by Max Barry

Latest Forum Topics

Advertisement

Search

Search

[+] Advanced...

Author:

Region:

Sort:

«12. . .829830831832833834835. . .3,4763,477»

The united acarian empires wrote:I meant that what I term spider walkers are more plausible than biped mechs

Very fair, my bad for misinterpreting that (which, shoot, now I look dumb for thinking that that was what you didn't get, noooo).
But while I kind-of agree, I also kind-of don't agree. From the 'more legs = more stability', perspective, absolutely, but actual spider-legs move in a lot of directions, and I'm sort of iffy on whether we could teach something with those legs to 'walk' properly. If you meant it more like a centipede or something (where the legs have a relatively limited range of motion), then absolutely, but if it's supposed to be a spider where there are lots of joints and a much wider range of motion for each leg, then...not so much.

The united acarian empires

French Albania wrote:that was a little hostile there

Again, sorry. I meant "someone" in the larger context of "new-ish players". That wasn't meant to be pointed to Allouxia. As of late, he's been nothing but a model player.

French Albania, Feminamia, and Allouxia

Now I feel like a complete asshole. Guess I should be less mean to people in general. ._.

Feminamia and Allouxia

Also at the risk of doing the sacrilegious "triple post", here:
https://imgflip.com/i/1w6elr

Feminamia

Thalasus wrote:-snip-

Broken into spoilered segments because otherwise it's just a wall of text.

Rumors of Thalasian meddling in the election swirled around the capital - they would swirl around the countryside, but most people didn't care about some islands all the way across the Great Ocean, too busy with their jobs or lives to have much concern for people who, frankly, weren't even properly Arbanian, looked different, and some of whom even didn't speak French. Oh, sure, it would perhaps harm the country's image if the Thalasians won some sort of diplomatic victory over this, but who cared about them? They were mostly communists anyway, their terrible social structure would collapse in 20, 30 years while the great Exarchate kept ticking along.
True, there were the dissenters, mostly in the western half of the island where the ethnic Catalans still yearned for their former colonial controls, but it was incredibly simple to turn them against their 'breakaway colony' as they called it (despite the fact that the two shared little but their language in common anymore, and that only as a vaguely-recognized mother tongue in Roussillon). For all that they were 'Spanish', after all, they were Arbanian first, and so these dissenters fumed at the Thalasians in a variety of ways - a boycott was called for, but collapsed soon after as most of them realized they didn't use many things from 'there' anyway (the consensus being that the inconvenience would outweigh the impact). And to be sure, every so often demonstrators called for war with Thalasus, a move the Exarch was silent on (and thus perceived to be in support of, rendering him even more popular with these groups) even as the Foreign Ministry soothed their Thalasian counterparts with terms like 'overzealous patriots' and 'fringe minority' - a narrative made all the stronger by the majority of international reports made coming out of Roussillon, making spinning a 'former imperialists dreaming of a return to their glory days' story incredibly simple, and which most international news agencies did with the rabid fervor they approached any scandal with (with the side effect, of course, of furthering the distrust these individuals had for the international media, leading them ever deeper into the arms of the Interior-Ministry-run Arbanian News Service - a major coup for the propagandists there).
In the government, there was official displeasure about outsized Thalasian 'influence' in the election, with the occasional rumbling from the Defense Ministry and another 'naval exercise' off the coast of the Debuterres. Internally, however, things were going well within the boundaries of the plan. After all, this entire maneuver was merely a stalling move, while the Villeles and others divested their interests or covered them up as far as the books went in deniable shell corporations registered overseas to prevent a massive shock to their balance sheets (and thereby winning the Exarch a great deal of favor with them and their sizeable dynastic alliance network). At the end of the day, neither the Exarch nor the Corporate Council really cared about the Debuterres, and fully expected any vote to remain within the Exarchate to fail utterly (largely because any development on the island was only incidental to what was, frankly, the large-scale looting of its offshore mineral wealth, not to mention the sizeable tourist income, and port duties from ships needing harbor from crossing the Great Ocean). This was why the Interior Ministry had suggested an 'independence' movement as a 'neutral, third option' in the first place, since any 'Arbania vs Thalasus vote would be expected to be a landslide for Thalasus, but the prospect of independence was a pill with a powerful allure, despite its potential to be a poisoned one.
At the end of the day, the goal was never to keep the Debuterres, merely to delay their return to Thalasus, and if the option presented itself to entirely deny that return - well, why not? Let the Thalasians, the rest of the world, even, believe that Thalasus might win some manner of victory here - since even if the independence movement 'lost', the Exarch 'graciously accepting defeat' would convey a diplomatic cachet upon him worth far more than some miserably hot island chain thousands of miles away, especially one which, a year before, had already been written off as hopeless.
And so the governor of the Debuterres (incidentally, a Sant-Neves-Villele, a cadet branch of the Villeles) was given, essentially, carte blanche to have the elections conducted 'in whatever way best suited the people of the Isles', and his chosen method was to assemble a council of Debuterrans, half to be popularly elected in each district, the other half drawn from the islands' leading figures (largely wealthy Thalasus-supporters and grassroots independence activists, creating an ostensible balance that would nonetheless favor Independence by creating an entirely artificial distinction on class lines, a stroke of almost inspired irony, as the reason there were no wealthy independence activists was because of crackdowns a decade before), to devise these details for themselves. What better method to trumpet 'free and fair', after all, than to have the election conducted 'by the people, for the people'?

Thalasus and Feminamia

Thalasus wrote:Also at the risk of doing the sacrilegious "triple post", here:
https://imgflip.com/i/1w6elr

bruh edits are a thing now
IC:
Post from Seenit thread for the above image (titled 'Just putting this here'), by u/moonshot:
Obviously. Arbania would treat us better than they'd treat Thalasus, thanks to the much closer cultural bond our two states would share - assuming we actually achieve statehood, of course, which is up to us in six months. But I know what you really mean, but punctuation and where you put it kind of affects the meaning of the sentence, friend.
As for the question you wanna ask, that's not the real question. I don't know anybody who wants to stay part of the Exarchate (maybe the rich guys in the city, but I'm from the suburbs), but that's dodging the actual question - whether we, or rather the government we would select, would treat our own citizens better than Thalasus would. The way I see it, probably, y'know? A third of us don't even speak Spanish, man. I know I failed it in the lycee.
But, shoot, the Exarch is effectively saying here 'hey, wanna be a kingdom'? I mean, maybe not a kingdom, we'd probably elect our own leaders. But it's giving that same sort of cachet. Independence is for kings, not dukes, and really that's a bigger title than anybody could ever buy in the Arbanian system. And he's just saying 'look, you guys want it, you can have it', although I'm pretty sure he'd rather we stay. Me, I'm not paying taxes to those Villele asses anymore, the governor treats this like his damn fiefdom, this isn't Arbania; maybe if the Exarch ennobled some local guys, I could change my mind, but he treats us like a different country because that's what we deserve. You wanna just be some guy living as a part of Thalasus, fine, man, but I don't wanna just be a cog in some way bigger machine, so that's how I'm voting.

Thalasus, Feminamia, and The united acarian empires

Thalasus wrote:Now I feel like a complete asshole. Guess I should be less mean to people in general. ._.

apology accepted

Allouxia wrote:even I'll admit this is going far, maybe we should just do something like the ISS? Please for the love of god I don't want another reboot.

Okay

i wont be going to the moon its fine guys

Post self-deleted by Cote azure.

The united acarian empires

Excitement runs through the streets of Acaria and the empire as the government has a final day of preparation for the 4th anniversary of the Dual Monarch rule. The government is welcoming foreign emissaries and performs their final practice run of the parade. Security is also increasing to make sure the crowd doesn't get out of control due to a mythological story of a monarch's coronation resulting in a stampede in ancient Acarian times since there was not enough gifts available.

Cote azure wrote:Okay

i wont be going to the moon its fine guys

Moon landing = fine

Permanent lunar base with 200 inhabitants = a little much

Feminamia

French Albania wrote:But while I kind-of agree, I also kind-of don't agree. From the 'more legs = more stability', perspective, absolutely, but actual spider-legs move in a lot of directions, and I'm sort of iffy on whether we could teach something with those legs to 'walk' properly. If you meant it more like a centipede or something (where the legs have a relatively limited range of motion), then absolutely, but if it's supposed to be a spider where there are lots of joints and a much wider range of motion for each leg, then...not so much.

Ahem, I will refer you to Exhibit A: https://media.giphy.com/media/3oEduVeIgwk80T5Q3K/giphy.gif
According to the famous historical film Wild Wild West (1999), such a machine was capable of being built even in the 19th century.

Thalasus, Feminamia, and The united acarian empires

2 hours left in the poll...go, go Uranus!

The united acarian empires

Geramundo wrote:Ahem, I will refer you to Exhibit A: https://media.giphy.com/media/3oEduVeIgwk80T5Q3K/giphy.gif
According to the famous historical film Wild Wild West (1999), such a machine was capable of being built even in the 19th century.

But according to invaluable historical rating site Rotten Tomatoes, said film scored only a 17% on its historicity, emblematic of the wild flights of fantasy and immense deviations from historical fact that the film exhibits. Notably, such a spider would have to be many times smaller than in the film given the concentration of oxygen in our atmosphere; perhaps in the time of the dinosaurs, but now it would simply not get enough oxygen for its metabolic processes.

French Albania wrote:that was a little hostile there
why would you inflict that on yourself

old but gold

Solaran olympus

Cote azure wrote:Okay

i wont be going to the moon its fine guys

You could do what I'm doing with my space agency and land on the moon. Currently my astronauts are collecting moon rocks.

Cote azure

French Albania wrote:But according to invaluable historical rating site Rotten Tomatoes, said film scored only a 17% on its historicity, emblematic of the wild flights of fantasy and immense deviations from historical fact that the film exhibits. Notably, such a spider would have to be many times smaller than in the film given the concentration of oxygen in our atmosphere; perhaps in the time of the dinosaurs, but now it would simply not get enough oxygen for its metabolic processes.

But according to the arguably more reliable metacritic and IMDB, the film is rated 38% and 48%, respectively. Though these may still be considered relatively low ratings, this may largely because the target audience of the film was to youths, evident in its MPAA rating of PG-13. In order to more easily grasp the attention of said youths, the film did indeed have instances of bombastic plot devices and questionably comedic dialogue that surely left a sour taste in the mouths of those with a more refined palate -- not to mention Will Smith's song of the same name (which, oddly enough, won an ASCAP Award). I do not, however, think any who rated the film so low questioned the integrity of the film's historical authenticity.

Take Exhibit B: http://www.famousfix.com/post/wild-wild-west-14494993
Kenneth Branagh's portrayal of Dr. Arliss Loveless and his mechanical wheelchair are indicative of the technological possibilities of the time, if not their outright implementations. This strengthens the argument that such a giant mechanical spider is also possible.

And about the spider's metabolic processes, I'm not entirely sure what you're on about. Machines do not have metabolisms. Or am I wrong?

Geramundo wrote:But according to the arguably more reliable metacritic and IMDB, the film is rated 38% and 48%, respectively. Though these may still be considered relatively low ratings, this may largely because the target audience of the film was to youths, evident in its MPAA rating of PG-13. In order to more easily grasp the attention of said youths, the film did indeed have instances of bombastic plot devices and questionably comedic dialogue that surely left a sour taste in the mouths of those with a more refined palate -- not to mention Will Smith's song of the same name (which, oddly enough, won an ASCAP Award). I do not, however, think any who rated the film so low questioned the integrity of the film's historical authenticity.

Take Exhibit B: http://www.famousfix.com/post/wild-wild-west-14494993
Kenneth Branagh's portrayal of Dr. Arliss Loveless and his mechanical wheelchair are indicative of the technological possibilities of the time, if not their outright implementations. This strengthens the argument that such a giant mechanical spider is also possible.

And about the spider's metabolic processes, I'm not entirely sure what you're on about. Machines do not have metabolisms. Or am I wrong?

i figured we were just doing jokes at each other anyway since it's pretty clear that Wild Wild West is not historical, nor is Rotten Tomatoes a 'historical rating site'
in the spirit of that, i decided to veer off on an insane tangent about how bugs are way smaller than they used to be in the jurassic (e.g. Meganeura), mostly because that was the first insane thing i could think of involving spiders that wasn't 'ah ah they're all over me get them off get them off oh god they're in my eyes, i can't see, ants in my eyes johnson everyone, TVs, radios, microwaves, I think, I can't see because of the ants in my eyes'

The united acarian empires

when do i get my wooden tanks and bamboo rockets, guys

Also, to everyone, can someone help me establish Feminamia in this new canon?

Feminamia wrote:when do i get my wooden tanks and bamboo rockets, guys
Also, to everyone, can someone help me establish Feminamia in this new canon?

Wooden tanks would be close to worthless, but bamboo rockets...actually those would be pretty meh too, mostly on the grounds of 'we stopped using those around the time of the Congreve rocket'.
But sure, do you still have the same vision for Feminamia or are you changing things up? If you want to stick with that tropical isolated archipelago, we might have to find a spot in the ocean to plop you down in, but otherwise there's several islands you could otherwise choose from.
Consult the map here: https://i.imgur.com/bWYaW0M.png?1 and see how you feel.

Feminamia

French Albania wrote:Wooden tanks would be close to worthless, but bamboo rockets...actually those would be pretty meh too, mostly on the grounds of 'we stopped using those around the time of the Congreve rocket'.
But sure, do you still have the same vision for Feminamia or are you changing things up? If you want to stick with that tropical isolated archipelago, we might have to find a spot in the ocean to plop you down in, but otherwise there's several islands you could otherwise choose from.
Consult the map here: https://i.imgur.com/bWYaW0M.png?1 and see how you feel.

Same vision, yeah, more or less. Probably with a tad bit more pragmatism, though, so I start feeling less like a fantasy nation. (Still want my silly establishing principles of compulsory nudism and super environmentalism, though, because those really make it fun.)
The problem with that map is that there are definitely isolated islands right in the middle, but they're not very tropical. I mean, I'll take em, but y'know.

Thalasus

note: the ability to edit posts is the best thing to ever happen to this site

The united acarian empires

Feminamia wrote:note: the ability to edit posts is the best thing to ever happen to this site

ikr it's majestic

Feminamia wrote:Same vision, yeah, more or less. Probably with a tad bit more pragmatism, though, so I start feeling less like a fantasy nation. (Still want my silly establishing principles of compulsory nudism and super environmentalism, though, because those really make it fun.)
They problem with that map is that there are definitely isolated islands right in the middle, but they're not very tropical. I mean, I'll take em, but y'know.

Well, I mean...it's what we got. But might as well ask: Greater Balticia, would it be possible to add a couple islands in the middle of the ocean near the equator? If it's too inconvenient, then y'know, don't bother, right.
Anyway back to you: compulsory nudity might be a losing proposition (one, tropical environments swarm with insects and snakes, and covering the body keeps flies and mosquitos from getting at you - but at the very least, sandals would be nice to have, especially if there's volcanic glass or coral or some other type of ground that's going to cut up your feet if you walk on it barefoot), but commonplace nudity probably would work out pretty well, and would pair reasonably with super environmentalism because that probably means less use of air-conditioning.
I'd stop short of trying to go full bamboo-tech though if you want to be more believable. Normal patterns of development, say, but after coming up on an environmental crisis due to excessive deforestation, you went the Japan route of strict controls over and protection of the forest, rather than the Easter Island route of 'eh whatever we'll just keep cutting them down'. Then in the modern era you make a strong transition away from fossil fuels towards green energy, maybe nuclear power to make up any shortfall from wind, solar, and tidal energy.

French Albania wrote:i figured we were just doing jokes at each other anyway since it's pretty clear that Wild Wild West is not historical, nor is Rotten Tomatoes a 'historical rating site'
in the spirit of that, i decided to veer off on an insane tangent about how bugs are way smaller than they used to be in the jurassic (e.g. Meganeura), mostly because that was the first insane thing i could think of involving spiders that wasn't 'ah ah they're all over me get them off get them off oh god they're in my eyes, i can't see, ants in my eyes johnson everyone, TVs, radios, microwaves, I think, I can't see because of the ants in my eyes'

The ball buster got his balls busted!!!!!!

French Albania wrote:i figured we were just doing jokes at each other anyway since it's pretty clear that Wild Wild West is not historical, nor is Rotten Tomatoes a 'historical rating site'
in the spirit of that, i decided to veer off on an insane tangent about how bugs are way smaller than they used to be in the jurassic (e.g. Meganeura), mostly because that was the first insane thing i could think of involving spiders that wasn't 'ah ah they're all over me get them off get them off oh god they're in my eyes, i can't see, ants in my eyes johnson everyone, TVs, radios, microwaves, I think, I can't see because of the ants in my eyes'

https://media.tenor.com/images/8a4a99d3bd67ba8d9a025c36edf4a624/tenor.gif

«12. . .829830831832833834835. . .3,4763,477»

Advertisement