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The Practice War [Complete]

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Snowfire said:
I have more to say in reply, but yesterday became unexpectedly busy.

The Elder First included themselves in the changes that created Humanity 2.0, however those changes were somewhat less effective wholesale due to the remnants of pre-Sorrows humanity having all grown up and developed in a different cultural state.

As for progression, it goes kinda like this:

Humanity 1.0: us
Humanity 1.2: Pre-Sorrows humanity
Humanity 1.5: Post-Sorrows humanity
Humanity 1.7-9: Adult humanity immediately after Elder First changes.
Humanity 2.0: Amanda's contemporaries.
Humanity 2.3: Vega's contemporaries
Humanity 2.5: Humanity as of the day Amanda was sworn in as President.
Humanity 2.8: Humanity post SBOS, as Amanda stood down.
Humanity 2.9: Current PW timeline humanity.

Edit: and I can already tell that you're going to try and get to 3.0 because perfectionism :V
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I hope not.

Such a project would open new vistas of human achievement.

And we don't want to be Humanity Vista.

Killer_Whale said:
We should throw the void crystal at the regular fleet. Make them suffer with it.
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No see, it exists to piss us off. The moment we give it to the Shiplords, it unfolds into some massive glorious array of non-Euclidean spacetime distortions and in a deep and eldritch voice calls out "What is thy bidding, my masters?" to them.

:(
 
Baughn said:
Skipping a few steps. First we get Humanity 3.11 For Workgroups, and then before XP there's going to be Humanity ME.

The egocentricity of that generation might crash the overall system.
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Isn't Practice all about skipping some of the finnicky, boring steps between to get to what you want? :p
 
Going to do some point by point here, as I feel it's reasonable to do so.

Shwaggy said:
First, just the whole of it. Like I mentioned, I've got reasons not to be fond of the Sci-fi empire-building genre. But even during President Mandy's extended term, it never felt like just an empire builder. Part of that was the way that many of the advances and policy decisions were shown as more personal interactions, but I think it's also the nature of Practice. The biggest, most important aspect of humanity's power in this 'verse is tied directly to both self-understanding and interpersonal connection. Looking back, I think that helped make sure that "research this, research that, MORE DAKKA" not only didn't but couldn't take the story away from the "smaller", character driven moments. I don't know if that was intentional from the get-go, but it's really cool.
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This was something that was really important for me going into PW, as I wanted to write a story that was far more character focused then a lot of CK2 quests. This informed how character creation worked pretty heavily, in that I asked for help building a person instead of a set of stats.

You might notice that I never went for anything like the more normal CK2 'pick you stats' character creation, instead allowing narrative choices to inform trait creation outright. Although the first few turns were much more mechanical, my questbase helped immensely in helping me to isolate that problem and work to fix it.

Shwaggy said:
Iris is best girl.
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*muffled screaming sounds*

Well, at least it isn't shipping :V

Shwaggy said:
Relating to that, I've also really enjoyed the focus on those beings humanity creates being our children, in truth and not just in name. Having some be born with intent and some by happy accident, and looking at them all not with fear of what they might become or that they'll outgrow us, but with the fear of any parent that we might not be providing them with everything they need, and seeing the chance that they'd outgrow us with "Well, yes, if we do out jobs right children are supposed to reach higher than their parents."
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This actually relates to the post I made about human development, and the way in which the culture of humanity has shifted so enormously. You've nailed the primary intent, though. Unisonbound, AI, whatever, they all have a place in humanity if they wish for one. That deep inclusiveness and communalism is an anchor point for a lot of PW humanity's better nature, and the specific overcoming of many of their lesser.

Shwaggy said:
In short (HA! I call anything about this short?) PW's humanity reminds me of the ideal that Star Trek was reaching for, in all the great ways. I do note, though, one piece of cynicism lurking in the background that despite myself I just can't disagree with - we couldn't get there naturally. Humanity had to be forcibly changed, at its core, to be able to come together like this. That's...well, yeah, without some deep universal way of "un-Othering", I have a hard time seeing us get there.
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And this is, well...yeah. You probably know from my posting in ASWAH that I've some experience in psych and sociology, though more the former than the latter. I wanted to create a humanity that was simply...good to each other. The sad fact is that, without massive cultural development, it would be very hard to make that make sense in such a small time scale.

I still hope and believe that humanity as we are can reach a place like this, but I'm aware of how hard it would be to do so.

Shwaggy said:
All kinds of thoughts about the Shiplords, their (as far as we know) self-appointed task, and whatever they warned about in the vasty dark, but nothing coherent enough to really set down yet.
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If you do get the chance to arrange them into something more coherent, I'd be fascinated to see what you come up with. I always love to see people poking at my world and trying to work out some of its mysteries.


In other, current thread discussion: reason #51274 that having so many compsci people in a questbase is pain :V
 
Snowfire said:
Going to do some point by point here, as I feel it's reasonable to do so.



This was something that was really important for me going into PW, as I wanted to write a story that was far more character focused then a lot of CK2 quests. This informed how character creation worked pretty heavily, in that I asked for help building a person instead of a set of stats.

You might notice that I never went for anything like the more normal CK2 'pick you stats' character creation, instead allowing narrative choices to inform trait creation outright. Although the first few turns were much more mechanical, my questbase helped immensely in helping me to isolate that problem and work to fix it.



*muffled screaming sounds*

Well, at least it isn't shipping :V



This actually relates to the post I made about human development, and the way in which the culture of humanity has shifted so enormously. You've nailed the primary intent, though. Unisonbound, AI, whatever, they all have a place in humanity if they wish for one. That deep inclusiveness and communalism is an anchor point for a lot of PW humanity's better nature, and the specific overcoming of many of their lesser.



And this is, well...yeah. You probably know from my posting in ASWAH that I've some experience in psych and sociology, though more the former than the latter. I wanted to create a humanity that was simply...good to each other. The sad fact is that, without massive cultural development, it would be very hard to make that make sense in such a small time scale.

I still hope and believe that humanity as we are can reach a place like this, but I'm aware of how hard it would be to do so.



If you do get the chance to arrange them into something more coherent, I'd be fascinated to see what you come up with. I always love to see people poking at my world and trying to work out some of its mysteries.


In other, current thread discussion: reason #51274 that having so many compsci people in a questbase is pain :V
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That it was intentional does make it even better. I really admire your ability to put this together the way you did. As well as your ability to write, just in general.

Iris is best girl. I know this is the exact same statement again, but it's both necessary and sufficient.

I share both your vision and your hope in a more connected, kinder-to-itself humanity. Maybe stories like this will help pave the path in some small way.

I'll try to gather my thoughts on those topics, but that's unlikely to be today as it's now past 9 and I never slept. Yay for wacky hijinx 'make it through so you can get your sleep back on schedule' day! Then again, sometimes the strangest work gets done on these days...

As for reason #51274, I googled that number. Know what came up? The ID number of a gene with, to quote, "Ubiquitous expression in colon". Tut, tut Snowfire, such a shitpost. :p
 
Coda said:
<Iris> Don't you have snow cone machines in your time?
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There's more than one reason why I'd love a shell like hers.

For example, so I can get revenge for all the stunning snowball-fight defeats! I wouldn't protest if they weren't mostly in the middle of summer, but let's face it. Iris cheats.
 
Michiru said:
There's more than one reason why I'd love a shell like hers.

For example, so I can get revenge for all the stunning snowball-fight defeats! I wouldn't protest if they weren't mostly in the middle of summer, but let's face it. Iris cheats.
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Consciousness transfer won't work and you know it - or at least you're capable of finding out from the network and I know you have the intellectual capacity to understand it if you care enough.

Trying to get me to alter how your reality works won't change that.
 
Snowfire said:
Consciousness transfer won't work and you know it - or at least you're capable of finding out from the network and I know you have the intellectual capacity to understand it if you care enough.

Trying to get me to alter how your reality works won't change that.
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That is that, and this is this. Nei assures me you can't change anything about reality anyway.

I'm just saying I'd like it. I've always had dreams about soaring through the sky under my own power. I'm a little envious, I guess, but I'm sure we'll figure it out eventually.
 
Snowfire said:
*sigh*

But why? I quite literally don't understand the very basis of it
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It's because of anime which treat it as if it's somehow massively significant. That's usually with young teenagers, to be fair, so to them it is -- but it's hard not to be amused when you see it.

Then of course someone made images macros, and so forth.
 
Snowfire said:
But...but wh-

Y'know what, I probably shouldn't try to pursue this rabbit hole any further.
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Handholding is also usually a sign of a romantic relationship. The only other occasions are parent/child, as it is a strong sign of trust.

This carries over into anime/manga because the primary target audience is children and teenagers, and they don't want to show overtly sexual acts on screen.

Thus handholding as a placeholder for 'lovers', without actually saying so or showing further proof of that fact.

And then memes came in. As the above image shows perfectly.
 
Raising Kittens said:
Handholding is also usually a sign of a romantic relationship. The only other occasions are parent/child, as it is a strong sign of trust.

This carries over into anime/manga because the primary target audience is children and teenagers, and they don't want to show overtly sexual acts on screen.

Thus handholding as a placeholder for 'lovers', without actually saying so or showing further proof of that fact.

And then memes came in. As the above image shows perfectly.
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No, it's like...I get that on some level. Somewhere. But it just hits a flat up does not compute somewhere in my thought chain, mainly because I don't see it as the sign of a romantic relationship - I know, you didn't say it was an automatic sign of one. That sort of very deep trust can extend to more than those. I can see why it's done, but on a personal level I just...don't. Intellectually I can make sense of it. Emotionally, I just get confused.
 
Snowfire said:
No, it's like...I get that on some level. Somewhere. But it just hits a flat up does not compute somewhere in my thought chain, mainly because I don't see it as the sign of a romantic relationship - I know, you didn't say it was an automatic sign of one. That sort of very deep trust can extend to more than those. I can see why it's done, but on a personal level I just...don't. Intellectually I can make sense of it. Emotionally, I just get confused.
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Don't worry we get it. It is much like we intellectually understand your aversion to the magical girls you are writing without actually emotionally understanding it.
 
Snowfire said:
No, it's like...I get that on some level. Somewhere. But it just hits a flat up does not compute somewhere in my thought chain, mainly because I don't see it as the sign of a romantic relationship - I know, you didn't say it was an automatic sign of one. That sort of very deep trust can extend to more than those. I can see why it's done, but on a personal level I just...don't. Intellectually I can make sense of it. Emotionally, I just get confused.
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Eh... don't worry about it there are plenty of memes I find deeply silly too and I think that's true of most people.
 
Being silly is the point. It's entertaining, and I guess if you aren't entertained by silly then you won't be entertained...

However, some people take it too seriously.

"It's not like I actually want to hold your hand, or anything."... Sandra, are you being serious now? How am I meant to take this? I'm busy, can't you see that? Please help, this isn't how she's meant to work.

Why am I asking you for help? This is all your faaauuullt!
 
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