Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-27708312-20170202163909/@comment-27708312-20170310043347

Guyscopelevel wrote: It was ok.

I wish Dipper had observed some kind of evidence that Mabel was inside the cannon, or solved some clue that led him there.

It was just a guess that she was in there. He didn't know for sure until he lit the fuse. Everything just follows automatically from the point Dipper decides that she *might* be in there. He could have just climbed up and looked in and the story would have been over a little early.

He could have done something unexpected, like pushing a large pool of water at the foot of the cannon and tipping the barrel of the cannon so Mable went splash in the water.

The way it reads now, is a bit like reading a murder mystery where the sleuth spends six months fingerprinting every one in town until he finds the person with the prints found on the murder weapon. A brute force solution might be effective, but it doesn't make for an engaging story.

If Mabel had had a ball balancing act and Dipper made her balance on a ball when he found her; or if she was a trapeeze artist and had to suddenly swing on a bar. For a normal person these would be odd and frightening things. But firing Mabel the cannonball out of a cannon is just a regular day.

Actually, don't real circuses use a pnumatic plunger or spring concealed in a tube, with a smoke effect to simulate the action of the cannon? The human cannonball doesn't actually leave the barrel at ballistic speeds--it would tear their flesh from their bones.

I think astronauts and fighter pilots train to work for minutes at a time at 3 or 4 times normal gravity at sealevel. At 7 to 9 Gs, struggling to remain conscious is a challenge.

Flight suits of modern fighter pilots are built with sensors to detect when the pilot is pulling high Gs, or he can trigger his suit if he knows he will need it shortly. The legs of the suit inflate, pressing very tightly againsts the skin. When the strong g forces pull the body's blood supply out of the head and into the legs, the suit pressure keeps the extra blood from entering the legs. If the blood can't drain from the pilot's skull, he won't pass out and can keep operating the jet.

A pilot who can take 4 Gs without the suit, can usually take 6 Gs with it. The more Gs the pilot can take, the sharper curves the jet can make. Sharp curves means the jet can escape an enemy on his tail, or even turn the tables on him.

In any case, the fuse on a circus cannon isn't real. It's all a bit to impress the audience. Dipper should know about the fake fuse. That might be how real circus cannons are like, but this is a story, so I had it be an actual, gunpowder-filled cannon. The reason he fires her out instead of just checking in the cannon is because I considered it funnier. Mabel being shot out of a cannon is a regular occurence in this AU, which is why it's used in such a casual manner here.

By the way, I've updated the circus twins story with a few more chapters if you want to check them out.