Star Power V: The Final Yawntier

[Vinyadan]

I still think they should have hooked up. At least it would have been interesting.

[random11]

Long time lurker here, thought I'd pop out to give my insight onto this psychologist character.

Several years ago, back when he was doing DD, I went to one of his convention panels at a con, I think in Denver, about writing memorable villains and heroes. During this panel, he brought up a book he had read before his webcomic-ing days that had obviously left a huge impression on him. I can't remember the book's name, but he described it as a sci-fi book about an extremely clever psychologist who basically went into the throne room of an evil galactic emperor and apparently spent the whole story calmly and successfully talking said evil galactic emperor into defeating himself. Mookie was, to say the least, enthusiastic about this book. In fact, he almost had a fan-gasm right up there on the stage. He was extremely impressed on how the book had this extremely smart and calm man defeat this powerful evil dictator by manipulating him with words, not with armies and violence.

Is it possible that it was "Tactics of mistake"? (Gordon R Dickson)
I read it many years ago, but I think the idea sounds familiar.

At the time, I thought that this really explained a lot about Dominic Deegan. What he really wanted was to emulate this character, to create a hero who fought and defeated enemies with his wit and cunning, not his physical prowess. Unfortunately, it doesn't quite work as well when you start manipulating allies as well as enemies, and most of the time, it just ended up being a violent battle anyways, just in mindscapes or with magic.

At first, DD indeed used more manipulation and illusions. But while I can't quite put my finger on when it happened, it was changed to Dominic always finding new magic to fight magic instead of finding smart ways to use his powers.

BTW, if you want a good book starring a seer, I would recommend "Alex Verus" series starting with "Fated".
The beginning is a bit weak since it starts like every other urban fantasy, but it gets better and has a very distinct set of powers for the main hero, forcing him to use his brains to overcome obstacles.

When this character showed up in this webcomic, I had a sinking feeling that we've gone from emulating his favorite character to basically trying outright clone him. I wouldn't be surprised in the least if Mookie is playing the Psychologist straight, that he is going to somehow verbally manipulate the empress into either redemption, or defeating herself. My bet is on the latter, as Mookie never really has been one to tinker with villains redeeming themselves.

Of course, now we have a little break before we see where this ends up going. I see they're taking four weeks off this time.

The way I see it, the psychologist doesn't really manipulate of force the countess to say anything, he is just there an an ornament to give the countess an excuse to monologue.
And since the countess exists just to show Danica is a good light by comparing her actions to the EVIL empire, the guy feels double worthless to me.

[Oracle_Hunter]

At first, DD indeed used more manipulation and illusions. But while I can't quite put my finger on when it happened, it was changed to Dominic always finding new magic to fight magic instead of finding smart ways to use his powers.

Storm of Souls

Approximately here.

[Raquiz]

Is it possible that it was "Tactics of mistake"? (Gordon R Dickson)
I read it many years ago, but I think the idea sounds familiar.

Pft, it's been years, I wouldn't recognize the title anymore. A quick google of that book, though, doesn't sound quite right. It might be it, but from the way I remember Mookie describing it, the Galactic Emperor was pretty much invincible, and the psychologist somehow managed to convince him to somehow drop his invincibility for some reason, and as soon as he did so, they were able to defeat him.

Out of curiosity, I tried looking around a bit, and I found a recording on youtube of the panel, though not from the same Con I had gone to. I didn't listen to the whole thing, as it runs an hour, but he might mention it there as well, if you have a mind to hear him speak about Writing Unique and Memorable Heroes and Villains. He was just as energetic when I saw him, though he had a table he sat behind and didn't pace around quite as much. He's also fairly normally proportioned in real life, not sure what is up with that camera angle.

Alas, I have not the post count to link URLs, and I'm not sure if I'd get in trouble for trying to work around it, but the Youtube user who uploaded them was called Rickettson, and it's pretty easy to find in his videos.

[Gez]

Several years ago, back when he was doing DD, I went to one of his convention panels at a con, I think in Denver, about writing memorable villains and heroes. During this panel, he brought up a book he had read before his webcomic-ing days that had obviously left a huge impression on him. I can't remember the book's name, but he described it as a sci-fi book about an extremely clever psychologist who basically went into the throne room of an evil galactic emperor and apparently spent the whole story calmly and successfully talking said evil galactic emperor into defeating himself. Mookie was, to say the least, enthusiastic about this book. In fact, he almost had a fan-gasm right up there on the stage. He was extremely impressed on how the book had this extremely smart and calm man defeat this powerful evil dictator by manipulating him with words, not with armies and violence.

I think it was the Foundation series, and the villain defeated was the Mule.

[Welf]

New comic.

Just in case a spoiler box, not that much happened:

Spoiler

Show

So Danica might not be an appropriate host because the magic machine is a bit buggy. They should have made their tests a bit more thorough then.
Since we know that Danica is the Best Sentinel Ever, the only drama I can imagine is that the Zel Gux still had some weird ideas and that Danica is even nicer than them. But likely T.O.M. just has the order to cure any imperfections by hugging them out.

[Traab]

New comic.

Just in case a spoiler box, not that much happened:

Spoiler

Show

So Danica might not be an appropriate host because the magic machine is a bit buggy. They should have made their tests a bit more thorough then.
Since we know that Danica is the Best Sentinel Ever, the only drama I can imagine is that the Zel Gux still had some weird ideas and that Danica is even nicer than them. But likely T.O.M. just has the order to cure any imperfections by hugging them out.

My guess is,

Spoiler

Show

there will be an arc where she messes up somehow or there will be a "wacky" misunderstanding that will make him think she is unworthy and he has an emergency cutoff ability for the star power. Then we get an arc where she refuses to give up doing what she can to help and he realizes she was awesome all along and reactivates her.

[halfeye]

My guess is,

Spoiler

Show

there will be an arc where she messes up somehow or there will be a "wacky" misunderstanding that will make him think she is unworthy and he has an emergency cutoff ability for the star power. Then we get an arc where she refuses to give up doing what she can to help and he realizes she was awesome all along and reactivates her.

Spoiler

Show

Nah, she defeats him while de-powered, then re-empowers.

Third and final spoiler this update.

[Traab]

Spoiler

Show

Nah, she defeats him while de-powered, then re-empowers.

Third and final spoiler this update.

While that would satisfy his "My hero is the best hero ever" fetish, it would ignore his desire to "subvert" the tropes. The normal way it works is the hero loses their power for some mysterious reason, and generally they get them back when they need them most because of the heart of the cards or some such nonsense. So I can see mookie gleefully setting up a person taking away her powers then being the one to decide if she is good enough to get them back as a "subversion" of the standard trope.

[Gez]

http://www.starpowercomic.com/comic/antros-entry1/

The Air People.

If you remember, there were the Rock People, the Sea People, the Wood People, and the Scorching Desert People, so with the Air People we round out to five elements, the four classical (Earth, Water, Fire, Air) plus Wood to borrow one from Wu Xing.

[random11]

http://www.starpowercomic.com/comic/antros-entry1/

The Air People.

If you remember, there were the Rock People, the Sea People, the Wood People, and the Scorching Desert People, so with the Air People we round out to five elements, the four classical (Earth, Water, Fire, Air) plus Wood to borrow one from Wu Xing.

At least this race doesn't have any characteristics like "wild", "a temperament that can change like the wind" or "air headed".

[Oracle_Hunter]

http://www.starpowercomic.com/comic/antros-entry1/

The Air People.

If you remember, there were the Rock People, the Sea People, the Wood People, and the Scorching Desert People, so with the Air People we round out to five elements, the four classical (Earth, Water, Fire, Air) plus Wood to borrow one from Wu Xing.

Best line from this Mookiepedia Entry:

"Antros cannot survive the vacuum of space, and were only introduced to space travel with the arrival of the Zel Grux"

Apparently every other species can naturally survive in space -- which is how they discovered space travel

It's kind of like saying "Humans cannot survive under the seas, and were only introduced to submarine travel by fish."

[random11]

Best line from this Mookiepedia Entry:

"Antros cannot survive the vacuum of space, and were only introduced to space travel with the arrival of the Zel Grux"

Apparently every other species can naturally survive in space -- which is how they discovered space travel

It's kind of like saying "Humans cannot survive under the seas, and were only introduced to submarine travel by fish."

I'm guessing it means they instantly die instead of other races that can survive for at least a few seconds/minutes?
Makes sense from their description, but not from the text itself.

[Oracle_Hunter]

I'm guessing it means they instantly die instead of other races that can survive for at least a few seconds/minutes?
Makes sense from their description, but not from the text itself.

I mean, most life forms don't handle vacuum all that well. In any case, an inability to survive in vacuum doesn't seem to have held back the space program of any other race in the Mookieverse.

[Gez]

If I put in more thought than Mookie probably did, a race that evolved "swimming" in the dense atmosphere of a gas giant would not have much hard materials with which they could try to venture beyond their habitable range. We humans live on a rocky planet which, quite conveniently, has plenty of heavy materials such as iron and other metals in its crust. (There's even an hypothesis that it's thanks to the colossal impact which created the moon that we've got them, as the heavy metals present in the Earth since its birth had sunk to the iron core when it was still a magma ball.)

Anyway, these cloud-dwelling people cannot go too low or the pressure starts to become crushing and the temperature boiling. They probably can't reach down to the gas giant's solid core by their own means -- they'd need to create vehicles for that, like humans create submarines and airplanes and space-going rockets, but alas, they'd need metals for that. Without the ability to develop a technology on their own, they can't develop a space program, unless they were able to float away to space on their own, and that's where the inability to survive in a vacuum kicks in. But the way they seem to be floating around through buoyancy rather than lift, there's probably an upper limit of the atmosphere beyond which they can't keep climbing anyway, so moot point.

[Traab]

Im with Gez on this. They literally couldnt do space travel because they lacked any ability to make it possible to go to space on their own. I have to admit I would be very interested in learning about a species like this. Do they even have the concept of trade and commerce? We were able to develop it through the abundance of random resources we had to work with. It sounds like these guys wouldnt have had much of anything.

[Oracle_Hunter]

If I put in more thought than Mookie probably did, a race that evolved "swimming" in the dense atmosphere of a gas giant would not have much hard materials with which they could try to venture beyond their habitable range. We humans live on a rocky planet which, quite conveniently, has plenty of heavy materials such as iron and other metals in its crust. (There's even an hypothesis that it's thanks to the colossal impact which created the moon that we've got them, as the heavy metals present in the Earth since its birth had sunk to the iron core when it was still a magma ball.)

Anyway, these cloud-dwelling people cannot go too low or the pressure starts to become crushing and the temperature boiling. They probably can't reach down to the gas giant's solid core by their own means -- they'd need to create vehicles for that, like humans create submarines and airplanes and space-going rockets, but alas, they'd need metals for that. Without the ability to develop a technology on their own, they can't develop a space program, unless they were able to float away to space on their own, and that's where the inability to survive in a vacuum kicks in. But the way they seem to be floating around through buoyancy rather than lift, there's probably an upper limit of the atmosphere beyond which they can't keep climbing anyway, so moot point.

That absolutely makes sense -- and if Mookie had written something even as simple as "adapted to living in the air, the Antros had virtually no technology before the arrival of the Zel Grux" I wouldn't have even batted an eye.

Instead we got word salad.

[Kornaki]

Is this the first we have heard of this reproduction cycle?

[Vinyadan]

We know they had hatcheries.

[Oracle_Hunter]

Rokk Rokk on!

I completely forgot that the Rock People were named Rokkosians. Good thing Mookie spent an entire paragraph comparing the Rokkos to rocks

Also: how is a race known for honesty and compulsive deal-making not bankrupt?

One Human merchant with basic salesmanship would own the whole Rok within a week!

[Kornaki]

Rokk Rokk on!

I completely forgot that the Rock People were named Rokkosians. Good thing Mookie spent an entire paragraph comparing the Rokkos to rocks

Also: how is a race known for honesty and compulsive deal-making not bankrupt?

One Human merchant with basic salesmanship would own the whole Rok within a week!

Honesty doesn't mean gullibility. This doesn't seem impossible. Besides the reputational benefits would be immense - a Rokkosian firm bidding to pave a space road can just say here are the cost of materials, here are the wages, here is how much your road will cost, and why would you not hire them? If you can literally take them at your word why would you ever hire anybody else to do anything? I mean, if they aren't as good as the competition then sure, go with the other guy, but they will literally tell you that their product isn't as good!

[Oracle_Hunter]

Honesty doesn't mean gullibility. This doesn't seem impossible. Besides the reputational benefits would be immense - a Rokkosian firm bidding to pave a space road can just say here are the cost of materials, here are the wages, here is how much your road will cost, and why would you not hire them? If you can literally take them at your word why would you ever hire anybody else to do anything? I mean, if they aren't as good as the competition then sure, go with the other guy, but they will literally tell you that their product isn't as good!

A race that is known for its honesty likely doesn't have much experience with deception until they make First Contact. And that First Contact race can certainly make a killing!

I guess since they were uplifted by the Zel Grux (who, I suppose, found a loving way to teach them about deception) they can avoid destitution.

[Kornaki]

A race that is known for its honesty likely doesn't have much experience with deception until they make First Contact. And that First Contact race can certainly make a killing!

But why would they develop such an instrinsic sense of honesty? Perhaps because everyone on the planet is so suspicious that the only way to get business done is to be completely open and honest; the slightest lie will be found and destroy your reputation because nobody trusts anyone. Like, on Rokkosia there are sleasy car salesmen that no one wants to do business with, only there the sleasy car salesmen are the ones who don't accurately describe the color of the paint. The first human who shows up is instantly shunned and starves to death for reasons he doesn't understand.

I don't know, it doesn't fully hold up maybe but it seems like this is explainable.

In other news,

used force when necessary to quiet less tolerant Rokkosian voices

Just sounds like the ultimate doublethink line to me. These guys were clearly ruthless dictators.

[Oracle_Hunter]

Just sounds like the ultimate doublethink line to me. These guys were clearly ruthless dictators.

Yeah... I think this is just like Earth's pacification -- aliens do First Contact, pick their Collaborateurs and end up with a Vichy Planet.

It's disturbing how frequently this approach to societal change shows up in Mookie's works

[random11]

Back in my DM days, I used to toy with the idea of a race that is physically incapable of lying.
And I don't mean in the fea-lawyer kind of way ("technically I didn't lie, it was the rock that killed him, not me" etc), I mean actually unable to say something they don't believe in.

While I spent some time working on the idea, thinking how a culture from that race might look like, how will they develop differently from what we know, and how will they interact with the rest of the world and specifically the PCs.
At the end, I didn't use the idea. It was too much effort, too many ways it could be misused, and too little gain to the overall story.

[Welf]

Back in my DM days, I used to toy with the idea of a race that is physically incapable of lying.
And I don't mean in the fea-lawyer kind of way ("technically I didn't lie, it was the rock that killed him, not me" etc), I mean actually unable to say something they don't believe in.

While I spent some time working on the idea, thinking how a culture from that race might look like, how will they develop differently from what we know, and how will they interact with the rest of the world and specifically the PCs.
At the end, I didn't use the idea. It was too much effort, too many ways it could be misused, and too little gain to the overall story.

So a society that is 99% like a human one? A lot of people honestly believe in the things the benefit them most.

Like lottery winners who suddenly realize ordinary people already got their fair share.

In our data set, many hundreds of individuals serendipitously receive significant lottery windfalls. We find that the larger is their lottery win, the greater is that person’s subsequent tendency, after controlling for other influences, to switch their political views from left to right. We also provide evidence that lottery winners are more sympathetic to the belief that ordinary people ‘already get a fair share of society’s wealth’.

We are able to observe people before and after a win. Access to longitudinal information gives us advantages denied to most previous researchers on this topic. One reason this is important is because it seems plausible that personality might determine both the number of lottery tickets bought and the political attitudes of the person, and this might thereby lead to a possible spurious association between winning and right-leaning views. We provide, among other kinds of evidence, a simple graphical demonstration that winners disproportionately lean to the right having previously not been right-wing supporters.

[Traab]

Too be fair, that quoted part generally comes after their 500 million dollar powerball jackpot gets reduced to like 270 million due to state and federal taxes before they even see a dime. So I can sorta understand being soured a bit on giving away money when you had a chunk like that removed.

[Welf]

I mostly meant the effect that lottery become less egalitarian after a win, not the political shift.

Maybe a calssic:

Retold from the story in Dale Carnegie's book "How to Win Friends and Influence People"

On May 7, 1931, the most sensational manhunt New York City had ever known had come to it's climax. After weeks of search, "Two Gun" Crowley, the gunman who didn't smoke or drink was at large, trapped in his girlfriends apartment on West End Ave.

One hundred and fifty police officers laid siege to his top floor hideaway. They chopped holes in the roof; they tried to smoke out Crowley, the "cop killer" with tear gas. Then they mounted their machine guns on surrounding buildings and for more than an hour one of New Yorks finest residential areas reverberated with the crack of pistol fire and the rat-tat-tat of machine guns. Crowley, crouching behind an overstuffed chair, fired incessantly at the police. Ten thousand excited people watched the battle. Nothing like it had ever been seen before on the sidewalks of New York.

When Crowley was captured, police commissioner E.P. Mulrooney declared that the two-gun desperado was one of the most dangerous criminals ever encountered in the history of the city. "He will kill," said the commissioner, "at the drop of a feather."

But how did Two Gun Crowley regard himself? We know, because while the police were firing into his apartment, he wrote a letter addressed "To whom it may concern." And as he wrote, the blood flowing form his wounds left a crimson trail on the paper. In his letter, Crowley said, "Under my coat is a weary heart, but a kind one; one that would do nobody any harm."

A short time before writing the letter, Crowley had been having a necking party with his girlfriend on a country road out on Long Island when a policeman walked up to the car and said "Let me see your license."

Without saying a word, Crowley drew his gun and cut the policeman down with a shower of lead. As the dying officer fell, Crowley leaped from the car, grabbed the officers gun, and fired another bullet into the prostrate body. And that was the killer who said "Under my coat is a weary heart, but a kind one; one that would do nobody any harm."

Crowley was sentenced to the electric chair. When he arrived at the death house in Sing Sing, did he say, "This is what I get for killing people"? No, he said, "This is what I get for defending myself."

The point of the story is this: Two Gun Crowley had deceived himself into believing he was something other than what he actually as.

The funny thing is, in random11's scenario you would meet Mr. Crowley and he would tell you he is an honest and peaceful man, and you would know for a certain that he is physically incapable of telling you anything that he doesn't believe deep down.

[random11]

So a society that is 99% like a human one? A lot of people honestly believe in the things the benefit them most.

Like lottery winners who suddenly realize ordinary people already got their fair share.

I was thinking more about the small things, and how they can change the society.
No white lies, no empty compliments, no boasting and exaggerating stories (just think of how many human relationship would end with "does this shirt make me look fat? ").
Literature is basically telling things that didn't happen, so no "little red riding-hood" even if both the story teller and the audience is 100% clear that this is just a story.

[Kato]

But casual lying is something totally different from that... I'm not saying people don't... involuntarily(?) lie, but most lies we tell, we tell very much aware we do so. Yes, sometimes people tell delusional stories they think are true, and much more often, we just don't know any better, or things are not black and white, but real, common lies make up far more than 1% of lies told by people.

Geez, almost forgot to talk about the comic... so we have former Ferengi voice actors now. Yay?