Salvation War Criticism Thread

[Simon_Jester]

I'm sort of ambiguous about this idea, for two reasons:
1) There's a question of how much of "muscle memory" is in your mind state and how much is in your body state. The stuff in your mind state gets saved even if the body stuff doesn't. If your mind remembers how to command your arm muscles to juggle, and if your new arms respond to the new brain your mind occupies the same way the old ones did, how much difference does it make that they're new arms?
2) There's also still the question of why the recent undead are able to walk and talk so soon after their arrival, if they've lost the "muscle memory" of those abilities. At the very least that should require an extended period of self-retraining over days or weeks. It could be accelerated by some sort of therapy... which would not have been available in pre-liberation Hell.

[Shroom Man 777]

I guess it depends on how the mind adapts to these new "non-human" bodies. What the hell is muscle memory, anyway? Is that just some fringeworld yokel hullabaloo or is it a scientifically quantified whatsits? Is it really because their muscles work automatic, or because their minds (not muscles) have gotten used to rote repeated tasks that get ingrained mentally through constant experience?

I'm a shitty nursing student, so I can't give any medical/healthcare related input on this. But unless it's something that deals heavily on repetitive motions, I'd doubt muscle memory is that major a factor - especially when it comes to tasks that require more brainpower than in repeated bodily movements. I'd imagine flying helicopters would require more intellectual functioning than repeated "memorized" muscle movements.

Perhaps you can chalk the muscle memory thing to the human mind getting used to his non-human and different afterlife body. After all, a dead old man is probably going to take a while to adapt to his middle-aged sexy muscular body and probably will take some time to adapt to it...

Hrm... thinking about it... won't it work THE OTHER WAY AROUND? If an old man goes to the afterlife and wields a sexy younger body, his "old man memory" might override the sexy younger non-human body because even though the new body is 100% capable, the old man's "old man memory" might have him initially go around walking with a heavily slouched back, in slow paces. He might psychologically think that he's still an old man, he won't use his new body to its maximum capacity, and he might initially MOVE like an old man - or, at least, he'd gradually adapt to his new body and learn to wield the new body over some unknown period of time (week? day? depends on how debilitated he was in his first life).

I think psychological memory would be more important than any faux "muscle memory". Those in the afterlife might carry more of the "hangups" in their first lives, despite their new bodies being totally different from their old ones without the old deficiencies.

Mind you, these wouldn't be permanent or even long term. Not at all. Hell, there's no scientific reason at all explaining how people carry their memories and personalities in the afterlife! So... who knows how on Earth, or how on Hell rather, this can work?

EDIT:


Hrm... upon further reading... I am further undecided! It's like how you KNOW how to write but you can only do so with your RIGHT hand and not your LEFT hand... FOR SOME REASON!

Except in this case, your new body in Hell is a GIANT LEFT HAND! Your whole body is a left hand! Oh my god, how can you pee? Between your index and middle finger? That's gross! Your entire body is a giant left hand with bigass finger nails and fingerprints, and you'll stink because of all the dirt that goes in between your GIANT FINGERNAILS! Eeew! That's like toe-jam, but proportioned to the human body!

YOUR BODY IS A LEFT HAND!

[Vanzetti]

As far as I am aware of, muscles can`t store memories. "Muscle memory" usually means things like reflexes, moves you know so well you do them without thinking.

[Simon_Jester]

Yes, but the fact that you don't need to think about how to move doesn't mean that the controls aren't located in your brain. And if they're in a human's brain, mixed in with all the other memories and personality quirks and (in Shroomy's case) massive thesauruses of awe-inspiring profanity, then why don't they transfer to the Hell-body like everything else? Sure, there's likely to be some interface problems if your new body is physically different from your old one (say, if it's got more arms or legs than you died with). But what about people who die at a relatively young age, without any major physical problems (except for whatever killed them)? Is their new body so different from their old one that they can't cope, despite being nearly identical structurally?

[folti78]

Probably because the Hell-bodies are similar, but not the same as the Earth-bodies in their inner workings, which means the muscles react slightly differently to Earth-body based commands from the nerve system.

As to re-learn skills, maybe the Minos gate mechanism tunes reflexes/muscle memories for the new bodies in a limited scale. Almost everyone walked in 5000 BC, while fine tuning for modern skills like flying combat helicopters is out of it's scope/knowledge.

Another question would be whether adaptation is faster for reflexes that are more ingrained and/or simpler than more complex and less used ones. Kim had more than 2 decades of experience for walking when she died, while her carrier as a pilot was much shorter. Also she had to walk in Hell from day zero, while she was grounded for 2 or 3 years and had to learn flying in a different environment with a chopper which has different handling characteristics due to hell conversions.

That's my take of it.

[Mayabird]

Yes, but the fact that you don't need to think about how to move doesn't mean that the controls aren't located in your brain. And if they're in a human's brain, mixed in with all the other memories and personality quirks and (in Shroomy's case) massive thesauruses of awe-inspiring profanity, then why don't they transfer to the Hell-body like everything else? Sure, there's likely to be some interface problems if your new body is physically different from your old one (say, if it's got more arms or legs than you died with). But what about people who die at a relatively young age, without any major physical problems (except for whatever killed them)? Is their new body so different from their old one that they can't cope, despite being nearly identical structurally?

Ugh, yes. They're in different areas from the conscious things like reading and thinking of stuff to yell at trolls, but it's still in the brain. I really don't like this "muscle memory" thing, just as with a lot of the other biology-related things. Plus it doesn't seem to flow naturally from the conditions of the afterlife, just a bunch of details tacked on to be detailed but without rhyme or reason. It's like way back in the TBOverse when those demons were finally revealed for what they were, and they have a tapetum lucidum (among other things) and I'm just going "NO NO NO NO NO that was lost in one of the early ancestors of the entire ape line! You might as well say they also can't get scurvy because they synthesize vitamin C! How the hell do random people whenever get the genetic back-mutation mega-combo-pack?"

If you need some free biology consulting, I have nothing better to do and I'd be glad to advise about anything to make it stop hurting.

(Really, if you want "muscle memory" to go away, you could just say, "These people have spent centuries or more getting tortured nonstop and the same rules apply in Hell about 'use it or lose it' even if it takes longer, and they haven't had the chance to use it, because, you know, burning river of pitch and all that. Note that this makes Hell doubly cruel to them. Also which would mean Jade could still pilot, but wouldn't be as good since she'd been out of practice. Unless that's supposed to come out of some basic principles of how the whole interdimensional soul conversion thingie works and where it comes from, but I'd want an explanation for that if everything else is going to be explained in detail. )

[Shroom Man 777]

Would it make more sense if they got spat into Hell in bodies that are more reminiscent of Neo's pasty hairless nigh-embryonic body when he "woke up" in the "real world" in The Matrix? Like, if you enter the afterlife, the process might resemble "rebirth" in a way that you get spat out in a new physical shell that superficially resembles your old body but is in fact totally different - and while you're consciously still you, a lot of those "other" aspects like locomotion and shit are still kinda... undeveloped in your new body?

Because it's kind of odd if the new afterlife body gets "spawned" fully formed. That's weird. I mean, do you enter THIS reality fully formed and physically mature? No you don't. You enter this world with a shitty body that, if it doesn't mature properly, gets fucked. I mean, shit, your SKULL isn't even solid when you are born - it has HOLES in it! Hell, your HEART has HOLES in it when you are born and only when you actually breathe your first breath of actual-factual air does the chemical processes end up SEALING the DUCTUS ARTERIOSUS in your heart.

Really, all this HELL BIOLOGY thing is really screwy and doesn't make sense in the first place. Any attempt at making sense of it will fail, totally. So... yeah, it probably won't make sense and attempts at further explanation might just fall flat and end up revealing more things that might not make sense, even if it is an attempt to make things make sense.

Currently, as is, the Hell people are born sorta physically intact in a similar state to how they died - or in the case of old people, in their state of middle age peak prime. This has something to do with interdimensional soul energy conversion. That's fine.

I don't want to read a story about Broomstick emerging in Hell and learning how to walk and learning how to talk, goo-goo-ga-ga, either because her muscle memory has been forgotten or because her newborn New Body in Hell is just at its "infancy" stage and hasn't "matured" yet. I enjoyed watching her, soon after entering hell, input her SERE training in SURVIVING, EVADING, RESISTING and ESCAPING and KICKING ASS and tagging along with SHROOM CONNOR and leading the HELL RESISTANCE against SATANET in the WAR AGAINST THE MACHINES in the HELL YEAR 2029! I'm looking for Shroom Connor, COME WITH ME IF YOU WANT TO LIVE!

[Stuart]

OK, I'm convinced and concede the point, the muscle memory and relearning thing was a bad idea. It's a pity because it might have made a nice storyline but there are too many problems with it. Fortunately, I'd never got to use it so it can be excised without any problems.

Thanks for all the help.

[Shroom Man 777]

I'm unsure about having our protagonist characters like Broomstick and that Marine from Hit spend time relearning their body mechanics and stuff isn't really that useful storywise and might actually end up getting in the way of the main story progression by slowing down the pace.

But the concept of people being physically challenged upon entering the afterlife because of having new different bodies is sound. Yeah, it could definitely work (ala how Neo was some albinoid hairless pseudoembryonic cripple when he "woke up" in the real world in The Matrix). But that kind of adds to the issues and problems our undead protagonists in Hell will have to deal with and would, yeah, kinda slow things down.

Unless the period where Broomstick managed to "adapt" to her new body in Hell, learned how to walk and stuff, happened "off-screen" or something like that.

[Mayabird]

OK, I'm convinced and concede the point, the muscle memory and relearning thing was a bad idea. It's a pity because it might have made a nice storyline but there are too many problems with it. Fortunately, I'd never got to use it so it can be excised without any problems.

Thanks for all the help.

Like I said, if you really wanted to, it could just be a form of "use it or lose it" that has had centuries of losing it.

And I still want to know how/why the system was set up and what happens to kids/infants/fetuses/animals that are smarter than infants and fetuses if the latter get special treatment.

[Simon_Jester]

Probably because the Hell-bodies are similar, but not the same as the Earth-bodies in their inner workings, which means the muscles react slightly differently to Earth-body based commands from the nerve system.

Now that makes sense, but it won't entirely wipe your muscle memory in and of itself. What it will do is alter your body's response to memorized muscle commands, sort of like an athlete who goes back to the game after spending some time in a hospital. You're recovered, sure, but the distribution of muscle and weight on your body will have shifted and you'll have to retrain to a limited extent.

(Really, if you want "muscle memory" to go away, you could just say, "These people have spent centuries or more getting tortured nonstop and the same rules apply in Hell about 'use it or lose it' even if it takes longer, and they haven't had the chance to use it, because, you know, burning river of pitch and all that..."

Now that makes a lot of sense. It's entirely reasonable for a guy who spends centuries in a river of burning pitch to come out, regenerate, and have completely forgotten his once-awesome sword techniques; the miracle is that he remembers anything, including his own name.

[Vanzetti]

It's entirely reasonable for a guy who spends centuries in a river of burning pitch to come out, regenerate, and have completely forgotten his once-awesome sword techniques; the miracle is that he remembers anything, including his own name.

In this case, people who spent more time in hell`s torment should remember less. So Jade Kim should still remember how to pilot, but Aeneas and Ori... not really.

Stuart, you still didn`t answer about children. Do they grow up in hell, or not? Or are you keeping it a secret?

[JBG]

OK, I'm convinced and concede the point, the muscle memory and relearning thing was a bad idea. It's a pity because it might have made a nice storyline but there are too many problems with it. Fortunately, I'd never got to use it so it can be excised without any problems.

Thanks for all the help.

I just thought it a little, well, blunt.

The somatosensory nervous system wasn't an issue. That's the system ( I hope my spelling is correct as I'm trying to remember Uni lectures of 20+ years ago ) that controls the automatic/autonomic muscle activity. Breathing, heat beats, focusing of eyes, standing upright etc. Retention of all that is necessary to the narrative/concept.

Conscious control of muscle is a different question and Mayabird has a good solution to that issue. You lose over time that which requires constant practice to become reflex.

[John Chris]

And I still want to know how/why the system was set up and what happens to kids/infants/fetuses/animals that are smarter than infants and fetuses if the latter get special treatment.

I don't suppose they can join the Junior Hell Brigade, where we follow the story of a Five Kid Band and their demon mascot friend?

[Darth Yan]

One change I suggest. Have mikey use human pleasures like dvds, music, books, the like, to corrupt the other angels, since all that cool and unfamiliar stuff would be so cool as manipulative devices.

[nerys]

is there a book for sale of this entire story?

[Stuart]

There's going to be as soon as we can get the editing finished and the rest of the technicalities of book publishing sorted out. The initial manuscript is with the publisher now. It'll be coming out sometime this year.

[MatSci]

There's going to be as soon as we can get the editing finished and the rest of the technicalities of book publishing sorted out. The initial manuscript is with the publisher now. It'll be coming out sometime this year.

A real mainstream publisher, or a POD publisher?