Sloth

Caught up to LoK

Gowi said
Neat. Guess I called it with the antagonistic snark. Shame. =/

Have I defused the tension yet?

Gowi said
Neat. Guess I called it with the antagonistic snark. Shame. =/But yeah, I wish there was a tiny bit of exposition regarding “why can you do these ridiculous thing”, but we were left by the finale in the void so to speak as it became a confusing unknown that they did what they did because they were “badass” which is one of my biggest complaints about season three in general. With that said I do like Zaheer and Ghazan as characters; couldn't care less about the two others so much I don’t care to remember their names or even Google them haha.

Gowi said Left in the void

But on a serious note, I do think it's a shame the backstories of the various Red Lotus members were never really dove into outside of dialogue snippits. How did Ming-Hua lose her arms? When did Ghazan learn how to do that weird lava shuriken thing? How did they even join the organization in the first place? But alas, I guess that's what we have fanfiction (and comics, hopefully) for.

The Living Dead [Open]

Gowi said
Vehicles? We're wasting GAS on a big maybe we'll find resources? Hahaha what. Nuts.

Not to mention you can't really scavenge without getting out of your cars in the first place, so what's the point of bringing them? Avoiding zombies isn't hard if you're smart, unless these zombies magically learned how to run and have brains larger than peanuts. And don't get me started on the noise. Unless you're purposefully driving slower than you could walk, odds are the sound of cars on a highway is going to attract people or walkers. Probably a lot of walkers. Probably a horde of walkers. Plus I doubt any of our characters have mechanical experience to maintain the parts, change the oil, and god forbid a battery blow out. Unless Leo's some super mechanic, odds are those cars aren't lasting long in an apocalypse situation. Jake's lucky he made it to Seattle from Pennsylvania, haha.

The Living Dead [Open]

Quasi important announcement:

I may or may not rewrite Jake to be from Washington or wherever if we're going that route.

Rather than being Pennsylvanian, he'd have gone to college there and come back to find his family or something, then develop the whole "We should go to the Midwest." philosophy while with the group or something, I dunno'. Just want to make sure his stuff makes sense.

The Living Dead [Open]

Gowi said We're a rag-tag group of barely competent folks trying to make due who can probably barely feed ourselves, animals added on that and people are going to starve you know?

Speak for yourself, Jake knows how to roll solo (IE: Make fires, cook game.) Heck, he's probably the most competent person in the group.

I mean, really, how useful are 17 year olds going to be in the apocalypse?

Gowi said
Except the abandoned cars and automotive wrecks would still be flooding the bulk of metropolitan and city highways. Not to mention any structural damage that causes parts of highways to collapse (see: Fallout, The Last of Us), and so on.

Hence all terrain vehicle and or back-roads.

The Living Dead [Open]

czechmate46 said
It was just a suggestion...And I've seen at least two zombie apocalypse fictions where they use horses.

I do hope they were used by communities rather than some lone ranger badass who can just somehow care for it and maintain everything.

The Living Dead [Open]

czechmate46 said
I feel like a year would be more ideal for what we originally had planned. But who knows. But traveling across states by car would be challenging, seeing as we've already established the danger with high ways. I'd assume a lot of us would have to travel by foot or horseback, or some other alternative like biking. Either way, those are relatively slow ways to travel, assuming you have to find your own path ways and stay clear of roads and high ways.

I don't think caring for a frickin' horse in a zombie apocalypse is a viable option for, well, anyone.

Also: All-terrain vehicles and lesser known roads. Jake got a call from his parents the day everything went to crap and could've at least gotten out of Pennsylvania and into Ohio before the military/police force started making checkpoints and all the rioting began.

Scratch that, he was with his family for a couple months before he went south, but by that point highways would be frickin' deserted and he could've still used some back-roads.

The Living Dead [Open]

Gowi said Yeah, either we have to amend our sheets (this is why I didn't say Will was from anywhere, though the original concept is from ) to adapt or something. I mean Sloth's character is from Pennsylvania for chrissakes.

He also had a car and a personal belief that heading to the Midwest/Southern United States was the best option. Even with only four months of time, he works. He could still get gas since I'm assuming people would be MAYBE still nice enough to sell gas to people.

LokiLeo789 said 4 month apocalypse -we all lived in the same state

I'd really rather not. I specifically made Jake from the North for that reason.

Loki said 2 year apocalypse - we would probably be more well developed, so cars, lots of guns, not as much need for a group of ten people to all scavenge.

What? No. In two years the amount of fuel and ammo would be astronomically low.

Caught up to LoK

Gowi said One thing I especially dislike about “combustion bending” is that they can arc something that is entirely line-of-sight based. But yeah, I thought it was neat that they were going to expand on the style in Korra, but then we got like zero exposition about it which I think is Sloth’s problem with a lot of the antagonists and their bending in season three.

Note: Sloth and Gowi are talking on Skype simultaneously while doing stuff in this thread, so there's that.

Unlike Gowi, I'm semi okay-ish with Ming-Hua, my biggest grievance with her wasn't that she could make arms out of water and use those arms to bend, it's that they don't really bother to explain how she makes those arms. She just dives into a pool and comes out with water arms. I was also excited to see the return of combustion bending and finally see some exposition on how that works (more specifically what was up with that third eye stuff), but instead all we got was a single throwaway line of dialogue that might never be brought up again about some random warlord.

The biggest difference between me and most Avatar fans I talk to is that I'm actually more than okay with Zaheer's becoming a badass airbender after only having airbending for a week or so. But that comes from me actually practicing martial arts years ago and assuming Zaheer to be an ex chi-blocker or something. But regardless, this thread has made me...well...not outright cool with it, but more accepting of Bolin's lavabending, and I s'pose lavabending in general.

Flying is still the most amazing thing in history though. /sarcasm

Caught up to LoK

K-97 said The part which would need actual training, skill and practice is making new lava out of Earth; I quickly went to a site which hosted LOK and skimmed through the parts where Bolin lavabends and he never actually makes lava.

He doesn't? I could've sworn he throws some lava at Ghazan in the Season 3 finale? Or did he just redirect some that Ghazan threw at him? Hmm, I'll have to have a quick rewatch of that.

K-97 said Bending the Lava isn't really the problem as it is at the end of the day still Earthbending; provided you have the right ''genes'' or chi or whatever I think it becomes a conceptual problem (like how Toph could only Metal bend once she realised there were trace amounts of earth in the metal she could manipulate). And in a desperate situation I think your mind may be in such a state in which latent bending talents can be unlocked and these conceptual barriers gotten past.

Him solidifying lava out of nowhere wasn't really the problem with me more than him immediately running to the rescue of Korra and having a lavabending duel with Ghazan. But as I said above, I might be mistaken with the exact way that played out. I do enjoy the friction theory though. But with no other Lavabenders around, I'd assume it'll still be hard for Bolin to generate lava even with three years of training? Unless of course he just spent 24 hours a day training, which doesn't quite seem his style.

K-97 said Gowi: Combustion bending is literally forming energy beams out of Chi.

Wouldn't that make it Energybending? Man, that'd be neat if it was.

Caught up to LoK

Larfleeze said I'm pretty sure Bolin was only capable of lavabending because he had both fire nation and earth kingdom parents. Maybe it's genetic in some way as well as spiritual.

I'm not a big fan of "Mixed heritage = More powers" in general. I can put up with it and it's a viable option for various power ups, but at that point why wouldn't Aang and Katara's kids have some funky Air + Water mash-up power? I preferred it when it was just "Mako got firebending, Bolin got Earthbending". Not to mention you then have to wonder "Well, who were Ghazan's parents then?"

K-97 said It's likely that Ghazan was using friction to melt the rocks into lava, I imagine it would work like rubbing you legs to warm them up or rubbing two sticks together to produce a fire. Except instead of two sticks you are rubbing every individual ''rock particle'' in the targeted area together in order to generate massive amounts of heat; the result of which melts the rock into lava.

That sounds a little too complicated for someone to just pull off randomly. Ghazan had the benefit of (presumably) years of training, unless he was in prison for about half his life, but Bolin just sort of did it out of pure desperation. To me it just comes off as something it'd take years to even grasp the basics of, let alone use it in a combat situation. Then again Toph could do crap like turn sand into solid rock at the age of twelve so....screw it.