Seven questions, again
At my request, chess gave me seven topics to write about. Comment on this post and I'll give you seven topics too.
(1) Giant pears with teeth invade the area where you live, destroying all before them! The expected military intervention doesn't seem to be materialising. What do you do?
Obviously the artwork of ursulav is coming to life, so I quickly commission her to illustrate a swarm of locusts in top hats that dine only on the flesh of the Biting Pear of Salamanca and go into hibernation when their prey is exhausted. How she's going to get all that detail into the illo is not my problem.
(2) You succeed in shattering time and bringing back the dead. Which of the dead do you particularly want to meet, and why?
I dunno. None, really. That's not what it's about. "To shatter time and bring back the dead" means to erase the distinctions between past, present and future, to live in an eternal Now of revelation. It's more perceptual than physical.
(3) You can commission the RPG author of your choice (alive or dead) to write the system of your choice. Who do you commission and what kind of system/setting do you specify, in how much detail?
robin_d_laws for system, princeofcairo for setting. Go wild, boys.
(4) You can change one thing that the current government of your country is doing (or planning to do in the next year or so). What do you choose and why?
Dismantle the Ministry Department of Homeland Security. It's a giant exercise in wasted money and abuse of authority.
(5) You get to add one subject to the standard curriculum of schools in your country, at about the same status as Geography or History. What subject do you pick, what does that subject mean to you (i.e., what are the boundaries of what's included in it and what's not) and why that one in particular?
The same status as Geography or History, eh? Meaning that no one will really pay attention to it and the US will be found to be 34th of the top 50 industrialized nations in teaching it, or whatever the current embarrassing statistic is. Better not be anything mission-critical.
Comparative religion? It might open the eyes of some of the spawn. Just a smidgen.
(6) You are locked in a room and instructed that you will not be released until you write a novel of quality acceptable to your captors. You do not have any information on their taste in novels, but they have kidnapped you specifically so they probably want something in your normal range of interests. What do you write?
Um. I'll probably grow old and die in that room, but I'll take a hack at one of the various story ideas that've been bedeviling me for years. Most of those are modern fantasy with elements of erotica.
(7) You can convert the entire world to a religion of your choice, but it must be a reasonably established current major world religion; additionally, the basic assumptions of that religion will then become objectively true. Do you perform this action, and if so what religion do you pick, and why? If not, why not? (You may pick particular sub-branches of a religion as long as the sub-branch currently counts as a major world religion in its own right.)
Mahayana Buddhism is perhaps a reasonable choice, with its emphasis on compassion and detachment, but I don't want to make "Existence is suffering" objectively true, so I think I'll refrain.
(1) Giant pears with teeth invade the area where you live, destroying all before them! The expected military intervention doesn't seem to be materialising. What do you do?
Obviously the artwork of ursulav is coming to life, so I quickly commission her to illustrate a swarm of locusts in top hats that dine only on the flesh of the Biting Pear of Salamanca and go into hibernation when their prey is exhausted. How she's going to get all that detail into the illo is not my problem.
(2) You succeed in shattering time and bringing back the dead. Which of the dead do you particularly want to meet, and why?
I dunno. None, really. That's not what it's about. "To shatter time and bring back the dead" means to erase the distinctions between past, present and future, to live in an eternal Now of revelation. It's more perceptual than physical.
(3) You can commission the RPG author of your choice (alive or dead) to write the system of your choice. Who do you commission and what kind of system/setting do you specify, in how much detail?
robin_d_laws for system, princeofcairo for setting. Go wild, boys.
(4) You can change one thing that the current government of your country is doing (or planning to do in the next year or so). What do you choose and why?
Dismantle the Ministry Department of Homeland Security. It's a giant exercise in wasted money and abuse of authority.
(5) You get to add one subject to the standard curriculum of schools in your country, at about the same status as Geography or History. What subject do you pick, what does that subject mean to you (i.e., what are the boundaries of what's included in it and what's not) and why that one in particular?
The same status as Geography or History, eh? Meaning that no one will really pay attention to it and the US will be found to be 34th of the top 50 industrialized nations in teaching it, or whatever the current embarrassing statistic is. Better not be anything mission-critical.
Comparative religion? It might open the eyes of some of the spawn. Just a smidgen.
(6) You are locked in a room and instructed that you will not be released until you write a novel of quality acceptable to your captors. You do not have any information on their taste in novels, but they have kidnapped you specifically so they probably want something in your normal range of interests. What do you write?
Um. I'll probably grow old and die in that room, but I'll take a hack at one of the various story ideas that've been bedeviling me for years. Most of those are modern fantasy with elements of erotica.
(7) You can convert the entire world to a religion of your choice, but it must be a reasonably established current major world religion; additionally, the basic assumptions of that religion will then become objectively true. Do you perform this action, and if so what religion do you pick, and why? If not, why not? (You may pick particular sub-branches of a religion as long as the sub-branch currently counts as a major world religion in its own right.)
Mahayana Buddhism is perhaps a reasonable choice, with its emphasis on compassion and detachment, but I don't want to make "Existence is suffering" objectively true, so I think I'll refrain.