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s lazed = a laser

You poor thing. Here's a cookie

You're correct so far...

note: Star Trek and Star Wars both break the laws of physics. Objects in space sometime bank as if travelling through a medium. Some objects drift to a stop despite lacking a brakign mechanism. I have a catch I've complained on here before where an object "blows" off Anakin's starboard wing.

So if your story makes some stretches, it's well within reason

Sure. Consider this conversation between Alice and Bob, the latter of whom has just emerged crawling from a fiery car crash only to collopse a few steps away.

Alice: Bob! Oh no! I think his heart just stopped. I'd better inject him with an unsafe amount of steroids
Bob: (wakes up): Alice! I should be dead!
Alice: I gave you a dangerous injection. You now have twenty minutes to live!
Bob: Twenty minutes!
Alice: Go to the hospital. Get help.
Bob: I gotta get back in that burning car and rescue other passengers
Alice: Are you crazy?!? I said you have twenty minutes to live!!
Bob: I will never leave my companions to die. Help me.
Alice: Yes, Bob. I will accompany you on this quest. Bob? Bob? What are you doing? Why are you sitting back down?
Bob: Alice... I wonder about my car's spedometer. Do you think it gave me an accurate representation of my speed?
Alice: Twenty minutes, Bob. You're going to die in twenty minutes.
Bob: I wonder how I can find out. What if we never learn the truth?
Alice: Look... while you get all existential, I'm going to go bake muffins.

I've added a little stress to this, but that's basically what happens. All the characters except one are acting with a high level of urgency. the one calm character (the M/C) somehow manages to cool them down to his level and even engages them on philosophical debate. What' missing in my example story is character C who will make a turnkey statement that allows Bob to change tracks .

Bob: I gotta get back in that burning car and rescue other passengers
Alice: Are you crazy?!? I said you have twenty minutes to live!!
Bob: I will never leave my companions to die. Help me.
Alice: Yes, Bob. I will accompany you on this quest.
Chris: Bob! I just ran a scan of the flight recorder. Apparently you broke the speed of sound!
Bob: What? *falls to his knees* That-- that's impossible
Alice: Bob? Bob? What are you doing? Why are you sitting back down?
Bob: Alice... I wonder about my car's spedometer. Do you think it gave me an accurate representation of my speed?

It's still a little zany with C but I hope you can see how C adjusts A's energy level.

Yes... what njc said.

Your ship has 100 units of momentum. Your internal power can create 50 units per second of change in momentum. You need 110 units per second to avoid collision. It become impossible to avoid collision. Therefore, the solution is not to avoid collision but to embrace it.

*if we want to get technical, this is a rate of rate of change. Eg 50 units per second per second.

haha no I mean impressed with their character development

Consider the defensive technique used by our neighbours to the south of the border. The Whitehouse is not easily hidden. Would-be invaders might seek to destroy it in an effort to snip off the governing head of the country. Unfortunately for them, during a national emergency, they will never catch both the captain and the first officer in it at the same time. If anything, attacking the Whitehouse during an invasion is playing into the hands of hte defenders.

Boarding would be very expensive in the future.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8gfGhVL3qs

Edit: To get the key combinations above, I had to type épée and watch my fingers

Four looks right to me

And yes, we're somehow on the same of similar pages for the capitalization

Yes... I was thinking "The Great One" could be a title... though it's not exactly. A title is something someone else can gain, right? No one else (in our lifetimes) can ever gain the title of the Great One. I heard someone once asked to be 99 and they said no... 98 was as high as he was allowed to go.

You could counter that equally, no one in our lifetimes can gain the title "Caesar" or "the Hun" which kinda blows my logic out of the water. Let's pretend that retired titles are no longer subject to the exclusion rule of being gainable, shall we?

Now here's an interesting page:
http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/educat … lize-words
(section marked "meaning is key")

This page suggests perhaps we don't only capitalize White House because that its name, but we might also be giving it proper noun meaning.

Consider:
a. Wow! Look! It's the Sonic Screwdriver! (wrong)
b. Wow! Look! It's the sonic screwdriver! (correct)
(Personally, I consider (a) to be the right choice if we're talking about Dr Who's screwdriver. To me, (b) is correct if the rest of the sentence is "...used by Baker on the set of the 3rd season." which establishes non-uniqueness)

And I ask you to think back to the Highlander. Ignoring the movie title which is a title and is uppercase, the person who's from there would take lowercase. "The highlander" would appear to be the correct case, no different from "the lowlander" or "the uptowner". And then the H/highlander completes his journey before the credits roll, he raises his sword in victory and yells:

I am the one!

Is "the one" a formal title (Hey guys, I'd like to introduce you to Bob the One)? I suspect no.
Is it a job title? Kind of, but lets rule that out for the sake of the children.
By all logic, "one" should be lowercase in the above sentence. Yet, I'm tempted to capitalize it (assigning it proper noun status).

We have a fair over here called "The Ex". The true name is "Canadian National Exhibition" but they call themselves "The Ex" (a name - so capitalized). Now here's the kicker. If I wrote on my fb wall "I'm going to the Exhibition" everyone reading it would automatically know I'm not going to some random museum exhibit.

Is Exhibition capitalizable because it's part of a proper name (CNE)? Lets try it with other words:
"World Poker Tour" -> "Tour" (See you next week, I'm going on the Tour)
"World Wrestling Federation" -> "Federation" (Guys, I got tickets to the Federation!)

Similarly, if I write "I'm moving West" people assume I mean Alberta rather than the other side of my city.

Aha, but what about the ozone layer? By the ephemeral "rule of one" it should be the Ozone Layer, right? I bring this up because while researching this reply, I discovered that there's no common accepted capitalization for the first moon landing. If I read "Bob thought about the Moon Landing" I suspect they mean the first one, but I'm not too sure. I would argue that moon landing is not unique enough to retain its capitalization any more. Similarly "the lunar surface" seems to trump "the Lunar surface" but I can find examples of both in scientific journals.

What about Ragnarok? It's the end of the world... or is it unique enough to be the End of the World. After all, the world can only end so many times, right? I'd argue that no, it's very hard to establish Ragnarok's uniqueness short of surviving it, which would invalidate it.

The briefcase in Pulp Fiction is often capitalized on the web, but I would suggest it shouldn't be. It's not a proper noun, even in the movie iirc. It would appear to follow my "exhibition" declaration in that it's  term that when used, all the user's peers understand which object is referred to. It appears to break the concept I've built here.

How that for a non-answer?

Here's an interesting page:
http://grammar.yourdictionary.com/capit … ation.html
(they don't quote their sources. Hmm!)

Anyway, this page suggests

(The stress is mine)

Also, it suggests a job title takes capitals if it follows the word. This would seem to suggest:
"I am Adam, Prince of Eternia"  <-- suffix = caps
vs
"The prince of Eternia spoke" <-- prefix = optional caps