culture
Snippet: A Saying
“Judge ye! And know that ye are judged in turn.” – Tectar Asamis, Second Exemplar of Saravoné
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meta
Circumlocution: A Way Of Talking Around Something
Among the things I am kicking around today are future possibilities for the Word-of-the-Day feature. I’ve got some interesting ones in the form of words which have distinct values implied – say, “greed” – which necessarily require multiple translations – “ambition”, for example, or “compromise” – or whose closest equivalent have very different
eldraeic language
Eldraeic Word of the Day: Ulquordaëälathdar
ulquordaëälathdar: (lit. “impossible-knowledge-person”, derog.) Agnostic; (Flamic) an adherent to the Agnostic Heresy; one who holds that certain or all knowledge cannot be known, i.e., is intrinsically unknowable, rather than simply unknown, or circumstantially unknowable due to lack of necessary epistemic tools or cognitive capacity. from ulquordaëlin (“impossible”, itself from
amnesic
Trope-a-Day: Killed to Uphold the Masquerade
Killed to Uphold the Masquerade: Again, a tactic used primarily by lower-tech and lower-ethics organizations, ones which can’t manage or don’t bother with amnesic drugs, memory redaction, a geas, simple memetic discrediting, or if all else fails, a trip to a perfectly nice, perfectly comfortable luxury space resort
Fundamental Ledger
Weighed in the Balance Sheet
“There is one thing that comes before the Fundamental Contract. That thing is the Fundamental Ledger. Before your first breath, before your first thought – even as your mind coalesces out of chaos, long before you can know your own nature as a sophont, its bindings are sewn and its pages
trope-a-day
Trope-a-Day: Kill It With Water
Kill It With Water: Leaving aside such not-really-the-water examples as water knives, pressure effects, and drowning, this is rather rare, inasmuch as the universe is full of the bloody stuff and as such having much of a vulnerability to water is unlikely to let you live long enough for anyone
worldbuilding
How Much Future?
I’ve recently been asked elsewhere, “how far into the future is your setting?” Well, since it’s not connected causally to Earth, even fictional Earths, and technological development in the ‘verse didn’t necessarily take place in the same order or at the same rate as it did here,
books
Book #3!
It’s coming! (I was initially planning to wait until I had a novel-length piece to publish, but a lot of nanofic has passed under the bridge since then, so a third collection it is. At least once the editing work is done – so you can consider this a pre-announcement,
trope-a-day
Trope-a-Day: Kill and Replace
Kill and Replace: A tactic – and with modern sophotechnology, a lamentably obvious tactic – used by lower-tech and lower-ethics intelligence agencies, for whom fast-growth cloning (or even radical plastic surgery) and programming is the best they can manage – rather than the implantation of overshadowing gnostic overlays used by the technological sophisticates
Rim Free Zone
So you've been attacked in the Rim Free Zone...
“So you’ve been attacked in the Free Zone… “…you had a security provider, right? At least I hope you had a security provider, given the giant ‘THE RIM FREE ZONE TRAVEL FACILITATORS’ ASSOCIATION RECOMMENDS THAT YOU GET A SECURITY PROVIDER’ banner hanging in the starport with maybe a thousand
trope-a-day
Trope-a-Day: Jump Jet Pack
Jump Jet Pack: A ubiquitous addition to virtually all combat armor (see: light infantry), scout armor, and the equipage of just about everyone else who can benefit from high mobility, from disaster relief teams to microgravity construction workers. (Being able to bend momentum with your mind is nice, but some
worldbuilding
May's Questions
So, yes, answers. But before we get to those, remember the reference to fanfiction being written in “Things You Are No Longer Allowed To Do In The Imperial Military Service“? Mark Atwood points out the following niftyness in a comment: The anime series “Gate – Thus the JSDF Fought There!” was