The Saga of Emiko Station - Complete

[Just Jim]

5 minutes ago, GarrisonChisholm said:

No my friends. Clearly, we are about to behold the appearance of...

 

...the Kwisatz HaderaK...

*grins creepily*

Ohhhhhhahahahhahahaha   And he's a generation early!!!  

[Geschosskopf]

6 hours ago, Just Jim said:

Actually this was kind of fascinating.  I've been working on an outline for a real novel, and one of the things I was thinking is humans born in gravity other than Earth's, say a Mars colony, could end up seriously screwed up.
Looks like I'm on the right track.

As for the game, Kerbals can be born in any gravity....  at least in my universe...

Yeah, this has been a staple of science fiction since pretty much the get-go.  In my own doodles in this regard, I had everybody infused with nanobots keeping them happy and healthy, but with the different gravitationally enforced subspecies tweaking their nanobots to keep them alive and even adapted to their various environments.  Thus, despite humanity still being a single genetic species with all members technically capable of interbreeding, getting the wrong type of nanobots in your bloodstream was essentially like contracting a deadly disease.  All sorts of fun to be had along those lines

But it's obvious no such problems exist for Kerbals.  The opening main menu screen of the game has Jeb, Bill, and Bob all floating on EVA at whatever angle suits them, without a ground-pounder's instinctive drive to have everybody at the same orientation.  Kerbals therefore are totally adapted to life in free-fall, and if they can do that, varying amounts of gravity shouldn't have any real physiological effect on their ensuing generations.

[Just Jim]

46 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

But it's obvious no such problems exist for Kerbals.  The opening main menu screen of the game has Jeb, Bill, and Bob all floating on EVA at whatever angle suits them, without a ground-pounder's instinctive drive to have everybody at the same orientation.  Kerbals therefore are totally adapted to life in free-fall, and if they can do that, varying amounts of gravity shouldn't have any real physiological effect on their ensuing generations.

What is really fun about them is there is so little canon... I think that's the appropriate term, for them... about them?  For us writers it's pretty much up to our imaginations, I guess.  At least until Squad comes up with an official story.  And I rather think they're too busy at the moment for that.

I already have enough going on in my corner of the multi-verse, so yeah, I figure they're already well adapted for life in a space suit, so to speak.  I like to think of them like the minions on Despicable Me.  I'm not going to explain what they are... they just are...  

I do think to speed things up mine will mature a lot quicker than humans... they are smaller, after all... but have much longer natural lifespans... repeat, natural.... they do seem to have a fondness for explody things... . 

Edited January 23, 2016 by Just Jim
spelling and wording

[Geschosskopf]

39 minutes ago, Just Jim said:

What is really fun about them is there is so little canon... I think that's the appropriate term, for them... about them?  For us writers it's pretty much up to our imaginations, I guess.  At least until Squad comes up with an official story.  And I rather think they're too busy at the moment for that.

I already have enough going on in my corner of the multi-verse, so yeah, I figure they're already well adapted for life in a space suit, so to speak.  I like to think of them like the minions on Despicable Me.  I'm not going to explain what they are... they just are...  

I do think to speed things up mine will mature a lot quicker than humans... they are smaller, after all... but have much longer natural lifespans... repeat, natural.... they do seem to have a fondness for explody things... . 

Well, Squad opened Pandora's box on the canon of Kerbal biology by introducing "girbals".  Before, you could imagine Kerbal biology any way you wanted, even having them be all artificial constructs.  Now we have to account for gender and sexual dimorphism somehow, whether in its literal sense as you're doing or in some other way, such as having larval/instar forms vs. mature forms, different castes like ants and termites, complex life-cycles as with ferns and fungi, etc.  All to appease those who get too easily offended over something that exists only as electrons in memory chips......

[Commander Zoom]

That's not the only reason [why female kerbals were added], and you know it.

Edited January 23, 2016 by Commander Zoom

[KSK]

Hey, hey - let's not derail the thread by getting into that debate again.

Besides, bigendered kerbals have one stirling advantage for us English speaking authors - the pronouns get a lot easier to use!

I'm not kidding - my own 'fic has quite a bit of background about that side of kerbal biology and originally, my kerbals were intended to be genderless (in keeping with prevailing canon at the time) with gender only becoming a thing under specific (and obvious ) circumstances. In the end, I just went for male/female characters, in part because I wasn't really happy with 'he' as the generic pronoun (stylistically it's OK but I wasn't comfortable with it) and none of the neutral or deliberately asexual pronouns really worked for me. Greg Egan does it very well. Me - not so much.

Edit - I totally agree with Jim though about kerbals being so fun to write about because of the lack of canon! We have some instantly recognisable names, a handful of characters, maybe a meme or two - and that's it. Everything else is up to us. It's the best of both worlds - a recognisable setting that's almost completely malleable.

Edited January 23, 2016 by KSK

[Just Jim]

I'm sure it's obvious I like having the Girbals for my story, so I can delve into the romance parts.  And I think they're cute... 
But I don't think I'm going to get too specific about things like the kid(s).  Maybe just write it off with something like:

"One moment they're crawling around the space station, the next thing you know, they're piloting their own shuttle.... <Sigh> They grow up so fast..."

And leave it at that.  I really don't want to try and invent my own canon, and take the chance of it erupting into something it's not intended to be.
Again, I think I'll just treat them like minions.  I'm not gonna get specific explaining what they are, they just are... 

Edited January 23, 2016 by Just Jim
forgot a word

[KSK]

Heh - they'd better move the airlock controls out of reach of small fingers.  I can just picture the nippers crawling around underfoot, probably having an absolute blast in low gravity. Or the Emiko Station, low gravity soft-play and flying practice area. Population: 2.

But yeah - some other story perhaps.

[Just Jim]

28 minutes ago, KSK said:

Heh - they'd better move the airlock controls out of reach of small fingers.  I can just picture the nippers crawling around underfoot, probably having an absolute blast in low gravity. Or the Emiko Station, low gravity soft-play and flying practice area. Population: 2.

Oh, goofy stories of them growing up I already have planned... 
I just don't want to get into the actual biology of it all or anything like that. 

[GDJ]

16 hours ago, GarrisonChisholm said:

...the Kwisatz HaderaK...

Hmmm........anybody see a giant sand worm in the deserts of Kerbin?

OH CRAP! That explains the pyramids........

[Just Jim]

6 hours ago, GDJ said:

Hmmm........anybody see a giant sand worm in the deserts of Kerbin?

OH CRAP! That explains the pyramids........

Likely.... have you seen the statue in front of the pyramids?  If that isn't the god-emperor of Kerbin, I don't know what is!!!!

[GDJ]

19 hours ago, Just Jim said:

Likely.... have you seen the statue in front of the pyramids?  If that isn't the god-emperor of Kerbin, I don't know what is!!!!

That works.

[Mister Dilsby]

On 1/23/2016 at 7:51 AM, Just Jim said:

I'm sure it's obvious I like having the Girbals for my story, so I can delve into the romance parts.  And I think they're cute... 
But I don't think I'm going to get too specific about things like the kid(s).  

My daughter (she's 13) had a good idea for how to do it if reproduction ever appeared in the Kuzzterverse: "Two Kerbals get married, they move into a house together, and after a while a kid just appears in one of the rooms." Yeah, she plays Minecraft, why do you ask?   

[Just Jim]

23 minutes ago, Kuzzter said:

My daughter (she's 13) had a good idea for how to do it if reproduction ever appeared in the Kuzzterverse: "Two Kerbals get married, they move into a house together, and after a while a kid just appears in one of the rooms." Yeah, she plays Minecraft, why do you ask?   

If it works on a space station, then I'm good with this!!!  

[Just Jim]

Just a quick update, the career game goes well, and I'm about halfway where I want to be for the nest part of the story. 

It's been a couple years, and KASA now has explorer satellites spreading out thru the solar system, but no signs of Thompberry Kerman or the sentient capsule Omega-77.

In fact, there are no signs of anything out of the ordinary... which has Gene starting to worry.... it's just too quiet. 

[GDJ]

5 hours ago, Kuzzter said:

My daughter (she's 13) had a good idea for how to do it if reproduction ever appeared in the Kuzzterverse: "Two Kerbals get married, they move into a house together, and after a while a kid just appears in one of the rooms." Yeah, she plays Minecraft, why do you ask?   

Y'know what? This would work fine in the story. We all know what reproduction is all about, and there is really no need to get into the "Fifty Shades of Green" or something like that. They shack up, kid appears later on. I think we all can fill in the blanks.

[GarrisonChisholm]

1 minute ago, GDJ said:

Y'know what, This would work fine in the story. We all know what reproduction is all about, and there is really no need to get into the "Fifty Shades of Green" or something like that. They shack up, kid appears later on. I think we all can fill in the blanks.

You said it.  Now by tomorrow morning there will be a 50 Shades of Green meme.

*watches the horse dash out of the barn*

...I may have to turn off my internet...

[GDJ]

5 minutes ago, GarrisonChisholm said:

You said it.  Now by tomorrow morning there will be a 50 Shades of Green meme.

*facepalm*

What did I do???

[Just Jim]

9 hours ago, GDJ said:

*facepalm*

What did I do???

OK.  So it's one of those Meme days again????  hehehe 
I have to admit, this is not what I expected to find when I woke up...  

Edited January 25, 2016 by Just Jim

[Torgo]

And for the older among us, just imagine "Dear Greenhouse, I can't believe this actually happened to me. I was working on a long booster rocket when...."

[GDJ]

2 hours ago, Torgo said:

And for the older among us, just imagine "Dear Greenhouse, I can't believe this actually happened to me. I was working on a long booster rocket when...."

NO!

We're not going there.

  

Edited January 25, 2016 by GDJ

[KSK]

Uh yeah. In another shout-out for the older timers on this thread, lets back off on this before the hammer of the mods drives this thread to new lands.

I should also point out that when I said 'quite a bit of detail', I didn't mean that much detail! Whatever happens between consenting kerbals stays - and will always stay - between consenting kerbals. I wouldn't dream of invading their privacy!

[GDJ]

Agreed wholeheartedly. The Kerbal couple shack up, then baby appears. Good enough. Like I said earlier, we're all intelligent enough to fill in the blanks ourselves on this. There are kids here on this forum, and lets keep it at least "G" rated.

[Just Jim]

3 hours ago, GDJ said:

NO!

We're not going there.

  

 

44 minutes ago, KSK said:

Uh yeah. In another shout-out for the older timers on this thread, lets back off on this before the hammer of the mods drives this thread to new lands.

I should also point out that when I said 'quite a bit of detail', I didn't mean that much detail! Whatever happens between consenting kerbals stays - and will always stay - between consenting kerbals. I wouldn't dream of invading their privacy!

 

39 minutes ago, GDJ said:

Agreed wholeheartedly. The Kerbal couple shack up, then baby appears. Good enough. Like I said earlier, we're all intelligent enough to fill in the blanks ourselves on this. There are kids here on this forum, and lets keep it at least "G" rated.

 

Yeah, y'all are right... we have to keep this thread rated-G.  

Oh, for the record, I haven't seen that 50-shades movie.  It just didn't look terribly interesting.  So I honestly don't know how bad this could have gotten.

[Andem]

59 minutes ago, Just Jim said:

Oh, for the record, I haven't seen that 50-shades movie.  It just didn't look terribly interesting.  So I honestly don't know how bad this could have gotten.

Believe me, don't read the book or watch the movie. If you are going to engage in either of those, watch the movie, it's incredibly tame in comparison to the book.