Thomas Slytherin and Hadrian Peverell from my story Oligarchy <3 artwork by the brilliant @natash-shhh <3
You have proof that the universe is a computer simulation. Instead of telling the world about your discovery, you exploit bugs in the simulation to teleport and clone yourself.
Oh, no, cloning yourself is NEVER a good idea. There are a number of books, movies, comic books etc that explore all the ways THAT can go wrong.
Better ideas:
- Enable ‘healing aura’ on yourself and make a fortune as a faith healer adhering to some really random deity.
- Edit a lot of wild new hair and eye colours into the human genome and watch the world get more colourful.
- Use teleport to break into a ton of museums, vaults etc. Don’t steal anything, just take pictures of a toy penguin in situ and run the most bafflingly thrilling Instagram ever.
- Figure out how to edit other people, then take the genitalia of the very rich hostage until they give all their money to a) the poor, b) you, c) environmental conservation or d) all of the above.
- Revive extinct species in really unlikely places just to watch the scientists flip their shit.
- Give yourself telekinesis and just go wild with it.
- Use ‘teleport’ and ‘glow’ to convince people you are an angelic visitor and give them a stern talking to.
- Create an ‘infinite coffee’ exploit and drive Starbucks into the ground.
- Be the best stage magician who has ever lived.
One thing that's always fun to write is the "well, yes, but actually no" kind of cultural misunderstandings. The things about a people that aren't exactly incorrect, but the grain of truth in them is worded so weirdly that the statement itself is completely wrong.
For the Unfinished Book, I had a random idea of a nomadic people who keep dogs, and choose their leader by an informal public vote - while there's ceremonies involved in aknowledging the new leader, and often the new chief is the offspring of a previous one, the real leader of a clan is simply the one that most people agree should be the one to lead. They also famously rever their dogs so much that people like to say that even the dogs get to vote on who the new chief should be - or even that they let the dogs choose the leader, and the people themselves have no say in the matter at all.
If one of the nomads themselves is asked about it, they'll respond with a deeply confused, mildly offended look and contradicting answers. Some say that of course the dogs don't influence choices like that, and some will say that of course the dogs' opinions are taken into consideration. Outsiders get the idea that whatever the truth is, half of the nomads are blatantly lying to cover it up, for some reason or another. But technically speaking, neither of the contradicting stands is wrong.
The matter is, the dogs aren't making the choices of who should lead the clan. They do, however, observe whom the people themselves regard as a leader. As social pack animals bred and raised alongside humans, they can tell by body language whom people actually respect and yield to, and what the dogs do and whom they obey is a visible indicator of the clan's unspoken common opinion.
If a clan chief dies, his son can try to fashion himself into the next chief and command people around, but people observe that the dogs look to his mother for her permission to obey him when he orders them to move, everyone in the clan knows who's really calling the shots. The people won't follow a leader whom the dogs don't obey, because the dogs don't respect a leader whom the people don't respect.
Thou hast now a bosom-companion. Take care that thou art not distracted on thy quest, seeking the comforts of the flesh.
Would we lie to you ?
Imagine waiting for the coast guard or whatever to show up and instead a replica of 18th century merchant ship pulls up and tows you to the coast.
pov: you’ve been transported to the 17th century
#in the article it says that the sailboat sailors were concerned because they could not be towed quickly because of the kind of boat#so they asked Götheborg what type of ship they were and warned that they would not be able to go above a certain speed#and götheborg went ' we are also a sailboat. 50 meters length. no worries :) '#and the poor sailboat sailors were just like ' That's not possible. they have to be messing with us' and then the ship Rolled Up (via bunjywunjy)
A/N: I finally got my copy of AGIT and it sparked this prompt idea, I might continue on...
"Of all the times why were we thrown into a different dimension…"
"I am not happy about this either, twerp."
Danny gave his body double a scorching glare. Dan only shrugged as he leaned back into the park bench, hiding a chuckle. Even if the situation was dire, it was kind of funny too. Good things had changed so much since he got a human body. Danny had become more of a brother to him than his nemesis or time original, especially since Danny had gotten the crown and was trying to smooth things over for ghosts and humans. Plus he finally understood why Jazz like to tease them so much as her younger siblings. He got to tease his time original / cousin / 'younger' brother now too, well he did see himself as the older one when they could technically pass as twins.
"We are stuck looking like this! Our powers don't work and I can't open a portal, Dan!"
"And what do you want me to do about it? Clockwork is not responding to either of us."
Dan studied Danny who was still pacing in knee-high snow, then looked down at his hand which was smaller than he remembered. He tried reaching out to his ghost powers but nothing responded. From the corner of his eyes, he noticed Danny stopping his pacing and looking back at Dan, his voice soft from resignation.
"What is the last thing you remember?"
"It's... nothing." I don't remember what I did last. Why do you ask?"
"It's the same for me. We are stranded for some unknown reason in an entirely different Dimension in six-year-old bodies, with no clue or solution to get home and our ghost powers being all wonky as shit! And clockwork won't react to us yelling his name into the snowstorm we are currently in! At least we are cold-resistant!"
Danny resumed pacing in the snow, kicking random little snow hills he was making with his pacing as he ranted. Dan was watching him from the park bench with a scowl of his own. Both had found themself waking up to each other in a pile of snow in a park that was located in a city they had no idea about, the only thing they had was a green sticky note with the words 'Code Bat: Different Dimension'.
That led to Danny yelling for clockwork into the starting snowstorm. They knew their powers weren't completely gone. Wherever they were they were in a place with a lot of ambient ectoplasm.
"We should look for a way out of the snow twerp. Even with cold resistance, we should stay out here." Dan huffed as he tried to make out the buildings around them outside of the park, Danny instantly stopped pacing tilting his head.
"Where should-"
Both boys yelled in absolute horror as they suddenly got picked up and were carried like a sack of potatoes under the arms of strange guys. Instincts kicked in and the two instantly fought back but the guys carrying them didn't appear to be bothered.
The wind whisked past their ears making hearing anything difficult until they finally got put down next to each other. Instantly Dan took half a step before Danny, glaring at the ones that abducted them from a park. "Who the fuck are you, guys?!"
"Language kid. And I should be asking what the fuck you little kids were doing out in the middle of the worst Snowstorm Gotham had in a long time?" The guy in a red helmet said towering over them with crossed arms. "I know you street rats are smarter than staying out in the open like this. Don't you kids have a shelter?"
Street Rats? Okay, so what if their clothes looked a little ratty? Hold a second. Danny and Dan looked at each other briefly as if for the first time noticing how worn the clothes they had looked compared to what they were used to wearing. Great so not only were they in twin six-year-old bodies but also wearing such worn-out clothes that people saw them as street rats.
"None of your fucking business." Dan retorted, the fun of the situation now gone and anger and frustration settling in as he glared at their abductors. Danny on the other hand tilted his head miming the confused child as he stared up at them.
"We got lost."
"You got lost?" The other guy in blue with a mask asked them unbelieving and Danny only nodded.
"Yup, we got lost."
Dan watched how the two adults playing dress up exchanged glances. He peaked back at Danny and then back at them. Before making a probably short-sighted decision.
"Fuck this!" He said out loud and grabbed his twin's hand. Once more he reached for his ghost core and powers, internally yelling at it to get a response. And it worked, sort of.
He felt intangibility wash over them so he attempted to escape by phasing him and Danny through the ground only… to get halfway stuck as the old on his ghostly powers got lost. Dan's eye twitched as he realized he was stuck in the ground up to his tights.
"Dan what the fuck?!" Danny who was now stuck knee-deep into the floor yelled.
"I was at least attempting to escape!"
"We are stuck now! This is even worse! You could have just let me talk our way out of this!"
"Oh hell no. I remember the others saying often enough that you should not do the talking!"
"Phasing us through the floor is not better at all! Our powers are wonky or did you forget that?!"
While the twin boy's where fighting Nightwing and Red Hood exchanged worried glances.
"Hood…"
"Yea… Probably Meta Twins on the run."
"I will contact the others."
A BEAR ATE MY BEST HUMMINGBIRD FEEDER.
Rude.
Someone tell that bear he's not supposed to eat that with the skin on.
I live in South Africa. And if you live in South Africa and you have any contact with people from the US or Canada you might have run into a question about wildlife like lions and elephants roaming our streets. Most South Africans get pretty offended by questions like this. We are a civilized country, our large and dangerous wildlife gets contained in properly fenced parks.
I use to get offended by this until I visited a few places in Canada and realized that the reason why you ask is that some of your large and dangerous wildlife does simply roam the countryside and sometimes make excursions into town.
This honestly blew my mind. What do you mean, you have bears just walking around? What the hell?
north americans don't all encounter deadly megafauna on our porches and front lawns but it happens often enough that we all think this is a reasonable amount of gigantic animal to happen to your house. so when we think of africa we kinda imagine it like this:
like. if we had elephants here. this is what we would be putting up with on the regular. what do you mean you guys are more sensible than us.
Few weeks ago there was a black bear casually roaming the suburbs with local news casually reporting on it, while surrounding cities were like "Hang on, there's bears that close to DC?" Bear was caught and relocated. Casually.
The ones that really freak me out isn’t listed above: alligators and crocodiles.
There’s tons of them along significant stretches of the US and they just kinda... wander around sometimes. And I mean, what are you going to do to stop them? Put up a fence?
Good luck!
homunculus-argument
One thing that’s always fun to write is the “well, yes, but actually no” kind of cultural misunderstandings. The things about a people that aren’t exactly incorrect, but the grain of truth in them is worded so weirdly that the statement itself is completely wrong.
For the Unfinished Book, I had a random idea of a nomadic people who keep dogs, and choose their leader by an informal public vote - while there’s ceremonies involved in aknowledging the new leader, and often the new chief is the offspring of a previous one, the real leader of a clan is simply the one that most people agree should be the one to lead. They also famously rever their dogs so much that people like to say that even the dogs get to vote on who the new chief should be - or even that they let the dogs choose the leader, and the people themselves have no say in the matter at all.
If one of the nomads themselves is asked about it, they’ll respond with a deeply confused, mildly offended look and contradicting answers. Some say that of course the dogs don’t influence choices like that, and some will say that of course the dogs’ opinions are taken into consideration. Outsiders get the idea that whatever the truth is, half of the nomads are blatantly lying to cover it up, for some reason or another. But technically speaking, neither of the contradicting stands is wrong.
The matter is, the dogs aren’t making the choices of who should lead the clan. They do, however, observe whom the people themselves regard as a leader. As social pack animals bred and raised alongside humans, they can tell by body language whom people actually respect and yield to, and what the dogs do and whom they obey is a visible indicator of the clan’s unspoken common opinion.
If a clan chief dies, his son can try to fashion himself into the next chief and command people around, but people observe that the dogs look to his mother for her permission to obey him when he orders them to move, everyone in the clan knows who’s really calling the shots. The people won’t follow a leader whom the dogs don’t obey, because the dogs don’t respect a leader whom the people don’t respect.
