u/Pietin11

In OTL, the UK made a 99 year lease on Hong Kong in 1898 following the second Opium war. This deal was made with the Ching dynasty, but the lease still carried over to the UK's recognized successor state to the Ching. In 1997 this was the People's Republic of China, but before 1971 it was the Republic of China (AKA Taiwan).

So, let's say that for some reason or another a skilled Chinese diplomat or an incompetent British one results in the UK getting a lease that lasts half as long as in OTL. Fast forward to 1958. The (at the time) internationally recognized government of China had fled over a decade ago with no practical means to hold Hong Kong. When the lease is set to expire, what does the UK do in this position?

Keep in mind that the sino-soviet split has not occurred yet and while China does not possess nuclear weapons, the soviets very much do. Not that anyone would throw nukes over Hong Kong, but the power at play would certainly affect negotiations. Additionally remember that the Korean war would have been just a few years ago before this point.

Let's assume you don't want to do anything too crazy that would get the shinigami king's attention. Just lower stakes stuff to stave off boredom long term.

Ideas that come to mind for me at least would be to steal stuff from the human world and bring it to the shinigami realm. Books in particular would be a godsend. As great as something like a kindle would be, keeping it charged is gonna be difficult without any electricity, sunlight for solar power, or fuel for a generator. (I guess technically you could burn some of your infinite death note pages for that).

Besides just stealing human art I'd probably say making art in general could definitely be a good way to pass the time. Even if everything in the shinigami realm is dull grey, you just need to smuggle in a few cans of paint every now and then to work with. Hell, you could literally just doodle in your death note.

You could make tabletop games or creative writing projects with other shinigami. There's definitely a lot of room to work with when pretty much the only things you have access to are enough pens and papers to last a literal eternity. Hell, we know they already have dice for gambling.

Obviously, none of these would work forever. Eventually, you would get bored after enough centuries or millennia, but I feel that there are definitely more ways to fight off boredom than napping, gambling, and dropping death notes at the feet of mentally unwell teenagers.

So, with that all being said, if being a god of death was your lot in life, what would you do to pass the eons?

Just like how gunpowder was discovered in China by alchemists seeking the elixir of life, say it happened centuries earlier in Rome. What I am wondering is if canons were even possible to build with the limited material technology at the time. Would it be seen as useful otherwise?

Each character must complete the full run start to finish. They do not need to participate in any of the actual plot Johnny and Gyro go on. They just have to complete each checkpoint and make it to the other side as quickly as possible. Each character is transported to 1890 San Diego with the clothes on their backs, an understanding of the English language, $5000 to spend, and 1 month of prep time before the race commences.

The racers must follow all official rules to qualify to win. This Includes the provision that whichever mode of transportation they choose (Horse, Car, foot) etc remain consistent the entire route.

The winner is counted by the time on the clocks of the referees. So time manipulating stands will need to account for that. The world will half the clocks for 7+11 seconds as Dio moves. Made in Heaven will make clocks speed up at the same rate as he travels. King crimson will make the refs forget the past 10 seconds, but will not stop their clocks. Bites the dust will reset Kira and the clocks to the beginning of the race, etc.

Every character is at their peak with three exceptions.

1 is that SBR characters who start as they did during the canon race.

2 is that requiem stands are not allowed as they require the arrow which does not exist in the SBR universe.

3 is that Pucci additionally doesn't start the race with Made in Heaven as the month of prep time he is given is insufficient to both travel to cape Canaveral and wait for the new moon. (Yes this is bullshit, but you know it would be busted in his favor otherwise.)

Round 1: Every named character in the entire series is transported to identical timelines to the main canon, the only difference is that each of the transported racers replace Pocoloco. Which of the summoned racers completes the race in the shortest amount of time?

Round 2: Same as round one, only all summoned racers are transported together to the same timeline. They must directly compete against and potentially interfere with one another as well as the regular racers.

Round 3: All summoned racers are instead transported to 1990 for the 100th anniversary of the steel ball run. All racers are instead provided $70,000. Who wins the race in the least amount of time with the proliferation of cars as well as the national highway system.

Insert "there is no canon", however I am making a canon and would like some advice. It's for my Three Portland's based ttrpg campaign (Using the Delta Green system if you're curious), one of my players is playing as a Sidhe gamer against weed.

The setting uses a mixture of Third law and Kaktusverse lore, alongside a bunch of other piecewise lore contributions from across the wiki. Nowhere on the Wiki, however have I found anything in regards to how exactly Sidhe age.

So, as readers and authors, I would like to ask the following? How long do you think Sidhe should live? Should they live the same lifespan as humans? centuries? Forever?

Should the 6th occult wars and the Exodus from Avalon in the 1860's still be in living memory for your average Sidhe? Or should it only be the eldest who recall?

In the end, this would be my decision for my canon, but if you have any institution, stories from the wiki, or takes on the question then I would love to hear them.

I shall state this from the top, I have not read Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, but I know that Krem's fate and overall character were vastly changed in adaptation. Because of that, I wouldn't be surprised if my take is contrary to the themes of the original story, or if experiencing that original story first would sour my view of the movie. That being said, my mind keeps going back to the choice to have Kara kill Krem despite her numerous pleas for Rutheye not to.

Whenever Rutheye brings up her motive for revenge, Kara always retorts that it won't help her, It won't make the pain go away, and it will stay with her forever. Rutheye counters by saying that denying herself that closure will just cause herself to become like Kara, giving into vices to dull the pain. Eventually, once Krem is defeated, Rutheye is persuaded to give up on dealing the finishing blow. She walks away and leaves Kara and Krem alone.

Despite all of that moral grandstanding against the concept, Kara still kills Krem out of explicit vengeance. Sure, Krem threatened to rape Rutheye not two seconds earlier, but Kara still said it was for poisoning her dog. Perhaps the aspect of the act saving someone made it more palatable, but Kara still stabbed him out of spite first and foremost. Kara is textually written as a hypocrite, and that has some neat implications.

The comparisons were already drawn earlier between Kara's boozing and Rutheye's lust for revenge. She indulges in vices to cope with her pain even though she knows it's bad for her. She recognizes Rutheye going down a similar path and denies her the chance to do so, but is unable to resist that temptation herself. Some may call that inconsistent writing, but I see it as a self-aware addict. One who traded one vice for another.

Miles Warren, New York native, Biochemstry professor and a cloning researcher whose CV goes all the way back to Dolly the Sheep has had a formal letter of complaint filed to empire State University. The letter was drafted with the experience of 7 authors. Four were students claiming to have been harassed by Warren. Two were TA's claiming to have experienced similar inappropriate behavior. The last one, and only non anonymous report came from PhD Student Anthony Serba who witnessed and corroborated several of the stories of the victims.

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Warren has vehemently denied those claims, and claims that it is part of some sort of conspiracy to sabotage his career and undermine his research. Federal grants from the NIH regarding Warren's research have been cut in the year's budget, no specific mention of it being due to the current accusations were given.

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The ESU department of biology has declined to comment on the accusations and as of yet, they have not revoked his position at the University.

Thrawn famously made a point that death stars are a colossal waste of resources. Tens of Thousands of star destroyers can be produced for the cost of one death star which can oppress tens of thousands of systems. Meanwhile death stars can only ever be in one place at any given time. As large as the Sith Eternal Fleet was, it only has 1080 star destroyers in total. Now, that may be a lot of planet destroying superweapons, but that still means you can only threaten less than 0.1% of all planets in the old empire. Again, still very much effective, but it still leaves the vulnerability that still need to worry about which planets you're threatening at a given time to prevent insurgency. Even Thrawn's proposed fleet of star destroyers simply does not scale well to oppressing a galaxy sized empire.

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Starkiller base on the other hand is the ultimate rebel suppressant. It can attack anywhere in the galaxy, at any time, with a visible death beam that literally anyone in the galaxy can see. All they need to hear is a whiff of insurgency for your entire planet can be made an example of. There is no warning it will be your planet next, nor do you ever know if you are staring down the barrel of its super laser. Therefore you must always act as if you are. It's essentially a galaxy wide panopticon.

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Now, that's all good on paper, but one must remember that superweapons in general always seem to have a way of getting blown up before they actually provide any tangible benefit. More often than not, they destroy a tactically unimportant planet, inspire resistance, and get destroyed before they can actually be useful. Starkiller base is again the exception here.

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Its ability to strike across the galaxy meant that the new Republic Senate had minimal warning before the Hosnian system was destroyed. The entire administrative head of the new Republic alongside a good chunk of its military was wiped out immediately. At that point, the damage was already done. The new Republic was kneecapped enough that the first order went from a group of fringe warlords to an actual threat. Did the FO have the capability to actually administrate the galaxy or prevent uprisings without starkiller? Hell no. Did they knock their largest threat down to their level, yes.

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Hell, starkiller was probably even cheaper than the other two death stars as it was made out of a planet already hollowed out through kyber crystal mining for the other death stars. It was a byproduct which became tactically more sound and practically more effective than any of the main products it was produced for. It's main source of fuel are stars, which notably there are quite a lot of in the galaxy. Just park the thing in unhinhabited systems (yes it does have a hyperdrive) and you can make potshots at any planet you like. No deep substrate floated kalkhite required for that.

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In terms of Kaboom for your credits, on paper effectiveness, and practical outcomes, starkiller base clears any other super weapon in terms of its utility. The only real downside is firing speed, which you don't really need with this sort of range and precision.

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From a storytelling perspective the whole concept is boring, derivative, and trite, but in terms of in universe effectiveness, the results are clear. Unlike any other super weapon, starkiller base worked. It may have gotten blown up after it did what it was set out to accomplish, but it DID accomplish it nonetheless.

Something about the setting of Steven Universe that often goes understated is that the history and geography of its earth is dramatically different from our own. Examples of explicit divergences from the show, writer statements, or art books are as follows.

The United States only has 39 states. Several of them have different borders or names.

The Delmarva peninsula split between Deleware, Virginia and Maryland is its own state. Rather than being first colonized by Europeans in the 17th-18th century, it is instead settled in the 19th.

New York City is instead called "Empire City" (possibly in an "Empire" state)

Pennsylvania is referred to as "Keystone"

Florida is called "Florida Island" due to it being an Archipelago.

Kansas city, (and Kansas as a whole) is the movie hub of america.

Greenland is referred to as "Blueland" while iceland does not exist.

Canada (referred only as the great North) has a green flag rather than red.

Mexico is referred to as "Aqua Mexico" (possibly referring to the fact that it's is split down the middle by a natural strait connecting the Atlantic and Pacific ocean)

South America is referred to as "Pangea".

Korea is unified.

World War II never happened.

One only needs to look at a world map from the show or art book to see that the shape of the continents are hardly recognizable in certain regions. It could be interpreted that these differences were a byproduct of Gem colonization, but that's a theory for another time. Let's just take these new landmasses, and specifically the archipelago between "Pangea" and Africa.

These islands could have acted as convenient pit stops by which smaller boats could safely cross the Atlantic centuries before the invention of the caravel. This trade could have allowed for Ironworking, livestock, and most importantly diseases to be brought over from the old world to the new far before the arrival of Europeans.

With these boons and resistance to old world diseases, the Americas may fare similarly to Africa. Trade ports may be built on the coast, but the interior continent remains firmly in local control. That is until the time of the industrial revolution in the 1800s. Like with Africa, a "Scramble for America" might occur. This would explain how an east coast state like Delmarva would only be colonized by Europeans traveling to "uncharted lands" only 200 years before the events of the show.

This would also explain why the US only has 39 states and has its film center in Kansas city. IRL Hollywood was formed on the west coast as land was cheap and it was far away from the movie monopolies in the east. If European powers were only able to push as far west as the great plains, then Kansas WOULD be the "western frontier" where land was cheap.

This would also also explain why New York City was renamed "Empire City". If it was founded in the 1800s, then it would have been named after the British conquest of india. That was the point in our history that the UK began truly adopting its "empire" brand. Similarly, all the different names for states and cities makes sense considering they would be named by different people in different centuries.

This would also also also explain how World War II never happened. No colonization of the Americas means no American revolution. No American revolution means the French monarchs don't bankrupt their country to troll the British. No French Bankruptcy means no French Revolution. No French Revolution means no Napoleon. Finally, no Napoleon means a near unrecognizable Europe.

I will admit there is a gaping hole theory. Had Native Americans survived in greater numbers than in our own timeline, then surely there would be a surplus of characters descended from them. To that I can offer the counter argument that the eastern U.S is somewhat analogous to colonial or apartheid era south Africa. The east coast is highly populated with the descendents of immigrants, while the further westward you go the more heavily indigenous the demographics become. Past the border state of Kansas, the continent is split between several sovereign Native American nations who were either never conquered or gained independence in the 20th century.

I have no evidence for the specific argument of this demographic shift in the western North America as the show never shows travels to the west or even Midwest of the country for any extended period of time. Despite that, I still feel that the lack of a Native American smallpox epidemic is the explanation which best explains the state of Steven Universe's Earth as we see it.

From what I understand, a legally binding contract requires at least two parties to be identified, be offered a deal, both receive something from said terms, and agree to the terms of sound mind and body.

From these constraints, I decided to draft up the shortest possible contract

>I, Ye, agree to sell my ox to Cher for $1.

>Signed

>Ye, Cher

That adds up to 45 characters without spaces, 60 characters with. There's probably the argument that nobody of sound mind would sell an ox (usually valued at multiple grand) for only $1, but Cher and Ye are both wealthy enough individuals that they can afford to do so far more reasonably than a regular person.

If there are any faults in this proposal, and/or any shorter than 60 character contracts any of you can come up with I would love to hear them.