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Originally posted by Giantevilhead:
OK, so the hands of blue guys are missing, presumed dead, and the Operative is a turncoat. The Alliance now needs someone else to track down River. How about a group of former Academy student who are all blind, deaf, anosmic, and mute? We know that River was the most promising student at the Academy so it's reasonable to assume that her psychic abilities are far superior to that of all the other students. To compensate for that, the Academy destroyed the five senses of some of its other psychics so that they would have to rely entirely upon their mind to perceive the world which strengthens their psychic abilities to a level equal to or even greater than that of River’s. Plus it would be cool if they have the ability to destroy the five sense of other people What do you think of this idea?

"I swallowed a bug." -River Tam

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Originally posted by Giantevilhead:
1. They only match River's psychic abilities.

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Not according to you. and I quote:

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Academy destroyed the five senses of some of its other psychics so that they would have to rely entirely upon their mind to perceive the world which strengthens their psychic abilities to a level equal to or even greater than that of River’s.

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This "only matching" her abilities was NOT in your original post. Please don't pretend it was. You said match or GREATER. That pushed it over the edge into "overkill" a tad.

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They have one sense to substitute for five and they have to rely on it all the time, it is as much a strength as it is a weakness. Sure they can perceive things in greater detail and at greater range than the five senses but they're not going to be able to use telepathy, postcognition, clairvoyance, clairaudience, clairsentience, whatever the heck psychic taste and smell are called, all at the same time, they'll be able to use two maybe three of those abilities at the same time. Not to mention the fact that they'll be completely helpless if their psychic abilities are suppressed or disrupted.

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This sounds slightly better, but as I said, the issue wasn't the idea of using a supression of the senses to enhance the psychic abilities, it was the "overkill" factor. ;)

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2. Visual communication + sign language. Plus each of them would have a normal person to speak for them.

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Uh... VISUAL?

Let's quote you again, shall we?:

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Academy destroyed the five senses of some of its other psychics so that they would have to rely entirely upon their mind to perceive the world which strengthens their psychic abilities to a level equal to or even greater than that of River’s.

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In case you hadn't noticed, sign language/visual communication takes VISION, which is one of the five senses. ;)

Besides, it still doesn't address the fact that, without eyes, they couldn't really communicate long-range. I don't mean a few hundred yards, either, I mean across an entire planet. If they can do THAT with their minds, it's very Sueish.

I think you also might consider exactly what "the five senses" means. It includes "touch". See, I don't see how you could destroy a person's sense of touch without making them either paralyzed or less effective as a fighter. Also, considering your entire body is wired for touch, I don't see it being easily destroyed.

See, if you left touch in, though (maybe slightly diminished, but still there), they could communicate through a coded form of braille or some other similar touch-based communication. That would take care of the really long-range stuff.

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3. Well, got to give them something to match the hands of blue's hemorrhaging device.

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Actually, you don't "got" to give them something like that. And hell, at least the Blue Hands guys had an actual device. It wasn't their MIND. That's just, as I said, a bit of an overkill.

Also, the fact that they apparently operate on psychic abilities alone but still apparently manage to be effective fighters/hunters is impressive enough. And if you really want to give them something like the Blue Hands' hemmorhage device... why not... you know... give them the same device? Makes more sense within what we know from canon.

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Oh and I don't really intend to write many fanfics since I'm a bad writer.

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And if you continue to say that, you will ALWAYS be a bad writer. NEVER call yourself a "bad writer", even if what you write does tend to be crap or you're just not happy with it. At the point where most would call you "bad", you are a writer in training. ;) It's just like walking or learning to talk or learning to do anything, really; you have to crawl long before you can run a marathon, and you may never be able to run that marathon, but you sure as hell won't if you keep saying "I will never be good enough to do it". Never say you're "bad" at something. Say you're still learning to do it well.

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I'm only good at coming up with insane and twisted ideas.

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Again, keep saying that and it really WILL be all you're good at. Why do you think I recommended places to get constructive criticism and offered to beta-read? If you're willing to work on your stuff, you aren't a bad writer, just one who isn't really fantastic yet. A "bad" writer is one who doesn't give a crap about their work and puts no effort into it. Not trying at all because you think it "won't be good enough" certainly DOES make you a bad writer, but it's that and not your writing skills that does it.

Can you tell I'm a tad passionate about the subject? :P


-Runa27

Can't Stop The Signal

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Originally posted by Giantevilhead:
I'm a bad writer because there is too big of a discrepancy between the way I think and what constitutes as good writing. I think the way Yoda speaks and most of my thoughts are too eccentric to be articulated in a way that people can understand. Half the time I don't even understand what the heck I'm thinking.

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I think you misunderstand me; you are only a truly bad writer if you aren't willing to work at the craft or rather, at how you use it in your stories.

As far as coherency goes and whatnot... that's what betas are for, you know. So long as you're willing to listen to and take advice, you're not a truly horrible writer, trust me. Again, you'd just be a writer still learning the craft, which puts you in the same boat as a LOT of other people.

Eccentricity isn't bad in and of itself, either. Firefly is actually somewhat eccentric (like that wouldn't be obvious, what with there being cowboys in space that speak Chinese and fly a spaceship that looks like a giant - if kinda cute - bug), yet here we all are, aren't we. Buffy was extremely eccentric when you think about it, and THAT one was a smash hit and is part of our culture now. I think your main problem isn't that you have odd ideas (because odd ideas can be made to work if you want them to), it's just that you're worrying about just getting the ideas across, right? Well, again... a beta cah help ENORMOUSLY with this. That is, in fact, the entire point of a beta; to tell you what's confusing and how everything comes across to the reader, and to help you make things less confusing and get your message across to the reader.

Again, you are only a bad writer if you consciously CHOOSE to let yourself become, or worse, remain one.

And also again, as I said I'm perfectly willing to beta for you.


-Runa27

Can't Stop The Signal

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Originally posted by Giantevilhead:
I understand you perfectly. You have misunderstood me. I have a non-Euclidian, Lovecraftian, Cthulhu, Elder Gods, the Tick type of eccentricity. Not only are many of ideas incoherent, the majority of my coherent ideas would prove to be extremely unpopular. Once I had an idea for a sci-fi story that took place after a nuclear war where the Soviets won. When I was a kid I had an idea for a superhero called the Insomniac, who had the ability to manifest his dreams into reality when he became extremely sleep deprived. Another insane sci-fi idea I had was about a group of people who traveled back in time 6 billion years and discovered that the earth did not exist. Those are some of my least insane ideas; my truly insane ideas would make your brain explode with jelly beans and gummy worms.
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Says a person who hasn't seen my work.

In one story, I have a vegetarian vampire who's afraid of the dark, a germ-phobic immortal demon (who can fly, but is terrified of heights), and a girl who ends up the Chosen Champion for an Uber Special Weapon, which turns out to be a kitchen utensil (a spatula, to be exact). And that's not including the idea I had for a steam-breathing dragon, and the one I still plan to include with the OMG TERRIFYING MONSTER that turns out to be a rabbit that ate lettuce covered in pixie droppings and mutated.

I also have stories about a girl who drowns in a flood trying to protect her friend (who survives, thankfully, and then leaves because the place is too painful to stick around in), and spends ten years as a ghost trying to find her again, occasionally helping out people along the way (because that's just the kind of person she was), and becoming known in that town as the Good Samaritan Ghost. This may not sound all that weird (then again, neither did a couple of yours, either!)... but it's the execution that would be strange. See, she doesn't particularly realize she's dead. Anytime somebody gently tries to tell her she is, it just doesn't get through to her - not until her friend comes along again years later. She also becomes a bit of a tourist attraction, because she comes into the bar every night for a quick meal and a drink before going off in search of her friend again! What's more, she's not the only ghost there, so the whole town over the years bounces back because of a boom in the tourism industry. There's also an amusing point at which her friend, upon discovering her ghost, tries to show her her grave to show her that she's really dead... she brings her to the graveyard, right up to her gravestone, and she gestures towards it. After a long, long pause, the ghost reminds her that she can't read. So, the friend finally just out and tells her she's dead. Ghost!girl is incredibly shocked at this revelation, and says "Why didn't anyone tell me!?"

She then shrugs it off, figuring, "hey, I'm already dead. Why worry about it?", and decides to start following her old friend around again to protect her.

She also disappears when she naps. Which is pretty creepy when you walk into a room and accidentally wake her up...

So yeah. You're not all that weird. No weirder than me, really.

And your post-nuclear war story where the Soviets won? Um, that's called "alternate history" SF. People do that kind of thing all the time, and that particular plotbunny sounds actually rather interesting.

You clearly have some interesting concepts and ideas in your head. I just wish you would stop disparaging yourself. Weird stories won't be bad just because they're weird (sometimes weird is better!), and who the hell cares if it's enormously popular or not? We're Browncoats, you think we care about only sticking with hugely popular, successful stories? :P We wouldn't be here if we did.

I don't mean to be instrusive or anything, but you strike me as a person who has a lot of neat ideas and could be really good writer if they put their mind to it, but who is actually scared of putting anything more than a vague "hey, wouldn't it be neat if...?" idea out, so you make excuses to yourself; "my ideas are too weird for other people", "it'll all not make sense to other people", "I'm a bad writer", etc. Maybe it's because I've been there, in that too-scared-to-write stage, where you think that your work won't be "perfect", so you make excuses not to write (I'm tired, I have stuff to do, I need to do laundry, etc.). To this day, I'm fighting the urge to procrastinate endlessly even on my real "baby", a story that's been with me since I was 13 and has grown up with me and has a lot of good possibilities and a well-planned plot and everything. Even though I love it, even though I'm scared of letting the characters die with me, I procrastinate because sometimes deep down I don't feel like I can do them justice, and it hurts and is really discouraging if I mention something about a character from there and somebody says something disparaging about them (I once had a person absolutely insist that my werewolf character Runa was a Mary Sue because she had a similar name to my usual username and I had had some fun thinking of ideas for how she'd handle being in the Buffyverse or Potterverse. Which hurt only because she started out as a Sue and I've spent six years turning her into a likeable, believeble, flawed, three-dimensional character to have one person insist over and over that I had completley failed... without giving the story or character a chance at all). So it could be that I'm seeing myself in you. But, I'm not sure that's all it is, really. Your basic ideas don't seem to be bad for the most part (they occasionally seem to need tweaks, but so do most stories!), and your excuses for not writing and justifcations for calling yourself a "bad" writer are becoming more and more weak tea. When I told you you were only only a bad writer if you kept telling yourself you were, you said basically, "no, it'd be too incoherent". When I told you a good beta could easily help remedy that, you started saying "my ideas are weird", which is certainly no excuse. Buffy was a weird idea. Firefly was a weird idea. They both turned out to be surprisingly fun and intelligent stories.

Seems to me, you're just scared of not being perfect - a fear I often share, as do others I know. My advice is to stop being so scared, and just take the plunge. I guarantee that it will be worth it! No, your early efforts probably won't be that good. But NOBODY's early efforts are all that good! We all start out writing crap and then get better, it's just the way it is.

It's either that, or you could always hire a ghostwriter, I suppose. Then you could at least stop feeling like (I would assume you felt like this, as you strike me as the type, correct me if I'm wrong of course) you have all these ideas that will go nowhere. Writer's Digest has listings that include ghostwriters, as do other services.


-Runa27




Can't Stop The Signal