
So the only people who would get it (except for the people who get it briefly before becoming a clone) would be me and the dozen other people I was willing to trust, plus the countless clones of me and my dozen conspirators. Having clones of an enemy running around would have uses yes, however it would tip people off that something was up and I can't have that, secrecy is extremely important.
Also I'm assuming I know how morphing works otherwise without knowing about the limit the first time I used it I would almost certainly die from the time limit.
Half morphs aren't really a thing, being stuck like tobias in a animal form also can't happen given how this R! morphing works, effectively you just die once the time limit runs out and the body you were controlling gets to live on.
u/Dwood15 [+1] (4 days later)
Side question: Is the animorphs from fanfiction.net here: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11090259/1/r-Animorphs-The-Reckoning
The one you're basing this off of? I may wish to start reading it, because these are some actually intense rules
u/vakusdrake [+1] (4 days later)
Yeah that's the one, it's pretty good.
u/noggin-scratcher [+1] I am a happy tree (6 days later)
I'll second the recommendation, and not just for the morphing rules - it also features a competent Visser 3, able to extract the levels-within-levels strategic thinking of his Andalite host (despite his resistance) to supplement the Visser's own already-high intelligence.
The result of which is that there's no period of time where the Animorphs are playing on "easy" mode, against a foe that underestimates them or forgets to account for their existence; from the off the Yeerks' assumption is that they're playing against a high-level opponent using optimal strategy... which actually really confuses them for a little while trying to puzzle out the hidden purpose of certain mistakes. Also every chapter carries a non-trivial risk of them all dying horribly (I'm still having some trouble imagining how they're supposed to eventually overcome their resource disadvantages to not inevitably die horribly).
It's a bunch of fun.
u/anewhopeforchange [+0] (an hour later)
i always understood it as the genie cant do that stuff cause he isnt powerfull enough and tricking him into thinking he should have to do it wont do anything. now jafar on the other hand...