Dragon Ball: After the End
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
So much uncertainly makes people much less inclined to vote.
[X][FACE] ...your family is a traditionally influential one, and your father in particular possesses an outright leadership position over roughly half your population.
[X][ROLE] ...actively address the Congress. Your blog posts over the course of the year so far have achieved widespread recognition, your continued attendance at school has done a lot to normalize you in the public view, and you have a decent amount of capital. Plus, you're a thirteen-year-old girl; even by virtue of not being able to take you seriously, people won't think, "threat," when they look at you.
[X][ROLE] ...actively address the Congress. Your blog posts over the course of the year so far have achieved widespread recognition, your continued attendance at school has done a lot to normalize you in the public view, and you have a decent amount of capital. Plus, you're a thirteen-year-old girl; even by virtue of not being able to take you seriously, people won't think, "threat," when they look at you.
Bakkasama
There is always a greater fool
- Location
- Buenos Aires, Argentina
- Pronouns
- He/his
[X][ROLE] ...actively address the Congress. Your blog posts over the course of the year so far have achieved widespread recognition, your continued attendance at school has done a lot to normalize you in the public view, and you have a decent amount of capital. Plus, you're a thirteen-year-old girl; even by virtue of not being able to take you seriously, people won't think, "threat," when they look at you.
[X][FACE] ...you are hereditary nobility, your grandmother is the prior sitting Lady, your father is the sitting Lord, and you will yourself become Lady some day.
It would explain why we have the right (as much of a right as it can be for a state not recognised by the rest of the world) to keep the war prisoners instead of Aramai.
[X][FACE] ...you are hereditary nobility, your grandmother is the prior sitting Lady, your father is the sitting Lord, and you will yourself become Lady some day.
It would explain why we have the right (as much of a right as it can be for a state not recognised by the rest of the world) to keep the war prisoners instead of Aramai.
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- Location
- New York
[X][ROLE] ...actively address the Congress. Your blog posts over the course of the year so far have achieved widespread recognition, your continued attendance at school has done a lot to normalize you in the public view, and you have a decent amount of capital. Plus, you're a thirteen-year-old girl; even by virtue of not being able to take you seriously, people won't think, "threat," when they look at you.
[X][FACE] ...you are hereditary nobility, your grandmother is the prior sitting Lady, your father is the sitting Lord, and you will yourself become Lady some day
In for a penny.
[X][FACE] ...you are hereditary nobility, your grandmother is the prior sitting Lady, your father is the sitting Lord, and you will yourself become Lady some day
In for a penny.
KnightDisciple
Brotherhood. Unity. Peace.
- Location
- Midwest, USA
[X][ROLE] ...actively address the Congress. Your blog posts over the course of the year so far have achieved widespread recognition, your continued attendance at school has done a lot to normalize you in the public view, and you have a decent amount of capital. Plus, you're a thirteen-year-old girl; even by virtue of not being able to take you seriously, people won't think, "threat," when they look at you.
[X][FACE] ...you are hereditary nobility, your grandmother is the prior sitting Lady, your father is the sitting Lord, and you will yourself become Lady some day
In for a pound.
[X][FACE] ...you are hereditary nobility, your grandmother is the prior sitting Lady, your father is the sitting Lord, and you will yourself become Lady some day
In for a pound.
Aranfan
Team Plasma Grunt
[X][ROLE] ...actively address the Congress. Your blog posts over the course of the year so far have achieved widespread recognition, your continued attendance at school has done a lot to normalize you in the public view, and you have a decent amount of capital. Plus, you're a thirteen-year-old girl; even by virtue of not being able to take you seriously, people won't think, "threat," when they look at you.
[X][FACE] ...you are hereditary nobility, your grandmother is the prior sitting Lady, your father is the sitting Lord, and you will yourself become Lady some day
I like honesty.
[X][FACE] ...you are hereditary nobility, your grandmother is the prior sitting Lady, your father is the sitting Lord, and you will yourself become Lady some day
I like honesty.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Without knowing what Berra's going to say, it's hard to figure out what Kakara should say. Do we know what Berra is going to say?
The problem is that (4), so inflexible that despite polymerizing numerous other substances and knowing rubber is a polymer, they have a natural flinch reaction at the idea of polymerizing one more... Just... It's deeply problematic, speaking from the point of view of someone who knows how science and engineering tend to work at the nuts and bolts level.
It's like, assuming for the sake of argument the Garenhulders have sandwiches, and that the first three sandwiches they invented were the chicken sandwich, the tuna sandwich, and the turkey sandwich... Did the first Garenhulder to hear about the idea of a ham sandwich suddenly freak out and hyperventilate because of the flinch response?
Because "I like sandwiches, I like ham, I've put a lot of things on sandwiches and they were tasty, I wonder if ham would go well on a sandwich" is exactly the kind of thing I'd expect the Garenhulders to be capable of thinking without an excessive flinch reflex. It's not a new idea in the sense of, say, space travel or nuclear weapons (which somehow the Garenhulders have) or radar (likewise). It is a straightforward application of well known technique (slap between two slices of bread) to a well known thing (yummy ham) with the objective of achieving a predictable result (yummy portable snack).
But then "I wonder if isoprene would go well on a polymerization, wait I already KNOW it does because it's a naturally occurring thing" is also exactly that kind of thing. From the point of view of a chemist who already works in a functioning plastics industry, it's the equivalent of making a ham sandwich after a long day of making sandwiches out of beef, chicken, tuna, turkey, pulled pork, and soy-based vegetable mix.
...
Anyway, that's why I originally suggested just dropping the problematic rubber monopoly and sticking with the totally un-problematic oil monopoly that serves the same purpose at least as well if not better and was already there anyway. Because the plot need of making Semtal powerful due to a resource monopoly is thus entirely satisfied, without having to make the Garenhulders brainless incompetents as opposed to merely change-averse.
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They quite possibly did freak out, though I imagine the thought process was more like "I like ham, and I like sandwiches. I could combine the two, but I don't know what the end result would be, and it's never been done. New things are bad, so I shouldn't do this."
This state continues until someone tries anyway, an accident in the kitchen occurs, or they have no other choice(only bread and ham). At which point, if it works, it catches on and spreads.
We're dealing with a distinctly alien mindset compared to our, modern western ones. Not brainless incompetents, but ones that have never received the mental tools, or had said mental tools suppressed, that are required for such thinking.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
See, I get that they have this issue. I get that the mindset is alien.
My point is that the upper bound on how much of this issue they have, on how alien they can be, is defined by what they are physically and mentally capable of doing as a people.
An intense, visceral "yuk" reaction at literally every thing that is not an exact copy of an existing thing would be too much. Not even given that they have literal space aliens to do some of the heavy lifting of innovating for them.*
Because innovation isn't an either/or thing; you don't go through life either doing absolutely nothing new or doing things that are super-radically new. You have to constantly make minor adjustments and minor changes and apply an existing piece of information in a new way. Otherwise, you can't bridge a river that isn't a carbon copy of a river a space alien bridged for you. You can't design a car that isn't a carbon copy of a car a space alien designed for you. You can't farm in an unfamiliar type of soil, or dig a tunnel through an unfamiliar kind of rock. You certainly can't design a hypersonic ramjet missile, or a global Internet, or a massive mass transit system designed to let everyone live in cities while commuting scores of miles out into the countrysides for work.
A neo-phobic person CAN build all those things, but only if they're at least capable of "yummy ham plus yummy sandwichization equals yummy ham sandwich" levels of mental flexibility.
________________________
*(Incidentally, which Exile is a brilliant nuclear scientist who figured out how to build atomic bombs? Seems to me, the Exiles almost certainly didn't have blueprints for such weapons with them from Earth, because what use would they have for such things? Given the incident with the Aramaian missiles, we might want to have some words with them. Or was most of the design work done by Garenhulders working on their own? Because believe me that was not done by someone who was this neo-phobic)
My point is that the upper bound on how much of this issue they have, on how alien they can be, is defined by what they are physically and mentally capable of doing as a people.
An intense, visceral "yuk" reaction at literally every thing that is not an exact copy of an existing thing would be too much. Not even given that they have literal space aliens to do some of the heavy lifting of innovating for them.*
Because innovation isn't an either/or thing; you don't go through life either doing absolutely nothing new or doing things that are super-radically new. You have to constantly make minor adjustments and minor changes and apply an existing piece of information in a new way. Otherwise, you can't bridge a river that isn't a carbon copy of a river a space alien bridged for you. You can't design a car that isn't a carbon copy of a car a space alien designed for you. You can't farm in an unfamiliar type of soil, or dig a tunnel through an unfamiliar kind of rock. You certainly can't design a hypersonic ramjet missile, or a global Internet, or a massive mass transit system designed to let everyone live in cities while commuting scores of miles out into the countrysides for work.
A neo-phobic person CAN build all those things, but only if they're at least capable of "yummy ham plus yummy sandwichization equals yummy ham sandwich" levels of mental flexibility.
________________________
*(Incidentally, which Exile is a brilliant nuclear scientist who figured out how to build atomic bombs? Seems to me, the Exiles almost certainly didn't have blueprints for such weapons with them from Earth, because what use would they have for such things? Given the incident with the Aramaian missiles, we might want to have some words with them. Or was most of the design work done by Garenhulders working on their own? Because believe me that was not done by someone who was this neo-phobic)
You're looking at this the wrong way. I'm picturing this as them having a sort of variable equation, or range of situations, and anything that fits within that mental state, they're fine with.
Like, using the sandwich example, they had a spread of ingredients, and have many, many variations of those ingredients, but if you asked them to put something outside of the ingredient list, they're stuck.
Building a bridge? It's still a river, they can cope. Digging through rock? Rock is rock, right? They adjust the paremeters in their brains and the formulas spit out the required numbers. If that doesn't work, they are indeed stuck until someone creates a new method, at which point they learn that, refine it and they now have expanded capabilities.
Or, perhaps put a better way, think of them as robots. They can do what they're programmed to do, and they're very well programmed, but the moment you place them in a situation that wasn't part of their programming, they're fucked.
Of course, there's another thing to consider: how do they classify things in their minds? To you, there's no difference between synthetic plastics and synthetic rubber, but to them it might be majorly different. Back to the Sandwich comparison, they can comprehend using different meats, but they don't view ham as a "meat" like the others, so it never occurs to them to put ham in a sandwich.
And finally, they do if neccisity demands them to, likely with amount determined by how NJ uch it's neede.
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VicSage
Not Crazy
- Location
- Czechoslovakia
[X][FACE] ...your family is a traditionally influential one, and your father in particular possesses an outright leadership position over roughly half your population.
[X][ROLE] ...answer any questions directed to you. You have no address planned, but you will be prepared to field any questions they ask. Better to keep the focus on your father, but there's no reason to decline all questions.
[X][ROLE] ...answer any questions directed to you. You have no address planned, but you will be prepared to field any questions they ask. Better to keep the focus on your father, but there's no reason to decline all questions.
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The Fourth Monado
S U B A R A S H I I
- Location
- Away
[X][FACE] ...your family is a traditionally influential one, and your father in particular possesses an outright leadership position over roughly half your population.
[X][ROLE] ...answer any questions directed to you. You have no address planned, but you will be prepared to field any questions they ask. Better to keep the focus on your father, but there's no reason to decline all questions.
[X][ROLE] ...answer any questions directed to you. You have no address planned, but you will be prepared to field any questions they ask. Better to keep the focus on your father, but there's no reason to decline all questions.
Bakkasama
There is always a greater fool
- Location
- Buenos Aires, Argentina
- Pronouns
- He/his
Perhaps I am misunderstanding but the impression I got is that they didn't develope the synthetic rubber industry is because, even if they did, there was real rubber already? As in, they figured out how to produce it at a lab level along with the rest of the oil derivatives but the idea of inventing a new market for a product that already had a variation (real rubber) filling its spot when the country that can produce synthetic rubber the most is the one that produces the most rubber was what triggered them.
As in, they figured how to make it but never developed it at industrial escale because they already had rubber so they didn't have the need. Other countries might have had it but since the ones who were most likely to produce synthetic one were the ones who had no shortage of real one and were the ones who probably developed most of the tech that has to do with oil...
As in, they figured how to make it but never developed it at industrial escale because they already had rubber so they didn't have the need. Other countries might have had it but since the ones who were most likely to produce synthetic one were the ones who had no shortage of real one and were the ones who probably developed most of the tech that has to do with oil...
Bakkasama
There is always a greater fool
- Location
- Buenos Aires, Argentina
- Pronouns
- He/his
I thought Garenhuld didn't have a world war though. Nor scarcity since the main producer is allied with the main trader and nobody messed with aramai because they were too afraid of an embargo, which means there wasn't too big an embargo except for Trasteia who had bigger things to worry about.
On that note, the only one who can openly oppose Aramai in this congress can because it has a super navy and that might be why Aramai developed ballistics.
Ridiculously Average Guy
I'm you, but stronger
- Location
-
[X][FACE] ...your family is a traditionally influential one, and your father in particular possesses an outright leadership position over roughly half your population.
[X][ROLE] ...actively address the Congress. Your blog posts over the course of the year so far have achieved widespread recognition, your continued attendance at school has done a lot to normalize you in the public view, and you have a decent amount of capital. Plus, you're a thirteen-year-old girl; even by virtue of not being able to take you seriously, people won't think, "threat," when they look at you.
Where was I going with this? Oh, right, a lot of the innovation in the past few hundred years was probably due to to Masque'd Saiyans and Saiyan descneded humans (if that can be a thing).
[X][ROLE] ...actively address the Congress. Your blog posts over the course of the year so far have achieved widespread recognition, your continued attendance at school has done a lot to normalize you in the public view, and you have a decent amount of capital. Plus, you're a thirteen-year-old girl; even by virtue of not being able to take you seriously, people won't think, "threat," when they look at you.
They do live super isolated, so there's definitely a ton of natural resources left since they very unwilling to push into the woods about their cities. Though I have to wonder about their population, normally the constantly rising pop would force them to exhaust resources and then have to get more... We know there's need a selection pressure of some fucked up kind which has shaped their society, maybe their avoid innovation because if they get too large a pop/it leaves their home-world they get reaped like wheat.
Where was I going with this? Oh, right, a lot of the innovation in the past few hundred years was probably due to to Masque'd Saiyans and Saiyan descneded humans (if that can be a thing).
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
That seems to be the reaction of many voters. Maybe you all should have voted for Jaffur.
The Fourth Monado
S U B A R A S H I I
- Location
- Away
- Location
- northern europe
and I was too late for that and many other votes.I did!
And we nearly won too...
But now that I have read a bit more, I notice I actually do have opinion I want to express!
[X][ROLE] ...actively address the Congress. Your blog posts over the course of the year so far have achieved widespread recognition, your continued attendance at school has done a lot to normalize you in the public view, and you have a decent amount of capital. Plus, you're a thirteen-year-old girl; even by virtue of not being able to take you seriously, people won't think, "threat," when they look at you.
Babble on! babble and tell them everything! Monologue! not in villanious way, but the "excited cute thing who can't shut up"-way
[X][FACE] Write In: ...you and your father fall somewhere between hereditary nobility and papacy. Chosen via Seer, you are the borderline worshiped leaders of your people.
of the options, this seems the best, We Are The Chosen ones!
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
See, that I can grasp... but at that point, there are a lot of Garenhulder chemists who if you asked them would say "huh yeah, we could totally make you artificial rubber if you gave us a few years" and there's just a lack of interest in bothering for economic reasons that have nothing to do with Garenhulder uncreativity.
Garenhulder uncreativity is a good explanation for Garenhulders being utterly ignorant of synthetic rubber-like substances if and only if they also don't have other plastics. Otherwise, it trips over the point I've already discussed, which is that synthetic rubber really is a straightforward generalization of other technology. There are reasons not to bother with it; natural rubber does many though not all of the same things well enough to reduce the incentives.
Economics is a better explanation.
I guess the reason it matters to me is because I like being able to imagine Garenhulders as sharing a planetary culture that functions naturally, rather than only functioning because of author fiat powers. The thing is, this means they can't be infinitely neophobic, any more than in real life Earthlings are infinitely neophilic.
In the intervening time, increased mastery of plastics has given us artificial substances that do outperform natural rubber in specific ways and roles... But again, that IS the sort of opportunity I can easily see the uncreative Garenhulders missing because of their tendency to say "meh, good enough."
[twitch]
Sorry, I have a poor reaction to the use of 'ballistics' as a shortening of ballistic missiles. It's like abbreviating "green cars" as "greens," because 'ballistic' is an adjective that can mean a lot of other things, and the noun 'missile' is pretty important in context. A bullet or a thrown rock is just as much a 'ballistic' thing as an ICBM warhead.
To engage with the substance of this more, yes, that seems likely. Although in that case, openly using ballistic missiles on Tastreya may have been a very bad idea, because even if the missile didn't work, it gives the Semarans (the island people) an incentive to develop ABM systems capable of shooting down a ballistic missile. If the Semaran military is actually capable of stopping the Aramaians from conquering them, they presumably have nuclear weapons of their own, and if you're determined enough to put nuclear warheads in the countermissiles, you have a pretty good chance of making an ABM system work.
In a long term grand-strategic sense, we may have done the Aramaians a favor by stopping the missile attack, because it makes other countries less likely to realize just how badly they need ABM systems to defend themselves against a nation with a proven willingness to make first use of nuclear weapons.
On the other hand, we've also entirely upset ALL Garenhulder strategic calculations by publicly outing ourselves as superheroes capable of preventing a nuclear attack. So yeah.
It sounds more like the Garenhulders just live in big city-states hundreds of kilometers apart, and all their resource extraction and agriculture is handled by, like, commuters who leave the cities via bullet trains or airplanes, go to remote sites to operate farms and mines, then commute home. So no one actually lives in the countryside, but a nontrivial fraction of the population works there.
However, since there's no rural population 'filling up' the countryside, there are much larger swathes of uninhabited wilderness than is true in our own world. You see farms and mines and so on ONLY in places where it's economically advantageous, you don't see people randomly living in isolated mountain valleys because they like living in isolated mountain valleys.
[Also, since the technology to make this kind of super long range commuting possible cannot have existed for that long, it's pretty clear that the Garenhulders retreated into cities at some time since the Exiles' arrival. Back in their not-long-ago medieval times, they must necessarily have lived in much smaller farming villages spread out over larger areas of land.]
It sounds like you're suggesting that Garenhuld is the leftover remnant of a population that has been through repeated cycles of interstellar expansion and destruction. Am I getting that right?