I thought of a few petals that send you on a 'mostly good' trip instead of a 'bad' one for a character of mine who is an always friendly and innocent young woman who just happens to make petals and wants to make people happy.
I'm not a native speaker, so please tell me if you think something in the description sounds strange, especially with the 'singular they' thing from p. 114.
The unfinished Swan
Shortly after consuming the drug, the user has an enormous desire to craft or paint something, and conveniently finds black paint and a canvas somewhere around them.
No matter how skilled or unskilled they are, the picture will soon start to resemble a swan, while the surrounding world starts to fade into complete white.
Once they are done and turn away from the canvas they realize that everything seems to be gone, at least there is nothing that isn’t completely white and impossible to observe as there is no contrast and no real light.
The key to “see” things again is to use the black bucket of paint to splash things so faces and silhouettes become visible again. But they must be careful not to cover everything with black as this will render them blind once more.
Now they can explore their surroundings and will discover that the only thing that has color in their new world are giant footprints of a swan…
Sweets: AR Background like on the trip, Clothing with random splashes of paint appearing until everything is of the same color and it starts with the other color.
Perfect Date
The petal’s nanobots and software look for a strong mutual romantic attraction between the users (usually two) and then increase these feelings by a good amount, as well as inducing feelings of relaxation, self-confidence and general happiness on top of the joy about the (seemingly) great relationship.
Also, as with most petals everything gets a dream-like quality and the users might seem a bit drunk. The narrative part of the petal takes the couple (or more people if you have the right version) on a trip through their normal surroundings but alters everything to be pretty romantic.
Restaurants are exquisite even if they are part of a fast-food chain, the weather is great, sunsets are perfect, everything looks as if it has just been build, renovated or cleaned, pleasant smells are in the air, the light has a soft and warm quality etc.
In addition a lot of nice things seem happen to the lucky two, like a wine on the house, street musicians playing a song for them, a horse carriage instead of a taxi, fireworks spontaneously going off and so on.
Sweets: AR Background for one place from the trip.
Fresh Green
Once taken the user experiences mild happiness, calms down and relaxes. The day to day stress seems to be far away and noises are dampened.
The air starts to feel fresh and everything gets a little bit lighter. After a short while tiny plants appear here and there, moss, grass and little flowers at first, then foliage on the ground, small branches, butterflies, bushes and finally trees, rocks, streams and birds flying around, mixed in with the normal appearance of the user’s surroundings.
They fully believe that these objects really exist and immerse themselves in the scenery. Wandering around they soon will find places where the grass is yellow and no leafs are on the trees, but some unopened flowers grow somewhere hidden.
If they touch them they open and new ones appear until suddenly everything gets green again, sometimes opening pathways to new areas of the trip.
If done in a special way or at the right time, sweets may be found.
Sweets: AR Background with a few plants here and there and a fresh smell in the air.
The End is nigh!
The User instantly thinks that the end of everything is at hand and there are only a dozen hours left. This feeling comes like a vision from a higher power, and is enhanced by fake news broadcasts streaming from the Petal’s mesh server.
In any case the user firmly believes that these are their final moments.
Although this would probably make almost everyone sad and desperate, the petal is designed to give the user a good feeling about it and most people just merrily do what they always wanted to do before the end.
Sweets: A Blueprint for a sandwich board with the text "The End is nigh!" on it.
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A few nicer Petals
Sun, 2012-09-23 20:18
#1
A few nicer Petals
Sun, 2012-09-23 21:47
#2
Lovely! And I loved the sweet
Lovely! And I loved the sweet for The End is Nigh!
Hmm, after having spent an evening updating math-related Wikipedia pages I have this idea:
Pitch pine blossom: Beauty Bare
The user becomes aware of higher mathematics, gaining tremendous understanding... or at least the feeling of knowing what is going on. Interspersed with their everyday surroundings they find amazing mathematical objects - minimal surfaces, function spaces, category theory functors and infinite series - that they can interact with and understand. They can discuss them with other participants, discovering new amazing theorems and properties (outsiders will just hear random pseudo-math). As the trip intensifies ordinary reality disappears into sacred geometry, and the users join an ever more grand series of infinite spaces.
Sweets: a few beautiful hard-to-understand mathematical objects, suitable for decorations in one's AR environment. Some people also claim the petal *does* lead to better mathematics abilities through accidental education.
—

Mon, 2012-09-24 09:45
#3
I love these. There's so much
I love these. There's so much focus on the bad things PETALs can do, I never really let them be used for good. This is some good inspiration to correct that.
Sun, 2012-09-30 10:59
#4
I like these. I wish Fresh
I like these. I wish Fresh Green was real. >.>
Sun, 2012-09-30 15:29
#5
I was thinking: mankind has
I was thinking: mankind has been using psychoactive substances since time immemorial, long before recorded history started; yet it is only in the last 150 years that substance abuse (and the concept of overindulgence as a form of consumerist entertainment) has become such a virulent problem.
So - why not construct a couple of petals that harkens back to a significantly older approach to mind-altering drugs? An approach that uses the altered state of consciousness for the purpose of spiritual (self-)discovery? Our mind, particularly our subconscious, may very well be the most mysterious Undiscovered Country that we could possibly explore - and every bit as marvelous and scary as what lies beyond the Pandora Gates, if not more so.
I'll think of something...
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[img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/lost_userbar.jpg[/img]
Sun, 2012-09-30 17:31
#6
Infomorph Kitsune wrote:I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJam5Auwj1E
It is. Kind of.
I got the idea from Flower:
Wed, 2012-10-03 04:38
#7
Jane the Bane wrote:I was
I don't know about that. South American cultures used to use cocaine to placate slaves and make them dependent on their masters. And poppies were associated with Grecian oracles, often described as spending their lives in a "divine trance".
The big reason it's a problem today is because we now have the technological capability to refine drugs. Cocaine, hash and opium today are exponentially more potent than the narcotics people used just two centuries ago. Even tobacco has been refined dramatically over the years... and Everclear is literally the most pure alcohol you can possibly manufacture on Earth. These things weren't possible prior to the advent of modern chemistry.
—
Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age.
[url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]
Wed, 2012-10-03 14:08
#8
Decivre wrote:South American
As I said: mankind *has* been using psychoactive substances throughout recorded history (and well before that). Ubiquitous availability has made substance abuse (and developing addictions) a whole lot easier, of course.
But the tipping point is the consumerist mentality associated with using a specific drug for "kicks". There's a significant difference between, say, a Siberian shaman consuming hallucinogenic mushrooms in order to enter a healing trance - and some party-crazed kid ingesting the same substance just looking for a cheap thrill.
You could compare them to a person using a motorcycle to reach a destination - and a person recklessly driving the same vehicle in a very unsave manner in order to gain an adrenaline boost.
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[img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/lost_userbar.jpg[/img]
Wed, 2012-10-03 17:41
#9
Many people today speaking in
Many people today speaking in favour of legal drug use tend to underestimate the amount of popular recreational drug use that went on in the past, speaking of shamans and religious rituals and conveniently ignoring people just getting sloshed. See any Nordic saga, and people are falling over themselves with mead. The Latin "vino" refers to wine mixed with water, since "mero", the unmixed wine, was too strong (Plautus and the other comedies are filled with jokes about the drunkards swilling mero). The Greek symposia were supposed to be formal and solemn, but games like kottabos suggest that things easily could get rowdy.
My point is that people have always been fairly eager to get intoxicated (in fact, this is observed in many animals too) and within any population there are always people who are bad at handling drugs. It was harder and more expensive to get intoxicated in the past, but people were also more sensitive to many drugs. There is also the issue that while most people are fairly resistant to addiction a ~5% subset seem to fall for it nearly no matter what drug they encounter. All in all, I would expect a roughly similar fraction of the population to remain drunkards as the technology advances. Except of course is we come up with even more addictive drugs, or good psychosurgery to correct addiction. But you will need to want to give up the addiction in order to do it.
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Thu, 2012-10-04 08:37
#10
Jane the Bane wrote:As I said
And yet the bible references immoderate drinking. So apparently the practice of drinking for the sake of drinking is at least as old as... the story of Sodom and Gomorra?
I promise you recklessness is a whole lot older than you think it is.
—
Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age.
[url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]
Mon, 2012-10-08 05:11
#11
Alright then, intoxicants
Alright then, intoxicants like alcohol have always been used in unwise quantities to produce a "buzz", and the addictive nature of many substances that have been known and used since antiquity has resulted in people developing a dependency.
That does not eliminate the fact that usage of such substances cannot be reduced to this aspect alone, nor that the sheer availability and consumerist mentality of the last 150 years have tended to emphasize this negative aspect many times over.
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[img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/lost_userbar.jpg[/img]
Mon, 2012-10-08 06:04
#12
Jane the Bane wrote:Alright
I disagree with that statement. Advertising rarely (perhaps never) promotes the use of drugs for reasons of merely getting drunk or high, or merely for the sake of doing it. Most advertisers like to promote their product as a sign of social status (as Dos Equis' "Most Interesting Man in the World" ad campaign does), or as a product that is for party-goers (as Bud Lite's "Here We Go" campaign does). And the list goes on for other ways they do it.
And it isn't just drugs. Associative marketing has been used for every product under the sun. Axe Bodyspray associates getting craploads of sex with using their product. Dr. Pepper has been trying to associate themselves with the concept of "be yourself". Mountain Dew has, for years, associated themselves with extreme sports. Bawls is marketed as a drink for the hardcore gamer. It's the universal standard of advertising, that has been used for centuries. Millennia even.
Because let's be honest: how is "drink our beer to be fun at a party" any different from "smoke this hookah and hear the voice of god" with regards to marketing? Even if the gimmick is different, it's still associative.
—
Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age.
[url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]
Thu, 2012-10-11 00:29
#13
Parrot lush
I had a girlfriend once who owned a cockatiel that loved to drink cider. It sipped away and then flew around and around the room at increasing speed, until the alcohol hit it, at which point it fluttered down the wall and hid behind the sofa.
It did this whenever it had the chance, so it wasn't a one-off... it liked doing it.
Thu, 2012-10-11 16:17
#14
This immediately opens up the
This immediately opens up the issue of what drugs AGIs invent for themselves. Standard petals are unlikely to work for them...
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Mon, 2012-10-22 22:42
#15
Here's to humanity, getting messed up on whatever's handy
Might as well offer a few ideas.
A few of the things mentioned in the original post remind me of movie tropes/cliches, and I like this as an idea for a themed set of petals. Instead of petals on a flower, they come as an edible piece of film reel that dissolves on the tongue.
[b]Montage[/b]
Disrupting a person's perception of time, this petal is the ultimate tool for those who don't enjoy working for whatever it is they wish to achieve. It doesn't matter if it's tending a garden, doing menial labour, or exercising (not that such a thing is required with medichine work-out routines). Once activated, the petal warps a person's sense of time and provides persistent rewards for performing the action, while suppressing habituation. The montage petal often contains an additional hallucinatory instructor, which can take the form of a kindly grandparent, a spirit guide, or a historical figure. This figure challenges a person with riddles, tests, and koans to open the mind and add challenge to the experience; failing a test can cause the experience to end. The petal trip itself can become somewhat habit-forming, as it can make the daily grind far, far easier for some people to get through.
[b]Sweets:[/b] The Montage is considered by some to be its own reward. In addition, however, a rare few petals contain actual training programs. Extensive use of a particular petal can learning times. (Reduces training time to 1/4th for a particular skill for the next 5 skill points if below 60, next 1 if above 60)
[b]Family Friendly Fun-Time[/b]
Family Friendly Fun Time, or FFFT (pronounced exactly as it's spelled), induces a feeling of elation and provides the user with a sense of peace with reality. The trip takes the form of a literal trip; a journey from one place to another. Along the way, any unpleasant sights (as well as anything else that's not excessively pretty) are modified in the AR to something nauseatingly saccharine. The smell of an open sewer becomes bakery fresh cinnamon buns; dreary skies (more likely, hab ceilings) become colourful frescoes; local utilities come alive with cartoonish faces, which laugh and smile as they sing happy songs. While most versions of the petal stay on this path, some have been known to have trials and gate guardians. When these tests are failed, the cheerful environs take a turn for the nightmarish. Thankfully, such petals are rare... Though rarely differentiated from the rest.
[b]Sweets:[/b] Those who successfully complete their journey are granted the AR overlay that lets them stay in Cloud Cuckooland. However, said AR does not come with the same feelings of euphoria that the petal itself grants. Most people find it grating and annoying.
[b]Varmint Catcher[/b]
Anyone who takes this petal instantly gains an AR skin of a stylized sheriff's outfit or of a similarly stylized outlaw. Those who take the sheriff petal gain an unerring, albeit somewhat general, sense of the direction of their quarry, but are temporarily rendered insensate for a randomized period of up to 30, and no less than ten, minutes. The sheriff, when regaining consciousness, must track down the outlaw.
While Varmint Catcher, on its face, seems like a simple AR game, the twist arises from the way it interferes with the ability to retrieve long-term memory. For the duration of the game, each player believes with the utmost certainty that the game they are playing is entirely real. This provides an exhilarating, and generally terrifying, rush.
[b]Sweets:[/b] The faster the sheriff's attempt to catch the outlaw, the better the sweet. Each week, the top times are uploaded, and the winner gets a blueprint (a shiny revolver for sheriffs, a chameleon skin implant blueprint for outlaws).
—
[img]http://img813.imageshack.us/img813/982/exhumanbar.jpg[/img]
[img]http://img804.imageshack.us/img804/4473/scumbar.jpg[/img]
[img]http://img818.imageshack.us/img818/1396/gatecrasherbar.jpg[/img]
[code][@-rep +1, f-rep +2][/code]
Mon, 2013-06-03 17:28
#16
A Dream of the Paper Cat
A Dream of the Paper Cat
This petal is usually hidden on the bottom of a luxurious looking black pack of self-igniting orbital hash cigarettes with an extendable smart-matter cigarette holder and nothing on the outside but a picture of a bronze colored orchid.
As soon as the tiny flower and its nutrient pack gets removed from the pack, it rapidly grows into a black orchid with golden and copper sprinkles that holds out one petal, tempting the surprised user to eat it.
Once they do that, a small and strange ball seems to grow out of the heart of the flower apparently at the same time made of fur and paper and wrapped into a thin and translucent metal foil. The user feels very dream-like and amazed by this unexpected discovery and has the desire to open the foil, which melts away as soon as it is touched and prompts the small ball to rapidly unfold itself into a black cat.
The animal has the same odd look like the ball it originated from, on one hand seemingly realistic and on the other very paper-like, similar to a very finely crafted origami figure. The cat follows the user around and is very attached to them, a feeling the petal also induces in the consumer, who starts to try and figure out how he can accommodate their new pet in their life.
Soon some difficulties arise with that, be it legal issues or insufficient space and money, which triggers the cat to start a dialogue about the rights of less complex intelligences like animals and simple AI. If the user is careless or inconsiderate of the cat at any time an 'accident' happens where they rip of the paper head of the poor critter, leaving them puzzled or even deeply sad.
Depending on how long the user discusses and how nuanced their arguments and beliefs are, sweets are granted. Due to the typical delivery method of this petal it is often used to suck people doing less invasive drugs into the petal scene.
Sweets: An AI or sometimes the creators of the petal evaluate the discussions and give rewards ranging from a simple AR cat to a fully able muse version of the enigmatic animal.
Tue, 2013-06-04 07:26
#17
I love the cat!
I love the cat!
Here is a petal inspired by it:
Silver Gerbera
A full, pinkish-silver gerbera flower. When taken, a small (about four centimeter) silver retro robot climbs out of the flower. It starts prancing about, perhaps singing or performing small acrobatic tricks. The more the users interact with it, especially by joining the dance and song, the more energetic it becomes. New robots also appear, scurrying around and playing pranks. The main point of the petal is to get as many people as possible involved and happy. In the end the little robots begin to dissolve into silver puffs of smoke, twinkling and singing as they dissipate.
Sweets: blueprints for the small robots. The basic sweets are just models or stupid bots, but there is a very hard to unlock sweet that has a "full" version of the entertainment robot.
—
