Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Levi]

I'd imagine being lazy would get tiring somewhere after 50 years of continuous TV watching.

I bet I could do it.  I'm pretty lazy.

[Sirus]

Why watch TV when you could spend 50 years on Bay 12 instead?

[Levi]

Why watch TV when you could spend 50 years on Bay 12 instead?

Hehe true.  In fact, if you swapped "Watching TV" with "Playing video games and browsing the web", I'm probably a quarter of the way to 50 years already.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

This is one of my gripes about vampires, like - if I'm watching the action in a vampire fight scene and they're doing incredibly stupid things that I of all people can notice, obviously they haven't spent any of their 200 years as a vampire learning how to fight. Give someone superpowers and I guarantee you they'll actually do stuff with those powers. But when you compare with another vampire, they're basically just even again, meaning practice and education is just as important.

You need 10,000 hours to get good at something. For a creature that doesn't need to sleep, and can devote say 20 hours a day to working on a skill, he could legitimately master something every other year. For a 200 year old vampire, that's 100 separate vocations for which the vampire is an expert.

I say the vampire who doesn't know everything there is to know about medicine, combat, engines, piloting, sailing, carpentry, wilderness survival, the stock market, banking and finance, cooking, painting, basically every art, craft, and science is a lazy fucking jackass.

One could argue that vampires, as dead or cursed things, no longer change. We see that physically in just about every vampire story: new scars slough off, old tattoos can never be removed, the creature never ages. But I've never seen a vampire story where the mentality is under the same restriction. Furthermore, we typically see older vampires becoming more powerful - which is either an intensification of whatever forces created them, or an improvement in the physicality or mentality of the creature.

[Neyvn]

Just stated playing "Dragon Age - Inquisition"...
Naturally I made a Dwarf (always do) and spent a good time staring at the Dwarf's chest as I chose my options during the conversations. I don't think its spos to do that. I mean seriously, the intro where the character stands up look'd slightly badarse not showing his face until I was ready to customize, but after that EVERY TIME I have a choice where the camera gets pointed at the MC its at his chest...

THEN THERE ARE THE SIDE BY SIDE PARTS! OMGLOL MOMENTS HERE!!!

Its like they didn't even think about how tall a Dwarf is when he is walking next to people with the cutscenes. One moment he is just under another character's chest the next he is at eyelevel. Just the opening moment is funny as hell when you take into consideration how tall the dwarf has to be in some scenes...

Then there are sometimes when the game glitches with the audio when they refers to the character's gender. It says both lines for He and Her. Gah gonna just wait a couple more days and see if they fix this. Still funny...

EDIT:: Now my clothing has changed... I think its glitching out on the DLC Gear I got when I got the Deluxe version...

[Flying Dice]

Part of it, I think, is attributable to over-reliance on abilities they don't have to work for. For a real-world example, note how a large percentage of paranoid American gun-hoarders who are allegedly trying to defend themselves as well as possible don't bother to learn how to fight with their bodies or simple weapons first, despite those being thoroughly more reliable and easier to access.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

True. But don't you think at least some of the gun-hoarder mentality is because (in a lot of situations) fighting with a gun is more effective than fighting with a knife? Which is not to say that a knife wielder can't take down a gun-wielder, but that a person in a normal fight would rather have a gun than a knife. If that's the overriding principle, the vampire should get really good at melee fighting because that's where his skill lies. OTOH, if the overriding principle really is just laziness I completely agree with you.

[Mech#4]

This is one of my gripes about vampires, like - if I'm watching the action in a vampire fight scene and they're doing incredibly stupid things that I of all people can notice, obviously they haven't spent any of their 200 years as a vampire learning how to fight. Give someone superpowers and I guarantee you they'll actually do stuff with those powers. But when you compare with another vampire, they're basically just even again, meaning practice and education is just as important.

You need 10,000 hours to get good at something. For a creature that doesn't need to sleep, and can devote say 20 hours a day to working on a skill, he could legitimately master something every other year. For a 200 year old vampire, that's 100 separate vocations for which the vampire is an expert.

I say the vampire who doesn't know everything there is to know about medicine, combat, engines, piloting, sailing, carpentry, wilderness survival, the stock market, banking and finance, cooking, painting, basically every art, craft, and science is a lazy fucking jackass.

One could argue that vampires, as dead or cursed things, no longer change. We see that physically in just about every vampire story: new scars slough off, old tattoos can never be removed, the creature never ages. But I've never seen a vampire story where the mentality is under the same restriction. Furthermore, we typically see older vampires becoming more powerful - which is either an intensification of whatever forces created them, or an improvement in the physicality or mentality of the creature.

I think I've seen things where older vampires tend to get stuck in the thinking of their time period. Wearing clothes from that age, not making use of more modern technologies and the like. Not sure where I saw that, maybe it's just how often castles and vampires are used together that kind of implies they get stuck in the past.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

If I had mega money and no expenses and mucho leisure time I'd live in a castle. Shit, dawg. Castles be ballin'.

[Sergarr]

that's a really funky lightsaber

[Eric Blank]

If I had mega money and no expenses and mucho leisure time I'd live in a castle. Shit, dawg. Castles be ballin'.

If you can afford to buy an apartment in New York City, you can afford a castle in Europe.

[Descan]

That feels a little backward to me, considering America was colonized because the land was cheap

[RedWarrior0]

It's better than the price of a castle in the US, at least.

Also, does anyone else find it weird that, even though the American spelling of a lot of words like centre and litre is center and liter, we still call them castles rather than castels?

[Flying Dice]

True. But don't you think at least some of the gun-hoarder mentality is because (in a lot of situations) fighting with a gun is more effective than fighting with a knife? Which is not to say that a knife wielder can't take down a gun-wielder, but that a person in a normal fight would rather have a gun than a knife. If that's the overriding principle, the vampire should get really good at melee fighting because that's where his skill lies. OTOH, if the overriding principle really is just laziness I completely agree with you.

Yeah, it's the laziness factor. Just because doing something one way is easier and pretty good doesn't mean you should just settle for that and not add any diversity to your options, especially when the easy choice has holes in what it can do.

[Frumple]

I'd also reiterate the whole "possible changes in thinking and/or brain structure" thing. I've actually seen it, obliquely, a handful of times -- explicit mention that while vamps in whatever setting could be masters of everything, they just can't think that way. It basically doesn't occur to them, and even when reminded or prodded or whatever the concept just kinda' slips away, or they can almost never manage to sustain it. Not so much laziness as something roughly equivalent to a fairly specific form of species wide brain damage. _{of course, the fun thing is when a evil overlord type comes in and starts riding herd on the idiot bloodsuckers and using them right, hoho}

From a writing/narrative perspective it kinda' makes sense to hobble 'em like that, really. You can construct a story where there's an entire species of ridiculously skilled, supernaturally powerful critters running around, but... it's not easy. So they just leave 'em supernaturally powerful and functionally brain damaged. Usually, anyway. I do think there's a couple of settings out there were vamps are the wu-tang-clan-ain't-nothin'-to-fuck-wit' level omnibadasses they logically should be, given their usual advantages, but it's fairly rare.

Seriously though, several centuries to master the art of investment banking and wealth accrual, among everything else? Story over, bad guys win.