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HH, folding in the thread from below as well

In Reply To
Anime Jason 
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Location: Here
Member Since: Sun Sep 12, 2004
Posts: 2,834
Subj: Not round here at 1.15am
Posted: Sun Jan 10, 2016 at 08:34:31 pm EST (Viewed 2 times)
Reply Subj: Fortunately those are easy to find.
Posted: Sun Jan 10, 2016 at 09:50:13 am EST (Viewed 646 times)



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    It might not enhance the story, but it says a lot about her character.


It it helps define the character and it connects the reader to the protagonist then it's likely helping the story.


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    Does [Mumph] remember how painful it is to be reassembled, though? Because that's the part which would probably start to crack Lara psychologically. Getting killed is usually pretty quick.


He feels it all and remembers. He's been tortured a lot, though.

And importing our discussion from further down the board:



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      It's very unfair to drop a fictional-competence-level adventurer in a real-world-physics situation. James Bond wouldn't last one fight.



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    Yes, because all it would take is some random idiot who could actually shoot straight to kill him.


That, and the world's best known spy announcing himself by his actual name.


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      In the PV it's a bit different, because the police there often expect a superhero to walk in and deal with the robbery gang or whatever. When the rules have changed and expectations haven't it becomes a whole new kind of danger.



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    Those cops wouldn't live very long. Paranoia is a survival instinct when you can die easily.


After a decade or more of superheroes, supervillains, alien invasions, supernatural incursions etc., the Paradopolis PD have become very specialised. But they would struggle in a suddenly-changed paradigm.


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    I understand that, but what I meant was Anna and Nena might never have the chance. As soon as their system detects a major malfunction, they'd go into maintenance sleep mode, except the nanobots that normally do maintenance wouldn't. So they'd just be stuck in sleep mode. It would be more like someone who falls into a coma suddenly.


If I ever do the plot I'll make sure there's a 24-hour build up period so they have a chance to interact with the problem. And then there's the question of where consciousness "goes" when a person is comatose. Do androids dream of electric sheep?


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    [Chiaki] *tries* to solve them without violence. When the violence suddenly ramps up and becomes more serious, she'll have a really hard time sticking to that. It's the difference between knowing you're slightly superiorly skilled and prepared, and just being scared, and fighting hard to survive. That kind of thing tends to make a person give up on idealism.


It's all grist to the story mill. When characters have been around for a while and they're well established, new scenarios that provoke new reactions from them in keeping with what we've seen before are usually interesting.


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      I could see her teaching self-defence classes to people who are no longer invulnerable.



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    That she might definitely do, simply because she realizes she can't keep fighting and killing people.


There are some heroes who already work at skills that aren't related to their powers: Hatman, for example, regularly trains in unarmed combat. Others, like CSFB!, are so intimately linked to their powers as to be almost inseperable. Those latter people might struggle most in the scenario we're considering.


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    Nothing is random in fiction. The trick is to make it seem like it is. There is a temptation to finish making a point in a scene before the interruption occurs, and *that* is what makes it feel staged. To make it feel real I'll sometimes interrupt a conversation in the middle, and then leave it unresolved.


Real life can be unbelievable. Fiction can't.


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      And in real real-life, even the best stealth and combat-trained operatives have severe limits, of course.



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    Sometimes things around you just refuse to be quiet. Or the person you're trying to sneak around is looking right in your direction, and won't stop doing that.


In real life the story doesn't co-operate.


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    I watched actual videos of actual ninja and akido trained people doing what is very possible in the real world, and learned some things from it:



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    It's fun to watch those videos, and good for making World Class more believable as I develop the story.


All of those are good examples. The problem comes because our view of combat is mostly drawn from stunt and CGI-enhanced movie rendtions of a stylised scene rendered for entertainment. Even live-action boxing and wrestling are articially constrained by rules. Relatively few people have seen real combat and fewer still have taken the time to spectate during it.


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      Her problem would be that she can't get home anymore.



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    That would make her kind of scared and depressed.


And in turn allows her to reflect on her choices, on her probably future etc. And to segue into any flashback memory of your choosing.

See? Narrative gold!



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      In the sketchy plot as far as I got it, Yuki was literally in a different time-zone, circa A.D. 1650.



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    If *everyone* was in 1650, all of the women would probably end up imprisoned anyhow. Especially Yuki. Also, everyone would make jokes about Mumph feeling right at home.


The way I'd structure it is with a small group of time-lost travellers trying to work out what's happened and the rest of the cast coping - or struggling to cope - in the present day. It's the equivalent of the storyline where some heroes have to heroically hold the fort while others have to get away and call the cavalry - two different kinds of heroism.





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