Recent content by Vaporo

It looks like it would be a huge pain to hold straight. I feel like it would constantly want to rock forward and backwards in your grip. I struggle to imagine using something with that form factor just to cut vegetables, let alone as a weapon.

That may be so, but large-bodied animals will lose heat more slowly, so what little heat she does generate will go a lot further than in most reptiles. Perhaps moving to stay warm isn't an instinctive behavior for dragons? Maybe her instinct actually is to slow down and conserve energy like...

Cold vs warm-blooded is not necessarily a binary, it's a spectrum. Even the warmest of warm-blooded animals still rely on environmental heat to some degree. An especially large cold-blooded animal (like a dragon) will produce some body heat. Perhaps without her own fire, your protagonist falls...

Regardless of how strong your character or the dragon's tail is, it would still be impossible because your character would be unable to get enough traction with the ground. i.e. They would just slide around before they could throw the dragon unless they had a magic power to hold themself in...

Maybe it's supernaturally sterile? So much so that surgical implants and sewage pipes lined with it never need cleaned with more than a quick rinse from the nearest tap in even the most polluted environments. Or maybe there isn't much special about it at all? Maybe it's essentially just normal...

Honestly, an empire sending three warships (even if they are new, shiny, and advanced) to conquer even a moderately productive colony seems pretty par for the course in a war-and-conquest-and-colonization society, especially if they're already at war and/or on bad terms with the original holder...

What if it's something a bit simpler. What if the latex is just really, really stretchy and really, really strong. Instead of steel cables, your civilization uses latex ropes. Instead of kevlar vests, they use fabric carefully woven from fine strands of rubber. etc. It wouldn't be a cure-all...

Here's my take on all this: The only good nutritional advice I've ever been given is that all nutritional advice and dietary science is just made up guesswork. I think a lot of people figure out a diet they enjoy but also keeps them in decent shape. Then, they get defensive when some random...

You know, I've seen several variants of "The words don't really matter, they just give the caster something to focus on" at this point. People want the "cool factor" of casting magic with incantations, and there's nothing wrong with that, but at the same time I feel like in a lot of these cases...

I use boring old copper, silver, and gold coins in my setting, but I have some history a behind them. After a massive societal collapse, the world operated under a crude barter system, with farmers trading their failing crops for spare parts and electricity from the few power plants which were...

Speaking as someone with a bit of a technical background, here's my take on this technology: It's terrifying, but it still has quite a long way to go. Neural nets like this can be thought of as extremely abstracted "averaging engines." Essentially, they try to figure out what the "average"...

Perhaps rather than just black, specify something along the lines of "midnight black," or describe them as looking like a silhouette or shadow from a distance. Perhaps avoid limit or avoid the word "skin" when possible since I've noticed that word in particular seems to draw commentary. I think...

Who says that demons have to be evil? Perhaps that is just a stereotype and they're just wildly misunderstood? Any magical creature bound by a contract seems like a good path to take. e.g. a Djinn or something of the like which will vanish back into the aether after its contract is fulfilled...

The problem I always have with runic magic systems that nobody even bothers to explain their origins. What makes these arbitrary lines and shapes so special? Are they a fundamental part of the universe? If so, we should probably see them appear in nature. Are they an ancient dead language? If...

Aaaah. Y'all are thinking about a REALISTIC laser rifle. Yeah, that's a bit different. Although OP called them "laser rifles," they also said that they never run out of power and that their effect is to cause a small explosion wherever they hit, which indicates to me that "laser rifle" is just a...