Tales of the Parodyverse - I'm moving my reply up to the thread on UT#351 because this

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Subj: I'm moving my reply up to the thread on UT#351 because this one is stretching the board.
Posted: Sun Jan 10, 2016 at 08:19:07 pm EST

Reply Subj: Re: There's a by-law?
Posted: Sun Jan 10, 2016 at 09:47:02 am EST (Viewed 469 times)

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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.

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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.

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For example, I had brain surgery a couple of years ago with a 5% chance of not waking up from it and a 15% of brain damage. Those last few days before the operation sure got me thinking hard about things.

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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.

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That's the point of the scenario I was positing. it helps to illustrate characters' resources and limits. For example, quite often Chiaki resolves problems without violence. Those aspects of her skillset remain unaffected.

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She *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.

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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.

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Every fictional universe has to set where it's "reality" limits are. It's not just in terms of violence (all those TV series and movies where heroes avoid automatic assault weapons). Fictional events have to make sense and link up in the way that real-life ones don't. Crimes always have clues leading to solutions. Random interruptions never occur.

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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.

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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.

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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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1. Stealth is actually more speed and surprise than sneaking. Sneaking like people do in movies is way noisier than it looks, and humans are highly motion sensitive, and have pretty good peripheral vision, so it doesn't work anyhow. The *real* secret is to plan your route through a room, and cover the distance faster than someone can figure out what's going on. The *actual* stealth part is hiding somewhere and being extremely patient, waiting for the right time.

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2. The whole "disabling an opponent" thing is actually true. Even self-defense classes teach it now, things like throwing an opponent off balance by taking out lets of hitting the upper body, or opening with a throat or eye strike leaving them unable to see or breathe. Another surprising truth is there actually is a narrow pressure point on the chest where depending on your strength, you can stop the heart or cause fibrillation. It's like a hardware-less stun gun, but requires a very hard hit on a very tiny spot. So train up your fingertips.

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3. Akido is part of the same training, and has to do with using an opponent's own velocity and direction against them, sidestepping it with perfect accuracy. I saw a video with a 90 year old Japanese man who could barely walk taking on 2 or 3 karate students at once, landing them on their backs or faces while hardly even moving.

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4. Surprisingly, most of ninja training is simply learning how to balance like circus performers do. Being able to throw your weight around and use a lot of muscular force while standing your ground (i.e. not falling on your butt) is central to all of the training. What makes them superior fighters isn't power.

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

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There's quite a lot of milage to be got out of that kind of risk. It helps with suspension of disbelief and it ramps up reader engagement and suspense. It;s not right for every kind of story but I think that's the kind of gloss that "World Class" benefits from.

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I hope so.

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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.

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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.

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Indeed. But more on that if I ever decide to run with the plotline. As i mentioned, it would probably have been "coming up" had I continued with regular Untold Tales back in the day.

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Noted?