Creation Daily

[Gabriele she/her]

Thank you, Quiver, no hurry. I'll be on a holiday next week anyway, probably chasing more plotbunnies. They keep lurking in those historical sites. 

 

Your idea sounds fun. So guy had an affair with girlfriend's clone and now they're both pregnant, of course. And the clone is the assistant of the Evil Boss and out to steal some formula for creating genetically engineered spinach that will turn Evil Boss into the evil version of Popeye, and only the guy and the child of the clone, which has a superbrain, can stop Evil Boss. Boss's wife finds out everything, and threatens to leave for her parents who live on that planet which just happens to have made a deal with an enemy of Evil Bosss. Or something.

Edited April 21, 2015 by Gabriele

[Quiver he/him]

A time loop, told from the point of view of the characters who are trapped in the loop itself- think groundhog Day, from the Point of View of the town.

 

So every chapter has a core group of characters who go about their daily lives, except for the one person who knows that there is a loop and acts accordingly. The result is a repeating epic, where the reader can see the mental breakdown that the main character (the Bill Murray) is going through, and experience all his weird antics from the point of view of the rest of the cast; like Bill quitting his job and being a chull to everyone who works there, or him doing absolutely insane antics (and commenting in the next chapter/"same day" about them).

 

Or, if you want to get dark, a whole string of chapters where "Bill" decides "storm it" and starts being straight up murderous to his friends, because hey, they're going to come back the next loop anyway, so it's not like anyone is going to know, and he's been trapped here for so long and just needs to vent a little...

[Echo]

I thought of a small idea, but I haven't really taken the time to develop it yet... anyways, it is essentially a world where there is a big superstition type thing, not quiet a religion but still believed by practically everyone. It is the belief that eventually, everyone who has died will come back into their original bodies, and if they found that their bodies haven't been treated well they would hunt down and kill the person that hurt the bodies (remember, still in the original body).This means that everyone buries bodies and doesn't ever disturb them again. They figure that burying them will preserve the body, and they could just dig themselves up when the time came. They also burn the bodies of prisoners or murderers to prevent them from coming back. Unfortunately for everyone living, the time suddenly comes, and they discover that burying bodies with no casket or anything was perhaps not the best of ideas... so pretty much a twisted zombie apocalypse story, I think.

[mail-mi he/him]

So I've talked about this elsewhere, but I think that it would be cool to talk about it here:

 

So, one of the worlds that my friends and I are building (it's actually had a few chapters posted here, under Our Vocab English Assignment (I promise you, it's better than it sounds) ) has two suns. But not in the way that say Tatooine has two suns. The suns are positioned on exact opposite sides of the planet. Basically, the two stars rotate around each other, and the planet just happens to sit exactly in between them. It's just outside both of the star's habitable zones, but because it gets heat from both stars, it still can support life. It takes a total of 42 hours to spin completely around its axis, and so there are 2 18 hour days and 2 3 hour "nights" (they're about as dark as twilights on Earth) per rotation.

 

It's still the pre-technology typical fantasy era, but scientists have discovered enough to know that it's not just one sun, it's two. One of the suns has a more reddish tint, and mythology has evolved around that. Basically, First Sun (the yellower one) is heaven, and Second Sun is hell. It's been interesting to write. 

 

And yes, I am using this as a shameless plug to get you guys to read it : http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/20613-our-vocab-english-assignment-i-promise-you-its-better-than-it-sounds/

 

So, a little bit more about this world: An Empire rules a good portion of the known civilized world, with a few kingdoms as its major opponents. The empire wasn't there just a short time ago, so how did it come about? Good question, rhetorical-question-man! The Emperor discovered how to make something magic, which he termed Distillers and began to market around the world. They're a magic add-in to any drink (think like metal shavings) that you can buy certain types of to calm you down, or keep you alert, or various other things. The most common drink to put these Distillers in is wine. Wine is actually the most common alcoholic drink, because there is a large abundance of juicy fuits because of the heat the planet receives from the two suns. Most of the planet is very humid and jungle-like, creating an ideal environment for these types of fruits. (if you please, could someone check my facts on this? My friends and I believe that most fruits prefer a warm and moist environment, but if one of you biology nerds knows otherwise, please correct this!)

[ccstat he/him]

Most of the planet is very humid and jungle-like, creating an ideal environment for these types of fruits. (if you please, could someone check my facts on this? My friends and I believe that most fruits prefer a warm and moist environment, but if one of you biology nerds knows otherwise, please correct this!)

While that's certainly not the case for all fruit, it is a very plausible scenario for certain types, which could be the ones that taste best/ferment well. And since this is a planet with new rules, I would definitely accept that explanation in a story.

As a biologist fact checker, I would be much more concerned about what you do with sleep cycles. Constant light will make for some very different behaviors and ecological rhythms, both in plants and animals. Your approach to this will change based on whether life here is native, transplanted, or both. (Sounds native from your description.)

 

EDIT: another science quibble. You may want to check one more aspect of the astronomy. My understanding is that due to atmospheric refraction, our rising or setting sun appears about 1 sun-width higher in the sky that it would assuming direct line-of-sight. That makes me think that with your setup there can't be two suns that never appear in the sky together. They would always both be visible at the transition between "day1" and "day2". So it may not have required recent science to know that it's not a single sun. I doubt that makes much difference to your setting, though.

Edited April 29, 2015 by ccstat

[mail-mi he/him]

As a biologist fact checker, I would be much more concerned about what you do with sleep cycles. Constant light will make for some very different behaviors and ecological rhythms, both in plants and animals. Your approach to this will change based on whether life here is native, transplanted, or both. (Sounds native from your description.)

 

EDIT: another science quibble. You may want to check one more aspect of the astronomy. My understanding is that due to atmospheric refraction, our rising or setting sun appears about 1 sun-width higher in the sky that it would assuming direct line-of-sight. That makes me think that with your setup there can't be two suns that never appear in the sky together. They would always both be visible at the transition between "day1" and "day2". So it may not have required recent science to know that it's not a single sun. I doubt that makes much difference to your setting, though.

 

Plants would be taller and have a longer growing season, correct? And there is also no seasonal cycle, so the plants would be able to just grow all the time. As for animals, would it be plausible that they (and humans) would adapt to need less sleep, and there wouldn't be such thing as "nocturnal," and mating/eating/sleeping times would be more sporadic. 

 

Um...well, it would be nice to have a few hours of twilight...but I suppose we could check on that. 

 

Thanks!

[TwiLyghtSansSparkles she/her]

Does anyone know of any good resources on Washington State in the 1940s? Or what would happen when lightning flashed behind a stained glass window? 

[+Slowswift he/him]

Or what would happen when lightning flashed behind a stained glass window? 

 

Awesomeness.

[TwiLyghtSansSparkles she/her]

Awesomeness.

 

Well, yes, but how long would said awesomeness last? Would all the colors in the window be illuminated at once, or would only certain snatches of it be lit? Would the shadow of the image appear on the floor before vanishing, or would the people inside see only little snatches of color? 

 

Methinks I'll need to finagle a way to be inside an old church during a lightning storm.  

[Tyson]

Magic System idea:

Have you ever been so mad that your face burns and feels like steam is coming from your ears? Have you ever been so scared that the air chills and goosebumps cover your skin? Have you ever been so happy that you felt weightless, ready to blow away in gust of wind? Have you ever been so shocked/surprised that the moment seems to move in slow motion, your mind moving overtime to take everything in?

If so you are what we call a Manic.

Manics are powerful magicians who have learned to perfectly control their emotions. Each emotion on the "Wheel of Emotion" (from Google) and corresponds to a unique ability, similar to how metals correspond to allomantic abilities. The stronger the emotion, the stronger the ability.

A well trained Manic can flick through their emotions like the pages of a book, using past experiences (deaths of loved ones, happy moments etc.) to fuel their emotions. They wear masks to hide their faces, lest they betray their emotions to other Manics.

The training is brutal. Strong emotions are purposefully stirred in apprentices. Torture, assasination of close freinds and family and extravagant gifts are used to give Manics a host of experiences to fuel their emotions.

Example of a Manics power:

A Manic that has stirred a powerful rage could melt iron with his bare hands. A Manic who is extremely happy becomes weightless and is able to ride the wind. Etc.

[ccstat he/him]

I just learned, from the excellent (yet frustratingly slow-to-update) webcomic Drive, about the Ming dynasty's military secret police called the Jinyiwei. One of my stories is set in a magical alternate Ming-era China, and this fits well with the political intrigue I've been trying to include.

 

 

Plants would be taller and have a longer growing season, correct? And there is also no seasonal cycle, so the plants would be able to just grow all the time. As for animals, would it be plausible that they (and humans) would adapt to need less sleep, and there wouldn't be such thing as "nocturnal," and mating/eating/sleeping times would be more sporadic. 

First, I want to point out that all kinds of bizarre things happen in biology, and the number of non-Earth ecosystems we've observed is still fairly low. So I bet your readers will buy into whatever you go with, provided you either give a plausible reason for it or somehow point out "this is weird and we don't know why." So feel free to extrapolate as much or as little as you like from what happens here. 

 

For the growing season, since there is no cycle, I would look at rain forests or other places where the climate is pretty constant year round.  Taller is not necessarily the result, but well could be. One thing that happens in ecosystems where energy is abundant is you get lots of different kinds of species filling lots of niches, and many of them grow very quickly to try to fill space before they get crowded out.

 

 

For the constant daylight piece, there would be some differences for sure, and I suppose that taller/faster growth would be one probable effect. Earth plants generally partition their photosynthesis into "light reactions" and "dark reactions" so that they can gather as much energy as possible during daylight and then do the rest of the chemistry on their own time when the sun isn't around. Because of that, constant light can harm some types of plants, while others (e.g. tomatoes) are fine with it, depending on how they deal with chemical intermediates and how tightly regulated their circadian rhythms are. (If you are interested, here are a few links to scientific treatments of the subject. If any of those look helpful but are stuck behind a paywall for you, PM me.) More useful to you would probably be research into the types of plants that live in or near the arctic circles. Those will deal with continuous light for a portion of the year, and will probably be similar in that aspect to the plants on your planet.

 

It occurs to me to ask: is there no seasonal cycle because there is no axis tilt or because the effect of the tilt is cancelled out by the two-sun effect? (i.e. at high latitudes one sun is high in the sky for summer when the other is low on the horizon for winter.) This could be a fascinating cycle of its own to explore.

 

Well, yes, but how long would said awesomeness last? Would all the colors in the window be illuminated at once, or would only certain snatches of it be lit? Would the shadow of the image appear on the floor before vanishing, or would the people inside see only little snatches of color? 

 

Methinks I'll need to finagle a way to be inside an old church during a lightning storm.

I think this would depend a lot on the distance and duration/frequency of the lightning. As I'm sure you know, there is a lot of variation in the length of a lightning strike. Some can be over almost immediately, others last upwards of a second. And sometimes multiple strikes comes in quick succession.

The more important question, though, is which way are you facing? If you are looking at the floor/wall, all the colors should be projected from the window, and if the strike is long enough your eye should have time to make sense of the shapes/patterns (if any). If it is a short strike then a burst of color may be all you see, especially if you get multiple strikes coming from different directions, which would project the image onto different locations. If you are looking at the window, however, you will probably only notice those pieces of glass behind which the lightning is appears. (If it is close enough to light up the whole window, you may need to pray more, or pick a different deity's church.)

[Kobold King he/him]

There are too many amazing settings here to name independently. Seriously, I'd be delighted to read a novel set in any one of the worlds and settings you guys have been working on.

 

Here's a quick synopsis of two alien races I've been developing for a while. By my calculations my setting should have over four thousand different civilizations, but I've only conceived of about two dozen and have only really developed a small handful. So please enjoy these two synopses while I get back to work.

 

 

 

The Skordyr

 

 

One of the earliest races humanity encountered, and fortunately one of the friendliest. These large blue millipedes live in bustling hives that they dig into the roots of enormous trees on their homeworld, separating their labor by caste much as the ants of Earth.

 

Unlike ants however, Skordyr castes are fluid. After a few weeks of metamorphosis a Skordyr individual can shift into any of over a dozen different castes, changing body as well as brain chemistry in the process. Naturally sexless, they can even shift into specific Male, Female, and Incubator forms for breeding.

 

Despite the autonomy available to each member of the hive, Skordyr communities regulate themselves easily as a whole, with members pushed by a strong instinct to perform whatever task they sense the hive requires. Famed for their loyalty and devotion to the hive, Skordyr can be found on most worlds thanks to their contracts with other races. Human colonial cities in particular were often built with Skordyr labor, with the alien insects paid for their services with lodging in subterranean areas of the settlements.

 

 

The Luthings

 

 

Resembling a cross between a monkey, a horse, and some kind of enormous spider, Luthings are one of the odder races to be found in this section of the galaxy. These beings are native to the planet Eden--a terrifying planet that is nothing like its namesake.

 

Luthings are well-adapted to the extremely hostile ecosystems of their homeworld, capable of enormous speed and agility. Long claws at the end of each leg aide them both in rushing up trees and fending off predators, and a total of four eyes on each side of their ridged heads allow them to see in all directions at once.

 

While arguably more intelligent even than humans on average, in over three million years of history Luthings have developed nothing even resembling a civilization. They wander across continents with no conception of territory or nationality, developing some tools where needed but usually leaving their knick-knacks and inventions behind them when their nomadic instincts lead them forward. As a result those transported off-world can find it difficult to adjust when surrounded by more civilized species, as Luthings have no natural conceptions of personal property or possessions.

 

Essentially they're hyperactive, love climbing and scratching things, eat whatever they can fit in their mouths, instantly evacuate their bowels whenever startled, steal whatever happens to catch their all-seeing eyes, and are prone to mathematical and existentialist ponderings that can drive a man to confusion or depression within hours. You could travel for millions of light years and not find a worse potential room mate than a Luthing.

Edited May 16, 2015 by Kobold King

[TwiLyghtSansSparkles she/her]

You could travel for millions of light years and not find a worse potential room mate than a Luthing.

 

Backtrack could.  

 

I like both of those. Any particular ideas for where and how they'd fit into a story? 

[Kobold King he/him]

Backtrack could.

 

I like both of those. Any particular ideas for where and how they'd fit into a story? 

 

Once Backtrack attempted to cook a packet of Ramen noodles, and the resulting cooking catastrophe opened a space-time portal that filled his room with Luthings. And then Skordyr ate the building foundations and his house was condemned.

 

Not really, no. Most of the time I create aliens for the fun of it and don't spend much time thinking about how they'd fit into the story. I like the idea of writing a short story that tells how Luthings were first realized to be self-aware--with their lack of technology and the overall lack of a universal translator in the setting, I imagine it could have taken several years for anyone to realize how intelligent they were. In a lot of ways it'd be similar to the discovery of dolphin intelligence, in that both dolphins and Luthings were assumed to be dumb animals before research began to suggest otherwise.

[mail-mi he/him]

 

First, I want to point out that all kinds of bizarre things happen in biology, and the number of non-Earth ecosystems we've observed is still fairly low. So I bet your readers will buy into whatever you go with, provided you either give a plausible reason for it or somehow point out "this is weird and we don't know why." So feel free to extrapolate as much or as little as you like from what happens here. 

 

For the growing season, since there is no cycle, I would look at rain forests or other places where the climate is pretty constant year round.  Taller is not necessarily the result, but well could be. One thing that happens in ecosystems where energy is abundant is you get lots of different kinds of species filling lots of niches, and many of them grow very quickly to try to fill space before they get crowded out.

 

 

For the constant daylight piece, there would be some differences for sure, and I suppose that taller/faster growth would be one probable effect. Earth plants generally partition their photosynthesis into "light reactions" and "dark reactions" so that they can gather as much energy as possible during daylight and then do the rest of the chemistry on their own time when the sun isn't around. Because of that, constant light can harm some types of plants, while others (e.g. tomatoes) are fine with it, depending on how they deal with chemical intermediates and how tightly regulated their circadian rhythms are. (If you are interested, here are a few links to scientific treatments of the subject. If any of those look helpful but are stuck behind a paywall for you, PM me.) More useful to you would probably be research into the types of plants that live in or near the arctic circles. Those will deal with continuous light for a portion of the year, and will probably be similar in that aspect to the plants on your planet.

 

It occurs to me to ask: is there no seasonal cycle because there is no axis tilt or because the effect of the tilt is cancelled out by the two-sun effect? (i.e. at high latitudes one sun is high in the sky for summer when the other is low on the horizon for winter.) This could be a fascinating cycle of its own to explore.

 

 

 

Thank you so much! 

 

To answer your question, I think you're thinking about the actual planetary system wrong: The two suns rotate around their combined center of gravity, which is somewhere in the middle of space. The planet just happens to be exactly on that center of gravity, and since it's being pulled at equally by both suns, its spot in space doesn't move (except rotating around its galaxy's center). It was caught in between the suns, and got stuck there. Its rotation has been slowly slowing down ever since (that's why it has a 42 hour day), and since it's caught in between the two suns, instead of rotating around both of them, there couldn't be any seasons. 

[Seonid he/him]

To answer your question, I think you're thinking about the actual planetary system wrong: The two suns rotate around their combined center of gravity, which is somewhere in the middle of space. The planet just happens to be exactly on that center of gravity, and since it's being pulled at equally by both suns, its spot in space doesn't move (except rotating around its galaxy's center). It was caught in between the suns, and got stuck there. Its rotation has been slowly slowing down ever since (that's why it has a 42 hour day), and since it's caught in between the two suns, instead of rotating around both of them, there couldn't be any seasons. 

 

 

Hmm....not a likely natural combination. Even a planet moving through the center of gravity couldn't get caught there if it was moving beforehand. Conservation of momentum (both linear and angular) and all of that. 

 

If it was artificially set up, something like that could happen, but it would be an extremely unstable equilibrium, tending to crash into one of the suns at the slightest disturbance from it's stationary point.

 

The rotation slowing is accurate, though. Tidal locking would slowly occur in a situation like that.

[mail-mi he/him]

Hmm....not a likely natural combination. Even a planet moving through the center of gravity couldn't get caught there if it was moving beforehand. Conservation of momentum (both linear and angular) and all of that. 

 

If it was artificially set up, something like that could happen, but it would be an extremely unstable equilibrium, tending to crash into one of the suns at the slightest disturbance from it's stationary point.

 

The rotation slowing is accurate, though. Tidal locking would slowly occur in a situation like that.

 

It is, in fact, artificial. And that same artificial-ness is keeping it mostly held in place. But if there was a significanlty large disturbance...

 

Edited May 19, 2015 by mail-mi

[ccstat he/him]

I think you're thinking about the actual planetary system wrong: The two suns rotate around their combined center of gravity, which is somewhere in the middle of space. The planet just happens to be exactly on that center of gravity, and since it's being pulled at equally by both suns, its spot in space doesn't move (except rotating around its galaxy's center). It was caught in between the suns, and got stuck there. Its rotation has been slowly slowing down ever since (that's why it has a 42 hour day), and since it's caught in between the two suns, instead of rotating around both of them, there couldn't be any seasons. 

 

If I understand you correctly, the planet is located at the L1 point of the two stars. I guess I was extrapolating an additional effect on top your description, which may or may not factor into the system you've designed. 

 

If the planet is like earth in that its axis of rotation is not perpendicular to the (two sun's) orbital plane, then the suns will occupy distinct arcs in the sky for a given observer on the surface of the planet. I assume that, even in the absence of any movement relative to the two suns, the planet's axis will still precess. If so, this will result in a regular ("year-long") cycle in which the north pole points towards one star, then the other, and back again. This would result in earth-like seasonal variations, except that with diametrically opposing suns one would be in summer mode (longer days in the northern hemisphere) when the other is in winter mode (longer days in the southern hemisphere). These disparate seasons would, presumably, even each other out and therefore result in no net change in average temperature.

 

If the axis is oblique, the two suns would be unmistakably unique, so I guess your initial description of it seeming to the residents as though they might be the same implies that there is no axial tilt, and the above would not apply.

If there is axial tilt, and it precesses, I can imagine some fascinating cultural elements, such as mythology of the two dieties exchanging places in the sky...

 

Having mentioned that, it also occurs to me that it could be particularly interesting to describe philosophy/religion on a world that is, in fact, the center of everything. The suns orbit us; we are immobile, therefore we are the fulcrum of the universe! (Not having read your work yet, I don't know if you already incorporate any or all of these things. I suspect you have thought of yet cooler things to include.)

[DanTheSeamonster he/him]

Mostly I write fantasy, but recently I've been toying with the idea of a contemporary, but not just any contemporary, nay! One set in and around the lives of the members of a book club. I thought it'd be cool for readers to see how the characters enjoyed books that the readers themselves had read. Such as TFioS or SA or Mistborn. I think it would definitely be fun to play with the characters discussion of the books, making some really enjoy some, while making other characters despise them.  

 

I dunno, just a tiny idea I've had for a few weeks now. Although it is quickly taking up more of my attention. Alas, I may have to set aside my fantasy shortstory collection for an actual novel soon. 

[Kobold King he/him]

Today I had the random and slightly disturbing idea of a society that surgically augments the skulls of newborns so they can wear specialized and fashionable hats when they reach adulthood.

 

I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do with this idea, if anything.

[TwiLyghtSansSparkles she/her]

Today I had the random and slightly disturbing idea of a society that surgically augments the skulls of newborns so they can wear specialized and fashionable hats when they reach adulthood.

 

I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do with this idea, if anything.

 

Um….create a brutal dystopia where people can be beaten senseless for not wearing silly hats?  

[Edgedancer he/him]

Today I had the random and slightly disturbing idea of a society that surgically augments the skulls of newborns so they can wear specialized and fashionable hats when they reach adulthood.

 

I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do with this idea, if anything.

Maybe the heads get specifically tailored and act like something akin to a cutie mark, just artificaly created?

[TwiLyghtSansSparkles she/her]

Maybe the heads get specifically tailored and act like something akin to a cutie mark, just artificaly created?

 

Then what is the special destiny of the child who wears this hat? 

 

 

Or these? 

 

[Kobold King he/him]

Maybe the heads get specifically tailored and act like something akin to a cutie mark, just artificaly created?

 

I was definitely thinking that the hats could be used to assert individuality. I'm still debating whether it'll be possible for adults to go in and have their heads changed.

 

Basically I'm thinking of this like a population-wide version of the footbinding inflicted on Chinese women a couple of centuries ago. Except with stylish top hats instead of deformed feet.

 

 

Then what is the special destiny of the child who wears this hat? 

 

 

Or these? 

 

 

 

It's got to be my destiny...

Because it's what my feather hat is telling me.

[Quiver he/him]

So, an idea occurred to me. Problem is, I'm sure its probably been done; I just can't remember where I read it.

(Or hell, maybe I didn't and did create this. But I doubt it.)

Has anyone heard of a story involving weaponising/using memories as a form of magic? The closest I can think is 'Rings of Akhaten', but I feel like I must have read it somewhere else...