The Square-Cube Law

Subject: Re: The Square-Cube Law Wed Sep 23, 2015 12:31 pm

Greyman wrote:: Another reason I can't swallow the "Oh Felarya's magic so don't bother" handwave is, well, some of these giant preds come from places OTHER than Felarya. JiroKatsu's Kai Roga Mayin is perhaps the most well-known example. And then there's NickInAmerica's Silver Scales story. Remus's naga 'daughter' got pretty damn big before she fled his world, big enough where the Square-Cube Law should've hampered her big-time. So it just leads me to think there are some evolutionary adaptions rather than magic at play.

rant:

We can assume predators are built with workarounds for the limitations we have, but eventually at some point it will break, because things simply don't work this way in the first place, and adding one ad hoc after another isn't gonna help things look any better. I'd much rather we just lampshade it instead of trying to add one ad hoc, after another, after another, when we know they're unlikely to do any good. Eventually you'll have to acknowledge it doesn't work, and I'd rather do this sooner than later.

Besides, people in Felarya don't think there's anything novel about giant nagas, and nagas probably predate science. Heck, going by what we see, there's giant preds offworld too, and giants offworld. Turboman's xenonians come to mind. They're probably just as puzzled by how we don't freeze to death, and how does thin fabric such as ours ever protect anything, and why everything we make is so frustratingly brittle, like us! WHY? EARTHLING REVEAL TO ME YOUR SECRETS

Newbie adventurer Posts : 71 Join date : 2015-09-11

DarkOne wrote:: it's not like they are going to spin around and go "Ha! I am not in any real danger because a 16th century mathalogical law says you cannot exist!"

I beg to differ. Not that it actually worked, but still, you can't say it hasn't been tried, and it was at the very least funny.

But on a serious note, I agree, I don't think this kind of stuff is something you should actually draw attention to in a story itself (unless it's being used as a joke, like it is above). Bogging down the story for an infodump that no one needs is just no good. But I think that in general, the writer should know a lot about the story that they don't tell the reader. A well-designed world and characters should have a lot of elements that are hidden from the reader, from backstory elements that color character opinions from behind the scenes to fiddly details like these. Having these in the writer's toolbox allows the world to feel more immersive even if many of them never actually find use. As readers, we shouldn't be given any reason to care about questions like these. As writers, it's good to keep this in the back of our heads, just in case it becomes relevant for some unforeseeable reason. If a Felaryan giant gets captured by an Area 51-esque agency that subjects her to all manner of rigorous measurements (Felarya/SCP Foundation crossover, perhaps?), I want to be prepared with an accurate weight measurement.

Also, I can't speak for anyone else, but I for one am not saying that Felarya's characters must be realistic and science bound. I'm perfectly fine to let suspension of disbelief take over here, I just like having numbers to punch into Wolfram Alpha and get neat comparisons.

Although now I'm imagining a comic where we see Crisis's medical records (No reason for Crisis to even have medical records, but that's part of the joke) and under "weight", they just wrote "shut up you're overthinking this".

Roaming thug Posts : 95 Join date : 2011-04-17

Wow.

Didn't expect to get THIS much backlash. Seems to be my fate when delving into the Felarya community, but oh well. I certainly wasn't insisting that EVERY facet of being able to get around the Square-Cube Law be explored and elucidated. Just an acknowledgment that physics still happens, these giant preds are hanging around anyway, but we got more important issues to deal with at present in any given Felarya story, so we'll get back to you later about all that. That was the approach I took for my story. Bring it up once or twice, flirt with possible workarounds a bit, then move on.

Subject: Re: The Square-Cube Law Wed Sep 23, 2015 5:18 pm

Greyman wrote:: Wow.

Didn't expect to get THIS much backlash. Seems to be my fate when delving into the Felarya community, but oh well. I certainly wasn't insisting that EVERY facet of being able to get around the Square-Cube Law be explored and elucidated. Just an acknowledgment that physics still happens, these giant preds are hanging around anyway, but we got more important issues to deal with at present in any given Felarya story, so we'll get back to you later about all that. That was the approach I took for my story. Bring it up once or twice, flirt with possible workarounds a bit, then move on.

My apologies if it comes off as backlash, it wasn't intended to. I was just trying to illustrate my point, and after 2 hours of working on another post, I felt really silly going back and forth over this one for longer than 10 minutes. I guess it sounded funnier in my head.

Roaming thug Posts : 95 Join date : 2011-04-17

Stabs wrote:: My apologies if it comes off as backlash, it wasn't intended to. I was just trying to illustrate my point, and after 2 hours of working on another post, I felt really silly going back and forth over this one for longer than 10 minutes. I guess it sounded funnier in my head.

Many things do. And don't get me wrong, I do appreciate a good bitch-slap when it's warranted. You obviously have a better grasp of physics than I do. And hell, I wasn't even going to go NEAR the "How do 110-foot harpies fly?" thing anyway. And I myself am guilty of just resorting to lampshading. I mean, in the back of Brennan's mind early in the story, she wondered just HOW Crisis could muster the energy to leap like she did. But of course, right then it wouldn't make sense for me to delve too deep as a writer, because it was in the middle of a harpy attack. Most would find that more interesting than a biophysics lesson.

Subject: Re: The Square-Cube Law Wed Sep 23, 2015 6:37 pm

Greyman wrote:: How do 110-foot harpies fly?

Easy, their wingspan are larger than their bodies without wings, and given the pressure of the Felaryan atmosphere and the aerodynamic drag produced by their wings, they could produce enough lift to propel their massive bodies . And their bodies would certainly have lighter bones, and their feathers could act as ailerons.

geek

The atmosheric composition could contain less nitrogen, and given the massive amounts of trees, oxygen should be prevalent. Makes me wonder if their are native sentient lifeforms there... And because the oxygen is prevalent, and the amount of trees, the atmospheric pressure would be large, and because of dimensional rifts, atmospheric levels and composition would vary per regions. And given the extensive amount of time, any native lifeforms would grow to adapt to the conditions in Felarya. Since Felarya couldn't be classified as planet or even a rogue planet (Felarya blurs the lines between the two), there could be someone out there in the universes that would begin to ponder on how or where does gravity in Felarya is. While surfing the net, I found a place where there are large "waterrises" are. Their gravitational fields are quite weak, but enough to pull a mermaid or two. So maybe the gravitational fields are actually in the Lydus, given that Felarya is a plane. This plane, scattered between dimensions yet connected, would use several gravitational fields, contradicting what I said about gravity earlier. ( scratch

)

One question remains, where does the gravity come from? scratch

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