View Flat HTML
View Metadata
Search Post
Here is a demon. The demon is in his swimming pool.
He doesn't swim naked, so he takes the summon anyway.
demon cam vs the clam planet
+ Show First Post
from_scratch
from_scratch
...Cam conjures up his computer. "Here is an animation of the solar system in which humans whom I was aware of this morning all live. It is to scale but sped way up. The sun is big. The planets are all spheres, these ones made of rock with air and water around the outside, these ones made of assorted nasty gaseous substances. Most of the planets have moons. Earth, the planet where humans are from, has one moon." He zooms in. "It's tidally locked, so one face of it is always facing the planet; and it gets all its light bounced off of it from the sun, it doesn't glow on its own. It, and the planets, and in the broader scheme of things the sun, all move principally according to a rule called law of gravity, which states in tidy mathematical form that things try to be near other things, especially when the things are big or close together. The moon is basically falling all the time and keeps missing the ground."
the-long-dawn
"Are you sure that your physics are not the ones that are weird?" inquires Ashras.
from_scratch
"I'm... not absolutely certain but I'm pretty confident. A feature I expect in non-weird physics is that it works mostly the same on things in general. A scale model of the Earth, well, the oceans would fall off because it would be small and therefore not exert more gravitational pull than wherever you were when you made it, but the rest of it wouldn't instantly collapse. Another feature I expect in non-weird physics is concise math, which I would love to hear produced to explain the presence of a 'sun circle' but I'm not optimistic."
the-long-dawn
"I'd be fascinated to hear about what kind of concise math produces an eternally falling moon, but I'm not sure we have time. Where's Dalvor? For that matter where's Father?"
adapt-again
Faidre doesn't turn around, but his tail flicks sideways in a way that looks plausibly meaningful.
the-long-dawn
"Ah, no wonder you couldn't find him," says Ashras to Elarron; then, "What are they meeting about?"
from_scratch
"My extremely convenient language acquisition mechanism did not include tail gestures."
from_scratch
"Anything I should be avoiding doing with my tail lest I offend people who assume I am familiar with tail gestures, or is the fact that it's not furry sufficient to mark me as clueless?"
the-long-dawn
"You're pretty visibly not Aluvai, and your tail pretty visibly isn't either. You should be fine. Uh, avoid short fast repetitive side-to-side flicking, and if you see someone doing it, be warned; it's a strong anger signal, usually not consciously controlled."
the-long-dawn
"It seems to be coming across in the intended spirit, as far as I can tell from other cues."
the-long-dawn
"That's our destination up ahead," Ashras mentions, since Faidre seems disinclined to play tour guide.
Their destination is a stone building set imposingly atop a slow-rising hill. Winged guards patrol its terraces and balconies. It's not quite a castle, but definitely in that genre.
Their destination is a stone building set imposingly atop a slow-rising hill. Winged guards patrol its terraces and balconies. It's not quite a castle, but definitely in that genre.
from_scratch
"Huh. Do most people not try, or do most who try not succeed, or both?"
from_scratch
"To do sufficiently monumental things? I mean, I'm used to people in general having disappointingly small ambitions but I'm also used to there being no extremities and pocket dimensions awarded as prizes for accomplishing stuff."
bright-morning
"Oh. No. Setting out to accomplish something because you want your wings is notoriously tricky - something about the mindset. Plenty of people do try it, but the ones who succeed tend to be the ones who focus on the immediate goal and not on the prospective reward."