#wakeupontheprongssideofthebed

[yourplayersaidwhat]

Do you have guidelines that dictate what posts you publish? I feel like I've submitted a few posts and never seen them published. Not sure if they just got swallowed by tumblr though..

Yep! The guidelines are listed at the top of the submit page, and we also have a list of common reasons why submissions aren’t posted. Also, please keep in mind that the queue varies from 4-6 months depending on how many submissions we get, so if it’s been less time than that, please just be patient!

[lilyheardjamesfall]

Can you help me out here? Who the hell is Marlene? I keep hearing the name come up, but I don't remember ever reading it in an HP book. Is she a canon character?

Marlene McKinnon is a canon character and is mentioned several times. She was a member of the original Order of the Phoenix. She was really fleshed out in the fic The Life and Times, which is the pinnacle of Jily fan fiction. We don’t know a lot about her, but she is often paired with Sirius. 

[script-a-world]

I don't know that much about economics, global politics, or history, so is it possible for a nation rich in all types of resources to become wealthy and/or technologically advanced without interacting/trading with any other countries? Like, could a society be entirely economically self-sufficient, or is foreign trade necessary for growth?

Synth: I don't have any background in economics, global politics, or very in-depth historical studies either, but let's take a stab at this anyway.

Also this is presuming by "technologically advanced" you mean current or near-future levels of tech.

I think it is possible that a country could go it alone if they had enough of a variety of resources, at minimum but not limited to: vast mineralogical wealth, a sizeable amount of arable land for agriculture, and good quantities of fresh water are the main things that come to mind. And also competent leadership -- not politicians, necessarily, but some kind of higher-up(s) -- who is good at getting things set up to best utilise said resources.

A good transportation infrastructure is vital too, but that is something I can see springing up naturally as people set about exploiting their country's resources. Lots of over here, but it needs to be over there to be of use, so let's build a road/put some boats on this river/whatever.

Though do keep in mind that, unless we're talking Star Trek replicator tech levels for your fictional country, things like oil fields and gold deposits are finite resources. No matter how carefully regulated the use of non-renewable resources, eventually they will run out. If this country hasn't developed alternatives, nor cultivated any political or economical ties with other lands that have these things, once those things run out, they might be fantastically screwed.

Which could make for a really interesting story, if you wanted to take things in that direction.

The biggest danger I see for a super-resource-rich country is invasion from its not-so-rich or actually-really-poor neighbours. "Hey, I have lots of and need , while you have lots of and would like more , so how about we do an exchange?" is pretty much how trading starts, but if one country has all the A, B, C, D and also E; and the next-door lands have nothing the first country wants in exchange, those neighbouring countries might one day decide "Well then, since they're not willing to trade for this thing we really need, we're just going to go take it."

So unless the rich country is extremely isolationist to the point that no one else knows just what they've got, they'd best make nice with the neighbours.

Constablewrites: This was Japan for a couple of centuries. Starting in the 1600s, the Tokugawa shogunate isolated themselves from relations with other countries. They let the Dutch land one ship a year, and that was it. In 1854, Commodore Matthew Perry negotiated the opening of their ports to US interests.

Bina: I don't know if you've seen Black Panther, but that's exactly the case with Wakanda, the fictional country that's a major setting in the movie. No major spoilers, don't worry! 

 Wakanda is a country completely isolated from the rest of the world, and incredibly wealthy and technologically advances. They're self-sufficient with extremely little to no trading with the rest of the world. Granted, Wakanda also has the world's largest supply of the seemingly-magical metal, vibranium, which has fantastic properties that allowed for expansive technological growth without the need to get materials from other countries. 

 That isn't to say that Wakanda doesn't get anything from other countries. They have people learn things from other nations. T'Challa in particular has a PhD in physics from Oxford university. 

 A nation that's rich in all types of resources, as you've asked about, can interact with other countries in ways that aren't economic trade. They could have scholars visit other nations to share and gather knowledge or have a booming tourist industry. 

I'd say that a society could indeed be entirely economically self-sufficient, but they can grow by interacting with other nations (just not via trade). They can also be economically self-sufficient and not interact with other nations at ALL, in which case you'll have to come up with (or ask us about!) the social consequences of a true isolationist nation.

[charlesoberonn]

hey I wanted to watch Annihilation (mainly for Natalie Portman and Oscar Isaac) but I don't see it on Netflix. Are you in a specific region/country where it's available?

It’s not available on Netflix in the US, I believe.

[scriptfeature]

I saw that ScriptEconomist is no longer being updated, so do you know of any other economics blogs where I could ask a knowledgeable person about the feasibility of my fictional economic system?

So first - thank you so much for sending this in, because I just realized I hadn’t slid it down on the ScriptX Family page to the Archived section, woops! Fixed. Because you are correct, the blog is Archived now.Unfortunately I don’t know much about economics or economics blogs outside of that. All I can suggest is:1.) Peruse the archive of @scripteconomist to see if you can find something applicable, which may help anyway?

2.) Depending on the question, the folks at other ScriptX blogs such as @script-a-world or even @scriptsociology MIGHT be able to help? The reason I suggest Script-a-world is that you’re looking at this for worldbuilding purposes, and their blog is designed to help with making overall fictional worlds more plausible, so they might have some ideas depending on what you need that fictional economic system to do in-story.

The reason I suggest ScriptSociology, is that Sociology as a field includes studying complex aspects of human culture and how they impact groups of people within them, and while it’s not the same as full-on economics, it by necessity can definitely include the impact of economic changes or the consequences of some aspects of economic systems, which is honestly the most important part of working with an ‘economic system’ in a worldbuilding sense anyway, I would think. Examples of this include how poverty levels or class divisions might shake out in terms of large-scale effects on actual people (I think they had a post on how street gangs in America originally formed as a way to ‘protect’ neighborhoods that were mostly ethnic enclaves, which presumably had less consistent access to reliable/non-abusive law enforcement due to poverty and class division, for an example of what doesn’t LOOK like it includes economics but technically does? At least that’s how I recall the post, but it’s been a while and I don’t have time to hunt for it >_>), or - There’s also how economic prosperity or pressure influences where people move to or from; e.g. how most major cities have historically developed along a waterfront due to resource access and/or trade access (Los Angeles for instance could not possibly exist as far inland in a desert like it does, without the massive man-made infrastructure that was installed that draws water to the area; but NYC existed before modern plumbing was really a thing, and became one of the early trade hubs with Europe and elsewhere because it’s in a region that connects to the ocean and several rivers; Chicago is near major water sources and lies between many other places that it engages in trade with too, etc.). That could be a question posed to either blog, I think, though the perspectives on it and the depth of information will likely be different and it’s probably better-aimed at ScriptSociology in particular? At a guess.3.) You could try browsing the Economics tag or Worldbuilding tag on tumblr?4.) Finally, I will open this up as a question to our followers to see if they have suggestions? Remember to check the notes in case we have a viable suggestion given! Good luck with your worldbuilding!-Mod Vorpalgirl(Feeling generous? You can click here to Buy Me A Coffee!)

[scriptgenetics]

Welcome to the script fam! My medium-hard scifi story has an alien who eats ppl and assimilates bits of their DNA. This process is random & involuntary. What's the most plausible genetic process for this? (I was thinking Horizontal Gene Transfer?)

DNA assimilation is a bit tricky when we start getting into more complicated (i.e. multicellular) organisms, because in order for this new DNA to have an effect it must be integrated into all of the target cells. Horizontal Gene Transfer (HGT) would do the job very well in a single celled organism, but less so in a more complicated one (but if the DNA was integrated in the germ line [sex cells] it could be passed onto offspring).

Then how could this happen? Well, a symbiotic relationship between your alien and another species could work quite nicely. We see HGT in plants that have symbiotic relationships with bacteria much more regularly than in other multicellular organisms. In this case, the bacteria could uptake that DNA, talk to all of the bacteria nearby through HGT, and dramatically increase the number of cells in your alien that could come into contact with the new DNA through another HGT step. It’s not a super clean or fast solution, but it does fall more into the realm of “realism”. And, on that note, bacteria reproduce fairly quickly, so you could see this over a relatively short period of time (think days not weeks).

Good luck with your story! This was a fun thought exercise for me, so thanks for asking!

[scriptmedic]

Hi Aunt Scripty! How realistic is Hollywood when it comes to snapping/breaking necks? Is the "treat the skull like a twist off bottle cap" method actually a quick, clean, stealthy insta-kill (assuming the assassin is properly trained)? Thank you!

Hey there nonny! I’m gonna refer this out to @howtofightwrite​, as combat (and thus neck-snapping) is their area of expertise. 

However, I think I can tell you their answer. From [a recent post] of theirs: 

First, snapping someone’s neck, the way you see in films, doesn’t work. You can annoy someone, and rack up an attempted murder charge, but it doesn’t actually work. That said, the list of things that can, in fact, kill someone is not short, ranging from blood chokes (where the attacker holds their opponent in a headlock which obstructs the carotid artery) to crushing the trachea, rupturing the kidney (though this one will take awhile), or any number of other attacks that will interrupt the victim’s ability to continue getting oxygen to their brain.

I have to agree with them. The neck is a tough bastard. It’s not only a very stable series of bones, but there’s so much stabilizing muscle, especially on the lateral aspects (the trapezius muscles) that it will make anything along the lines of “snapping” very difficult. 

For human insta-kills, see Michi and Starke’s lovely blog of violence in storytelling. 

xoxo, Aunt Scripty

[disclaimer]

[scriptstructure]

With plot twists, how do you avoid making readers feel "tricked"? I know "readers like to feel smart" (i.e by predicting what's going to happen), but I feel like if I foreshadow enough for readers to guess what'll happen, it ruins the surprise/twist

Well, as you say, it has a lot to do with foreshadowing. 

You’re right also, that a lot of readers (this is me!) like to predict what’s going to happen. A lot of times it can be disappointing, though, as ‘twist’ endings are either so clearly telegraphed that it feels a little farcical to actually get to the end and know that you’re supposed to be surprised by what’s happening, but you’d guessed it three chapters ago. Other times the twist feels more like it’s just been plucked out of the ether with little or nothing tethering it to the actual plot, which is just as annoying.

So what’s the happy middle ground?

The ‘twist’ should be something that is already built into the plot, but which is unexpected. I think that one of the better ways to do this is to construct your plot and its twist ending so that there is at least one other way that the reader might expect the story to end.

I’ll give you a good (in my opinion) example, and a bad example, and we can think about what makes them work or not work.

A good example of a twist is the Sherlock Holmes story A Scandal in Bohemia, at the end, while Holmes has nominally solved the case, the woman he’s been investigating (Irene Adler) has cottoned on to his scheme, and has taken her husband and her blackmail materials and run off to the continent, well out of reach of Holmes or his employer. 

This is a surprise, because most of the time we expect Holmes to get to the end of the story as the single triumphant figure, and also because most of the people he investigates don’t manage to match him on his home turf as well as at his own game.

This is built into the story, as we already have evidence that Irene is capable of some significant amount of trickery, given that she has already pulled a fast one on the king of a small nation, and has managed to evade every hired man he’s sent after her to try and get the blackmail materials back by force.

There are also several other endings that seem just as likely to the reader as the one that occurs the most likely being that we might think that Holmes would manage to sneak the blackmail materials out of her home and hand them over to the king. It is a little bit like sleight of hand, while the reader is waiting to see how Holmes is going to manage to do it, Irene is setting up her own victory in the background.

A bad example of a twist ending is a movie I watched very recently Red Lights (2012). The film follows along a couple of scientist-skeptics who investigate and debunk paranormal events, and whose main antagonist in the film is a famous mentalist who claims to be able to prove that he really does have paranormal abilities.

The film goes along a fairly standard track of them investigating this mentalist and managing one at a time to pick which tricks he’s using to make it seem like he has powers. Right at the end there is one thing which they seem to be unable to debunk, it comes right down to the wire as the results of the tests he’s undergone are going to be published and ...

It turns out that one of the skeptics was really a real psychic all along! Oh yeah, and they figure out how the mentalist was doing that one trick just in time, too.

Now, I was with the movie up until about the halfway mark, but then it started to fall apart. They were laying in hints that there was something weird happening, but they were heavy-handed and could easily have been that the mentalist character was just using his wealth to hire people to harass the skeptics, or that he had real powers.

Having one of the skeptic characters have powers and having that be the big reveal felt cheap. It seemed unnecessary and it didn’t carry any weight when so much of the film had been focussed on the rivalry between the characters. As well, at the last minute, there was an attempt to give this character’s powers emotional weight, where it hadn’t been built or foreshadowed by the film so far. There were several other details about the character that were very sympathetic and interesting, but to have the ‘and I’m a real psychic’ suddenly given the top billing cheapened the rest of it.

I think when you’re crafting a twist ending, a good approach is to figure out what you want your ending to be, and then to think of two to four endings that are very reasonable outcomes for the story. As you write, you can work in evidence that will lead readers to assume one thing or another that will turn out to be wrong, alongside your foreshadowing for the actual twist.

I hope that helps!

–

Hi there, your friendly blogger Mason here!

At the moment I’m fundraising to cover the costs of my gender confirmation surgery, if you’re able to donate, please click [HERE] to give me a helping hand!

If you’re not able to donate, I would be really grateful if you would reblog [THIS POST] so that more people will be able to see the fundraiser.

Thank you for reading, and thank you all for being so kind!