Philosophical question

[Axiom]

What really gets me is that people get mad if you say you were born somewhere and start passive-aggressively going "*looks confused* What's being 'born' mean?" because they're serious roleplayers.

Sorry, going to have to agree with the serious roleplayers there. Your character wasn't born and neither was anybody else's, there's like seven people in town and obviously none of them gave birth to a twenty year old expert vehicle manufacturer with extensive knowledge of the wiki just then, people would have noticed. And of course someone would have noticed if you'd come from some vague far away place. And also all possible places on the entire island are on a map so you should be able to point to it and then they could radio and verify your story if so. And I could go on.

Oh no, I don't disagree that it makes sense in the context of Cantr. It's a natural consequence of the setup, and things have to be set up that way for practical reasons, so I'm not suggesting changing it. It's just that it results in a strange society of fungal spore aliens, which is kind of...bizarre.

[Kyriel]

Personally, I don't disagree with the concept itself, purely the word choice. "Spawning" sounds very gamey, as someone else said, and isn't very poetic. Not that "newpops" would be any better.

[Joshuamonkey]

It also depends on the language. The only way I've heard it in Spanish is "nacer," which means "to be born." However, "nacer" is an intransitive verb. You don't say that someone "nació" someone else. Also, in some cases it is used like "appear."

[Rebma]

I have some characters that call them newspawns (or rather, f***en newspawns) and others cal them new ones, or young ones. My characters tend to say they same to be, or came about or got here, etc rather than saying spawned.

[Snickie]

I have identified the ailment from which many Cantriians suffer:

Kleine Levin Syndrome

Read it and weep.

[viktor]

I have identified the ailment from which many Cantriians suffer:

Kleine Levin Syndrome

Read it and weep.

so many cases of this in cantr it's more epidemic than the plage ever was.

that being said, back to the original question about bellybuttons.
I think that the populous of cantr are a ton of humanoids or.. humans with a wide array of conditions or mutated characteristics... I had a char that looked like Oscar the grouch, and one that looked like a buff yoda, while I also have a great many that actually have a true human description
bellybuttons? depends on their genes, for example, in the real world, 2 nipples are the norm but there are people with 3.

[Snickie]

Here's my new theory:

When Cantriians spawn, fragments of the spiritual energies automatically left behind by other Cantriians gather together to form the physical base, the "seed" if you will, of a Cantriian's life force. From this base literally sprouts a few tendrils of light, which dim and solidify into a physical body that's essentially made of hard light... except there's no way to "collapse" the hard light. The "seed" remains at the core of the body, just behind where the belly button is or would be.
The seed is also the access point to a Cantriian's pocket dimension where their various tools, resources, and hordes of notes are stored. This includes several defense mechanisms:
* If a shield is carried, it will automatically spawn when attacked.
* Cantriians can place objects in each other's pocket dimensions (or, alternatively, give other Cantriians items and let them place it in their pocket dimension themselves), but they can only remove items from their own pocket dimension.
* If the body of the Cantriian suffers severe physical damage, the pocket damage will purge all contents in an attempt to conserve energy for regeneration, which takes three days; this alone is sometimes not enough however. The "seed" is exposed, and can be severed at any time, which causes permanent death.


Essentially Cantriians are closely related to the Gem species and Gem-human hybrids from Steven Universe.

[returner]

Interesting theory Snickie - but if you're going to go deep I think you need to tie your philosophy in closely with the code and how the reality is defined by the functionality. As far as I am aware, there is no mirror in Cantr, and perspective in Cantr is at best an abstract concept combining a top-down 2D view cross-stitched with the description of objects, buildings and people. In this sense, the fabric of reality in Cantr is so bizarre that it would be impossible for a human to perceive the world of Cantr as a true AI might.

Edit: I think it would be difficult to see it from the perspective of your own character too - we tend to just pretend that it's a representation of our real world but if we were being hardcore role players then this would be a poor way of simulating what our characters perceive!

[MonkeyPants4736]

I think "born" is perfectly acceptable. Born means all sorts of things aside from being expelled from a birth canal And "born" is technically a correct description of what happens when a character spawns. They just don't understand that it was a player's imagination and series of keystrokes that they were born from.

[computaertist]

As far as I am aware, there is no mirror in Cantr,

Mirrors have been implemented in Cantr. Of course, they don't mechanically do anything a wood carving can't, but they exist for the sake of role play.