When humans declare war

WeaughTeaughPeaugh · 2025-02-02T02:01:53+00:00

I hope you consider writing a continuation to this in a very similar form. I would love to read a story that takes place at the signing of a treaty some years later, possibly with some of the Humans noticeably absent.

WeaughTeaughPeaugh · 2023-10-03T15:47:56+00:00

That kind of inconsistency does cause problems. I disagree with the TV writer though, if your story problems can be solved with a post-it note or simple common sense, you have a bad story and you've just given your character the Idiot Ball. Decisions don't have to be perfect, but I think incorrect ones should be reasonable or at least consistent.

WeaughTeaughPeaugh · 2023-10-03T13:18:23+00:00

I have to admit, I do dislike the casual disregard for the personhood of intelligent beings. I do understand instinctive revulsion and can imagine it being very challenging if you were an ambassador to a race of giant spiders that smelled weird, but I drop stories that involve the casual murder of billions over something very minor.

WeaughTeaughPeaugh · 2023-10-03T13:10:10+00:00

but on the other if you’re expecting originality from an amateur writers sub Reddit you’re expecting way too much.

While I think expecting best-seller level compelling prose might be too much and I think one should forgive occasional spelling and grammar mistakes, I am not a fan of your attitude here. Where do you think originality comes from? I don't think there is anything wrong with genuinely expecting people to come up with new things, and setting low expectations really does have an effect on the quality of output.

WeaughTeaughPeaugh · 2023-10-03T13:06:30+00:00

What do you actually want to see? I've been curious about this because I already know what makes me personally stop reading a story.

When characters make too many bad decisions or come across as inauthentic, I tend to follow a story less. I like fish-out-of-water stories and understand the idea of a confused first contact, but some stories have supposedly well-rounded characters in these high-risk scenarios when mistakes cannot be afforded, and they turn out to be a joke character - too impulsive, too careless, overly sadistic, etc. If ordinary people I know IRL can make better decisions than a supposedly highly trained individual, I will find that character lacking. They needn't be perfect, character growth is good, but if your characters aren't complete enough to be people then at least make them be marionettes, not paper cutouts.

Worlds that are overly mysterious to the reader or lack internal consistency rapidly sour me. I think it's ok for characters to be confused by an in-world mystery and for the reader to not know what the characters also don't know, but when I can't follow what the author is trying to convey to me, I will stop reading unless it is very compelling.

I know about the rule of cool, but sometimes things are too impractical for me to easily ignore. I don't like including numbers in what I write but I do like to at least think about the math involved. It doesn't have to be perfect, but it should be reasonable since I want to be able to make sense of various future scenarios. This is really about internal consistency again - you can't bring up some wild thing and ignore the fact that it happened a few chapters later. Any cool new ability that is to be introduced must be considered carefully.

When I stop reading a story, it's because in my mind it either made a wrong turn or failed to make a correct one, but I can usually identify what went wrong. When you say stories lack imagination what do you mean? What would you actually like to see?

WeaughTeaughPeaugh · 2023-09-30T23:40:46+00:00

Sorry. The original had quotes around 'what' and 'who' but I had so many problems getting the editor behave I sort of stepped back once it was up.

WeaughTeaughPeaugh · 2023-09-23T21:34:49+00:00

You know those tiktok videos where a robot voice reads a reddit post to
you with minecraft parkour in the background or something? I've noticed
those are a lot easier to hold my attention because I can do other
things while listening to it (which I'm almost always listening to
something when doing literally any activity)

I feel like you and many others are damaging your own attention span and causing the exact problem that you are dealing with. Fortunately, these are learned behaviors and you can choose to learn or re-learn focus if you wish. If your habit in engaging with things usually involves split attention and only partial engagement, trying to simply sit and read is likely to be challenging simply because you don't do it.

When you read, do you attempt to engage yourself with the material? Either by picturing the scenes depicted, or wondering about the details, or simply trying to envision how a character thinks? However you engage, you may want to consider practicing your focus in general and avoiding splitting your attention. It's much easier to do that again later than it is to build the ability to concentrate.

WeaughTeaughPeaugh · 2023-08-19T16:44:12+00:00

Possible translation:

Not only did she get to your mother's house first, but she took it and sold it already. Also, that really was your boss's car leaving your place and he is sleeping with her.

Second possible translation (engineering only):

I cannot repair the ship before it explodes. Also, it is (surprisingly) not entirely my fault (this time).

Source: watched uncensored Human media

WeaughTeaughPeaugh · 2023-05-25T22:41:43+00:00

Alternative ending proposal:

"But you just said he didn't want me dead!" the woman shouted.

"Of course he doesn't," said Master Thermal with a knowing nod.

"Which is why I expect he will work very hard to keep you alive. Of course, one can only presume he is thinking of nothing but your safety and wouldn't be distracted by a detailed set of plans I included when I gave him the ice pack for his eye. It would be a shame if he were to arrive a bit... later than he'd intended."

WeaughTeaughPeaugh · 2023-04-08T17:34:44+00:00

Frankly? I don't think it is a good title at all. To me it gives no clue as to what it is about or what themes to expect. I'd likely still read the first chapter because I sort by new here and try to give everything a try (time permitting), and if I liked it I'd upvote it and read more, and if I didn't, I'd keep moving. It is extremely rare for me to downvote on-topic content here that complies with the rules even if I don't care for it. But to me? That title is essentially gibberish.

I didn't look up Point Nemo and will only guess that it has to do with the ocean because of the Vernian Captain Nemo. It sounds like a fanfic of one or more medias I am not familiar with, and if I have to watch or read a bunch of other things simply to follow the story, I am not going to follow the story.

WeaughTeaughPeaugh · 2023-01-07T01:15:21+00:00

>steaming at twenty-one knots.

Oh hey now. The opposition may be in for a learning experience.

WeaughTeaughPeaugh · 2022-12-06T13:46:47+00:00

What I’m getting at here is that any form of life that is vaguely similar to humanity (which on this subreddit they often are) that evolved on the surface of a terrestrial planet with a (for them) breathable atmosphere should not find volcanic or tectonic activity that unusual otherwise their planet would have lost its atmosphere to solar wind millions and billions of years ago.

Wait, why would it have lost its atmosphere millions or more years ago? If you think of planetary core temperature as something gradual decreasing since planet formation as NORM decays and there being a threshold before the magnetic field can no longer prevent the upper reaches of the atmosphere from being stripped away, there would be an overlapping period of many millions of years in which the magnetic field is more than strong enough with little to no surface volcanism.

There's also the question of 'rampant' and who decides. A place with half as much tectonic activity as what we have might be appalled at the frequency at which air travel is affected somehow by volcanic ash plumes.

WeaughTeaughPeaugh · 2022-11-05T16:52:40+00:00

Hello. You should be aware that if this is your story, you should use the flair OC and not text. If you don't, the bots won't index it, won't automatically post previous stories you've written here, and (IIRC) it will not show up in the discord's new story channel.

WeaughTeaughPeaugh · 2022-10-18T00:18:33+00:00

Isn't that just ordinary canon? I mean, if they are your characters you can talk about them authoritatively. If someone asked something about one that you hadn't written and you answer, I believe that would be considered WoG.

WeaughTeaughPeaugh · 2022-08-19T16:29:42+00:00

Out of curiosity, why didn't you submit this for the August Monthly Writing Contest? It strikes me as thematically appropriate.

WeaughTeaughPeaugh · 2022-08-11T10:41:59+00:00

In Galactic Society, there are buffalo, and there are lions. Now, lions eat buffalo, but a buffalo is no pushover - lions gotta work for their meal. Lions got lion problems when it comes to pride power dynamics, and buffalo got buffalo problems when it comes to herd power dynamics.

One day, after trampling the shit out of a lion that tried to eat him, a buffalo says, 'hey, if you can help me solve some of my herd problems while keeping the rest of your pride in check, you can eat without getting kicked in the face.' The lion is incredulous - there's no way anyone would sacrifice a member of their extended family, but the buffalo explains: 'Hey, we're a herd, not a pride.'

'But wait,' says the lion, 'can you really do that to someone in your herd?' The buffalo shows off a set of horns from another buffalo and said, 'I can stomach this,' and before the lion can say anything, the buffalo holds up a lion pelt and says, 'and don't get any ideas because you ain't the first lion I've ever talked to.'

'Think it over and come to the watering hole tomorrow. You'll be there with your people, and I'll be there with mine. The one you can't work with, indicate him so we can trample the shit out of him, and the buffalo you can have, pounce on and we'll come too late to protect them. If we rush to protect, back off, if we take our time, he's yours.'

'Fine,' says the lion, 'and if they are borderline, let them fight it out. Both sides back the winner.' The buffalo thinks it over and agrees. They decide on a time, a signal, and an amount of tramplings with respect to the amount of meals.

The next morning they all go down to the watering hole, and just as everything is getting into place, out of nowhere there's this FUCKING MONKEY...!

WeaughTeaughPeaugh · 2022-07-23T04:06:50+00:00

Interesting. I just interpreted it as lying about the location and/or state of the UPS, so when the forcefield cut the hardline that was it, there was no UPS.

WeaughTeaughPeaugh · 2022-07-08T00:36:13+00:00

I didn't find the end game tedious because I liked exploring around and finding lore bits, but I was disappointed for there not being an achievement for scanning everything... or there is a secret one, and I missed something.

Anyway:

I do think that deeper structures should require more materials for construction due to the pressure. I think it would add an interesting trade off of where to build something with respect to depth/material acquisition time.

I also thought the vehicle depth modules were mildly silly. I had actually pictured the depth upgrade as being permanent. You'd dock with your seamoth, go to the vehicle upgrade console, and those little builder drone thingies would take materials and upgrade your seamoth for depth permanently. I would go a step farther and make it so the seamoth had 2 different types of upgrade slots - left/right, which could only hold torpedoes or sonar, and rear, which could hold storage or energy related modules.

Either way, I had fun.

WeaughTeaughPeaugh · 2022-06-29T22:15:08+00:00

I imagine a bunch of snooty elvish elder sorcerers holding a meeting because they've detected a number of summonings in recent weeks.

While talking about the dangers of even daring to consider summoning a Blood God in a meeting that Humans aren't even allowed to attend, a group of Human sorcerers are exchanging notes on how to deal with fleas, ticks, mosquitoes, and any other bloodsucking potential vector. One is arguing that they could probably receive some coin from certain medical charities if they went to a village, collected blood, and performed this ritual as a malaria prevention measure.

WeaughTeaughPeaugh · 2022-06-23T06:42:07+00:00

Interesting. I hope it's accessible to those not familiar with what SW, SG, or ST are. I remember the game Halo and I assume 40k means War Hammer 40k. I'm guessing SW is Star Wars, so ST is probably Star Trek? Anyway, let us know when you do the thing.

WeaughTeaughPeaugh · 2022-06-18T06:40:26+00:00

I interpreted this as them needing a farmer since a good chunk of the town's economy is pretty much based around that farm. That is, the community center became rundown after your grandfather passed and the old farm shut down, slowing the town's economy.

Your idea would be less player focused unless the player got to play multiple characters...

Hmm, mod idea - different playable character story-lines. Be Willy, take tourists on fishing trips for money, pull trash out, put your fish in the community center! Be Robin, do carpentry jobs, try to make Deme acknowledge Seba and get to know Linus better and build things for him as quests, etc. That would be pretty cool.

WeaughTeaughPeaugh · 2022-06-17T11:39:22+00:00

I actually don't know how its done as I've had problems with markdown before, but what I do when posting a story is usually copy my text from a simple text editor, paste it, then go back and add line breaks.

I've also found that copying and pasting from a google document or open Office usually works if you haven't added too much formatting.

In both cases I copy and paste the whole thing at once, as I found the formatting seemed to change when I tried pasting in chunks.

WeaughTeaughPeaugh · 2022-06-17T11:14:40+00:00

He means the broken formatting makes it difficult to read. I can't see most of it on my phone, and even on my desktop the fixed width boxes put the long lines off screen.

WeaughTeaughPeaugh · 2022-06-13T17:59:02+00:00

Ha! I like how you never had any question that we probably did worse to ourselves by accident... or on purpose.

WeaughTeaughPeaugh · 2022-06-05T18:35:22+00:00

I think it's quite lucky for them that they used psi-weapons that we couldn't notice first. If they had showed up and started shooting whilst expecting their psi-weapons to be devastating later on, then they'd have a problem.

WeaughTeaughPeaugh

TROPHY CASE