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Author Topic: Unconscious references to RL  (Read 4024 times)

orange

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Re: Unconscious references to RL
« Reply #30 on: 25 Sep 2013, 08:18 »

"What is a cat?"
This is kind of relevant to what we're doing. All kinds of weird stuff is known about New Eden's flora and fauna but next to nothing when it comes to the important things like crops, domestic animals and invasive species. Because most habitable planets in the cluster are terraformed, it's not at all clear that everything except the curiosities work exactly as in the real world. Maybe some extrapolation could be done based on the known facts about the societies, cultures and religions - how these structures evolve tends to depend on the environment.

Anyhow, in my view the principle of least surprise would say here that it's safer to assume there exist cats and other kinds of dogs than the Slaver hound, than that they've all somehow gone extinct in the whole cluster, or that humans no longer have interest in pets.

There is a the question of what did the first settlers bring along with them (physical animals or gene stock).  For example, there may be very, very few poisonous snakes and thus someone using the term viper or cobra is making an extremely obscure reference.

Artificial worlds and biospheres create all kinds of opportunities for "dangerous" parts of Earth's fauna to be left out.
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Lyn Farel

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Re: Unconscious references to RL
« Reply #31 on: 25 Sep 2013, 09:21 »

"What is a cat?"
This is kind of relevant to what we're doing. All kinds of weird stuff is known about New Eden's flora and fauna but next to nothing when it comes to the important things like crops, domestic animals and invasive species. Because most habitable planets in the cluster are terraformed, it's not at all clear that everything except the curiosities work exactly as in the real world. Maybe some extrapolation could be done based on the known facts about the societies, cultures and religions - how these structures evolve tends to depend on the environment.

Anyhow, in my view the principle of least surprise would say here that it's safer to assume there exist cats and other kinds of dogs than the Slaver hound, than that they've all somehow gone extinct in the whole cluster, or that humans no longer have interest in pets.

There is a the question of what did the first settlers bring along with them (physical animals or gene stock).  For example, there may be very, very few poisonous snakes and thus someone using the term viper or cobra is making an extremely obscure reference.

Artificial worlds and biospheres create all kinds of opportunities for "dangerous" parts of Earth's fauna to be left out.

Or maybe they started to re-use vipers and cobras to call the new serpentine things they met in New Eden. Letting behind the the old snakes only to find new exotic ones...

Lots of conflicting possibilities. Schrodinger is happy.
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Arista Shahni

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Re: Unconscious references to RL
« Reply #32 on: 25 Sep 2013, 10:36 »

Schrodinger is happy.

Or maybe not.. we would have to check...
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Steffanie Saissore

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Re: Unconscious references to RL
« Reply #33 on: 25 Sep 2013, 11:07 »

Speaking of standard units, if people could please add what amount of cm / metres equals to their feet and inches and gallons and other non international units they use in their bios and all, it would be awesome at times, because it's gibberish for people that do not speak them.

We are told to speak english by convention because it's the international language, so would be cool if people did the same for international units...

For me, I have a hard time with height and weight in metric units for some reason; part of it is likely that growing up, even though everything else was in metric, height and weight were still referred to by imperial units.  So, when someone says they are 1.8m (or 180cm) tall, that number doesn't translate well for me, it has no meaning. Tell me your character is 6 feet tall, I have a reference point to work with and now know how tall the character is (same thing goes with weight).

Ironically, and this might be a by-product of Canada, but distances (either miles or km) are also kind of vague for me since almost everyone I know here never answers "oh, it's 5km to our place from yours" but rather "it's a five minute drive". We seem to refer to distances not by the actual distance traveled but by how long it takes to get there.
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"And if the music stops, there's only the sound of the rain.  All the hope and glory, all the sacrifice in vain.  And if love remains though everything is lost, we will pay the price, but we will not count the cost."

Anabella Rella

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Re: Unconscious references to RL
« Reply #34 on: 25 Sep 2013, 12:14 »

I'm pretty relaxed on things so long as people stay away from references to current events, politics, pop culture, etc. As others have said, while we don't want to break immersion unnecessarily, we still need to be able to communicate our thoughts quickly and simply.

Ana enjoys drinking whiskey rather than "an amber colored distilled alcoholic beverage made from fermented grain mash". It may be a little lazy to believe that the term whiskey will be used in 25,000 or so years but, everyone understands what I mean and it's way more convenient. I doesn't mention drinking Scotch or Bourbon whiskey as those are obviously products of modern Earth. For me, another player doesn't have to say that their character enjoys drinking a Pator Pale Ale rather than the more generic "beer" so long as they don't mention the name of some RL brand.
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Seriphyn

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Re: Unconscious references to RL
« Reply #35 on: 25 Sep 2013, 12:33 »

Google easily converts everything if one types "100cm in feet" into the search bar. It should be easy to convert on that basis, because yeah, I too find imperial measurements in EVE on the trivial side of immersion breaking.
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Lyn Farel

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Re: Unconscious references to RL
« Reply #36 on: 25 Sep 2013, 13:01 »

That's not so that I find imperial measurements immersion breaking per se, it's just like hearing another language i'm not familiar with. Usually I don't mind much and I go google translate, but doing that everytime I see a bio or someone using those is rather... exhausting, to say the least.

That's a little like if I started to talk to you in something else than english and expected you to understand.
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Vieve

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Re: Unconscious references to RL
« Reply #37 on: 25 Sep 2013, 17:47 »

Artificial worlds and biospheres create all kinds of opportunities for "dangerous" parts of Earth's fauna to be left out.

And there you go stumbling upon my personal rationale for why Caldari Prime got settled in the first place, when there were nicer planets (e.g. in Pettnick and Mies) not so far away.  A bleak "sterile" planet might have been believed to be easier to terraform rapidly -- especially if the early colonists were bound by regulations to preserve native biospheres if they could support life -- than something with an existing biosphere.



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Lyn Farel

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Re: Unconscious references to RL
« Reply #38 on: 26 Sep 2013, 02:27 »

Maybe valuable resources and CP was actually supposed to be the mining satellite of the main populated planet in Luminaire.
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