Very brief bunny
Apr. 18th, 2016 10:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethWilliam Brandt was captured by a crowd of enemy, set to fighting Hawkeye, then surprised from behind by Kenneth Kitsom, grinning. Hawkeye had said something like 'may the perfect man win', very sarcastically. Brandt (eidetic memory) vs Hawkeye (deaf) and Kitsom (not bright). If perfect is the social standard then what do they do with the others?
Dystopian fantasy setup: Temples help with all the births and wander off with all the babies and bring back one perfect baby if the temple decides they're perfect. They're also education and healthcare, and you can lose perfection as you go along. The imperfect can stay at the temple and become priests, who are sword to celibacy and theoretically have no babies of their own. Eugenics the soft way, with a religious wrapper on it.
Or, they can become slaves. Maybe with a different word wrapped around it. But their options are do exactly what they're told, and get food and housing ish, or starve in the streets. In theory slaves can earn their way free, if they save enough to set up independently, but independent is a shifting standard and if their imperfections are such they are deemed to require help then they'd need to save enough to employ that help, out of very meagre allowances, while already employing help. But slaves can have babies. They're just never going to be handed back to them.
If someone does the math and finds that rich people almost always have perfect babies, some of them looking heavier and possibly slightly older than others, well, that's just the will of the gods for you.
Slaves are looked after, that's the law. It's only training and therapeutic work. And they get a nice looking allowance.
But after sanctions and paying for their care and appliances the allowance doesn't seem to add up to much.
Plus if they get enough to buy their way to independence and don't use it then their allowances are stopped, which means they can't save a penny for after freedom, they have to go out and earn it straight away. And they have to decide on the same day they get their last pay in, but that's simpler cause they'd probably saved for eighteen years by then anyway.
... anyone at this point thinking I'm slightly concerned about trends in British benefit law would not be wrong.
ANYway, the bunny of Renners: Brandt grew up outside the temples, probably didn't know he'd ever had siblings. Must have risen high somewhere nice. Hawkeye would do well for himself wherever he ended up, as long as listening wasn't key. Not listening to orders would get him in way too much trouble way too often, even if they ought to know why. Kitsom was a follow orders guy, just not really capable of following complex ones. They'd have started in the temples but not stayed there. So they work for someone that took against Brandt's family and now one of them is being sent to swap in for Brandt and open the gates while the others are asleep. Probably they send Kitsom for a simple job like that, Hawkeye is too valuable waiting on the outside with a bow.
I was thinking also of the books I read recently which didn't invent martial arts when they really, really should have. The Riftwar books on the invading side, the planet hasn't got enough metals, so blades are fiddly and difficult to make by laminating leather with tree resin. And I spent most of the books just wondering why they don't use different weapons. I mean, hit each other with heavy things, why don't you! Or spears, you can get a nice point on a lot of things that aren't metal. But they also ban slaves from carrying weapons, and make a big point of how this one slave picked up a knife and then a sword in defence of his mistress, and everyone else pretended not to see him. But slaves are allowed farming implements. For goodness sake that's the basic prototype of every other martial arts weapon. Give someone a tool suitable for digging and he'll figure out the most efficient ways to hit other people with it eventually. Anything that can cut down a tree can take limbs off a human given half a chance. And slaves would have both time and motivation to think of it. Plus even if they don't get tools they've got themselves. I know slaves invented unarmed arts, there's a bunch of stories about it. ... okay, I first learned it in a computer game, but still. If humans can move their bodies around and really really want to hit someone, they're going to study up on how.
... Riftwar reckoned that slaves believed their only way to get reborn as better than a slave was absolute obedience. Okay, that's religion. Ideological chains. But seriously, several thousand years of assorted religion has been really clear on the fact that murder leads to hellfire, and do we have universal peace yet? Do we heck. So.
So now in my head there's triplets, two slaves and their rich and well educated brother, and they're going to be used to bring his house down. The slaves know martial arts permitted to them, all the things you can do with empty hands or sticks and string, and the rich brother knows martial arts required for his class, all the things you can do with metal weapons. Chucked into a ring bare handed he'd probably have lost even without the surprise two against one. But after his house falls he's a slave too. Hmmm, that would need a new mechanism, or him to be made deliberately 'imperfect' and ew. Movie canon had him losing his nerve maybe and historically that has been interpreted poorly. So mental illness can lose you your whole class and future. Huh, potential. But once the three of them are together then they decide they've got common cause... that would take a while, though. And then what?
Well the only acceptable outcome is to bring the system down, right?
But the temples are doing the entire health, education and social welfare system. You really can't bring that bit down and have it turn out well.
You'd need a new Revelation, something that would fix the bits nobody likes, make actual independence possible. Can't just have the temples deciding clerical marriage is okay, if the whole imp/perfect divide is really important to them. Hmmm, on what basis are the imperfect going to be the priests and so forth? Like, if society looks down on them, do the temples have power? Whoever does the education definitely has power. Whoever does the tests that can take you out of everyday society definitely has power. So how do the losers ideologically justify being the only ones to know the will of the gods in these matters? Enough of a loophole there and their blessed status can extend to those who don't take the vows and then we've got some wiggle room.
I also was having ideas for something a bit like the GURPS Banestorm world where the place is patchwork of different bits of history because people keep on being brought there. I'd patchwork very different parts of history than they did though, since they really went out of their way to make patriarchy and make it worse than ever. But one thing that means is you get characters who just walk out of our world into the adventure world, so you can get people to make up sheets kind of like themselves and then play them. But real people who have not been in the armed forces tend to be a bit too squishable in adventures, so half the trick is getting them either an adventure small enough of an advantage large enough.
'Suddenly magic' is a classic one. Earth is a low mana planet and the new place is GURPS normal mana, so spells work. Earth people would go their whole lives not knowing they had that potential and then have a really big advantage in the new world, but no skill in it. It's difficult to justify the kind of spell books you can get in the real world as being actually worky over there. Plus you'd still need to have practised a particular spell for hundreds of hours to use it.
Advanced tech is another obvious one. It's an odd person who has a solar charger on them for all their advanced tech, plus the GPS won't work, but in theory you could pack a lot, especially if they were intending to travel and just ended up a lot further away. Or if you brought their whole house or farm with them, which Banestorm can if it feels like.
I was thinking though that wealth has changed over tech levels. Judged in GURPS dollars, which are tied to teh price of a loaf of bread, people have in fact got richer over time. We have so much more stuff than a lower tech person used to. And wealth is a superpower, especially at the highest end. So then the challenge is to explain how someone happens to be carrying a substantial proportion of their worldly wealth, in goods rather than plastic cards, and in forms that low tech societies would appreciate.
So then I thought about wedding jewellery and someone being dressed up in all the gold of their entire extended family, ready to embark on a new life. If it's a love match it could be a really sad start and they've got a Quest right there, trying to get home. If it's more arranged or convenient then they might be more pragmatic about it and set out to get set up in the new world instead. And they could have any educational background you please.
But white British people don't tend to wear enough shinies at once to pull this one. Do we? Engagement rings are worth a bunch, you can get a couple thousand pounds on one finger that way (when an average loaf of bread is one pound... or actually it's possible an expensive or Fine Quality loaf is £1 and the average is more 75p, but then there's fiddly maths). But if you really want to be dripping in gold then you mostly need to pick both an Occasion and a culture different than my own. Which leaves bazillions of ways to screw up.
Also just writing about white people being made slaves seems to be a bit... you know that post about dystopias that says 'but what if, right, all that happened to white people'. I mean, historically you have to go back a long way to find white British being enslaved, you have to mess with Roman history to get a lot of conquered people mixed together. But I don't want to write Black people as if slave is the inevitable story? I mean, that would suck. And I don't know enough about the relevant history of other parts of the world. It's such an ugly way of behaving though I'm pretty sure I'd wade right into ugliness trying to write a story there. Even if I change the criteria and go making it about health and religion, still going to be creepy, and now in a work camp way.
Probably not a good setting even if feeling a need to vent.
... I flinch back from any and all settings because it seems impossible not to be racist and sexist somehow. And yet, equality is possible, so it's got to be possible to write it.
Probably I'm just a bit rubbish.
... huh, titled that 'very brief', went on for an hour. Bit not brief then.
Other ways to get someone's entire worldly goods through the Banestorm include them being a refugee - if they know they're running with everything portable they can get their hands on, if they expect to start a new life in a new country, they'll be as close to equipped for a new world as one can be. Except with modern communications not so much. A few years ago people might be carrying all sorts stored locally, but now people have so much cloud storage and rely on the internet so much they might have a nearly empty computer. Factual data I mean, instruction manuals such as would be useful on a new world. Probably they've got a bunch of new music.
... I know I keep wanting to download some Time Travellers Guides and so forth, just in case, but that's because I spend way too much tiem thinking of these things.
Another thing a Banestorm can do is pull in from multiple worlds that look fictional from here.
Tony Stark in a new world would still be pretty rich, if he was wearing his Suit and willing to sell it for the metal value. Or put it up as security against a loan, more likely. But if it's powered he's so well armed he doesn't need to be rich, so that's less fun. Hmmm, though, could you get magic tough enough to take out the suit? Mind magic would work on the pilot but not the co-pilot. Tech college might make it too easy. That'd be fun though, how would you try?
I should go get on with Monday.
Dystopian fantasy setup: Temples help with all the births and wander off with all the babies and bring back one perfect baby if the temple decides they're perfect. They're also education and healthcare, and you can lose perfection as you go along. The imperfect can stay at the temple and become priests, who are sword to celibacy and theoretically have no babies of their own. Eugenics the soft way, with a religious wrapper on it.
Or, they can become slaves. Maybe with a different word wrapped around it. But their options are do exactly what they're told, and get food and housing ish, or starve in the streets. In theory slaves can earn their way free, if they save enough to set up independently, but independent is a shifting standard and if their imperfections are such they are deemed to require help then they'd need to save enough to employ that help, out of very meagre allowances, while already employing help. But slaves can have babies. They're just never going to be handed back to them.
If someone does the math and finds that rich people almost always have perfect babies, some of them looking heavier and possibly slightly older than others, well, that's just the will of the gods for you.
Slaves are looked after, that's the law. It's only training and therapeutic work. And they get a nice looking allowance.
But after sanctions and paying for their care and appliances the allowance doesn't seem to add up to much.
Plus if they get enough to buy their way to independence and don't use it then their allowances are stopped, which means they can't save a penny for after freedom, they have to go out and earn it straight away. And they have to decide on the same day they get their last pay in, but that's simpler cause they'd probably saved for eighteen years by then anyway.
... anyone at this point thinking I'm slightly concerned about trends in British benefit law would not be wrong.
ANYway, the bunny of Renners: Brandt grew up outside the temples, probably didn't know he'd ever had siblings. Must have risen high somewhere nice. Hawkeye would do well for himself wherever he ended up, as long as listening wasn't key. Not listening to orders would get him in way too much trouble way too often, even if they ought to know why. Kitsom was a follow orders guy, just not really capable of following complex ones. They'd have started in the temples but not stayed there. So they work for someone that took against Brandt's family and now one of them is being sent to swap in for Brandt and open the gates while the others are asleep. Probably they send Kitsom for a simple job like that, Hawkeye is too valuable waiting on the outside with a bow.
I was thinking also of the books I read recently which didn't invent martial arts when they really, really should have. The Riftwar books on the invading side, the planet hasn't got enough metals, so blades are fiddly and difficult to make by laminating leather with tree resin. And I spent most of the books just wondering why they don't use different weapons. I mean, hit each other with heavy things, why don't you! Or spears, you can get a nice point on a lot of things that aren't metal. But they also ban slaves from carrying weapons, and make a big point of how this one slave picked up a knife and then a sword in defence of his mistress, and everyone else pretended not to see him. But slaves are allowed farming implements. For goodness sake that's the basic prototype of every other martial arts weapon. Give someone a tool suitable for digging and he'll figure out the most efficient ways to hit other people with it eventually. Anything that can cut down a tree can take limbs off a human given half a chance. And slaves would have both time and motivation to think of it. Plus even if they don't get tools they've got themselves. I know slaves invented unarmed arts, there's a bunch of stories about it. ... okay, I first learned it in a computer game, but still. If humans can move their bodies around and really really want to hit someone, they're going to study up on how.
... Riftwar reckoned that slaves believed their only way to get reborn as better than a slave was absolute obedience. Okay, that's religion. Ideological chains. But seriously, several thousand years of assorted religion has been really clear on the fact that murder leads to hellfire, and do we have universal peace yet? Do we heck. So.
So now in my head there's triplets, two slaves and their rich and well educated brother, and they're going to be used to bring his house down. The slaves know martial arts permitted to them, all the things you can do with empty hands or sticks and string, and the rich brother knows martial arts required for his class, all the things you can do with metal weapons. Chucked into a ring bare handed he'd probably have lost even without the surprise two against one. But after his house falls he's a slave too. Hmmm, that would need a new mechanism, or him to be made deliberately 'imperfect' and ew. Movie canon had him losing his nerve maybe and historically that has been interpreted poorly. So mental illness can lose you your whole class and future. Huh, potential. But once the three of them are together then they decide they've got common cause... that would take a while, though. And then what?
Well the only acceptable outcome is to bring the system down, right?
But the temples are doing the entire health, education and social welfare system. You really can't bring that bit down and have it turn out well.
You'd need a new Revelation, something that would fix the bits nobody likes, make actual independence possible. Can't just have the temples deciding clerical marriage is okay, if the whole imp/perfect divide is really important to them. Hmmm, on what basis are the imperfect going to be the priests and so forth? Like, if society looks down on them, do the temples have power? Whoever does the education definitely has power. Whoever does the tests that can take you out of everyday society definitely has power. So how do the losers ideologically justify being the only ones to know the will of the gods in these matters? Enough of a loophole there and their blessed status can extend to those who don't take the vows and then we've got some wiggle room.
I also was having ideas for something a bit like the GURPS Banestorm world where the place is patchwork of different bits of history because people keep on being brought there. I'd patchwork very different parts of history than they did though, since they really went out of their way to make patriarchy and make it worse than ever. But one thing that means is you get characters who just walk out of our world into the adventure world, so you can get people to make up sheets kind of like themselves and then play them. But real people who have not been in the armed forces tend to be a bit too squishable in adventures, so half the trick is getting them either an adventure small enough of an advantage large enough.
'Suddenly magic' is a classic one. Earth is a low mana planet and the new place is GURPS normal mana, so spells work. Earth people would go their whole lives not knowing they had that potential and then have a really big advantage in the new world, but no skill in it. It's difficult to justify the kind of spell books you can get in the real world as being actually worky over there. Plus you'd still need to have practised a particular spell for hundreds of hours to use it.
Advanced tech is another obvious one. It's an odd person who has a solar charger on them for all their advanced tech, plus the GPS won't work, but in theory you could pack a lot, especially if they were intending to travel and just ended up a lot further away. Or if you brought their whole house or farm with them, which Banestorm can if it feels like.
I was thinking though that wealth has changed over tech levels. Judged in GURPS dollars, which are tied to teh price of a loaf of bread, people have in fact got richer over time. We have so much more stuff than a lower tech person used to. And wealth is a superpower, especially at the highest end. So then the challenge is to explain how someone happens to be carrying a substantial proportion of their worldly wealth, in goods rather than plastic cards, and in forms that low tech societies would appreciate.
So then I thought about wedding jewellery and someone being dressed up in all the gold of their entire extended family, ready to embark on a new life. If it's a love match it could be a really sad start and they've got a Quest right there, trying to get home. If it's more arranged or convenient then they might be more pragmatic about it and set out to get set up in the new world instead. And they could have any educational background you please.
But white British people don't tend to wear enough shinies at once to pull this one. Do we? Engagement rings are worth a bunch, you can get a couple thousand pounds on one finger that way (when an average loaf of bread is one pound... or actually it's possible an expensive or Fine Quality loaf is £1 and the average is more 75p, but then there's fiddly maths). But if you really want to be dripping in gold then you mostly need to pick both an Occasion and a culture different than my own. Which leaves bazillions of ways to screw up.
Also just writing about white people being made slaves seems to be a bit... you know that post about dystopias that says 'but what if, right, all that happened to white people'. I mean, historically you have to go back a long way to find white British being enslaved, you have to mess with Roman history to get a lot of conquered people mixed together. But I don't want to write Black people as if slave is the inevitable story? I mean, that would suck. And I don't know enough about the relevant history of other parts of the world. It's such an ugly way of behaving though I'm pretty sure I'd wade right into ugliness trying to write a story there. Even if I change the criteria and go making it about health and religion, still going to be creepy, and now in a work camp way.
Probably not a good setting even if feeling a need to vent.
... I flinch back from any and all settings because it seems impossible not to be racist and sexist somehow. And yet, equality is possible, so it's got to be possible to write it.
Probably I'm just a bit rubbish.
... huh, titled that 'very brief', went on for an hour. Bit not brief then.
Other ways to get someone's entire worldly goods through the Banestorm include them being a refugee - if they know they're running with everything portable they can get their hands on, if they expect to start a new life in a new country, they'll be as close to equipped for a new world as one can be. Except with modern communications not so much. A few years ago people might be carrying all sorts stored locally, but now people have so much cloud storage and rely on the internet so much they might have a nearly empty computer. Factual data I mean, instruction manuals such as would be useful on a new world. Probably they've got a bunch of new music.
... I know I keep wanting to download some Time Travellers Guides and so forth, just in case, but that's because I spend way too much tiem thinking of these things.
Another thing a Banestorm can do is pull in from multiple worlds that look fictional from here.
Tony Stark in a new world would still be pretty rich, if he was wearing his Suit and willing to sell it for the metal value. Or put it up as security against a loan, more likely. But if it's powered he's so well armed he doesn't need to be rich, so that's less fun. Hmmm, though, could you get magic tough enough to take out the suit? Mind magic would work on the pilot but not the co-pilot. Tech college might make it too easy. That'd be fun though, how would you try?
I should go get on with Monday.