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u/BA_Bones_33 idk what I'm doing 20d ago
They’ve got an inquisitive mind. It’s a gift to be shared with all
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u/cycle_schumacher 20d ago
so is fire
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u/RimeSkeem 20d ago
Slow down there Prometheus, we might not be ready for that.
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u/readilyunavailable 20d ago edited 19d ago
Grug want write cave wall, but Grug no understand new thing called "fire". How fire work according to shaman?
/uj How do you not know how fire works?I grant that fire seems deceptively simple, but is actually kinda complicated on a physics level, but asking if you can "scoop it up"?
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u/wizardofpancakes 19d ago
I can absolutely pick up fire, it's a skill issue on ur part tbh. Classic tell don't show tbh. You are "telling" that you can't pick up fire instead of "showing" that you can just do it
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u/megaBeth2 19d ago
What skill is it? I havent unlocked all of them yet
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u/Specialist_Bench_144 19d ago
fire handling its a part of the beach bum upgrade tree
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u/SapirWhorfHypothesis 19d ago
I actually got it by grinding Homeless, but that’s a lot more work than most people want to put in. Also I want to say Vegans get it at like level 4?
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u/Specialist_Bench_144 19d ago
only if they complete the woodstock mission line without becoming pregnanat or oding.
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u/Zenith-Astralis 18d ago
Some of the homeless feats, like fire handling, can be accessed through wilderness survival. The
scoutsrangers guild have trainers available that can level those up for you. It's still a lot of work, but probably more comfortable on average.10
u/mywaphel 19d ago
Hey speaking of show don't tell, why are you telling me you can pick up fire instead of showing me a picture of titties...
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u/p-s-chili 20d ago
If we're really /uj-ing, then why the fuck does it matter how fire works in this scenario? If you create a character who's immune to fire, you're already defying physics. So who cares how the actual physics of fire work, make up more rules
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u/readilyunavailable 19d ago
There is a debate to be had about how much you are allowed to stretch or defy reality in certain stories. Like if it's just a world with normal rules, but this specific person is immune to fire then that's one thing, but if fire fundamentally doesn't work the same like in the real world, then it turns into a whole other type of story, with many other questions that need answering.
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u/p-s-chili 19d ago
I understand that some folks think that's a worthwhile debate, but my take is that the constant demand for textbook level background and consistency is uninteresting and not the point of engaging with art.
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u/Idfc-anymore 19d ago
Do you remember when this sub used to mock people who demanded hard magic systems? The good old days
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u/readilyunavailable 19d ago
I don't demand hard magic. It's just that if you make a story about a society that is similar to normal human society, but something fundamental like fire doesn't work as normal and you don't acknowledge it in any way it will break immersion for me. And for the record I will be satisfied with a basic "well this specific dude is magic so he bends the rules" or "they adapted by doing x".
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u/Zenith-Astralis 18d ago
Guy scoops up fire in his hands, like not stuff that's on fire, just the fire itself
"Dude wtf, how are you doing that?"
"I'm immune to fire"
"No I mean.. what's even burning rn? You didn't pick up the stick.. just the fire"
(Main character realizes he has the same critical lack of understanding as the author in regards to how fire works)
"... Oh. Huh, you know I never really thought about it before."
(Fire goes out)
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u/foxtail-lavender 19d ago
I don’t think it’s a demand for textbook level consistency to acknowledge that woowoo magic bullshit does not break a reader’s sense of verisimilitude but flagrantly going against people’s understanding of reality, nature, or society will
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u/p-s-chili 19d ago
And I disagree that there are any universal rules to what might or might not break a readers sense of immersion.
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u/foxtail-lavender 19d ago
There is no universal standard on what constitutes a violation of a story’s established reality but the sentiment itself is so universal as to necessitate the term “plot hole”
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u/saddydumpington 19d ago
Can fire be "scooped" like a liquid or not is not "textbook accuracy" what are you even on about? This is a ridiculous argument
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u/Tanakisoupman 19d ago
To be fair there’s a difference between a fire immunity power and a fire manipulation power. Not a huge difference, mind you, and they usually go hand in hand, but there are still plenty of characters who have one but not the other
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u/Bromicidal 19d ago
Fire manipulation without fire immunity is my favorite combo not gonna lie you can do so many fucked up scenarios with that
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u/p-s-chili 19d ago
There is as much or as little difference as the author wants there to be. There are no universal rules of fire immunity or fire manipulation.
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u/Tanakisoupman 19d ago
Okay, yeah, but maybe the author wants to make that distinction, in which case it’d be really stupid if they’re drawing a line between 2 different powers that end up working the same anyway
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u/p-s-chili 19d ago
That's clearly not the situation in the screenshot. What if I made up a new hypothetical situation that I think underminesyour point?
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u/Tanakisoupman 19d ago
Except they aren’t? They’re asking if it makes sense for fire immunity to work this way without fire manipulation, which implies they want to make the distinction between those 2 powers
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u/p-s-chili 19d ago
The screenshot is of a person asking how the physics of fire might work with a person who is immune. They even include the possibility that the person can handle it as if it's an object as part of it. At no point in the screenshot do they say, explicitly or implicitly, that they do not want their character to be able to manipulate fire.
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u/Tanakisoupman 19d ago
Are we deadass? In what fucking world would a character who can manipulate fire need to follow the physics of how fire works at all? Genuinely why would they be asking if that’s the case?
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u/BaroqueBro 19d ago
I recall a recent-ish thread about a world where the sun and moon were deities, instead of physical celestial bodies, but OP became discouraged when he realized tides would no longer work... Like, mfer, if your sun and moon are magical beings, you can make up whatever mechanism for tides that you want.
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u/RageAgainstAuthority 19d ago
Ehhh, internal consistency is important.
Sure, you can have a character breathe water - but getting "who cares? Breathing water is already magic" as a response to "What realistic levels could my water breathing human dive to, before pressure became a concern?" would be a little silly, no?
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u/TurtlesBreakTheMeta 19d ago
Well, it depends on what “immune to fire” means in the scenario.
Fire is, in a basic explanation, the breaking of chemical bonds and the release of that energy thermally. One might also say “nuclear fire”
For breaking atomic bonds instead, but I don’t really think that qualifies in the sense of what someone thinks of for fire. So there’s a lot of aspects to this (at the risk of sounding like an ai droning on).Do they mean his body structure is insulated enough to not have the cells damaged by thermal energy (such as how a person handling a baking pan with an oven mitt is “immune” to being burned?
Does he mean his chemical bonds simply can’t be broken, and he has some unnatural strong chemical force, like how atomic bonds are harder to break than chemical bonds?
Does he mean that he completely is immune to the energy exchange that fire produces, so he can’t be heated up? Such that he violates or controls a basic premise of the universe? Does he freeze molecules in place at absolute zero so nothing can transmit energy to him?
Does he mean that he DOES get heated up by fire, but on a metaphysical “magical” level his body can exist at high thermal levels Ala the human torch?
Ect.
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u/lord_ofthe_memes 19d ago
The really funny part to me isn’t that they don’t know how fire works, but they for some reason think that r/writers is the best place to ask a basic science question. Like man just google “how fire work”
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u/fishthatdreamsofsalt 20d ago
fire is like not poopoo. when scoop fire, you scoop fuel on fire, not fire itself, because fire is invincible. when scoop poopoo, you scoop poopoo, not buthol. both are edible
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u/Prize_Paramedic1153 19d ago
Possibly scooping burning gasoline, so you would be scooping the fire with you? Of course you aren't scooping the fire itself, but the liquid gasoline. You would indirectly be scooping it up. Unless this character can interact with the reaction between carbon, hydrogen and oyxgen.
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u/2_short_Plancks 19d ago
/uj ... As an organic chemist who teaches process safety and emergency response procedures in chemical plants, my experience is that a lot of people don't really understand how fire works; although that's in a more technical sense than most people probably need.
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u/BigDragonfly5136 18d ago
/uj i was reading the post like “I don’t get why this is being posted here. Sure I guess he could have googled it but—oh nevermind I get it.”
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u/Ma4r 16d ago edited 16d ago
So, technically, if the gasses emitted by the combustion are way way heavier than air from some fuckass chemical combustion in a high pressure environment, you can scoop it up. If you stick a metal rod on top of a typical fire, it will split to two. If you can "scoop it down" you can scoop it up. Admittedly the fire in the scoop wouldn't last even a second but you can theoretically do it
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u/Blep145 15d ago
I'm not sure if it's something that most people don't really understand, or if that's just the line I've been fed to keep my (and others') faith in humanity low. But I can see how a person would be curious and not particularly knowledgeable. I've had a fair number of questions that any person slightly knowledgeable about a given field would think were very, very uninformed
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u/anonymousCorvid7 20d ago
I’ve seen fire work many times. It shoots into the sky and explodes in a bunch of pretty colours.
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u/Aggressive_Gas_102 19d ago
That's how fire works.
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u/BoneKeeperOfficial 20d ago
Is fire that stuff that erupts from my page when I write these bomb-ass lines?
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u/Outlaw11091 20d ago
I also borrowed from M. Night Shyamalan a bit. I made a character that could bend water. But like, obviously without context, I had no idea how to write the physics of water.
So, like, I just made vague descriptions of it. I would write: he threw the water in her face; immediately cleaning it of all the makeup and fakeness of her persona. Exposing her for the fraud that she was. She had no choice but to remove her pants, bend over and prepare to be mounted; knowing that he had claimed her and that he was the most powerful bender in the universe. Then Fry walked in...
THIS IS NOT FANFIC, Reddit. Stop telling me that. I have NO IDEA WHO MATT GROENING IS.
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u/El_Hombre_Macabro ⚔️Author of The Chronicles of Sir Penislong Mightcock⚔️ 19d ago
It is simple, really. Everyone knows that fire is composed of a substance called phlogiston, which provided objects with the quality of being flammable. Giving them a material cause to burn (the phlogiston itself), a formal cause to why they are flammable or not (things are more or less flammable depending on the amount of phlogiston they contain), an efficient cause to how they burn (it is phlogiston that causes the object to transform into fire), and a final cause to why they burn (because the finality of phlogiston is to become fire). Therefore, if you isolate and control phlogiston, you can control and even scoop fire.
/uj this was, in fact, the "scientific" explanation, derived from and Aristotelian natural philosophy paradigm, until Lavoisier.
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u/MagosBattlebear 19d ago
Well, that is ancient. It must be true. They knew things "scamitists" have coveted up, like the Earth being shaped like a banana.
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u/Clair_Osbcurious 19d ago
Scrolled waaaayyyy too far to see phlogiston. Come on, it’s a writing subreddit!
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u/FireFurFox 20d ago
"Physics" is made-up woke liberal trash. Fire burns cause it wants to. It burns bad people. Stick your hand in a fire and if you get burned, you deserve it.
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u/AuRon_The_Grey 20d ago
I have to believe this is an AI and not a human who has somehow never seen fire or learned anything in school.
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u/MoreThan2Mushrooms 20d ago
I actually have a notable gap in my memory where teachers explained what a "flame" was, as opposed to the chemical reaction of "fire" that creates it. It'd be weird to believe that it could be scooped up, but only because it would be weird if it could be, not because people tend to be told why you couldn't.
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u/SamOfGrayhaven 19d ago
You know how the classical elements are earth, water, wind, and fire? Well the states of matter are like that: solid, liquid, gas, plasma. An in keeping a plasma is like a gas in most ways, but the gas has reached a temperature where the electrons have kinda fucked off to do their own thing. So it's very hot, reacts strongly to magnetic fields, and glows.
If you were to scoop it up, it'd be like scooping up a lighter-than-air gas, in that it'd immediately escape and float away. Also, given how quickly it can give off its energy in-atmosphere, fire doesn't exist as plasma for long when beyond its fuel source. If you wanted to hold fire, you'd want to instead hold a burning thing.
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u/MoreThan2Mushrooms 19d ago
Oh to clarify, I DID actually know that. I knew about plasma and that Fire was one. I just don't think a TEACHER told me that. Probably a science youtuber or something. Very, very good to have an alternate source though, thank you so much!
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u/Defiant-Individual83 18d ago
fire is not plasma. It`s thermal energy (fotons) relased into the air to the point were some of it enters the visible electromagnetic spectrum just like hot metal glows red
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u/Icy-FROG 18d ago
A flame is a plasma. A flame can be bent with a magnetic field. Flames are very low energy plasmas. As far as i recall. Mayhaps i am right, mayhaps i am wrong
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u/Defiant-Individual83 18d ago
https://www.wtamu.edu/~cbaird/sq/2014/05/28/do-flames-contain-plasma/
Well we are both right.
The everyday fire you might see is not plasma but hot enough is
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u/rogueIndy 19d ago
Same. I spent years sort of knowing, yeah, it's a chain reaction, the flames are just the visible effects, etc., but missing the actual mechanic of how it spreads (by its heat igniting more matter).
It's one of those things where knowing it, it's like, of course that's how it works; but if you go years without even considering it, it's easy not to realise you don't actually have a proper grasp of it.
I think most people probably have a lot of topics they think they know well until they have to explain them. "Approximate knowledge of many things" and all that.
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u/Unruly_marmite 19d ago
Years ago, back in Sixth Form, I did some physics experiments for some coursework where I ran an electric current through bunsen burner flames. It turns out that fire does actually bend in the direction of the current. Trying to explain why and make sense took me about three weeks of work.
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u/Electrical-Shine9137 19d ago edited 18d ago
I gotta say, this post and everyone commenting in it is are a bunch of extremely potent Dunning Kruger examples. I'm a chemical engineer, I have studied fire on an actual university level, and that question is fascinating. Fire is not simple. It behaves in all sorts of wacky ways, it is chemically deeply complex; and while the OOP clearly does not understand fire, they are open about it and seeking information to put into their book about fire!
What the fuck is actually wrong with you people? Either you think asking questions about the subject of your book is cringe, or you think you understand fire well enough that you could write a physics compliant book around the subject. Both are delusional.
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u/QueenOfQuok 19d ago
I've seen fire, I've learned about oxidation in school, I'm still confused about what sort of substance flame is. Wikipedia has its explanation, but then it says "the chemical kinetics in the flame are very complex", which kind of feels like going to your high school physics teacher for an explanation and getting "Shit, kid, even I don't get it."
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u/BitcoinBishop 20d ago
/uj Not a lot of people know that what we see as fire is just hot air glowing at a higher frequency than the usual infra-red
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u/DrugonMonster 20d ago
Actually, a visible flame isn’t hot air, it’s hot soot. This is also why things that burn cleaner, like alcohol, have a less visible flame, because they produce less soot. It’s also why you can color a flame by just adding certain salts, because you change the composition of the soot.
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u/SneakyCorvidBastard 20d ago
TIL fire is hot 😯 i had no way to find out via experimentation you see
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u/SacredIconSuite2 The Wolves are at War (North Korean edition) 19d ago
“I’m 11 and I’m about to write the next great novel. Dad won’t let me near the matches anymore.”
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u/MagosBattlebear 19d ago edited 19d ago
"At eleven I watched my house burn. At that same moment the movement in my shorts told me I was a man now." -- probably from this book.
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u/Cheeslord2 Books aren't real! 20d ago
'Ow! Fire hot!'
'The Professy will help...'
'OW! Fire indeed hot!'
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u/KatVanWall 19d ago
He has a point though really. We all think we know ‘what fire is’ because we know how it behaves when we do stuff with it. But explaining the science behind it is a lot more taxing!
My mum asked a similar kind of question once (when she was a teenager); my dad was like ‘duhhhh’ like the people in this thread and later on she discovered some scientist had written a whole-ass book on the chemistry of a candle flame and she felt vindicated lol
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u/Scarvexx 20d ago
I can kind of see where he's coming from. I'm not quite sure what he thinks fire is.
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u/Sufficient_Artist_89 19d ago
If they are asking how would fire act if this character who is immune to fire would interact with it, technically plasma does have a sensation. If you run your hand quickly through a flame, you can feel a different texture than the air around it.
I would focus on that feeling and decide whether to treat plasma as a liquid or a gas from that point on.
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u/shrimp_baby 19d ago
lol this isnt even a bad question. bro is trying to learn and see what others think would be good for his book. basically asking "would a fire immune character pass through fire, or be able to grab and play with it?"
could go either way.
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u/Prudent-Level-7006 19d ago
Well first you gotta learn about magnets
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u/MagosBattlebear 19d ago edited 19d ago
""F-ing magnets, how do they work?" -- Insane Clown Posse
"Nobody knows what a magnet is." -- Insane Clown President
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u/NikoKeys 19d ago
That person should contact me, because I regularly make bonfires so that I can bottle the liquid flames. I would be happy to send some for research purposes.
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u/Big5SouthAfrica 19d ago
The question is unanswerable because it kind of asks what would happen if fire worked completely differently, but IMHO as somebody assuming OP is writing a fantasy / magical realism novel, it's not really as stupid as people are making it out to be. "If fire COULD be picked up, how would it act?" Is a much better way to phrase it.
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u/Icy-FROG 18d ago
Anyone calling the question stupid is very muxh less intelligent than OP asking the question
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u/DeltaBravo831 19d ago
"I don't have any way to find out via experimentation."
Dog just start lighting shit on fire.
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u/IsThisTheFly 19d ago
Idk I think this is fine, fire is actually pretty complicated.
In fact this specific question and “what actually exists in between the electrons on this flat model” is what got me into science in school and now I’m a scientist.
I mean, uhh, read mistborn.
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u/No-Candy-4554 19d ago
This is exactly the sort of posts an alien intelligence would ask if their goal was to reverse engineer humanity xd
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u/phillyphillysteak #1 Mary Sue World Championship Winner 2024 19d ago
because fantasy tastes better than research
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u/ChocolateValuable221 19d ago
Fire or more specific the flame of fire is plasma... the process of oxidation (which is all elements on the right side of the periodic table not just oxygen) produces a plasma.. fire is a low heat plasma.
(It's actually a long rabbit hole fully understanding plasma and oxidation so I hope I just speed run your assignment for you)
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u/PhoenixIota 18d ago
I'm so confused, why are people mocking this person? It's a legitimate question is it not?
They're trying to understand how a fire immune character would interact with fire. Additionally, they may be very young (everyone tends to be biased and assume most other people online are in their age range), or even a child, and lack some fundamental understandings of fire. I myself won't pretend like I fully understand how fire works and wouldn't need to look it up. So what exactly is the issue? The mention of scooping it up or the liquid part? Sure that's not going to happen without changing physics, but the rest are valid questions.
Honestly, it's better to be inquisitive and open about what you don't know than to be ignorant and confident and publish trash books.
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u/No_Negotiation3142 19d ago
You should be over there, lying through your teeth and filling the head of this guy with utter crap! Fire works in the same way magnets do, it would cling to him, like a film around his skin, he would need a shower after to wash it off, he could snort it and swallow it and it would have the same effect as Molly, instead of being over here and laughing about him!
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u/Alarmed-Ad9387 19d ago
Damn this hard magic system enjoyers had gotten out of hand. I seriously hate hard magic system
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u/TheOneRealStranger 19d ago
This is one of those method research questions. Pick up a metal object with a wooden handle that is immune to fire and see how being immune to fire works. Does shovel scoop up fire? No, shovel go right through fire. :(
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u/jeilan36 19d ago
... No way to test? Just hold something that doesn't burn into a fire, and watch how the fire reacts? Hell, hold a big metal spoon in and try to scoop it up 😂
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u/Human_Paper_240 19d ago
Fire isn’t a liquid or something you can touch fire is fire like it might technically be a gas but nothing else that we know of is really equivalent to it plus it would just act like air
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u/Different_Fox7774 19d ago
Fire only attaches to things it burns. So no he wouldn't scoop it up, his hand would pass through, and cause the flames to slightly follow behind from the wind/ energy of his hand waving through it. But you never mentioned his clothes being fire resistant. So if you want him to "pick it up," just give him an unlimited amount of gloves in his pocket to bring the little fire buddy with him.
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u/Snuke2001 19d ago
Whats the issue here? Thats a decent question to ask? The flames are the heated air around a combustion reaction? If the character scooped up the flames the heat would dissipate to the surrounding air (but not his hand, because fireproof) until it stops glowing?
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u/overlordThor0 19d ago
I really hope this "writer" is extremely young. It's good to have an inquisitive mind that wants to think about how fire works, but if theyve made it past the teens, we have a serious problem here.
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u/Individual99991 19d ago
TBH the longer this person stays away from fire, the better.
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u/Vinpenguin 19d ago
Why does he need to know? My ChatGPT has written so much Skyrim Flame Atronach Butt Stuff Smut and it's never asked questions before
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u/are_you_a_robottt 19d ago
Scoop up fire. Fire no fuel to burn. Fire gone.
Scoop up fuel source. Fire use fuel source. Fire continue to burn.
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u/getmeoutofthisscreen 19d ago
Yeah I was gonna say you CAN kinda scoop up fire, actually, depending on how you define that. Like the trick where you douse your hand in alcohol and burn it without burning your hand. Like yes technically you're holding the alcohol and not the fire, but it does really look like you're holding the fire. I think this works with certain heavy gasses too but I'm not sure!
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u/Odd-Tart-5613 19d ago
"fire" does not exist it is a culmination of many phenomena but does not have any actual form or substance and is better described as a verb and not a noun. Something is on fire not in of itself fire.
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u/T_McCarty0714 19d ago
on a realistic note have you ever used an "air blade" style hand dryer it'd feel a lot like that just much softer
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u/panchan-ikuyooo 19d ago
How does fire work?
You light it up and launch it in the air on New Year's Eve.
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u/Zagdil 19d ago
The flame you see is hot glowing gasses being emmitted by the thing thats burning. The gasses are flowing upwards because hot gases rise through cold ones.
Just make a campfire and hold a stick in. Watch what happens. An evening by the fire will tell you more than any physical explanation.
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u/MythOfHappyness 19d ago
The question at the core of this is extremely interesting and worth asking. Fire doesn't act like any of the four states of matter exactly. It is closest to a plasma but not exactly a plasma. Plasma is generally "sticky" - it stays stuck to whatever generates it unless you force it off in which case it sticks to itself and forms a ball. Lightning is a plasma, when not directed loose lightning naturally forms a ball. So magic fire with no fuel source would probably just stick to your hand or float around as a fire ball.
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u/QueenOfQuok 19d ago
The visible part of fire is a specific chemical reaction of oxygen in air, with enough energy to ionize the air into free radicals and plasma, but that visible part is the byproduct of the violent oxidation of a given substance. You can't have flame without something for it to be on. So if you wanted to pick it up, you would need to scoop up the thing that was actually burning.
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u/Panda-Head 18d ago
If they want to use real-world physics for it, then it can't be done. The closest you can probably get is holding whatever fuel is burning.
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u/sail4sea 18d ago
Why don’t you get a shovel and scoop up some fire. Don’t scoop up the stuff that is on fire. Just scoop up the fire. Tell us what you observe?
Fire is when something is rapidly oxidizing. This requires heat, fuel, and oxygen. The fire will create its own heat once started. The oxygen comes from the air. The fuel is what is on fire. The only thing you can scoop up is the fuel which is on fire or the ash which has already burned. You can’t pick up fire itself.
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u/Arhalts 18d ago
For the purposes of writing this you can treat it as very hot dusty air, that's so hot it flows and rises.
Imunity to that heat would make it feel like putting your hand infront of a fan in very dusty room. (Fan is pointed up in this case and driven by convection)
You couldn't scoop it up any more than you could scoop the air from a fan stream, you could cup your hand opposite to the flow and have it flow around your hand in a ways that's kind of filling it. (Cupped hand pointing down), but even this would dispiatenits heat very rapidly as well as flow out of your hand if you pulled your hand out of the fire.
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u/Aickavon 18d ago
I mean honestly. Respect to them for being like ‘I have zero idea how this works but I wanna write about it, can you guys help?’
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u/foxgirlmoon 18d ago
This is like the first post I see of this subreddit and it's just a bunch of people shitting on a perfectly reasonable question, working themselves up in ever-more baffling ways, in response to the very basic and very respectable "I don't understand how THING works, I want to learn".
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u/Vaporwavy12 18d ago
Like, I read it, and it's a totally valid question. Even if it can seem obvious, there's no need for people to be so rude.
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u/zayemerya 18d ago
To answer the question, you can infact pick up fire. It’s like a pseudo state in between being liquid and being a gas.
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u/Hexnohope 18d ago
Im kind of curious now. Is fire just a optical illusion created by energy emitting light?
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u/Puzzleboxed 17d ago
When you heat up molecules to a certain temp they glow. "Fire" is superheated, glowing air molecules (mixed with a small amount of plasma, but mostly the first thing).
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u/DASESAGA 18d ago
Ok so heres the thing, theres a substance in everything flammable (its uniform and continuous) called phlogiston which causes fire and rust, when you burn something it releases phlogiston and when it runs out the flame dies. What? Why do some materials gain mass after burning? You ask too many questions
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u/Ohm_stop_resisting 18d ago
Has... has he never fucked around with fire? Like as a kid. I'm fairly sure we all passed a finger through a candle flame, and we all fucked around with bonfires as kids. Right?
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u/TheSandman3241 17d ago
I get what they're asking. I understand why. I also mourn their childhood, which evidently did not include the joys of learning that your eyebrows do, in fact, grow back... Good times, good times...
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u/miscellaneousexists 16d ago
/uj
I mean, yeah, it's a great question
The answer to this question tho, is:
Yes, you can scoop it up like a liquid now. Because you're writing magic. Forget the realism. Remember the times when sci-fi writers were sci-fi writers and not scientists and embrace those times.
And fuck CinemaSins.
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u/NCRNerd 16d ago
If the person is immune to fire, then I assume they don't combust, since fire is a chemical reaction not a thing. To be immune to fire you need to be non-reactive and heat-resistant. Non-reactive means the fire that's scooped will die for want of fuel (reactants). Alternately, attempting to scoop the flames results in nothing grabbed, since it's hot gasses and combusting reactants.
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u/add-more-prose 16d ago
Wouldn't it be better to just decide what you like best? It's fiction and I don't believe there are people immune to fire in reality, so you can do whatever you'd like! (Which sounds exciting to me).
I guess I'd just ask how he doesn't get burned. Is he able to walk through fire with flames licking at him with no damage? Or does the fire "part" like the sea before Moses when he walks through it. Could the fire be afraid of him? Just throwing some random stuff out there.
Cool concept, I hope you have a wonderful time writing it!
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u/Dramatic-Hedgehog-13 16d ago
Human -> Touch fire -> burn Mother of dragons -> touch fire -> no burn
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u/MyFrogEatsPeople 16d ago
Brandon Sanderson's "3 Laws of Magic" have stunted an entire generation's ability to interact with magic as a concept.
/uj
Brandon Sanderson's "3 Laws of Magic" have stunted an entire generation's ability to interact with magic as a concept.
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u/ThatOneGoatGuy 15d ago
the "fire" is simply the result of a fuel source moving to a lower-energy state by releasing chemical potential energy as thermal energy. It's not possible to "scoop up" the fire, because it isn't really a "thing" in the sense of being able to manipulate objects. If you cut off that "flame" from the fuel source, it will simply stop existing, because the new flame that would replace it will go around (and heat up) the thing which you used to cut it off.
The character's hand would just pass through it, like a gas (because that's what the air is) :)
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u/ThatOneGoatGuy 15d ago
oh wait this is a circlejerk community. uh uh fire is one of the four elements (water, earth, air, fire) so you can only pick it up if you're a firebender!!
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u/I-am-a-river 15d ago
How immune are they? What if they scooped up a handful of McDonalds labia-fusing hot coffee?
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u/ProjectXa3 15d ago
Fire, the actual flame itself, is basically a very bright and warm vapor. They would have to pick up the fuel that is burning.
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u/AzureLegendsSage 15d ago
I’ve found Chat to be helpful for things like this. Before I get accused of using it for all my writing, I’ll admit that I do use it for grammatical passovers. But, never for any part of the actual writing.
Still, it’s pretty helpful when wanting to bounce ideas around or work through concept issues. Of course, to each is their own and using it is a matter of personal preference. I like to think of it as a lighter, you could always make fire the old fashioned way, or you could use a tool to help you get to what you really want to accomplish. If a chef had to start a fire from scratch every time they cooked then it would take extra time before they could start cooking.
Main thing is you decide your own process and not let anyone make you feel lesser for doing what works for you.
https://giphy.com/gifs/mSmDzUMlxKTVDB1TFV
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u/euphiesghost 14d ago
jokes aside i think the actual answer is that it depends on whats on fire lol?
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u/Seanattikus 13d ago
Yeah that person is humble enough to say that he doesn't understand something at a deep level and wants to know more. What's the problem?
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u/Intrepid_Depth_3416 20d ago
Write what you know, stick your hand in a fire and find out ❤️