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Alethiar said:
I actually support the discussion started on the role of conflict in stories that lack it, but not to see it mocked as "they just want violence". People posed serious questions here about Mp3's pacing, which were answered. Some then rewrote their argument as asking for more violence, when they were actually asking why nobody from the protagonist to support characters were actually having hardships.
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*wakes up and starts reading thread*

That's the entire problem. The people claiming "there's no conflict" also ignore any literary conflict that exist in the story.

One of the 'no conflict' complaints for this specific story (and Taylor Varga) is that "nothing bad has happened to Taylor." Her best friend is in a coma, but I guess that isn't bad enough because it doesn't personally affect her? And of course she's been untouched by Costa-Brown's throwing her weight around, yet. There are government agencies actively trying to prevent said throwing of weight leading to knowledge of Taylor. Her papers have not been widely disseminated yet. And her patents haven't become publicly viewable yet. Or in other words, none of the backroom power plays have had a chance to progress far enough to cause trouble for Taylor. And as more players start reacting to what's going on, there are likely to be problems cropping up.

I'm not expecting them to be "crisis of the week" or even "Worm Canon" levels of problems. @mp3.1415player doesn't seem to like writing that sort of story. Some of the conflict is likely to be ethical rather then confrontational. But that's no less valid a source of literary conflict then 'punch other character in the nose".

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Actually, right now I'd consider Taylor to be a side character in the story. We get to see bits showing what she's working on currently. However the main story appears to be how her actions affect others, and not what exactly she is doing.
 
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Aylor_Aivo said:
So you're right that there are no methods in modern physics you travel faster than light and as such if it is possible then it's outside the scope of special relativity. The faster than light==back in time thing, however is within the scope of special relativity. It's weird and counter intuitive (which makes sense as there's no reason to expect that intuition developed at low speed should translate well to high speed) but in order for the universe to have consistent outcomes it needs to have inconsistent ordering.

This means that for any two events that are further apart in distance than in time it's possible for two observers to disagree which came first. This effect is well understood, holds up in experiments and most of the time doesn't matter at all.

Of course, when you go beyond physics you might as well just say "a wizard did it" so you can invent rules to say you can't go back in time in a way that lets you interact with your own past. What you can't do (without ignoring physics completely, anyway) is get rid of all those observers (mostly radiation) that see you arrive before you leave.
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Ok. Let's just consider how Special and General Relativity treats something approaching the speed of light and has mass. The force needed to accelerate the object approaches infinity as the objects relativistic mass also does. What do you think happens to the math if you then set a speed for the object above the speed of light. Does the mass become two times infinity?

No. I argue that relativistic effects can't exist in that regime and the math becomes nonsense, even if it appears to give a valid answer. To calculate things traveling faster than light (if at all possible) you would have to have some new math and a new regime where some of the effects specific to SR and GR are negated.

According to Newton you could accelerate indefinitely. But we learned this was not true as Einstein showed us. Einstein tells us that if you try to travel faster than light things happen that really shouldn't. Ok. How likely is it that if we find a way to travel faster than light we find that we have to modify Einsteins equations to make them work?

Newton works in the regime of regular people on the surface of a planet. Einstein works in the regime of stars and planets (and anything else massive) on a cosmic scale (as far as we know). The next mega brain guy/girl will stretch themselves to a new regime where new math will rule and we will consign Einsteins equations to the same "close but not quite" bin we hold Newtons in.

It will probably take some experiment finding another "huh, that's not quite right" moment before this happens though. Possibly as a result of a particle detector finding traces of something new, or a telescope finding something behaving in a way it really shouldn't. They, after all, knew that Newton hadn't gotten it quite right for at least a century before Einstein came along.
 
Of course, it's also always possible that Einstein was wrong about what happens as you approach the speed of light. We just haven't been able to do any practical experiments to determine one way or the other. His math checks out, I suppose. But if he got some of his base assumptions wrong then he might have been doing the wrong equations.
 
FaerieKnight79 said:
Of course, it's also always possible that Einstein was wrong about what happens as you approach the speed of light. We just haven't been able to do any practical experiments to determine one way or the other. His math checks out, I suppose. But if he got some of his base assumptions wrong then he might have been doing the wrong equations.
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Same as with Newton, so far Einstein has been right enough for us to effectively use his equations. We don't actually care all that much if he got it completely right in all things so long as we can use what he gave us to make accurate predictions.

We still use Newton after all since on a planetary surface it works well enough.
 
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cryptoam said:
RE Relativity assumptions:
Assumptions Under Special Relativity (uaf.edu)
Subspace could violate at least one of the two assumptions.
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My mental model for any kind of FTL media is that the first assumption fails - that there's some privileged reference frame of the universe/subspace which has special properties. If subspace lets you travel faster than the speed of light from that reference frame but not from any other reference frame, then causality isn't broken. From an observer at rest in that frame of reference, everything moves forward in time, so there is no causality breaking.


Note that this does mean that subspace related technology will work strangely while inside a near light speed spaceship.

Also, you can't just say that special relativity fails for FTL objects. That FTL in different reference frames leads to time travel only relies on relationships between spacetime which special/general relativity does describe extremely accurately. You can get around this by restricting FTL to one reference frame or throwing out relativity altogether, but you can't just say it breaks down because it involves FTL. Many theories like QCD have special relativity considering temporary tachyons without any issues and which lead to valid experimental results.
 
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But also, if the time dilation assumption is wrong, which to my knowledge we have no real way of verifying one way or the other right now, then all the "physics break as you approach the speed of light" parts of reletivity would also, in theory, be wrong because there's no time reference differences that could cause such breaking.

If, for example, a trip to a five light year distant location takes five years for the ship and the people on the ship experience five years, then traveling faster then light wouldn't even potentially involve time travel.
 
kelgar04 said:
I also have to wonder when the aliens will cover power cells and cold fusion
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The story already covered that - a pack of C cells from the store is nowhere near enough electrical energy to accelerate her prototype at 2G for 2 days.

Taylor believes it's getting energy from elsewhere, which I am dubbing 'cosmic energy' in tribute to E. E. 'Doc' Smith, but which Taylor hasn't named.

She could also be wrong, and it's doing 100% matter to energy conversion, too. Or something else, but regardless, power is solved in practice and close to being solved in theory.
 
Oh and physicists will finally be able to measure the one way speed of light.
 
FaerieKnight79 said:
if the time dilation assumption is wrong
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Time dilation has been demonstrated at least in part. Time dilation exists. GPS WOULD NOT FUNCTION without time dilation.
Satellites in orbit travel fast(not anywhere near the speed of light but fast enough that there is a tiny amount of dilation), and are farther away from the large gravitational well that it the earth(again the effect isn't large, but it is measurable).
*edited for spelling
 
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Yes but it could be wonkier as one approaches lightspeed. See how the Taylor series for sine diverges over time as an example of the possible deviation
 
Oh definitely. What happens at really high speeds is not confirmed. I was just pointing out that time dilation is real. I've encountered a lot of people who don't realize it is. They see these pop science videos that describe relativity and it seems like sci-fi to them. Relativity is practically a fact, like evolution, we might(almost certainly) not have it perfect, but its real.
 
Stuff that happens at high speeds is confirmed.
LHC wouldn't work without it being true.
 
FaerieKnight79 said:
One of the 'no conflict' complaints for this specific story (and Taylor Varga) is that "nothing bad has happened to Taylor." Her best friend is in a coma, but I guess that isn't bad enough because it doesn't personally affect her?
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Okay, first, yes, Emma's coma is absolutely 'something bad happening'. The problem there is that it has affected one scene out of 50k words. Outside of that scene, what influence has Emma's condition had on the story? How would the story be different if Emma had simply moved to a different city?

Second, 'the protagonist was sad once!' does not literary conflict make. Here are the requirements for literary conflict:
  • Goal: The protagonist has something they want.
  • Weight: The protagonist's goal is important to them.
  • Opposition: Someone or something stands in the way of achieving that goal.
  • Struggle: The protagonist is required to put forth significant, on-screen effort in order to overcome this opposition.
  • Consequence: There must be significant penalties for failure.
  • Threat: The audience must be made to feel that there is a real possibility of failure.
So, yes, you could make a dramatic plot from Emma's condition. You could make a Man vs. Nature story of Taylor trying to save Emma. Or a Man vs. Self about Taylor struggling to cope with her friend's absence. There are lots of ways it could be played for conflict. But what we got was a scene of Taylor being sad at Emma's bedside, and then she went back to her life.


E M Berner said:
Ok. Let's just consider how Special and General Relativity treats something approaching the speed of light and has mass. The force needed to accelerate the object approaches infinity as the objects relativistic mass also does. What do you think happens to the math if you then set a speed for the object above the speed of light. Does the mass become two times infinity?
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*sigh* You misunderstand the claim. When people say 'FTL implies time-travel', they are not saying 'Time slows down as you approach the speed of light; therefore if you go faster the light time must flow backwards!'. Because you're right, it's nonsense to try to apply the equations to domains they explicitly do not cover.

What 'FTL implies time-travel' means is more like 'If Alice at point A sends a message to Bob at point B by laser, then Carol, who is at point C and travelling at 0.9C, will observe the message arrive before it is sent. If Carol has an FTL radio which can send a message at 2C, then [complicated math stuff] therefore Alice will receive the reply from Carol before she sent the message Carol is replying to.' It has nothing to do with how an object going faster than light experiences the passage of time. It's a function of how velocity shifts reference frames, which is an experimentally verified part of relativity.


Schnake said:
Oh definitely. What happens at really high speeds is not confirmed.
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Yes it is.
 
There have been some suggestions, and I believe a small amount of evidence that might be interpretable to be favorable to those suggestions, that the speed of light has not been constant throughout the life of the universe. And that it might not necessarily be a constant everywhere in the universe. We do know that to every level we've been able to test to date Einstein was annoyingly correct. Time dilation is as stated above very real, and has to be accounted for in satellite communications for example. In fact modern ultra-high-end electronic clocks are sufficiently accurate that you can measure the time dilation caused by going up a mountain and ending up rotating about the center of the planet that little bit quicker :)

This is fairly extraordinary, as the resolution requires is ridiculous, but it's been done.

All the indications are that the speed of light is indeed a hard cap on velocity in normal space. On the other hand, if you're not in normal space, assuming such a thing can be arranged, who knows what will happen? 🤷‍♂️
 
macdjord said:
  • Goal: The protagonist has something they want.
  • Weight: The protagonist's goal is important to them.
  • Opposition: Someone or something stands in the way of achieving that goal.
  • Struggle: The protagonist is required to put forth significant, on-screen effort in order to overcome this opposition.
  • Consequence: There must be significant penalties for failure.
  • Threat: The audience must be made to feel that there is a real possibility of failure.
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DARPA wants to develop Taylor's tech for National Defense.
DARPA feels this is of vital importance.
RCB of the PRT (and secretly, Cauldron) wants control of the Prime Asset for her own purposes.
DARPA has repeatedly fended off challenges from the PRT on-screen and off.
Loosing access to Taylor to the far less secure PRT could allow other, hostile nations to gain an upper hand over the United States.
The audience is aware of the sorts of parahuman resources available to RCB and Cauldron, and that Cauldron is not above kidnapping Taylor if they ever identify her.

Ergo, by your own rules, DARPA is the protagonist of this story, and there is indeed ample literary conflict.

I fail to see why you are complaining about getting exactly what you are asking for.
 
FaerieKnight79 said:
Of course, it's also always possible that Einstein was wrong about what happens as you approach the speed of light. We just haven't been able to do any practical experiments to determine one way or the other. His math checks out, I suppose. But if he got some of his base assumptions wrong then he might have been doing the wrong equations.
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The issue with that it's philosophically true but realistically false: we've done plenty of experiments, at both small and large scales (the LHC and astronomy) and nothing we've seen goes against SR, even a little. It's basically the firmest piece of theory in modern physics. It only applies in certain special cases (hence the name) but it has been 100% accurate in all cases that we've seen (and we've seen a lot).
E M Berner said:
No. I argue that relativistic effects can't exist in that regime and the math becomes nonsense, even if it appears to give a valid answer. To calculate things traveling faster than light (if at all possible) you would have to have some new math and a new regime where some of the effects specific to SR and GR are negated.
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This is also true, and kind of what I meant when I said to have FTL you might as well say "a wizard did it". Obviously in sci-fi you call your wizard a scientist or an engineer and any good story will give the wizard limitations and rules but it's still fiction rather than science.

On the other hand the FTL==Time travel thing doesn't have anything to do with actually going FTL and is well within the regime of relativity. It's also hard to explain, there's probably a youtube video but I've never seen one. It's to do with the fact that, in order to keep what happens consistent no matter who's observing it, relativity gives up on "time" as a singular concept that everyone can agree on. If I see two things happen and for me they happen at the same time, but at different places, then someone moving WRT me will see them happening at different times (and someone else going in the other direction will see them happening in the opposite order).
 
I would also like to push back a little against the idea that conflict is required in good storytelling at all. I see a lot of people pointing out aspects of these stories where one might find more traditional types of conflict. However, I while think that conflict is a useful tool, I also think that it is not a required one, and that it is overly simplistic to say that every story needs it or that story is bad without it.

Ursula K. Le Guin, a much better storyteller than myself wrote in their book, Steering the Craft: A Twenty-first Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story,
Modernist manuals of writing often conflate story with conflict. This reductionism reflects a culture that inflates aggression and competition while cultivating ignorance of other behavioral options. No narrative of any complexity can be built on or reduced to a single element. Conflict is one kind of behavior. There are others, equally important in any human life: relating, finding, losing, bearing, discovering, parting, changing.

Change is the universal aspect of all these sources of story. Story is something moving, something happening, something or somebody changing.
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I think that this story and Taylor Varga both have change as the central focus of the storytelling. This kind of story is much less common in modern Western writing, so I understand the confusion , but as many others have said before me, different doesn't mean that it is bad.
 
mp3.1415player said:
Anyone who wants a story written to their exact requirements is free to write it themselves
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That's what I did. Doesn't mean I don't enjoy reading yours as well... :)
Taylor is DOOMed is so far over the top, it's comedy, not bloody, nihilistic violence.

chrono2x said:
I think that this story and Taylor Varga both have change as the central focus of the storytelling. This kind of story is much less common in modern Western writing, so I understand the confusion , but as many others have said before me, different doesn't mean that it is bad.
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Agreed. In the world of Statistical Process Control, there is the phrase : "Equally good, but different."
(goes back to writing more wordz of my own; since lizard related wordz not coming from the master, I must make my own...)
 
chrono2x said:
I would also like to push back a little against the idea that conflict is required in good storytelling at all. I see a lot of people pointing out aspects of these stories where one might find more traditional types of conflict. However, I while think that conflict is a useful tool, I also think that it is not a required one, and that it is overly simplistic to say that every story needs it or that story is bad without it.
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There's this fantastically good novel I know about. The main protagonist is a teenager who never has anything bad happen to them. They also never suffer. Both of these are true because he lives in a utopia. The only 'conflict' in the novel is this kid being told the real history that is hidden from 99.9% of every generation. That novel? It's called The Giver.
 
FaerieKnight79 said:
There's this fantastically good novel I know about. The main protagonist is a teenager who never has anything bad happen to them. They also never suffer. Both of these are true because he lives in a utopia. The only 'conflict' in the novel is this kid being told the real history that is hidden from 99.9% of every generation. That novel? It's called The Giver.
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...Are you fucking kidding me? That's no utopia. I read it when I was in my tweens and I could see enough of the book to know a world where people are constantly psychologically dampened to the point that somehow color vision is a thing they don't have is not a utopia. It is, at best, an Omelas. Powered on something forsaken.
 
Jacen1 said:
DARPA wants to develop Taylor's tech for National Defense.
DARPA feels this is of vital importance.
RCB of the PRT (and secretly, Cauldron) wants control of the Prime Asset for her own purposes.
DARPA has repeatedly fended off challenges from the PRT on-screen and off.
Loosing access to Taylor to the far less secure PRT could allow other, hostile nations to gain an upper hand over the United States.
The audience is aware of the sorts of parahuman resources available to RCB and Cauldron, and that Cauldron is not above kidnapping Taylor if they ever identify her.
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Excellent analysis, and thank you for actually engaging with my argument rather than shouting about violence and the non-necessity thereof.

What DARPA vs. Cauldron lacks as a narrative conflict is struggle and threat. At no point are we shown them having any difficulty in achieving their goal of protecting and retaining control over Taylor. We see !Black Widow telling Kaiser to back off or die, and he does. We see them meeting with RCB, and she loses every point in the debate. There are no close calls, nobody is scrambling to keep on top of things, at no point is the reader ever encouraged to feel like there is any imminent or long-term danger that they will fail.
 
Eventually the news of the tech will leak out enough(whether via espionage or the tech being released) to get CUI or the other arms of Cauldron interested. It will be interesting to see what happens then.
 
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