Mckeedee123

Well, that's not the point. Animals shoving piles of bugs into their mouths to do magic is just sort of a weird image to me. So I must be stuck somewhere.

So how do you visualize the krill thing working? I don't think I really understand the implications of it. I keep visualizing dragons swallowing clouds of hovering rotifers and then using them to fly somehow. Are they magical? Or scientific? Do they exist inside organisms like chloroplasts or mitochodria at birth? Or do they have to be ingested? Uh... anyway, when are you planning to ask your pal for that map? Should we just go ahead and start getting into the details of the worldbuilding now?

That would be incredibly versatile, and would let us do practically anything with world design. It's a great idea. I guess I should say that I do personally prefer having magic be something... intrinsic to certain people though. I dunno where other people stand. Are there any more suggestions for specific magic systems? We should get them all together and figure out the pros and cons of each, in terms of worldbuilding and storytelling and whatnot.

Wait... prehistoric animals? Ground Sloths! We can make Ground Sloths part of this world! Seriously though, of all of the prehistoric "ages," quaternary is definitely the coolest.

Wow. Somehow, Twy's dinosaur idea just got even cooler. Love this. I've got some pretty decent ideas for that, if we want to make it a thing.

-I think that a magic system based on ancient polytheistic practices would be interesting. Basically, certain elements of nature and society come together as spiritual consciences, and certain bloodlines (including animal bloodlines) are descended from (or created by) these consciences and have a sort of influence over them. There's room for a lot of cultural variation there, I think. It's just a suggestion, though. -Ooh! Designing new species is fun! I'd go with flora and fauna that are earth-like, but pulled out of context, like giant flatworms, or jellyfish-like creatures that float across the sky catching leaves and insects. -Archipelagos. Islands give a lot of room for diversity, and I'd love to create different island societies.

Don't let the power go to your head.

There you go. Also, Twy wrote two threads that should help you, What is Free-form Role-Playing? and Rules and Etiquette.

I'd suggest reading through a thread first to get a feel for how it's done, but really, it's not any different from what you'd expect. Etiquette demands that you ask somebody before you show one of their characters or substantially change the plot, however.

Currently, there are 3 cities open to Epic characters. Corvallis is the first. It's a highly structured city that's currently in a state of slow collapse. Astoria is the second. It's basically a dumping ground for our overpowered Epics. Finally, there's Salem. It's a sort of Epic fight club. Characters are either contestants trying to rise up through the ranks and earn fame and fortune, or participants in some sort of conspiracy-thing. At the moment, neither of these plots is getting much attention, so you'd be free to shape them however you wanted. The other two cities (Portland and The Dalles) are kind of full right now, though The Dalles is accepting non-Epics .

Sounds great.

Hmm... can Soulcaster's powers fill in the blanks enough to recreate famous Epics to fight?

Yeah, it's weird. I've been considering writing another arena-fighting character, because... we need a few more of those.

An important piece of evidence of a connection could be the Shash rune. Siri mentions that it's part of the Hallandren alphabet, and then, of course, it's also burned into Kaladin's forehead. The symbol and meaning are different, but the name is the same.

I've never been able to tell the difference with diet colas. Must be an Epic thing

I'd say that most Americans lost their rabid nationalism during the Vietnam War. Our culture and post-WWII national pride never really recovered from the 60's. By the way, I've never seen an obese person riding an electric scooter in my life, but I want one.

Well, the backstory to Corvallis is pretty complicated, so I'd suggest reading it all the way through, if you haven't already. good luck!

So do you know where you want this character to go? Currently, there are 3 cities open to Epic characters. Corvallis is the first. It's a highly structured city that's currently in a state of slow collapse. Astoria is the second. It's basically a dumping ground for our overpowered Epics (so if you wanted to beef her up a bit...) Finally, there's Salem. It's a sort of Epic fight club. Characters are either contestants trying to rise up through the ranks and earn fame and fortune, or participants in some sort of conspiracy-thing. At the moment, neither of these plots is getting much attention, so you'd be free to shape them however you wanted. The other two cities (Portland and The Dalles) are kind of full right now, though The Dalles is accepting non-Epics

We'll wait as long as it takes for you to come up with something good.

Sazed writes it in the epigraphs. She snapped during her birth.

On that topic, I'm feeling a little overwhelmed right now in my Computer Science class. I'm surrounded by programming nerds with two weeks' worth of stubble and who already know, like, seven languages. Heck! Most of my classmates just watched Youtube for the entire period! And here I am with no prior experience... Imean, the class itself is just learning C++, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to fall behind at some point in the semester.

Well, personally, I think the entire way we go about doing politics is just wrong. On a one-on-one basis, humans can be very intelligent. By extension of that logic, you'd think that if you put a hundred people into a room and asked for a reasonable solution to the energy crisis, you'd get a great answer. You wouldn't. Humans = smart. Human systems = dumb. Mobs are human systems. Mobs are dumb. Nation-States are human systems. Nation-States are dumb. Corporations are human systems. Corporations are (usually) dumb. I'm bad at explaining ideas, so that's all I'll say about that. I'm not going to get into the multiple examples and almost unfailing patterns throughout history that've led me to this conclusion, and I'm definitely not going to get into the implications that this has for Democracy as a system of government (though actually, my opinion is that since idiocy is impossible to escape anyway, you might as well have a system of government that makes that idiocy less efficient, right?) Political parties are human systems. They're driven forward by collective opinion, aka recursive thinking. The "political issues" we see everywhere are basically just products of these systems. One demagogue associated with a party says one thing, and the other party will almost unfailingly take the opposite stance. That's how issues are made. You want an example? The controversy over new Voter Registration Laws. I'm not even sure if I have to explain that one... Yes, the rhetoric is very divisive, but in the end, most of consists of things that have no real affect on the country. What actually matters is the long-term stuff. Real stuff (at least, real stuff for our American Sanderfans out there.) Getting away from our dependence on oil. Finding an alternative to spending half a trillion dollars a year on getting flak for being the world's police force. Balancing our trade deficit by bringing back US manufacturing. Education, maybe? The funny thing is that these are all partisan issues, but they're not talked about nearly as much as everything else. But no one up there cares, I guess.

If it makes you feel any better, both of your political views are basically just products of your respective environments. My earlier post was a bit too dismissive, I guess, but I think you need to know that if your political ideology matches up pretty closely with one side of the aisle or the other, it's probably because of recursive thinking. There's a brilliant piece written by Mark Twain, Corn Pone Opinions (don't worry it's short,) that explores this phenomenon. The first major point of the thing is that we humans like to think like other humans. We follow the majority opinion, subconsciously, because: A- It makes us feel accepted, and repeating an opinion shared by most members of the group you commonly associate with draws respect from them, and B- We sort of associate the majority opinion with the correct one. This first point has more to do with fads and fashion than it does with politics, but you do see some of it. It explains why groups (or states) with a strong political affiliation tend to become more radical than those who don't. The second (and probably more relevant) point is that most of our opinions tend to be those of people we respect or give credibility to. I do this all the time when I read movie reviews. Whether I've seen it before or after I read the review (spoilers. meh), it changes the whole experience for me. I just sort of assume that the guy is right because he's got a degree in Movie Critic-ing or something. With politics, this source is usually either parents (obviously not a thing with you,) friends (sometimes... If you think they're really smart or something,) demagogues (this one is rather one-sided. As Clemens explains, we tend to ignore or trivialize articles and stories that disagree with our established opinion, whether it's a radical or moderate version of that ideology,) and celebrities (seeing as you're apparently a young liberal coming from a conservative background, I would assume that this is where you get most of your opinions from. It's not that it's coming directly from the celebrities [who cares what Kim Kardashian thinks about tax brackets anyway, right?] It comes from the media they produce. Hollywood is extremely liberal, and I'm sure you've noticed the political bias in shows like "Parks and Rec" or "30 Rock.") I'm not accusing you of having a sponge-like mind that stupidly absorbs all biased information that enters it. Heck, I used to consider myself a "fiscal conservative" before I figured the whole thing out, and I still tend to carry those opinions even after I know where they actually come from. Mark Twain explains the whole thing better than me, so I strongly suggest reading his thing. It's just that whenever someone identifies themselves with a certain prearranged ideology, I get sort of skeptical. Lots of people believe that the reason Conservatives and Liberals think so differently is because there are just two different ways of seeing the world, even to the point where some have tried to prove it scientifically. Weirdly, some experiments have come back with positive results (I don't buy it. The experiments were done in a very inconclusive way,) but the proof against that, I think, is that the ideologies don't even match up depending on whose politics you're looking at! In Europe, to summarize the entire political ideology in a nutshell, liberals are pro-business and pro-"humanities" while in the US, liberals are anti-business and pro-"humanities," and vice-versa with conservatives. Also, you can see it in the way pro- and anti- war stances change simply to defend the current president. Back in WWI and all the way through the Vietnam War, Republicans were "anti-war." Now, because of the criticism Bush received for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, they flip-flopped to become the "pro-war" position. The same thing happened with Civil Rights. Ultimately, neither party actually has the right solution to any issue. Stances have more to do with recursive thinking than actual logic or necessity. Republicans don't like Obama, so they don't like "Obamacare." Democrats don't like big business, so they empower unions to the point of ridiculousness. A supermajority on either side makes for some royally stupid decisions. That's just what happens in a two-party system. And you can forget about objective decision-making (which is the ideal way to choose policy.) That only happens when we're lucky enough to find someone legitimately intelligent through the lottery that is the presidential race (Congress has no free thought, so they don't count.) Your individual opinion doesn't matter either. Nobody up there cares. Moderate or radical, your vote is the same. Whether you pick and choose which stances you take on issues, your vote is the same. Whether you qualify your position (saying, for example, that you think the Affordable Care Act should be revised to reflect some of the better-functioning health care systems some states have created as alternatives but don't think it should be brutally erased in a frenzy of sectarianism,) your vote is exactly the same as those goobers on your side of the aisle you're ashamed to even be associated with (you know who I'm talking about.) A two-party system is terribly depersonalizing, isn't it? By the way: Emperor's New Groove. Love it.