Apparently Russell Crowe had a role on Gilligan's Island. Wowza... I wonder who else was on there
52 2024-12-09 19:41:11
Re: The Archangel Syndrome (309 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
Joulestones is overly accurate. They'd realistically be called (inaccurately) Wattstones
53 2024-12-09 01:36:34
Re: The Archangel Syndrome (309 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
if you pick x-stone, I recommend dropping "hyperbattery" entirely since the term makes me wonder what a non-hyperbattery is like and if it can be substituted, as Musk likely will have to unless his hyperbattery factory can get the numbers out
54 2024-11-27 04:15:07
Re: new member (1 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Basic)
Cheerio & Welcome aboard
55 2024-11-16 13:53:54
Re: As Darkness Gathers (the Connor series) - Dirk B. (1,438 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
"Don't eat this fruit because it contains bad-ju-ju knowledge" becomes an omission if God also plans ahead of time to kick them out of the Garden of Eden for eating it.
Here, I sense God doesn't know at the time of statement that he plans to give them the boot... but for arguments sake, lets assume his omniscience has told him they will eat it. Leaving out the "...also kicked out" part may unfairly pressure them to not make a fair choice. And omission is not technically a deception.
56 2024-11-16 13:21:33
Re: As Darkness Gathers (the Connor series) - Dirk B. (1,438 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
Not lying, but an omission of fact
57 2024-11-13 16:39:52
Re: As Darkness Gathers (the Connor series) - Dirk B. (1,438 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
Now you probably see why I'd rather not add a loop to this story as well.
> Removes the alternate timeline headache
58 2024-11-13 09:39:14
Re: As Darkness Gathers (the Connor series) - Dirk B. (1,438 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
No, the other loop. The one where the end times already occurred. Satan's back at it again because he's been released.
+Add the Eucharist as "in progress"
You can still adjust the 2nd round of end-times to suit your story's needs with a new challenge, the original inerrant bible has been preserved since those events played out as prophesized.
59 2024-11-13 07:12:58
Re: As Darkness Gathers (the Connor series) - Dirk B. (1,438 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
The loop concept would seem to be compatible with the Eucharist and an inerrant bible, unless I misread
60 2024-11-13 01:58:53
Re: As Darkness Gathers (the Connor series) - Dirk B. (1,438 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
The other alternative I also considered right from the beginning was to sidestep multiple timelines (2 in this case) and have God give the prophets a vision of the future that is identical to our future.
A third alternative is that the end-times we have in our prophecies already occurred and Satan has been freed from his confinement, (and that our "universe" was reset to see if he could lead mankind back down the rabbit hole a second time.
And cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled: and after that he must be loosed a little season.
Upon being released, desperate to not go back into purgatory, Satan could make the wager. Since all the prophecies already came to pass, they could happen slightly differently on this iteration
61 2024-11-12 22:05:18
Re: As Darkness Gathers (the Connor series) - Dirk B. (1,438 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
there might be parts that God fogs Satan's mind...
Except if God fogs someone's mind such that they end up in the lake of fire, is the punishment still fair?
62 2024-11-11 02:49:10
Re: The Archangel Syndrome (309 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
However, the surest way to bring society to a halt, even if only briefly, is some event that takes down the bureaucracy's electronic systems, such as a massive solar flare
In VQF I went with a block-chain engine for identification, so even should Earth randomly fall into the sun and be incinerated, the rest of the solar system will continue to function without it.
The "ID" is a "bioprint" which is never fully defined in the series, but one story mentions that it has your DNA as a header/prefix and you can always message "down" to your next of kin even if they change their "phone number" using the DNA prefix (Obv this doesn't work across adoptions).
So if you're 45-light-minutes from Earth, you can instantly spend money from your bank account where you have access to lock your part of the block-chain rather than have to wait for a message to your bank to make the two-way trip (90 minutes is a long wait to buy a coffee)
63 2024-11-08 13:03:09
Re: The Archangel Syndrome (309 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
The main problem with these, I think, is that Joseph and Apollo don't meet at all in novellas 1 and 3, only in novella 2 and briefly at the end of novella 4. Naturally, they regularly interact via Galaxinet
Do they need to meet often? In my main series it's not until book 4 (not even novella 4) that my sword-wielding-girl-who-lops-off-heads even comes out of the woodwork. J3nna shows up in the book after that, so she's an even longer wait. Good things age well with anticipation
64 2024-11-08 04:28:20
Re: The Archangel Syndrome (309 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
You mean publish here or Amazon?
65 2024-10-28 00:17:18
Re: The Archangel Syndrome (309 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
Hmm how many? All of them. But one particular act may extend along multiple volumes.
For example, Fire's current story, "Act I" is everything from the beginning to the point where she's with the Uranians and realizes she's going to have to go on this mission. So that's currently all of Book 1 and half of Book 2.
Within this "Act I" and several smaller Act I-II-III groupings. such as "Begin Auction - Secure bee - Escape Auction"
Q: Too long?
This is hard to answer, but I can definitely say I don't feel the length of a book, but rather the strength of the reward for reading the ending. In this sense, Han Solo vs Kylo Ren ending left me unsatisfied. Unrewarded. And one may make a counter-point that sometimes life is random like that, and not every death has meaning, but I would argue this should have meant more and rewarded more. It wasn't far from the death of Superman or Optimus Prime, (both of which the companies chose to walk back but Disney decided to plough forward).
If the reward is great enough, no length is really too much.
consider to be the end of act one/beginning of act two
I have trouble dividing the acts unless I reach the end.
(I imagine you face the same dilemma if you tried to split Laurie's journey in the ship right now. You know she goes to town on the crew in the third act, but where exactly did Act I end and give way to Act II? I checked my notes. Formally, Act II starts in chapter 20 when Laurie commits on a course of action. A purist would say her first commit is much earlier, probably around the introduction of Alice where the journey-story changes direction to survival-story)
For yours, I can guess Act I culminates the destruction of Joseph's homeworld, but not knowing now much story comes after that, I could be way off.
My concept of "too long" is really how many disparate elements I need to track over how long a period. As long as there is character growth, I'm usually along for the ride.
66 2024-10-24 23:17:59
Re: etc (63 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
Yes. Sometimes I forget it's up there and lose my own posts
67 2024-10-24 22:04:22
Re: etc (63 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
Bc my postis hidden in the stickies. Can Dirk or Sol unsticky it?
68 2024-10-22 09:41:46
Re: VQF (46 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
So I face this weird problem where Dirk mentioned my characters mis-quoted the verse count in Deuteronomy.
I checked a random online bible and my French version: Both have 69 verses. Eng KJV: 68 verses. Some online KJVs differ
68's:
This NIV has 68: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?s … ersion=NIV (Their KJV version also 68)
MIT: https://web.mit.edu/jywang/www/cef/Bibl … UT+28.html
69's:
https://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/D … %2028%3A69
https://www.sefaria.org/Deuteronomy.28. … p;aliyot=0
I feel there is no one choice I can make that half the readers don't trip up
Edit: It's the spot with all the curses promised to sinners, and we learn here that due to the android massacre if the Antiquties, the world has added few more curses to the end such as don't sleep with an android etc. This will be extremely important later on, so the particular chapter is perfect for my needs, though I could theoretically just invent a new "chapter 28.5"
69 2024-10-14 23:21:13
Re: AI for Writing (13 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)
MS Image-generator belched it up. Took a few rounds of prompts and misadventures
70 2024-10-14 20:11:40
Re: AI for Writing (13 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)
Sort of unrelated, but I popped a pretty good cover from AI. Won't be using it in the final product, but interesting what the machine saw from a few simple prompts
71 2024-10-13 20:14:06
Re: VQF (46 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
I decided to go back-fill the old chapters leading up to the ship. Please ignore
72 2024-10-13 18:56:51
Re: As Darkness Gathers (the Connor series) - Dirk B. (1,438 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
More moving parts might not be a good thing
73 2024-10-02 16:36:45
Re: etc (63 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigatio … 024-09-26/
"Laser sword" should be next
74 2024-09-20 02:42:45
Re: As Darkness Gathers (the Connor series) - Dirk B. (1,438 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
If he can't sit around, interesting thought. As closer to the Jew side of the spectrum, the lake of fire is instantaneous (read: little suffering). If I understand Catholicism, it's perpetual suffering (read: torture)
75 2024-09-20 02:21:36
Re: As Darkness Gathers (the Connor series) - Dirk B. (1,438 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
Also, Satan's spirit has very little power to manipulate the physical realm
In this state, does the nature of his environmental condition (eg cold / hot) bother him? Can he sit around for ten thousand years and wait for colonists to show up so he can make a new body?