This post is mostly directly to Salamander, as she and I had been discussing it in chat a few days ago, but I welcome other's comments.

The conversation started when I stated that "accidental novas" has negative connotations. Accident is a term for a chance event, but it is almost always used to define an event that brings calamity. She replied that the term was correct, and I said there had to be a better word we could use. So she told me to come up with it, and I think I have.

Fortuitous

Thersausus.com states that "fortuitous so strongly suggests chance that it often connotes absence of cause." It was a chance that a latent would erupt, or that they'd be a latent at all. And then we can have Planned Novas and Fortuitous Novas.

Damn, you beat me to it. I was going to suggest "surprise novas."

How about "Lucky Motherfuckers"?

How about: "Who cares?"

A nova is a nova, how you erupted is relevant. It's just another way of people trying to make themselves out to be better than others or more special. Salamander doused herself in gas, struck a match and leapt from a cliff in an attempt to be part of the 'in crowd'. Not only does it speak volumes for her intelligence but it shows that she just wanted to be like us and when she got there found she wasn't all that special after all, so decided to make a big deal of the slef eruption thing.

How... human.

She what???

If someone doused herself in gasoling to become a nova, I feel sorrow for her. Not for enduring pain, but for not being happy with who she is.

I see children every day, who would do anything to have just one more day to live. Now I hear about this 'Salamander' who willingly attepts to sacrafices her life to hope be a Nova. I feel sorry for her. She didn't even realize how precious life is.

I think it is selfish, considering there are little kids who would do anything to live just one more day.

I propose an Opnet drinking game: first rule, anytime Dr. White mentions his sick kids, everyone takes a drink.

We should all be unconscious in no time, nova physiology or not.

Despite how much as you annoy me, I have to admit that was absolutely hilarious.

I would like to thank you for laughing about dying children. I envy you for being able to do so. Take a drink!

We're not laughing about children dying (drink). We're laughing about the fact that you seem to think that because you work with them, you can whip them out as the reason you are right and everyone else is wrong on any matter. That is the action of a pretenious bastard. You are a brilliant doctor, but an annoying man.

Besides, all we hear about is dying children (drink)? What about homeless children? Starving children? What about dying adults? There are other worthy causes that you don't seem to care at all about, given the air time you don't grant them.

In short, Bob, remove yourself from your high horse.

What about those poor bastards in H.S. who can't even get a handjob? What about them? Doesn't anyone give a shit about those sad motherfuckers?

Honestly, don't know much about them myself. I was catching trim regular at 15.

So was I. Helpful to fish off the skanky end of the pier, huh?

God dammit, stop making sense all the time. I liked it better when I thought you were just a spoiled snot.

Fixed that for you.

What you could have said, but being a dick, chose not to, was

Very... Fiery..

That was cute Sally Mander. Really.

Look, I've seen you out and about, you're smart, beautiful, and pretty down to Earth. That's you bother so damn much because I know your smarter than this.

You attempted suicide. You know how many other people have erupted during suicide attempts? Several. Throwing yourself from a cliff after lighting yourself on fire was a catalyst for eruption. You did not know if it would work, you simply took a chance and created a scenerio for yourself that placed your body in a state of 'erupt or die'. Your eruption was an unforeseen, and unexpected event (you didn't know you would erupt so ther was no act of 'self' involved) which occured suddenly as a result of undue stress from the jump off a cliff and your burning body. Self preseration instincts saved your life. You erupted out of nessecity, not sheer willpower.

Yet here you are, calling the rest of us 'Accidents' and seeming to place yourself in some tier higher than us. You're a nova, how you got here is irrelevant unless it's just some way to make a buck. The NQA and Burnin' Nation, I'm sure, are 'burninating' large holes in the wallets of consumers as they rush out to buy your merchandise.

What Revenant said.

That was a bit harsh... <.< >.>

Salamander, maybe you've commented on this somewhere else and I missed it but when you decided to go out and try to become a Nova, why did you choose fire? It seems like there are plenty of Fortuitous novas who end up with the ability to, broadly speaking, break things. I'm not criticizing your choice (or any of the folks who end up good at breaking things!), but I am curious.

Closer to on-topic, is it even possible for planned novas to develop the more subtle sorts of powers? I worry that if every latent knew of their potential and tried to erupt deliberately, we'd see a lot of powers that form in response to the hazards people can easily inflict on themselves, and not much else. I guess it could be argued that's what we see anyway...

P.S. Hi everybody, I'm Kevin.

Hey, no problem.



No, I attempted to erupt. The intent was not death, it was eruption. I accepted death or mutilation or injury was a possibility, but the purpose was not to kill myself. Someone who is attempting suicide is not intending to erupt, they are intending to die.



You know how many people erupted in accidents? Several. But none of them were attempting to erupt either. Comparing what I did to a suicide attempt is saying someone that dies of an accidental overdose intended to kill herself. Intent is vital to understanding motivation and consequence.



If you are trying to imply I didn't clench my fists in determination and will my eruption into being, yes, that is correct. That's because eruption doesn't happen that way for the majority of novas. Self-preservation instincts happens to be the easiest known eruption trigger to purposefully set in motion. All those other novas like Rachel Alinksy who erupt during a week-long study binge are the exceptions.

With the intention of erupting, I put myself into a situation where my self-preservation instincts would trigger that eruption.

This was deliberate, thought-out, and intentional.

Not a suicide attempt.
Not self-preservation kicking in during an accidental situation that happened completely a random.



Oh really? Hmm. Let see if I can quote you from elsewhere...



Hmm. Seems to me that a deliberate transformation from latent to nova might just provide certain advantages that the quantum accident didn't have. Spent many nights reliving the trauma of joining Club Novus?



The NQA Initiative is something that I'm funding with my own accounts. Yes, we have donors and backers, but the point of the NQA Initiative is not to make money, it's to fund research into the science of eruption and latency so that one day the majority of eruptions could be deliberate.

Burnin Nation', for as much as it has provided me financial independence, is making the NQA Initiative possible.

Nice of you to bother doing the research to find out what the NQA Initiative was before trying to call me out on it.

Good grief. Is this all you guys have done so far?

I can see it now. Today's Posting Schedule: Whine, bitch, moan, wax philosophical, self-justification, more bitching, veiled insult, random cheerful comment, more moaning, argue over petty nonsense...

Some of you guys must be really tall, 'cause the horses you're on are pretty freaking high.

Who cares how any of us erupted, honestly? It's a personal thing, right? Specific to the individual, shapes our quantum expression, and so on and so forth, or so say the doctors I've seen. I think it's ridiculous to make a distinction between "accidents" and "deliberate" eruptees, when even the "self-erupted" people I've heard of can't really claim they even knew it would work. They just got lucky. In the end, we're all novas now. Someone who tries to drown himself to force eruption, for example, is definitely no more deserving in my book than the guy who erupts while bracing a doorway in a collapsing building. I guess it's less about wanting desperately to be a nova, for me, and more about pushing yourself just a little farther, a little harder, for whatever reason.

Hope that makes sense... It's freakishly late for me. If not, I'm sure I'll hear about it.

I am hypnotized by your avatar. O.O

I don't mind so much. It gives me people to talk too.

Why are people so fucking pissy about being called an 'accident'? It's fucking true?


Which rich dude do you think of as a lucky dumbass and which one do you think really earned his shit?

Bill Gates

Johnny Shitdick the tow-truck driver who hit the Lotto

Hot Mamma earned her stripes and I lucked into them. She wants to crow about that I got no problem letting her. We're both still novas and I still have a fucking cool life.

I just don't like the term "accidental" being applied to me. Makes me think of condoms breaking or something. That's why I suggested something less negative in connotation.


I agree, to a point. But if she's going to run around differentating us, I'd prefer to not be called an "accidental nova."

And she's no Bill Gates (sorry, Sallamander - I still like you, though). She's as accidental as the rest of us, because she was lucky that she was a latent and that her node chose to pop at that moment. Did she seek our eruption purposely? Yes, but she didn't work for it. She's as lucky as the rest of us. The only reason she's getting any fanfare at all is because she succeeded in erupting; had she not, she'd be a sad (and that's sad in that it's sad when anyone dies) statistic that social commentators shake their heads over.

Now, as a disclaimer, I feel personally that Salamander's a good person. I have a Burning Nation shirt that I got for Christmas. I feel that she puts on some airs, but overall, I think she's ok.

Honestly, I'd rather us celebrate our solidarity as novas instead of finding reasons to fight.

Thanks. That made a lot more sense than my rambling in the wee hours.

Oh, I don't know about that. I know this is a matter of opinion, Jael, but when you're soaked in gasoline it isn't an easy matter to strike a match and touch your clothing with it. There's also the matter of setting up the circumstances, studying up on what research was available in 2001, etc.

Since you've brought it up, I am curious what you think someone would have to do to "work' for their eruption.



Absolutely, Jael. I may have drawn distinctions which mean little to most novas, but in the end we're all nova firsts and foremost.

On that Salamander, I certainly agree.

Glad I could help, though I wasn't trying to step on anyone's toes. I just had the added benefit of nothing to do in study hall and being awake.

EDITED TO ADD: This was initially to Fianna. I posted too slowly.

Jael said the same thing... why not light her up and call her names?

That cracked me up! As one of those poor bastards in H.S. it strikes a little close to home, but I console myself with the fact that I haven't had a problem with getting what I want since my eruption. I haven't developed the super slick skillz that some of you guys have, but just the confidence that came with eruption alone makes all the difference in the world.

As for the rest of this conversation, who really give a shit? I erupted because I got rejected by a girl and I was furious about it. Call me a accident if you want, but I'll be laughing all the way to the bedroom every time I get what I want!

I don't think anyone can work for their embrace. You either are a latent or not, lucky enough to pop or not and in the right situation. All you did was remove the last option: you made the situation. You could have erupted without the self-immolation, later. So you still needed to have the latency, and on that, you won the same genetic lottery as the rest of us.

There is no work to eruption, especially since some of us seem to erupt for some really 'mundane' reasons.

I feel a little like it would be the same as me looking down on Daniel Fox because he didn't survive anything dangerous, and therefore didn't "earn" his eruption. I don't, because it doesn't matter.


Awesome.


If you mean that I said the same thing you did, but she didn't yell at me, it was probably because I did it nicely, and you were a dick about it. And I bought merchandise.

I have been following this thread from the beginning and this last inquiry has especially caught my attention, Juri.

First, Your use of the term ‘accidental’ is technically correct, but I would propose the term reflexive as being more scientific.

This term brings to mind the classic patellar reflex check; a doctor bops the patient on the knee, or more specifically on the patellar tendon just below the knee, and the lower legs kicks without any direction from the patient. This is a completely involuntary neuromuscular action, independent of and prior to any response from the brain.

The thing of it is, if you were to strike yourself on the tendon and successfully stimulate the same reflex, it would still be a reflex, and not the same as a voluntary raising of your leg.

This leads to the same point that others have already been making: “Deliberate intent to stimulate eruption” does not equal “Deliberate eruption.”

So what would qualify as someone deliberately working for his or her eruption? Simply put, any act of will or concentration involving that starts with a signal from the cerebral cortex that directly initiates the manifestation of an M-R node.

As yet this has never been recorded as happening. There have been some cases, for instances a few have erupted by “wishing really hard” or through intense meditation. I would not argue with these instances being called voluntary, it’s basically semantics; honestly there would be no sure way to distinguish their real nature unless an instance occurred in a laboratory environment.


Actually, Juri, the work you’re doing at NQA intrigues me. Although the issue is a lot more complicated that it is often presented, I favor your view that a person has the right to knowledge of their genetic potential. A large portion of my own work covers eruption studies, perhaps I could offer you my services at some time in the future.

There is one thing that nags me though. Given the nature of your own eruption: Would you condone someone taking similar drastic actions to stimulate their own eruptions? Knowing the odds would allow someone, or give someone information that could cause them to threaten their own lives?

I pretty much agree with Pensar, except that I don't see it as a Right to get a genetic screening. That's a tall order, even though it would be wonderful to see in my line of research.

I had never given much thought to me being a deliberate nova, but I guess I am. I thought, and still think, that being a nova is enough. We are united by our nodes, even if they happen to be made of granite, or living flame, at the moment.