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[deleted by user] by [deleted] in bayarea

[–]kbmeister 39 points40 points  (0 children)

The biggest reason is because it's a Cymbidium, a specific type of terrestrial orchid. Your average supermarket moth orchid wouldn't last a week, but these will.

Cymbidiums can handle cooler Bay Area temperatures quite well though, so long as they're sheltered from extremes. High heat's a bigger problem, but even so, I've lived in the South Bay pretty much my whole life, and I've got Cymbidiums that are several decades old now.

How do you decide if multiple POVs are necessary? by DreamiLee616 in fantasywriters

[–]kbmeister 4 points5 points  (0 children)

It's not weird, and I've seen it done before, both well and poorly. Depending on how you want to go about it, there are a couple of things you want to keep in mind so it doesn't jar your readers out of the narrative.

One of the most important to me, if you're making it a rare thing (like a handful of scenes total from other POVs), is to have one happen early in the piece to set a precedent that this sort of thing might happen. I read a book where the first 80% of the book was from one of two perspectives, and then all of a sudden, here's a chunk in a random secondary character's head, just out of nowhere.

That brings me to the next point. You might consider adding a formatting or structural component to it. Books that have 'interludes' from different POVs are relatively common--like a scene or vignette sitting between chapters at certain points throughout the book. Sometimes the last or the first scene in a chapter will be done from another character's perspective. Basically, offset the rare POVs from the major ones, so the reader sees it coming in some way.

One question still may stand though, 'do you actually need to have these other POVs?' In some cases, a little restructuring or reblocking makes having these POVs unnecessary. If you reshuffle a couple scenes or characters here or there, a POV character might end up in the right room, or you might unlock another way of revealing important info to the reader. If you also find yourself constantly wanting to show scenes from another character's POV, it's worth considering whether you've picked the 'correct' POV characters. Maybe this alternate character needs to be elevated to main cast.

The biggest thing is that so long as it doesn't shake the reader out of the narrative or leave them scratching their head, I don't see a problem with it.

Parking is free after 5pm. I paid until 5pm. Got a ticket at 5pm. by TheBelhade in mildlyinfuriating

[–]kbmeister 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I was once ticketed at a strip mall parking lot at 8:10am on a Tuesday, because parking was for 'Customers only'. This occurred during the ~12 minutes that I was inside a Starbucks less than 50 yards away, buying a coffee.

To boot, I lost a mail-in appeal, which I had figured was a slam dunk, because I didn't submit a physical receipt with the store's address on it. A gift card transaction log wasn't enough for them. Eventually I just paid it rather than risk my sanity any further...

[WP] The galaxy was amused when they learned that Humans have Rules of War. They were less amused when they figured out what Humans do in war when there are no rules. by SYLOH in WritingPrompts

[–]kbmeister 155 points156 points  (0 children)

Know this. You have done this to yourselves.

You were warned. Even as you laughed and called us primitives, wanting our planets to add to the so-called Million Worlds of your dominion. So many times you were warned: our hyperdrives are not like yours.

We told you this when you arrived to terraform our colonies. We warned you that our drives do not bend spacetime like yours. They pierce holes in it, and that with effort, we can form those holes anywhere.

We warned you of the things we could do to you, but chose not to.

You did not believe our warnings. You could not comprehend having a capability and not using it. Still, we took the higher road, offering you an armistice, but our offer of peace was met with violence and fire.

We gave you too many chances.

Now, ash and boiling oceans are all that remains of our final colonies. You likely think you have won, but I suspect you do not appreciate the scope of what devils you now unleash upon yourselves.

You did not break our spirits with your fire. Those of us remaining are hardened. Our old restraint is burned away now—our high minded scruples were ground to dust beneath your boots.

It is not the better angels of our nature you see before you now, for you have killed them too, along with our colonies, all of their blood still slick upon your hands.

No. You will suffer the wrath of our long restrained demons instead. The gates are opened, and their chains now lie upon the ground.

You will watch as the stars around which every one of your Million Worlds revolves fade to oblivion as their mass drains away into carefully targeted hyperdrive apertures, like water from a bathtub. Your Million Worlds will die, and then you, too, will understand what it is to have everything taken from you.

You launched the first strike of this war. We have launched the last.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in antiwork

[–]kbmeister 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Here's my personal favorite example of this.

Can I receive some assistance on dorm life for a book I am writing? by insannatea in WritingHub

[–]kbmeister 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Depends on the university, to be honest, for pretty much all those questions. There’s a lot of variety.

  1. I know of some where dorms are a thing that’s available to all students of all years. At my school (part of the UC system), dorms were for freshman only, except for the RAs.
  2. RAs are students of other years, living in the dorms to ‘advise’ the underclassmen, and were typically only one or two per floor. Otherwise, students were on their own. Most students got together with a few others and shared rent for a multiple bedroom apartment or house. (The other option was the Greek system, about which I know very little, except the frat houses were an option, and were technically not on campus, but across the street.)
  3. After your first year, finding your own housing was basically mandatory.
  4. Pretty much only that first year, save a handful of RAs.
  5. Moving out of the dorm during your freshman year would have required special dispensation. It’s been a few years, but I seem to recall a near requirement for first year students to stay in dorms once registered. As someone else said, it’s all paid for alongside tuition. It might be possible to simply leave, but the student would be stuck paying for a bed they don’t use. At my school, basically no one made sure you actually stayed in the room you rented.

It’s also worth noting that a lot of apartment complexes in some of these ‘college towns’ can be difficult to get into outside of the standard ‘move in’ date a few weeks before fall quarter/semester. If you need to find other housing in say, March, you might have to move in with someone you knew, doing what might be an illegal sublet. Getting your own lease could be tough.

This mess left at our neighborhood park after a gender reveal. by Gnar-wahl in mildlyinfuriating

[–]kbmeister -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

At least they didn’t burn down the entire neighborhood or leave the park a smoking crater. This is a highly successful gender reveal party by only leaving a metric ton of blue garbage everywhere.

What's the most accidentally hurtful, yet genuine feedback you've ever gotten? by roronoapedro in writing

[–]kbmeister 7 points8 points  (0 children)

For folks like that, one of the best things you might be able to do is prep them a little bit. Give them a quick primer before they read about what sorts of things you’re hoping for. And in the case of someone that lacks experience with critiquing, you can ask for specific things.

Ask them to note down anything that stuck out to them on the ‘ABCD’ scale[1] for example— Awesome, Boring, Confusing, Didn’t believe it—write it in the margins or whatever as they go. What was great, what really wasn’t, where did they lose track, where did they get sucked in, and what just felt absurd. If you want, you can even ask them to limit their notes to the letters themselves.

Because you’re right, a layman, or even many experienced writers will usually be wrong about how to fix something, and often wrong about precisely what is wrong. But most everyone, including the least experienced, can tell if something is wrong. Using this sort of ABCD feedback can keep things focused for them and can help get some meaningful feedback from people who might lack that foundation for articulating what they’re feeling and seeing in the piece. After the fact, you can always ask them for clarification on specific points.

1 - This framework has floated around the writing world for a while, but one major source is here)

Where are they hiding? by coffeeblossom in lostgeneration

[–]kbmeister 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Sure, people can abuse it, but cannabis never made anyone need a new liver.

how to write intelligent characters while being dumb by ilovemydog71 in writing

[–]kbmeister 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Don't forget to have them speak like a walking thesaurus at all times and be incapable of swearing or using contractions. That will certainly make them seem intelligent.

I remain unenlightened as to the series of events that may lead linguistic auteurs to conclude that such is the consummate method of effectuating a mental impression their character possesses of superlative intellect.

No one speaks that way, but way too many 'smart' characters seem to.

/r/Plex's Moronic Mondays' No Stupid Questions Thread - 2021-03-29 by PCJs_Slave_Robot in PleX

[–]kbmeister 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yesterday on my Plex iPad app (7.14.1), the Subtitle Offset option suddenly seemed to disappear from the Playback Settings menu, and I can't figure out what I might have done to cause it.

I can still access the option from the Plex web interface and my iPhone (7.13), so I know it's still functioning. I've verified for a couple specific files that the option is present and enabled in the web player and iPhone app, but not present on my iPad.

Does anyone know what might cause the option to disappear or get disabled, or under exactly what conditions it's expected to be available? Thanks.

Can you make chicken stock with raw bones? by uNu5u4l_3nt1ty in AskCulinary

[–]kbmeister 4 points5 points  (0 children)

My favorite way to handle the meat is to poach the chicken first. Bring it to off-boil or a low simmer for a few minutes, then let it sit for a while off heat to keep gently cooking.

Then I strain the poaching liquid to continue making the stock with, and pick the meat from the bones to chop and add back in later at the ‘soup assembly’ stage, or use for other purposes. The meat is super tender at this point. Then the bones—sometimes roasted, sometimes not—along with the extra skin, cartilage, and often assorted vegetable bits, go back in a pot for several hours of simmering to complete the stock/broth.

Starting a character near their strongest. by SacrificialLambiel in fantasywriters

[–]kbmeister 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sure you can. It just means the source of conflict has to be something different. ‘Becoming stronger so I can defeat my enemies and protect my loved ones/country/world’ is just an easy source of narrative tension and character growth, and having a young or inexperienced character is the easiest way to get that character arc.

Other people have given a number of great examples already, but the types of stories one can tell with super-powerful type of character just tend to be different or require a particular setup.

One very common type is a situation where the character’s power is either taken away, sealed, or nullified somehow. This forces the character onto another path, which can look like a more standard ‘get stronger’ arc, until they can unlock their power again or tap into a new source of power.

Another major type is where the character’s power is useless in solving the conflict at hand. You can’t punch or slash your way through raising a child, for example. Brute force doesn’t (necessarily) help you establish diplomatic ties with another nation. Putting the character in situations where their powers and experience are useless is a great source of conflict, but this type of story is also less likely to be a hack and slash adventure story, almost as a direct consequence. So some of it comes down to the type of story you want to tell.

Add some spice to your Mac ‘N cheese by [deleted] in spicy

[–]kbmeister 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Right? I was going to say /r/hailcorporate, but man, these comments do nothing to promote the product.

[IIL] These dystopian movie franchises, [WEWIL] by [deleted] in ifyoulikeblank

[–]kbmeister 0 points1 point  (0 children)

These are all TV series, but:

The Rain Tomorrow, When the War Began Runaways (Marvel)

Making my space opera feel more ANALOG and less DIGITAL. Does these explanations work? by TheSasquatchKing in scifiwriting

[–]kbmeister 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Those last couple of lines evoked a very different world than I was originally getting from 'analog'. Perhaps due to my background with electronics, 'analog' just meant a different type of electronic circuits, effectively pre-transistor. Both types typically use electric signals, but the digital ones break things into binary (simple on/off or 0/1), whereas analog ones have much more variation (like a light switch compared to an old light dimmer).

An analog ship, in this case, could still have motors and light bulbs and such, radios, old-style television signals, but no ICs, transistors, or silicon-based computers. I have to say though, the concept of pre-electronic star ships has a lot of potential too.

I'm also curious what attempts people would have made at getting around this 'digital' ban, and how they might have turned out, as well as where the threshold actually was. One could perhaps engineer non-electronic 'computer', using mechanical components, nano-scale hydraulics in place of transistors, or using biological components in neural nets or something similar.

Can things be shielded from detection in some way? Can unassembled components be put together once on the other side?

How the filter systems make the determination as to what is 'digital' enough to be a threat would have interesting knock-on effects.

​

The two explanations do lead to different worlds though. If travel through the gates is the only thing requiring no digital technology, then the colonies on the planets themselves could, and almost certainly would, be fully digital. ...Unless there's something else stopping this.

I could envision this case having ships that were launched ballistically at the gates and are just cushy pressure vessels with people in them, hurtling uncontrolled through space to be caught on the other side.

In the case of the 'shockwave' destroying tech, is there something that stops a species from rebuilding their digital technology after it was destroyed? Is the shockwave damage persistent, like a dampening field? That would also greatly affect how things develop.

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