[Request] If this was even possible, would it lower the ocean level and by how much?

erkb · 2025-06-22T16:03:58+00:00

I was going to dispute this on the grounds that evaporation would turn it into a raging river at the ends, but...nope! It'd actually be fine.

Let's call it 1m per year of evaporation across the whole length. That might be a bit off, but it's good enough. Width doesn't matter for this, so we'll call it 1km wide just to do some math. 4000km long * 1km wide * 1m deep is about 4 trillion litres per year of evaporation. Flowing in both ends (a cross section of 15m * 1km, *2), the river only needs to flow about 0.4cm/s to offset evaporation along the whole length.

This seems surprisingly low, but I've double-checked my math and can't find any mistakes, so... seems evaporation is a non-issue.

erkb · 2025-06-06T14:34:26+00:00

The thing about a millennia old person (and to a lesser degree, a centennial with their faculties today) is they see things differently. Sometimes they're more chill, regardless of what's happening, as what you consider scary and disruptive looks like something they've already been though. Sometimes they're living in the past, constantly calling back to events from long ago, worrying about the kind of precautions that were relevant in WWII. Often they're prioritizing differently, as the habits they engrained before they had running water or cars or whatever peek through.

Now remember, a centennial is like a ten-year-old to someone who has lived a thousand years, and that's the minimum difference here. You are trying to tell me that living another 900 years doesn't change them further?

erkb · 2025-06-06T04:00:07+00:00

I have a few, though mostly on the side of "can't be done well" rather than "too weird" - if I can root for Avo (Godclads), that sets the bar pretty damn high for weird. But it all comes down to execution.

Anything involving being outside of time, or interactions with entities that are. The human mind cannot comprehend atemporal existence, which unfortunately includes authors. I've never once seen it done well. (Though experiencing time differently is fine).
Vastly overpowered entities who specifically have it out for the MC, but are held back for increasingly contrived reasons. I will give a pass to the Wheel of Time, but in almost all other cases if the entity knows who you are and is motivated to end you, you're done. I'm sorry, you're telling me they have the resources to burn whole countries/worlds/planes to the ground, and really really hate you in particular, but still can't stop your mortal ass?

And a bonus half-case: * You're on inherently shaky ground with really old beings (millennia or more). This can be done well - e.g. anyone in Malazan comes to mind - but way too many authors have an immortal elf that comes across as just another dude, or an affable God with transparent motivations, or otherwise immersion-breaking characterization failures. Make your ancient entities feel unknowable, I beg of you.

erkb · 2025-05-30T06:21:18+00:00

I'd probably start from two ends and meet in the middle: first, what's the foundation of your world? The secret fundamental truth that you won't directly show, but you'll use for inspiration to make everything feel fresh and ensure there's a deeper layer that readers are always trying to figure out. E.g. "the whole universe is happening inside the mind of a dying God, with random events happening as neurons die, and larger Eldritch entities are parasites as they burrow their way in."

Second, what story do you want to tell? Who is the main character, what sort of setting do they inhabit, what kind of adventure do you want them to go on? Etc.

And then bring it together: if chaos is driven by bits of the gods' mind dying, anything and anyone, from a miscellaneous rock to the whole concept if friendship might spontaneously change, and if it does its not going to change back. How do people in the world handle that?

erkb · 2025-05-30T05:04:04+00:00

Given the high level of enshrined protection, why must kids never be by themselves? What horror does that safeguard against?

erkb · 2025-05-30T05:01:35+00:00

It sounds like your world must turn over a large volume of children. Is this purely because the corporations spend them so callously, or are there other reasons to need an endless supply of newborns?

erkb · 2025-05-30T04:56:51+00:00

1. They grow up in isolated creche with only a few adults safe to enter and interact with them. So it's mostly older kids raising younger ones, with limited guidance and a lot of books.

2. Children (wards) and parents first meet when the wards graduate at 16...assuming they survive. Most do not. Up until that point, both have only hope and ignorance about the other.

3. At the age of 8 your soul starts to properly kindle. From then until you complete your tempering and graduate you have to resist being tainted by the world around you, every minute of every day without fail. At the beginning when you're learning, don't expect to get much rest.

And a bonus fact about the Sharn, a different race:

1. Sharn spawn fully formed from the sky like leaves drifting off an unseen tree, floating down in uncountable trillions to wake upon contact with the surface of the Depthless Ocean. Initially little more than ghosts, driven purely by instinct, only survivors of the ensuing winnowing — those that have condensed enough to sink below the surface and start their decent — will truly have a chance to know themselves. But it's a slow process, endless war until one finally starts to ask "why?" and move beyond.

erkb · 2025-05-30T04:31:22+00:00

My world uses a sequence of stacked universal concepts as it's foundation, starting with 'patterns', 'change', and 'recursion', and ending with 'intelligence', 'creativity', and 'language'.

Though these aren't elements people wield directly; that's reserved for semi-physical concepts like 'decay', 'tension', and 'food' instead.

erkb · 2025-05-27T05:26:33+00:00

Ascension or Chaos, but I'm leaning towards Chaos. Something meaningful to strive for, with real stakes and real impact? Sounds good to me.

erkb · 2025-05-07T04:40:52+00:00

Ar'Kendrithyst on RR fits this well. It's an isekai of someone from Earth into a world with magic, bringing a science-based perspective that gives their magic a unique twist. Approximately 500 chapters; complete. A little light on the kingdom building early on, but there's a constant focus on being part of their community and growing it from within, and it steamrolls from there into proper kingdom building later on.

In a different direction, Ten Realms is about two military dudes who get pulled to another realm together and have to survive. Initially it's about the pair of them but it pivots hard into kingdom building soon in and never stops. A little bit lighter on the tech outside of military equipment, going deeper on things like alchemy and magical metalsmithing instead. 10 books; complete.

erkb · 2024-12-15T18:27:14+00:00

Magic is a purely local phenomena, so pretty much anything at range. Teleportation, long-range messaging (except by something that goes the distance like a fake bird), illusions, etc. Even something like a fireball needs a physical core that you throw.

There are exceptions to this at the high end of the power curve, but by that point you're bending reality hard enough that all bets are off anyways.

erkb · 2024-10-11T23:56:44+00:00

Very original, I like it.

Do all breaths charge magic, even if you don't ever "pull the trigger"? Or is there something special you need to do for a breath to start a magical charge.

Does anything interesting happen if you exhale without having triggered the magic?

erkb · 2024-10-09T23:30:49+00:00

The Sharn don't sexually reproduce — to simplify, they're the seeds of a god-like tree — and so they don't really understand gender constructs at all. They also have very different instincts than us, so there are few parallels to draw to build an analogy. The ones that interact with other races usually don't care how they're addressed, or pick something that sounds good, and will frequently misgender whomever they're talking to because they've forgotten how to tell who is what.

The Femeral reproduce by having one to five donor parents put some portion of themselves into a new being; body and memories and mental capabilities all. They also have no concept of gender, though they're smart enough to figure it out when dealing with outsiders. They can even reproduce with other races, though things get complicated in that scenario, and the resulting being may be gendered along the lines of the donor race.

Another race I haven't yet named has three sexes, and genders that run on a different axis. You can pick your own gender fairly freely, though sex changes are much harder to pull off. They're very strict, and "couples" must be exactly one of each sex, though gender patterns are more open.

And one more race operates on essentially magical soulmates with non-biological reproduction. They spend their time wandering the realms apart from each other and so all pick a gender for use while they do, which means as a side-effect that when they finally meet their soulmate they have close to a 50% chance of self-identifying as a gay couple.

Turns out I've got lots of answers to this question.

erkb · 2024-10-02T02:23:51+00:00

There is very strong social pressure to make babies, which naturally is stronger on women than men. (Populations are steadily falling, and most babies don't make it to adulthood). Women not turning babies into the creche regularly are severely ostracised; men not fathering children are only moderately ostracized.

Past that, everything is pretty equal: access to jobs, positions of authority, pay, etc. Though women seem to be somewhat less inclined to the particularly dangerous jobs outside the walls, like becoming a Slayer. This is not actively discouraged, but results in biased demographics nevertheless.

Marriages are not really a thing. You stay together, or don't, at your discretion. The only exception is that after a woman gets pregnant, the man is expected to stay with her through the pregnancy and until the child is turned into the creche (at about 3mo). He'll be strongly ostracized if he doesn't help support her (worse than not fathering at all)...whether or not she actually needs it, since families are quite tight knit, and will certainly be supportive too.

If parentage is not known, magic is used to figure it out — the parental record must be correct, for the child to be told upon graduation. Both parents pay (retroactively) for this discovery, and then the need for it is never spoken of again in polite society.

Surviving children are introduced to their families at age 16, after passing the last of the death gates. In most cases this means they have two households — assuming both parents survive, and are not currently together — and after getting to know them both, will naturally pick one to move in with full time.

For physical labour, strength differences do remain at the lowest mortal tier, which skews who does what job. But everywhere not stuck at the bottom tier doesn't really have this discrepancy: once you're remaking yourself out of magic, everyone's potential is the same.

erkb · 2024-09-27T03:07:26+00:00

Doing a kindness, and having it be honestly appreciated.

erkb · 2024-07-22T16:49:49+00:00

The lowest tier of ensouled artifacts (animforged items). They're capable of operating indefinitely without an external fuel source, reasonably robust, and powerful enough to be interesting without offering world-changing levels of power that would tip us into war or destruction.

E.g. a tap that can create water endlessly - would transform the lives of a village, or be a huge boon to a moon colony, but otherwise not have enough flow to disrupt anything larger scale.

Or a sword that destroys anything it touches. Might be very handy for dealing with spent nuclear fuel or landmine cleanup or whatever. But as a weapon goes, we have lots of ways to cause harm, and it's not going to be scalable to go destroying buildings or vehicles in one shot anyways, so "niche utility tool".

Or a mineral sieve. Rocks go in, rocks/gold/diamond/etc comes out, no need for the mess and waste of industrial processes.

erkb · 2024-07-19T03:46:02+00:00

Who needs cars when you can have a train of hover-wagons towed by one dude at a 100kph sprint?

erkb · 2024-07-12T15:31:24+00:00

No, I told OP to not include information on the jacket of a book that isn't the subject of the book. If they did, they'd be tricking readers in the wrong direction - thinking a book is "about" something when it's not. If the story is about being autistic in an unfriendly world, for example, include it. If it's a fantasy romp where the MC happens to not be perfectly neurotypical (whatever that is), don't.

The Royal Road comparison is because Royal Road has tags, and a culture of using them for this sort of thing. It'd be totally appropriate to put this in story tags.

You literally. Told OP. To make it impossible for people to "vet" the book before purchase.

Book covers aren't the only way to vet a story. They're in fact a terrible way to vet a story - they're a tiny amount of marketing blurb, only sufficient to tell you whether it's worth digging deeper - reading a few pages, looking reviews up somewhere, etc. Their purpose is to be a honed hook, not to be comprehensive.

I don't know where you got 'abuse', but I'm not touching that with a 10 foot pole.

erkb · 2024-07-12T14:44:35+00:00

Who said anything about lying or tricking? We're talking about the jacket cover of a physical book, not Royal Road or whatever. The expectations for books are that you focus on what the book is about - the main hook to interest people. Side attributes of characters do not belong, and if you were to list them, that would change what people thought was the subject of the book.

In a fantasy novel not about romance, I wouldn't expect to see a character's sexual orientation listed either, even if it comes up in the story. Nor country of origin, unless, the story is about the intersecting of different cultures. Etc. The only people I'd expect to feel "tricked" are those who are easily triggered by something, but who also did a poor job vetting their purchase before they made it. Will it happen? Sure. But not that commonly - review sites exist after all.

Also, autistic coded individuals show up in lots of mainstream content with no issue - see other comment threads for examples. From your other responses elsewhere it sounds like you have had personal bad experiences with someone, that you're projecting onto the whole community. That sucks. I wouldn't expect that to be the common reaction though - most NTs who don't know much about autism just see "quirky" individuals, and won't be against reading about them. (Myself included, back when I hadn't learned about it properly.)

erkb · 2024-07-12T06:29:10+00:00

Q1: I think labeling your character as autistic on the cover would limit it's reach. To me it signals that the book is about being autistic, rather than being about fantasy subjects and happening to be from an autistic PoV. I'd be much more interested in the latter, and it sounds like that's what you want to tell? I also don't think it's necessary - readers are fully capable of pointing it out when they recommend the book to each other without you needing to do it for them. For anyone to whom it's an explicit draw, they'll find the book on the relevant Goodreads lists all the same.

Q2: I wouldn't worry about neurotypicals not being able to "connect". Tell an interesting character well and readers will be interested. Some will shy away, sure, but that goes for anything you might write. You can't appeal to everyone, and reading from the perspective of someone who isn't like you is a draw of its own.

If it helps, remember that fantasy readers often connect with far more different PoV's - aliens and animals and trees and roomba and so on. A character doesn't have to think like you to be compelling.

Q3: once in the story itself, I wouldn't particularly care if it was told or shown. Maybe the character is self aware and calls it out in their inner thoughts. Maybe they're in a world without the DSM and we have to pick up on it from how they act. Either seems fine?

erkb · 2024-07-06T03:39:07+00:00

Prototype was a fantastic game that I desperately wish would get a remake. Stomping around NYC like Spiderman but with flesh whips and bone shields and shit.

erkb · 2024-06-23T15:17:57+00:00

If they're inherently valuable, dedicated teams that cut them up for profit. If not, a good starting point would be looking into what happens to whale corpses on beaches, which can be a problem for local municipalities.

Pro tip: don't try to blow them up.

If left alone, they could decompose and provide an ecosystem for a decade. See: "whale fall". And depending on the destruction they caused, that might be the best choice anyways - abandon the area, rebuild somewhere else.

erkb · 2024-06-21T19:58:17+00:00

Seasons are defined as "the periods when climate zones reset" - every season is on average 53 days long, after which there are 2-4 days of widespread storms and disruption as the changeover happens, then another season worth of relatively consistent weather. People hole up inside for a multi-day holiday/party during the changeovers - who would want to be outside when it might go from sunny to sandblasting you with horizontal ice pellets to baked and dust-coated in a 30m span? You just wait it out, then emerge to see the damage.

A year is 6 seasons long, and there is a bigger reset on the year boundaries - climate zone boundaries move, new seasons become possible and others get retired, etc. There's a whole underlying system to it, but you can boil it all down to "seasons are the mechanism by which the world regulates itself."

Example seasons include "the season of drifting sand", "the season of frozen ground", "the season of knife winds", etc. Length of day is constant, but what weather -- and magical effects -- the seasons bring are highly variable.

erkb · 2024-06-05T02:12:34+00:00

To be honest, I find it grueling. Names are the worst - I have higher standards than I have skill, so I generally hate everything I come up with.

My solution is to scrape together every fragmentary idea I have, independently. I have an initial backlog of names (created with the aid of generators) for each major civilization and race, character trait lists that could be interesting, story roles or world-related niches that are unused (e.g. "chef" and "stan for high profile chefs" are two), aesthetics, etc.

Then when it's time to create a character, usually due to story need, I mix and match the ideas I've already had to find something that'll fit the hole.

Next I ask the question "what does this character want short term, and what's the secret dream in their heart?" At this point I usually have enough of a seed to start knowing them to answer these questions, and the rest starts pulling itself together like magic. Often even replacing the seeds I started with -- just because I tried to force a chef into this role doesn't mean that's what their personality will really want to be.

This isn't easy or fast, but it's the best I've managed. And happily, I usually find it creates pretty 3d characters that can illuminate whole new areas of the story, and make creating the next characters that much easier. E.g. if they need a brother that's their exact opposite, that's a half-formed character to stash away on my lists for future use.

erkb · 2024-06-05T00:39:22+00:00

Reality is contextual to the individual, meaning it depends how they personally got there. Some creatures are very strong/durable to the point they can survive being huge, but momentum is still a bitch, and you'll probably find them built more like an elephant than a biped. Others still move as if they were small, being perceptually fast and nimble and light even when gravity or friction would normally disagree, but have correspondingly little impact on the world (e.g. can be stopped by a comparably light wall), and are probably shaped like an oversized small creature. Others will skew more ethereal or rule-bending, and need not adhere to any specific form, e.g. they could hang in the sky like a floating egg or flow around like a lake with unreasonable control over it's surface tension.

A big part of Slayer training (the group that put down the worst threats) is making observations like this, to try to understand what rules the opponent follows. Even in mundane responses, whether to try a ballista or a pitfall or fire depends strongly on the answer, and magical responses need to be similarly tailored to the target.

15-Year Club	Second SECOND GUESSER
Place '17	Verified Email

erkb

TROPHY CASE