Theorycrafting - Blog Posts

I wonder (have been for a while, just hopping on opportunity) how large the Underland equivalent of Chrotopterus aritus(sp?) or Vampyrum spectrum would be? Assuming they'd likewise scale up and not merely match the size of other fliers, that is.

Also that last image, just, the concept of being able to hug an Aeorestes like that, just aaaaaaa <3 sky fieri

"Bats don't have noticeable muscle-" Me, drawing Ares "That's fascinating, I don't give a fuck."

aaaaaah I love this concept, just... everything about this. Especially since big'ol'bat'bro ought to have had even just *one* night topside.

On the other wing, however, the process of even getting Ares to the Overland... it's complicated. More so than with most canonically-known fliers, given Ares' above-average size. Ares even outright states he won't fit up the staircase leading to the concealed stone (and even if he could, getting a giant bat up all those stairs... well, it's doable, but there's gonna be a lot of cursin' involved), and if he can't fit there, then the laundry grate is similarly an unlikely surface access point. And that's without factoring in the possibility of others intending to use the laundry room during this process... and then the duo would have to scramble back down lest they're still in the building when Animal Control inevitably arrives on scene.

And then there's the decision of how to go about 'bring your pet cottonball companion bond to school'. > Bring Ares into the building? > Ask him to stay up on the roof and somehow convince the teacher to allow the class out to the yard so Ares can do some kind of dynamic entrance? (Assuming there's even an outdoor space on the complex...) > Open the window to let Ares stick his big fluffy head in?

But, aside from all the above... I still very much love everything about this hypothetical scenario.

imagine it’s bring your pet to school day and gregor shows up with ares.

Robo Walker Mech Suits

I started thinking of how I could reimplement mechs into my setting. Currently I'm thinking they would break down into two types, 'Walkers' and 'Mobile Suits'. Walkers would be semi-squishy nukers, more like the 2142 mechs, 2-3 stories high and generally pretty manuverable, but can be killed by tanks rather easily, destroyable with infantry. The 'Mobile Suits' would be much larger and durable, designed more for prolonged engagements and soaking up damage, able to easily kill vehicles but have a harder time targeting infantry and have little to no air defenses making aircraft their hardest counter. Neither would be super common as the common dropships can't carry even a walker meaning it will need a larger or dedicated transport and would then likely only be fielded by the Army.

The alternative I thought before that is that the suits are rather rare, perhaps only one of each variant, very expensive and hard to produce but very powerful and hard to kill, making almost like a Hero unit for vehicle types. Best ways to deal with them would be to field your own or write off the battlefield and nuke it or bombard it from orbit until the target is gone.

My own theory is that a majority of the new Air Nation is made up of former Earth Kingdom subjects for two main reasons. First of all, the simple fact that the Earth Kingdom is the most populous nation in the world means that, if the number of people developing airbending was equally distributed, the lion’s share of new airbenders would appear in the Earth Kingdom. Secondly, it seems like Tenzin got the majority of his “recruits” from Ba Sing Se, where they were refugees fleeing conscription and had no choice but to leave the EK, while others presumably came to Republic City as civil war broke out falling the Earth Queen’s assassination. By contrast, the Korra-era Fire Nation and the two Water Tribes were relatively stable and humane places, so the new airbenders probably had less of an impetus to emigrate. I imagine some did, but it wasn’t a matter of life or death for them. As for the airbenders who stayed behind in the Earth Kingdom, I had a dark idea about that. A few years ago, I was playing with story ideas for a potential Kuvira fic, and I hit upon this idea of a bunch of pro-Kuvira EK airbenders joining her army and being put into a special unit. With a training regiment crudely based off of whatever old books about airbending were floating around the EK, these airbenders would learn to control and manipulate poison gas as an offensive weapon against opposing armies and in fortification-clearing operations. While they would seem rather graceless and clumsy compared to someone like Tenzin, the fact that these “gasbenders” would be wielding clouds of the Avatarverse’s equivalents of mustard gas, phosgene, and chlorine would make them terrifying in their own right, and they would be one of the many things that turned the world against Kuvira. Sadly I never came up with an actual story to put this idea in, but I still have the gasbenders in my back pocket for a rainy day.

Were there no new Air benders in the Fire Nation of Water Tribes? We saw the Air benders pop up in Republic City (EK colony) and Lin had reports of Air benders in the Earth Kingdom.

Does this mean Air benders come from “the people of the earth element” or that the other two nations just kept quiet about it?  It certainly would have been interesting to see how the modern Fire Nation deals Air benders in their midst. 

Where did the Air benders come from in the pre- fire- conquest days? Where they all born within the nomadic- monk society? That seems very unlikely. Where they born elsewhere and joined the order as a “higher calling”? Where they Air benders from all nations or just the Earth kingdom? and if so, why? 

While Tenzin & Krew pressured the new Air benders to join it was a voluntary choice in the end. Was it always that way?  what I’m getting at is … there may be people with Air bending abilities that are not part of the Air bending culture/ society. Are they self taught? are they lying dormant? What are the stories of the non joiners?

This is very embarrassing, but I forgot to link the blog post that discussed Kuvira. It’s right here: https://futuristdolmen.wordpress.com/2015/08/23/kuvira-an-appraisal-of-the-woman-and-her-works/

A piece I did for avatarfanzine - Children of the Earth zine, which if you pre-ordered it, should be getting it real soon. I wished Kuvira would’ve had a longer season to shine a lot more. She genuinely saw herself as the hero of the people.

I’ve always been very reluctant to equate Kuvira to either Chaing or Mao. Part of the problem is that if you start looking for 1:1 historical analogies in fantasy worlds you end up developing tunnel vision you miss out on what the writer is actually trying to do with their setting. The other issue is that Bryke never really made it clear what Kuvira’s beliefs and ideology were beyond a few speeches and a handful of background details that don’t entirely fit together. Back when B4 was airing the revelation of the Earth Empire’s internment camps caused a stir in the fandom (at least among the Kuvira fans), since there was literally nothing in Kuvira’s backstory or behavior to explain why she would be an ethnic chauvinist. This old blog post took an interesting tack by discussing Kuvira’s context in the world history of Avatar and suggesting that she might be closer to Kemal Atatürk than any figure from modern Chinese history. (There’s also some neat discussion of the personal and political relationship between Kuvira and Suyin too!)

A piece I did for avatarfanzine - Children of the Earth zine, which if you pre-ordered it, should be getting it real soon. I wished Kuvira would’ve had a longer season to shine a lot more. She genuinely saw herself as the hero of the people.