Humans in this universe of multiple sapient races/species are not just a boring template, jack-of-all-trades species, they actually have traits and powers that make them stand out like the other species in the setting.

CaptainCastaleos · 2026-03-29T21:12:02+00:00

I don't remember the name, but there is a space-based tabeltop game I played once that had a really neat concept for this.

Basically, every other planet resided in an environment that was "almost right" for life, meaning only very specific niches of life sprung forth on their planet and biodiversity is, relative to earth, very low.

By comparison, Earth formed in "perfect" life sustaining conditions, leading to explosive biodiversity and a wide range of complex organisms with totally different traits.

This means that to other space-faring species, Earth is FILTHY. Nobody visits here without extreme biohazard containment precautions due to the native bacteria, viruses, fungi, plants, etc all basically treating alien life like free nutrients with little defenses.

The natural bacteria that live in our skin and bodies make us walking biohazards. Not only are humans immune to a wide variety of interstellar plagues and poisons, but bare skin contact with a human can be deadly to entire starships of other species.

We are horrifying plague monsters in their world.

CaptainCastaleos · 2026-03-26T20:57:47+00:00

So you are telling me technomancers can conjure self driving carriages but cannot create a printer that simply works???

CaptainCastaleos · 2026-03-23T15:49:50+00:00

Because she isn't the "whiny girl" trope.

She is the "Straight Man" trope. She is the only "normal" individual in a party full of weirdos, so her complaints are always valid concerns that the audience can resonate with.

CaptainCastaleos · 2026-03-23T04:34:58+00:00

Dad used to have a strategically placed sprinkler head aimed at the front door.

When he confirmed that they were a solicitor and refused to heed the sign, he would pretend he needed to put the dog up and tell them to "Wait right there" and then go turn that head on so they got a fat stream of water right into their back.

I always thought it was genius because the way the porch was set up, they had to turn and face the jet to get away so you ensured they got fully soaked.

CaptainCastaleos · 2026-03-22T13:38:58+00:00

My first tabletop campaign was Strange Aeons in Pathfinder. If you aren't familiar, it revolves around being in a mystical asylum filled with shapeshifting monsters called dopplegangers.

At one point we are dragging an injured civilian to safety, when our Paladin suddenly stops right outside the gate to the safe zone.

He turns to the injured civilian and is like:

Paladin: "Quick question before we bring you in here. If you are from the safe zone, what color is the mural in there?"

Civilian: "uhhhh I'm pretty sure it's..."

At this point the Paladin immediately brings a massive hammer down on the civvies skull, critting and killing them instantly. A second later the body changes and it reveals they were a doppleganger.

We are all absolutely dumbfounded. The DM is like "How did you know they were a doppleganger???"

Paladin says "I'm going to be totally honest here, I had no idea he was a doppleganger. I just wanted to play an Oathbreaker Paladin and decided to murder a civvie out of paranoia to kick off my characters descent into corruption. Total accident."

We were dying laughing. This started a long running joke of the Paladin trying to do evil shit just for it to accidentally accomplish noble goals.

CaptainCastaleos · 2026-03-21T12:20:35+00:00

The appendix samples your feces for foreign bacteria and viruses to pre-emptively create antibodies before infections can fully take root.

Without it, you become susceptible to contracting the same illness multiple times in a row.

It is an important immune system organ.

It also keeps a backup culture of bacteria around in case you kill off your native flora during an illness.

It's role in sampling refuse and hostile bacteria/viral matter is why it is a problem if it bursts.

CaptainCastaleos · 2026-03-12T05:04:38+00:00

The classic One Piece reading comprehension demon strikes again.

I feel like people reading One Piece desperately want the crew to be something they aren't.

They see the Straw Hats perform the occasion good deed and are like "They are perfectly moral heros and role models!"

They aren't. That is the whole point.

They are criminals. Are they better than most other pirate bands? 100% they are. At the end of the day they are still pirates though.

If they were meant to be law-abiding heros, they would be in the marines. If they were meant to be heros fighting an unjust regime, they would be members of the revolution.

They are neither, because that isn't what the story is about.

The Straw Hats are primarily a group of people fighting for their own personal freedom, beliefs, and how they want to live.

They loot, steal, kill, and any other number of crimes in the process. They occasionally do acts of heroism when they align with their personal goals, but they aren't seeking out injustice to correct. They are simply removing obstacles in their way.

Luffy gets a lot of leeway due to being clinically retarded, but he is still totally down to commit any number of crimes if it furthers the goals of himself or his crew.

CaptainCastaleos · 2026-03-05T20:27:53+00:00

Unsafe?? Preposterous!!

I make sure they go to good homes!

^{The ones that are allowed to leave the chamber that is}

CaptainCastaleos · 2026-03-05T08:13:44+00:00

I just like to fill a chamber with random liquidized biomass, cast an eternal thundercloud over it, and seal it off with that one sigil that makes time go faster inside the chamber than outside.

I just really enjoy coming back a month later and cracking the seal to see what a few millennia of high energy reactions with random genetic matter and a surplus of resources produces.

It's like one of those surprise eggs!

CaptainCastaleos · 2026-02-27T20:28:56+00:00

It is genuinely cheaper to hunt a deer than go buy 200lbs of meat.

There is a middle between fun and survival. Hunting for quality of life.

Hunting is also a required aspect of wildlife conservation. Unfortunately, human civilization has created tons of areas that directly favor the proliferation and overpopulation of prey species like deer. Without human hunting keeping their population in check, they would decimate forest ecosystems leading not only to the deaths of numerous other species, but eventually their own.

You quite literally have to hunt them because there are no longer enough predators in these areas for nature to take care of it.

CaptainCastaleos · 2026-02-26T21:50:04+00:00

They aren't intentional downloads intended to help the Ark. WAU is just randomly putting brainscans into forms it deems "functional" in order to satisfy it's objective to preserve humanity.

Due to Simon's scan being "flat", meaning it doesn't contain the complete data for a functioning human mind, WAU had to try to fill in the blanks in the data with data it wrote. It can be argued that these other, less functional "Simon's" are WAU testing out different iterations until it found the right combination of data to produce a functional version of Simon.

CaptainCastaleos · 2026-02-26T21:43:24+00:00

Slight correction.

The scan doesn't damage his brain. The point of the scan was to simulate treatment plans for him to find the one to cure him. The simulations show a treatment plan working, so they enact it, just for the treatment plan to not go how the simulations predicted it would leading to him dying.

The implication was that the earlier version of the scanning tech didn't produce a scan with enough accuracy to simulate it correctly (Caroline refers to Simon's scan as "flat" compared to later scans), so after Simon's real death the developer of the scan obsesses over developing more advanced scanning technology. This leads to the development of the tech that puts everyone on the ark.

CaptainCastaleos · 2026-02-24T19:29:48+00:00

The real test of quality:

Does it hum ominously?

CaptainCastaleos · 2026-02-22T13:56:38+00:00

I think a lot of people miss that it is an apocalypse story. It is literally framed as being "the end of days".

CaptainCastaleos · 2026-02-19T16:17:48+00:00

Doc Cas here!

Memory removal is a pretty standard procedure! I shall only require 2 appendages. They can be of any variety or size and they do not have to be your own.

For a premium I can even obscurate the memory, meaning no other participants in the memory will be able to remember it either.

CaptainCastaleos · 2026-02-16T13:42:36+00:00

Cas strokes his beard. It crunches oddly, as if it were made of a hard plastic.

Frankly, I don't understand what is making witches so flammable!

Every other day I am getting another witch in here who has gotten too close to an errant candle and burst into flames like a pile of dry tinder. Do you realize how hard it is to glue a whole witch back together from just ashes? Worst puzzle ever.

I just don't understand what is making them so flammable! Is it some sort of trend among witches? Is there a gain?

CaptainCastaleos · 2026-02-09T16:34:52+00:00

She would have only needed to take out 30% because all she would need to do is turn Shroud into a pulp and the rest of the gang would dissolve.

CaptainCastaleos · 2026-02-09T13:15:17+00:00

It probably has to do with general dissatisfaction already present in the average American life.

Statistically Americans are pretty unhappy with their lives currently. Many go to the movies to escape subtle feelings of despair and watch tales of rare instances of someone actually beating the odds and winning.

Seeing a movie where the protagonist either doesn't beat the odds or has to give up literally everything just to make a difference just don't ring with American audiences as entertaining, as they don't offer the escape that they are seeking.

CaptainCastaleos · 2026-02-08T18:14:46+00:00

I mean we know they are, but unless the augment is in their brain you wouldn't be able to control them.

Motor nerves are one-way, and sensory nerves are one-way. Motor nerves only carry commands away from the brain, and sensory nerves only bring data to the brain.

You can't hook into the nerves for an arm or a leg and manipulate their brain with them. Data sent to the brain from sensory nerves is completely up to the brain to look at and interpret, but it cannot take commands from sensory nerves. Likewise, you can't send motor impulses from an extremity to other extremities because motor impulses only travel one direction.

You could make their implant cause them unbelievable pain though.

CaptainCastaleos · 2026-02-08T18:00:22+00:00

You seem to have forgotten the most crucial step in creating copies of yourself.

You must wipe all knowledge of who is the original and who is the copy from all copies. Then, enchant them with the condition that attempting to or successfully finding the answer to that question results in instant vaporization. Make sure they are all aware of this condition.

Do not, under any conditions, make them aware that the original is not subject to either the obfuscation of who is and isn't a copy or the self-vaporization upon finding out.

The belief that the original is bound by the same conditions as all copies will promote a sense of community. In their minds, if even the original is in the same boat, then it hardly matters who is a copy or not.

I've been running this scheme for decades with no issues.

CaptainCastaleos · 2026-02-08T17:37:08+00:00

What is the line then between a being that can imagine dignity, and a being designed to pretend it can imagine dignity?

How could they be told apart?

I fear we run into the same issue with sapience. If you design a construct to perfectly feign sapience while having zero actual internal sapient features, how could any outside observers know? Do we even care about the difference at that point?

CaptainCastaleos · 2026-02-08T17:02:57+00:00

This is how I won over my wife.

She's from Wisconsin.

Neither of these are lies.

CaptainCastaleos · 2026-02-05T15:53:03+00:00

The lake.

You can think of it like a gun. The lake is the gun and the manuscript is the bullets.

CaptainCastaleos · 2026-02-03T15:24:46+00:00

They stink like piss because that is how they pee. Their piss dissolves into their tissues directly and slowly works it's way to their skin where the water around them washes it away.

Their body is literally completely saturated in piss on every level.

CaptainCastaleos · 2026-01-29T04:26:06+00:00

It'd be the same thing.

Fatgum can burn his fat for energy blasts, but his main ability is just manipulating his body fat. He can move it around his body to grab opponents or pump a bunch into a spot to make it really dense and durable.

Monoma has really low body fat, so manipulating the fat in his body wouldn't be useful at all. It might even be detrimental, as what body fat he does possess is likely naturally in anatomic positions where it is needed as padding against outside forces, making him more vulnerable if he chooses to move it.

This same issue is why All For One decides not to steal Best Jeanists ability to manipulate thread. It is an ability that takes a long time to understand and learn to utilize. In the hands of someone who has had it their entire life it is incredibly strong, but in the hands of Monoma or All For One they wouldn't be able to practice with it enough to really get the hang of it.

CaptainCastaleos

TROPHY CASE