Question 11

[mail-mi he/him]

Huh. He's not an instant jerk to someone.

 

He's in shock.

[Kobold King he/him]

Huh. He's not an instant jerk to someone.

Just wait till Deathwish meets her.

[Mailliw73 he/him]

Just wait till Deathwish meets her.

Dang it Kobold. Way to ruin the moment.

I finished another Emma segment, in other news.

[TwiLyghtSansSparkles she/her]

The announcer on Beat Bobby Flay referred to one of the contestants as a "financier."

He doesn't look at all like I'd pictured him.

Edited May 12, 2015 by TwiLyghtSansSparkles

[Blackhoof]

New Reader post. I'm still rolling with the plan that some child Epic turned Disneyland into a city filled with characters forced to play out disney stories. 

 

that's hilarious XD

 

although at first I thought she had come from an actual place in Norway called Arendelle, where a crazy epic had forced people into being characters from Frozen.

[Aonar he/him]

In other, other news, I just finished a Frostfire segment. Probably not the one you're thinking of, though.

 

The WHOOC thread just got a little darker. Well, a lot darker, actually.
 
The obligatory Zeppelin song to go with the post's title.

[Edgedancer he/him]

...

On that air absorbing matter, tecnically it would be possible for Converter to absorb energy from the air so she can still walk but that would require a very high amount of precision, that she could only really muster if the air keeps at a constant force. If Rainmaker changes up the force of her wind just a little bit that should be enough to keep Converter from making progress.

 

Well it'd have to be the earths crust if I were to use the earth, too much movement of magma in the core for that to be easily mapable, in reality it'd probably be a small select sample of the earths crust since that's all that's needed, say a piece directly below the object she's affecting of the same size as that object.

Rough calculations should suffice for things like pressure changes, I don't think we need perfect mathematical models.

Not sure what you mean by large and small scale not working, small scale is a part of large scale you can't really have one without the other.

I think that if its travelling through air the charge would actually be equalized pretty quickly, positive ions created by the discharge would pick up the stray electrons. Even if not since it was no longer being controlled it would follow the normal path of electricity and discharge into the ground.

What I mean with the scale deal is can be shown on how you pick the reference. You ignore the problems that would come from taking the earth in its entirety and instead shrink the focus down to one little piece and treat that as the data total. Yet with actually using the power you think about affecting every little thing differently instead of taking what would be considered "an object" as the data total.

 

I'm pretty sure the electrones wouldn't be equalized though. They would keep their exact same state as when they were frozen, otherwise there would need to be movement of the electrones that doesn't fit into the standard of the reference and there's no need the lightning itself couldn't just continue to travel the same way, so unless MV was lucky and catched them in a piece of air far away from her instead of for example her clothes she'd just get his by the discharge anyway.

[Voidus]

On that air absorbing matter, tecnically it would be possible for Converter to absorb energy from the air so she can still walk but that would require a very high amount of precision, that she could only really muster if the air keeps at a constant force. If Rainmaker changes up the force of her wind just a little bit that should be enough to keep Converter from making progress.

 

What I mean with the scale deal is can be shown on how you pick the reference. You ignore the problems that would come from taking the earth in its entirety and instead shrink the focus down to one little piece and treat that as the data total. Yet with actually using the power you think about affecting every little thing differently instead of taking what would be considered "an object" as the data total.

 

I'm pretty sure the electrones wouldn't be equalized though. They would keep their exact same state as when they were frozen, otherwise there would need to be movement of the electrones that doesn't fit into the standard of the reference and there's no need the lightning itself couldn't just continue to travel the same way, so unless MV was lucky and catched them in a piece of air far away from her instead of for example her clothes she'd just get his by the discharge anyway.

Again, not sure what you're trying to get at by differentiating one object or its components, the object is made of the components so naturally it has to affect those too, there's no way to differentiate between motion of an atom from heat and motion from say falling through the air, so either it can't affect atoms at all which means it can't affect anything or it also has to affect heat.

The electrons wouldn't move, positive ions in the air would be attracted to the negative charge to balance it out. 

As for whether she gets hit by the discharge it depends on what she does, as you say if she were to use a more distant shield it would work, or she could just take off the piece of clothing and back away a safe distance, not that she's likely too, if it actually happened she'd probably assume the lightning was dealt with and then crisp herself, but I'm more interested in getting the mechanics down at the moment, then I can balance her powers with behavior as needed to try to keep her within bounds.

[Edgedancer he/him]

Again, not sure what you're trying to get at by differentiating one object or its components, the object is made of the components so naturally it has to affect those too, there's no way to differentiate between motion of an atom from heat and motion from say falling through the air, so either it can't affect atoms at all which means it can't affect anything or it also has to affect heat.

The problem is that "a part of the earths crust" isn't an object it's a component and not even one that's clearly differentiated. When dealing with an actual object like a person you do the exact opposite and don't take the parts relative to each other but affect them all seperately. It's inconsistent. You handwave the part that would give you to much trouble but keep the part that make her powers potentially broken.

I've never said that she shouldn't be affecting atoms, what I'm saying is that she shouldn't be accounting for the atoms in a body to be seperate objects but keep them relative to the major object.

And through all of this you haven't really adressed the problem that the atoms wouldn't really stop moving but would have to sync up their random movement with the random movement of the atoms of the arbitrary choosen piece of earth, again deprieving us of a singular point of reference, and the problem we have wouldn't be complicated math were don't need the deatils but math that I can't even fathom. 

Edited May 12, 2015 by Edgedancer

[Voidus]

The problem is that "a part of the earths crust" isn't an object it's a component and not even one that's clearly differentiated. When dealing with an actual object like a person you do the exact opposite and don't take the parts relative to each other but affect them all seperately. It's inconsistent. You handwave the part that would give you to much trouble but keep the part that make her powers potentially broken.

I've never said that she shouldn't be affecting atoms, what I'm saying is that she shouldn't be accounting for the atoms in a body to be seperate objects but keep them relative to the major object.

And through all of this you haven't really adressed the problem that the atoms wouldn't really stop moving but would have to sync up their random movement with the random movement of the atoms of the arbitrary choosen piece of earth, again deprieving us of a singular point of reference, and the problem we have wouldn't be complicated math were don't need the deatils but math that I can't even fathom. 

There's no such thing as an 'object' in an abstract objective sense, an 'object' is a purely speculative entity assigned by us. Also I never said that her reference frame was a single object so I'm not sure why you're saying its inconsistent, in fact multiple times I've said my current idea for reference frames was a kind of idealized version of any living entity, which is certainly not an object and its a different reference frame for a non-living entity. I understand trying to make sense of the powers but I feel like picking on something like that is needlessly distracting from the actual issue.

It's not accounting for them to be separate objects, but if she were to only take into account momentum shared across every particle in the object then again her power becomes useless since given the random nature of heat energy no two particles are going to have the same momentum, let alone all of them, which is further complicated by even macroscopic scale subobjects not sharing momentum universally, air resistance for instance would affect each part of the body differently, noticeably not by much and it would balance out to be the same since they then drag on each other but enough that it would affect the power, again causing near instant death on anyone she affected with her abilities. Or walking for example, your foot remains stationary while walking, pushing the rest of your body forward, although at different rates, so every part of the body is moving at a different momentum, how could that then be treated as one object without rendering her powers completely meaningless? She'd be able to 'freeze' people except they'd still be able to walk, talk, point a gun and shoot her if need be. It would pretty much only be useful against fliers who move their entire body in unison.

The point of using the earth as a reference is its relatively homogenous temperature, unlike the human body, so it doesn't need to sync up, it would just impart each particle with a certain amount of random kinetic energy equivalent to that heat. The maths involved for that isn't particularly difficult, simple mass conversions to determine the relative increase in energy since the energy is random it would only affect heat not overall movement.

[Edgedancer he/him]

There's no such thing as an 'object' in an abstract objective sense, an 'object' is a purely speculative entity assigned by us. Also I never said that her reference frame was a single object so I'm not sure why you're saying its inconsistent, in fact multiple times I've said my current idea for reference frames was a kind of idealized version of any living entity, which is certainly not an object and its a different reference frame for a non-living entity. I understand trying to make sense of the powers but I feel like picking on something like that is needlessly distracting from the actual issue.

It's not accounting for them to be separate objects, but if she were to only take into account momentum shared across every particle in the object then again her power becomes useless since given the random nature of heat energy no two particles are going to have the same momentum, let alone all of them, which is further complicated by even macroscopic scale subobjects not sharing momentum universally, air resistance for instance would affect each part of the body differently, noticeably not by much and it would balance out to be the same since they then drag on each other but enough that it would affect the power, again causing near instant death on anyone she affected with her abilities. Or walking for example, your foot remains stationary while walking, pushing the rest of your body forward, although at different rates, so every part of the body is moving at a different momentum, how could that then be treated as one object without rendering her powers completely meaningless? She'd be able to 'freeze' people except they'd still be able to walk, talk, point a gun and shoot her if need be. It would pretty much only be useful against fliers who move their entire body in unison.

The point of using the earth as a reference is its relatively homogenous temperature, unlike the human body, so it doesn't need to sync up, it would just impart each particle with a certain amount of random kinetic energy equivalent to that heat. The maths involved for that isn't particularly difficult, simple mass conversions to determine the relative increase in energy since the energy is random it would only affect heat not overall movement.

Maybe I've just reached my understanding of science but could it be you're cutting corners by equating momentum to kinetic energy and from there to energy in general? Correct me if I'm wrong anywhere but momentum is mass times velocity, meaning if we take a baseball the temperature of the object doesn't matter for calculating it, as momentum doesn't messure the amount of energy contained within the object but only how much mass is displaced in space, in which direction and how fast. The logical conclusion of that would be that if momentum isn't affected by temperature then temperature shouldn't be affected by a change in momentum. (Yes, I'm aware that heat transfer does ultimately affect momentum but equating them is like saying a teleporter just moves really fast.)

 

If you have to work with abstraction, ideals and other wishwash why not cut out all the in between steps and opt for a system were we take one object decide on earth as the reference frame and take only the overal movement relative to the reference intoo account (so someone moving at 5 km/h is asummed to move at that speed with his entire body) once stoped all movement that change the object's overall position relative to the reference if also frozen (so no movement of limbs) while internal movement of such things like lungs and blood is allowed to contiune. 

Is this method perfect? No, but it is a whole lot less complicated and doesn't require some additional relatives or handwaved ideals.

[Kobold King he/him]

That Frostfire post... it's... it's...

 

Alarming.

 

(Though just for the record, Frostfire would have died shortly thereafter--if he'd attempted to take over the town. He probably wouldn't have survived his first encounter with Deathwish, and even if he did, Arsenal would have resorted to carpet bombing the entire block around the clinic. Of course, with everything else, the amount of chaos Frostfire would have wrought would probably lead to the city falling anyway by the end of the next evening. )

[Voidus]

Maybe I've just reached my understanding of science but could it be you're cutting corners by equating momentum to kinetic energy and from there to energy in general? Correct me if I'm wrong anywhere but momentum is mass times velocity, meaning if we take a baseball the temperature of the object doesn't matter for calculating it, as momentum doesn't messure the amount of energy contained within the object but only how much mass is displaced in space, in which direction and how fast. The logical conclusion of that would be that if momentum isn't affected by temperature then temperature shouldn't be affected by a change in momentum. (Yes, I'm aware that heat transfer does ultimately affect momentum but equating them is like saying a teleporter just moves really fast.)

 

If you have to work with abstraction, ideals and other wishwash why not cut out all the in between steps and opt for a system were we take one object decide on earth as the reference frame and take only the overal movement relative to the reference intoo account (so someone moving at 5 km/h is asummed to move at that speed with his entire body) once stoped all movement that change the object's overall position relative to the reference if also frozen (so no movement of limbs) while internal movement of such things like lungs and blood is allowed to contiune. 

Is this method perfect? No, but it is a whole lot less complicated and doesn't require some additional relatives or handwaved ideals.

The problem is that real world physics don't work the way Epic physics do so there's going to be a certain level of conjecture, Kinetic energy and momentum are both related measurements (Ek is 1/2*velocity*momentum or momentum^2/2*mass) though I do try not to mix the two up I might fail occasionally so if I have then I apologize. That works for the average momentum over the entire object yes, but that's the thing, in real life we tend to deal with averages like that but on the nanoscale it really makes a difference, heat is essentially just randomized kinetic energy (And hence, randomized momentum of individual particles), and either MVs power applies at the nano-scale or else it causes a whole mess of problems.

Limb movements don't move the whole body though, that's my point, taking a step doesn't move your whole body, it just moves most of it (Hence moving the average, which is the problem with using just the average momentum)

To give an example, suppose the person was mid stride while MV froze them, their average momentum is around 120 (100kg * 1.2 m/s), their foot however is completely stationary on the ground.

If you now take the average momentum, divide it up by weight and create an opposite momentum (500 in the opposite direction) then most of the body will be in various stages of stopping but lets suppose it works out and the entire rest of the body stops as it should, now her power reaches the foot, determines it makes up 1/20th of the bodies mass and so applies a - 25 kg.m/s  momentum to the foot, which now moves backwards, tearing itself from the rest of the body which now can't move. The problem is that without using abstracts there's no way to differentiate between the movement of blood or air in the body and the movement of a limb.

 

Now I could change it so that her power just envelops an object, not affecting its internal mechanisms but just stopping it from moving once it hits the border, but then that allows her to squish people without too much difficulty, would require me to retcon her entire power usage and would still allow her to suffocate people completely by accident if she uses her powers for any extended period.

It's a problem that I've been wrestling with for the better part of 6 months now and I still can't come up with an answer that satisfies me so I do know that it's not perfect, I'm just trying to determine the best way to keep her from becoming an instant one hit ko on pretty much everyone.

[Edgedancer he/him]

That Frostfire post... it's... it's...

 

Alarming.

 

(Though just for the record, Frostfire would have died shortly thereafter--if he'd attempted to take over the town. He probably wouldn't have survived his first encounter with Deathwish, and even if he did, Arsenal would have resorted to carpet bombing the entire block around the clinic. Of course, with everything else, the amount of chaos Frostfire would have wrought would probably lead to the city falling anyway by the end of the next evening. )

To be fair, I would have to heavily veto the use of his powers in this post given that by his (very extensive) Bio he both wouldn't have been able to gather enough energy to partially melt guns and boil the blood of multiple people that fast nor would he have been able to wait multiple seconds to aim for the gun parts and then mull it over some before killing Autumn without all that energy causing him to incinerate himself.

Then there's the literal darkness seeping out of his body, which we let slip in the RP but realistically would have been a pretty big give away that he's planning something.

 

So yeah alarming but from what Aonar told us not actually possible

 

 

The problem is that real world physics don't work the way Epic physics do so there's going to be a certain level of conjecture,

...

Now I could change it so that her power just envelops an object, not affecting its internal mechanisms but just stopping it from moving once it hits the border, but then that allows her to squish people without too much difficulty, would require me to retcon her entire power usage and would still allow her to suffocate people completely by accident if she uses her powers for any extended period.

It's a problem that I've been wrestling with for the better part of 6 months now and I still can't come up with an answer that satisfies me so I do know that it's not perfect, I'm just trying to determine the best way to keep her from becoming an instant one hit ko on pretty much everyone.

Then why not use the simple hadwave instead of the complicated one?

 

By letting her powers work on an area you inherently gave her the ability to suffocate people anyway, given she can freeze the air around them, so why worry now?

Do me the favour and explain how taking the object as a whole like I proposed would allow her to squish people. I can't immeadiately figure that out at the moment.

[Blackhoof]

Why not do what comic book writers and Brandon does and ignore the deeper science?

her power is she transfers momentum around. There is momentum here, now its here, and that guy now can't move. Wait, how did that not kill him? Magic. It just didn't, her powers figured it out, not even she has a clue.

And given the propensity for handwaving in all fiction i think we could let that slide

[Voidus]

To be fair, I would have to heavily veto the use of his powers in this post given that by his (very extensive) Bio he both wouldn't have been able to gather enough energy to partially melt guns and boil the blood of multiple people that fast nor would he have been able to wait multiple seconds to aim for the gun parts and then mull it over some before killing Autumn without all that energy causing him to incinerate himself.

Then there's the literal darkness seeping out of his body, which we let slip in the RP but realistically would have been a pretty big give away that he's planning something.

 

So yeah alarming but from what Aonar told us not actually possible

 

Then why not use the simple hadwave instead of the complicated one?

 

By letting her powers work on an area you inherently gave her the ability to suffocate people anyway, given she can freeze the air around them, so why worry now?

Do me the favour and explain how taking the object as a whole like I proposed would allow her to squish people. I can't immeadiately figure that out at the moment.

Because the simple handwaves are the more frustrating ones? If someone says that gravity on earth can suddenly go sideways because it just can so therefore they can have antigrav in their novel (extreme example) and someone else says that tachyonic particles imaginary mass is expressible through a slightly different variant than is theoretically true so that they can use lightspeed in their sci fi novel I'm more inclined to accept the latter, more complex handwaving is less noticeably handwaving.

 

Being able to suffocate people and having to suffocate people are two different things, the former I can control with behaviour to keep her power leveled, MVs not exactly imaginative with her power so while it's posible for her to do it she isn't likely to think of it on her own, if it's a passive effect of using her power on other people then she's going to discover that she can suffocate them pretty quickly.

No, using the average momentum just causes her to passively rip peoples limbs off but at least its not able to penetrate PIs so it is slightly better than most, the squishing people thing comes from using an envelope around the object instead of the whole object, when she tries to catch falling people with that they'd get squished against the envelope, it's not something you suggested just another potential solution I've previously thought of then dismissed.

[Voidus]

Why not do what comic book writers and Brandon does and ignore the deeper science?

her power is she transfers momentum around. There is momentum here, now its here, and that guy now can't move. Wait, how did that not kill him? Magic. It just didn't, her powers figured it out, not even she has a clue.

And given the propensity for handwaving in all fiction i think we could let that slide

Because I'm an obsessive science nerd who is incapable of letting go?

Also because how exactly her power works influences what exactly she can do with it, both through clever manipulation and through unintentional side effects. That being said I could just choose the effects I want and handwave the science behind it but yeah... Obsessive.

[TwiLyghtSansSparkles she/her]

That Frostfire post... it's... it's...

Alarming.

(Though just for the record, Frostfire would have died shortly thereafter--if he'd attempted to take over the town. He probably wouldn't have survived his first encounter with Deathwish, and even if he did, Arsenal would have resorted to carpet bombing the entire block around the clinic. Of course, with everything else, the amount of chaos Frostfire would have wrought would probably lead to the city falling anyway by the end of the next evening. )

(Also, I think once Frostfire killed Autumn, Coma would've jumped into the story to settle things once and for all. )

[Edgedancer he/him]

Because the simple handwaves are the more frustrating ones? If someone says that gravity on earth can suddenly go sideways because it just can so therefore they can have antigrav in their novel (extreme example) and someone else says that tachyonic particles imaginary mass is expressible through a slightly different variant than is theoretically true so that they can use lightspeed in their sci fi novel I'm more inclined to accept the latter, more complex handwaving is less noticeably handwaving.

 

Being able to suffocate people and having to suffocate people are two different things, the former I can control with behaviour to keep her power leveled, MVs not exactly imaginative with her power so while it's posible for her to do it she isn't likely to think of it on her own, if it's a passive effect of using her power on other people then she's going to discover that she can suffocate them pretty quickly.

No, using the average momentum just causes her to passively rip peoples limbs off but at least its not able to penetrate PIs so it is slightly better than most, the squishing people thing comes from using an envelope around the object instead of the whole object, when she tries to catch falling people with that they'd get squished against the envelope, it's not something you suggested just another potential solution I've previously thought of then dismissed.

Well... I guess you'll have to deal with that?

 

I'm not sure how this would force her to suffocate people, if we let the internal movement of the lung continue?

 

Think about the envelop just setting the momentum to zero without decceleration... which is pretty much how Impact's power work, so it's not like you don't have a precedent.

[Kobold King he/him]

(Also, I think once Frostfire killed Autumn, Coma would've jumped into the story to settle things once and for all. )

 

That is true. Though on the bright side Backtrack and Game would have lived through this one, being in the back room at the time. Though Backtrack's sobbing might have given away their position.

[Voidus]

Well... I guess you'll have to deal with that?

 

I'm not sure how this would force her to suffocate people, if we let the internal movement of the lung continue?

 

Think about the envelop just setting the momentum to zero without decceleration... which is pretty much how Impact's power work, so it's not like you don't have a precedent.

If that's what everyone would prefer then I suppose I will, but I think it's better all around if her powers are mostly clear and predictable but at a very complicated level there's some unexpectedness rather than the basics of her powers being handwaved resulting in a complete inability to predict what would, could or should happen when she uses them. Obviously I'd try not to abuse it but if I'm given largely creative license for how her powers work on the fly due to handwaving there's guaranteed to be some confusion.

Two reasons: one, no air could enter, 2 lungs can't expand if theres no room to expand into, once they've hit the envelope they couldn't expand anymore.

Deceleration at the border isn't the problem, in fact it makes it worse if its instantaneous, that's why cars have crumple zones, to extend the deceleration to reduce trauma. If it stops instantly at the border then the momentum of her organs will crush themselves against her skin.

[TwiLyghtSansSparkles she/her]

That is true. Though on the bright side Backtrack and Game would have lived through this one, being in the back room at the time. Though Backtrack's sobbing might have given away their position.

Bad Luck Backtrack indeed.

[Kobold King he/him]

Bad Luck Backtrack indeed.

 

Did anyone really expect being in a parallel universe would give him any better luck?

[Voidus]

Did anyone really expect being in a parallel universe would give him any better luck?

Didn't he kill Steelheart in one of our AUs?

[Kobold King he/him]

Didn't he kill Steelheart in one of our AUs?

 

I don't remember that... I remember him throwing a bunch of dollar bills at him and then being conscripted into starring in a Newcagoan talk show, though.