You’re all probably right; BoneClaw Mother and the Hag would certainly see each other as kindred spirits. But just for the sake of argument, imagine that they found themselves on opposite sides: the Hag insisting that Digger must rest and heal, both physically and spiritually, before embarking on any more nonsense, and BoneClaw Mother insisting just as … um, insistently … that Digger still has work to do before she can rest.
Ignore, at least for the moment, that Digger’s work ethic would almost certainly put her firmly on BoneClaw Mother’s side in this particular example.
(I think my money would still be on BCM; the Hag is good, and youthful enthusiasm plus no small degree of skill counts for a lot, but BoneClaw mother has decades of experience on her … )
Ursula, I want to tell you what an absolutely amazing writer and artist you are. A single character in your story has more personality than the entire cast of some books together. Ed is the first character in any story I’ve cried over in years. Your abilities are flooring and I wish you the utmost success in anything you put your pen to.
CJ — one of the things that makes Boneclaw Mother more appealing to me as a role model than Granny Weatherwax (though I admire them both beyond words!) is that we at least don’t *see* Boneclaw Mother worrying much about starting to cackle. (Or about starting to consider installing oversized ovens or gingerbread siding.) Granny, despite appearances, is constantly checking herself; she is the watcher as well as the watched. (as in, “quis custodiet ipsos custodes”)
I’m sure Boneclaw Mother keeps an eye on her ethics, but I don’t see her as having a Black Aliss in her family tree.
*sighs with relief* I’m an unabashed Jhalm fan, so I’m really glad to hear that he didn’t cross this line. Of course, that’s entirely due to Boneclaw Mother and her awesome, but I’m happy that I can still like the man.
(Also, “Freaky adopted daughter!” made me snerk out loud.)
Interesting, Gramina. I particularly *like* the fact that Granny W is the watcher and the watched. Self-knowledge is an illuminating game to play, don’t you think? And I bet that if we were treated to as many pages of BCM as we have been for Granny W (oh, I *wish*!!!) then we would be seeing similar self-referential asides. She’s just too darned together to not think like that.
@Jason: Her aunt was called “Blood-tail” if my obsessive memorising of details of The People from this comic serves me well.
You know, I had a meaningful comment to make here, but I forgot it as soon as I got to the “Freaky Adopted Daughter” line and involuntarily shouted “Marry Me Boneclaw!” at my computer screen. Now that Iām feeling a lot better and have got over the urge to profess what TV tropes refers to as āperverse sexual lustā* I may as well point out that Iāve always though as Boneclaw as being a half-way point between Mistress Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg, simply because you canāt ever picture Granny Weatherwax having fun. Ever. The world would explode. Or implode. Or transplode. Oh, she enjoys herself when sheās fixing something with which she Canāt Be Having, and she smiles, a LOT, but thatās not the same as Fun. Boneclaw is Granny with a sense of Humour (and not a clean one), and thatās a very very frightening prospect. It sufficiently awesome that no-one will care, but Iād not cross her for a big clock. The Hag I could cope with, because Iāve had Osteoarchaeology lectures like that. They wouldnāt resort to mind-games because just shouting and telling people off in a stern voice has always worked for them, Boneclaw might getā¦ creativeā¦ and once you find yourself in that situation the only way to win is to be better at being Boneclaw that Boneclaw is, at which point your stuck doing her job for her whist she can relax. She doesnāt need to watch herself as much, unlike granny she’s good with people and so has things running in a way so that any evil cackling tendencies she develops will be politely pointed out by Shade-bones and Owl-Caller, or if the worse happens and she goes evil the only way she will be beaten is my some who learns to think like her, and so is a good replacement once they beat her. Weatherwax, Ogg and Vetinari all in one, my fellow Pratchett fans.
*Itās not as bad as the trope makes it sound: the trope definition is basically Any emotional or romantic attraction whatsoever to a fictional character, the fact they are fictional being the only āperverseā bit. I’d just quite like to go for a quite drink with her somewhere and maybe swap dirty jokes. For example, the trope āPerverse Asexual Cuddle Lustā where you canāt help but want to give someone a hug despite being fictional, well, that trope IS Ed and he IS that trope.
Hmm. If I remember correctly, an explosion is a rapid increase in the volume of a substance at greater than the local speed of sound (phase+), and an implosion is a similarly rapid decrease (phase-). I’m thinking a transplosion would have elements of both, so the simplest case would be phase+ on one side of a central plane and phase- on the other. A basic transplosion would therefore look like a chunk of material moving supersonically in one direction.
Or if you want to look up spherical harmonics, you could play games with the patterns: instead of a simple dipole (only one phase+ and one phase-), how about a quadrupole (2 of each) or even octopole (4 of each) transplosion?
(This ignores the thermodynamic absurdities of the external pressure suddenly deciding to be much higher than the pressure in your chunk on the implosion side and much lower on the explosion side, and of creating a high-and-increasing-pressure and a low-and-decreasing-pressure region immediately adjacent. I can’t think of any way that could work, short of cheating and putting the chunk across a pinhole in a membrane: this isn’t just a cheat for the use of the membrane, but also for allowing mass transport between the two phases. And if you can bypass thermodynamics, I think you’ll have more interesting things to do with the knowledge.)
[Needs to stop self-nerdsniping!]
Hey, as long as we’re theorizing, just mix in some quantum mechanics and the Newtonian laws get real flexible.
I’m thinking quantum entanglement is just the trick to get the implosion/explosion combination you describe. Now we just have to figure out how to make it happen for some good old fashioned empirical observation.
You’re all probably right; BoneClaw Mother and the Hag would certainly see each other as kindred spirits. But just for the sake of argument, imagine that they found themselves on opposite sides: the Hag insisting that Digger must rest and heal, both physically and spiritually, before embarking on any more nonsense, and BoneClaw Mother insisting just as … um, insistently … that Digger still has work to do before she can rest.
Ignore, at least for the moment, that Digger’s work ethic would almost certainly put her firmly on BoneClaw Mother’s side in this particular example.
(I think my money would still be on BCM; the Hag is good, and youthful enthusiasm plus no small degree of skill counts for a lot, but BoneClaw mother has decades of experience on her … )
š
BCM also has the services of a small army under her command. The Hag has nothing but a dog-eared copy of “101 Goat Diseases.”
Ursula, I want to tell you what an absolutely amazing writer and artist you are. A single character in your story has more personality than the entire cast of some books together. Ed is the first character in any story I’ve cried over in years. Your abilities are flooring and I wish you the utmost success in anything you put your pen to.
CJ — one of the things that makes Boneclaw Mother more appealing to me as a role model than Granny Weatherwax (though I admire them both beyond words!) is that we at least don’t *see* Boneclaw Mother worrying much about starting to cackle. (Or about starting to consider installing oversized ovens or gingerbread siding.) Granny, despite appearances, is constantly checking herself; she is the watcher as well as the watched. (as in, “quis custodiet ipsos custodes”)
I’m sure Boneclaw Mother keeps an eye on her ethics, but I don’t see her as having a Black Aliss in her family tree.
Barry — one of the things that delights me in these comments is how many crossover Vernon/Pratchett fans there are here š
*sighs with relief* I’m an unabashed Jhalm fan, so I’m really glad to hear that he didn’t cross this line. Of course, that’s entirely due to Boneclaw Mother and her awesome, but I’m happy that I can still like the man.
(Also, “Freaky adopted daughter!” made me snerk out loud.)
http://icanhascheezburger.com/2010/12/10/funny-pictures-mortal-wombat/#comments = Digger
Interesting, Gramina. I particularly *like* the fact that Granny W is the watcher and the watched. Self-knowledge is an illuminating game to play, don’t you think? And I bet that if we were treated to as many pages of BCM as we have been for Granny W (oh, I *wish*!!!) then we would be seeing similar self-referential asides. She’s just too darned together to not think like that.
@Jason: Her aunt was called “Blood-tail” if my obsessive memorising of details of The People from this comic serves me well.
You know, I had a meaningful comment to make here, but I forgot it as soon as I got to the “Freaky Adopted Daughter” line and involuntarily shouted “Marry Me Boneclaw!” at my computer screen. Now that Iām feeling a lot better and have got over the urge to profess what TV tropes refers to as āperverse sexual lustā* I may as well point out that Iāve always though as Boneclaw as being a half-way point between Mistress Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg, simply because you canāt ever picture Granny Weatherwax having fun. Ever. The world would explode. Or implode. Or transplode. Oh, she enjoys herself when sheās fixing something with which she Canāt Be Having, and she smiles, a LOT, but thatās not the same as Fun. Boneclaw is Granny with a sense of Humour (and not a clean one), and thatās a very very frightening prospect. It sufficiently awesome that no-one will care, but Iād not cross her for a big clock. The Hag I could cope with, because Iāve had Osteoarchaeology lectures like that. They wouldnāt resort to mind-games because just shouting and telling people off in a stern voice has always worked for them, Boneclaw might getā¦ creativeā¦ and once you find yourself in that situation the only way to win is to be better at being Boneclaw that Boneclaw is, at which point your stuck doing her job for her whist she can relax. She doesnāt need to watch herself as much, unlike granny she’s good with people and so has things running in a way so that any evil cackling tendencies she develops will be politely pointed out by Shade-bones and Owl-Caller, or if the worse happens and she goes evil the only way she will be beaten is my some who learns to think like her, and so is a good replacement once they beat her. Weatherwax, Ogg and Vetinari all in one, my fellow Pratchett fans.
*Itās not as bad as the trope makes it sound: the trope definition is basically Any emotional or romantic attraction whatsoever to a fictional character, the fact they are fictional being the only āperverseā bit. I’d just quite like to go for a quite drink with her somewhere and maybe swap dirty jokes. For example, the trope āPerverse Asexual Cuddle Lustā where you canāt help but want to give someone a hug despite being fictional, well, that trope IS Ed and he IS that trope.
I must now make it my life’s work to cause something to transplode, just to see what it looks like …
š
Hmm. If I remember correctly, an explosion is a rapid increase in the volume of a substance at greater than the local speed of sound (phase+), and an implosion is a similarly rapid decrease (phase-). I’m thinking a transplosion would have elements of both, so the simplest case would be phase+ on one side of a central plane and phase- on the other. A basic transplosion would therefore look like a chunk of material moving supersonically in one direction.
Or if you want to look up spherical harmonics, you could play games with the patterns: instead of a simple dipole (only one phase+ and one phase-), how about a quadrupole (2 of each) or even octopole (4 of each) transplosion?
(This ignores the thermodynamic absurdities of the external pressure suddenly deciding to be much higher than the pressure in your chunk on the implosion side and much lower on the explosion side, and of creating a high-and-increasing-pressure and a low-and-decreasing-pressure region immediately adjacent. I can’t think of any way that could work, short of cheating and putting the chunk across a pinhole in a membrane: this isn’t just a cheat for the use of the membrane, but also for allowing mass transport between the two phases. And if you can bypass thermodynamics, I think you’ll have more interesting things to do with the knowledge.)
[Needs to stop self-nerdsniping!]
Hey, as long as we’re theorizing, just mix in some quantum mechanics and the Newtonian laws get real flexible.
I’m thinking quantum entanglement is just the trick to get the implosion/explosion combination you describe. Now we just have to figure out how to make it happen for some good old fashioned empirical observation.
I’ll get my transplosion yet!
š
Still haven’t gotten a good transplosion yet. š