Ask Kobold Anything

[Lightsworn Panda]

Best I could come up with before dinner:

 

 

 

I am honestly surprised that this didn't pop up at the start of the thread.

 

What is your opinion on pandas? Also, do you add the milk first, or the cereal?

[Quiver]

Do you ever wonder if maybe the whole world exists just as someone's dream, and when they wake up we'll all cease to exist?

[Kobold King]

Kobold. How much time do you spend on the Shard every day?

 

Way more than my employer would prefer. I spend a lot of time on my computer, and I pretty much always have the 17th Shard open in a tab somewhere.

 

 

Which pre-Colombian American civilization is your favorite?

 

The Aztecs are simultaneously my favorite because they invented cocoa, and my least favorite because of the whole human sacrifice thing. But I nevertheless found myself cheering them on in the history books where they're up against Cortes; they may have been a twisted, corrupted excuse for a civilization, but the conquistadors were a bunch of slontzes and I'd of liked for them to lose a round against the natives they were exterminating.

 

Actually, can I put down a new least favorite? The Tlaxcalan people, because they allied with Cortes to bring down the Aztecs. They basically made a deal with a devil to bring down another devil, and they helped the conquistadors get a foothold in Mesoamerica where they proceeded to enslave and pillage all the native peoples. Thanks a lot, Tlaxcalans.

 

 

I am honestly surprised that this didn't pop up at the start of the thread.

 

What is your opinion on pandas? Also, do you add the milk first, or the cereal?

 

Isn't it implied that any thread I start is the property of the Reckoners RPG? We're like a cult. We have no personal property; it all belongs to the insane community we joined.

 

I think pandas are fascinating and adorable creatures, but I fear their overspecialization may ultimately result in their extinction. Historically an animal that depends on a single food source is on precarious footing as a species, and when you couple their limited diet with habitat loss and the illegal poaching industry, I fear there may not be any left for my grandchildren to see.

 

This might seem blasphemous to some, but I haven't eaten cereal in years. I seem to remember putting the cereal in first when I did eat it, though.

 

 

Do you ever wonder if maybe the whole world exists just as someone's dream, and when they wake up we'll all cease to exist?

 

Yes, actually. I ultimately concluded that even if this is the case, our souls will still be real even if our bodies never have been.

 

But who knows? Maybe all the Aztecs and conquistadors and holocausts in our history will make this entity's dream so terrible, we'll be a nightmare that he or she will never forget. Through traumatizing an innocent demigod we will have attained immortality.

Edited June 15, 2015 by Kobold King

[+Slowswift]

How would you react if any Sharder just showed up at your door one day?

[Varyn]

What was it that originally sparked your interest in the Fantasy Genre?

[Voidus]

What do you consider to be the most underrated fruit?

[Quiver]

How legitimate is your claim to the title of 'king'?

[Silverblade5]

What is the most overrated classic?

[RandomRevival]

What do you think is better. Pokemon or pokemon?

[Kobold King]

I'll probably answer the rest of these tomorrow, but this query has to be dealt with immediately.

 

 

What do you think is better. Pokemon or pokemon?

 

 

Ponies.

[RandomRevival]

Outsmarted by the Kobold King again!!

http://www.google.com.mx/imgres?imgurl=https://hypixel.net/attachments/darn-it-jpg.88594/&imgrefurl=http://hypixel.net/threads/hypixel-developer-training-program-hdtp.204768/page-9&h=510&w=350&tbnid=C16ccxm4XCrTvM:&zoom=1&docid=yixI3jWk9rpA7M&hl=es&ei=MhuKVaD9A8mZsAXhhIOQBg&tbm=isch&client=safari&ved=0CB0QMygBMAE

Edited June 24, 2015 by Random_illuminati

[+Slowswift]

Have you heard anything by the Piano Guys, and if not, WHY NOT?

[mail-mi]

Have you heard anything by the Piano Guys, and if not, WHY NOT?

 

Seconded.

[A Joe in the Bush]

Thirded, motion past. (I love their music)

[Delightful]

Thirded, motion past. (I love their music)

Past or passed? Cause there's a biiiiggg difference there .

[Quiver]

Ponies and Pokemon go to war. Which side do Ponyta and Rapidash join?

[A Joe in the Bush]

Past or passed? Cause there's a biiiiggg difference there .

Both. The motion was passed so hard it became already passed in the past.

Homophones are dumb.

[Kobold King]

What is the most overrated classic?

 

Greek mythology. Half the myths are just Zeus using his magical powers to sire offspring with everything that has remotely compatible reproductive organs, and then some. If I wanted to read that sort of literature, I'd patrol the dark depths of Fanfiction.net.

 

Have you heard anything by the Piano Guys, and if not, WHY NOT?

 

 

Ponies and Pokemon go to war. Which side do Ponyta and Rapidash join?

They are initially conflicted, as their external traits could put them into either side. As the other sides do battle, they seek refuge on the edge of a scorching desert.

 

Days go by, and then do weeks. After months, a night comes when lay on the desert sand and sleep as they always do. But on this night, they are chanced upon by a purple alicorn on her nocturnal scouting mission.

 

Pokemon, she thinks angrily, summoning magic to blast them into craters. They've hurt my friends enough.

 

But then she stops. She looks upon their hooves, and their muzzles, and their flaming manes. While their flanks are bare and devoid of cutie marks, she begins to see that they're not so different after all.

 

She wakes them up, and while they're initially frightened, she calms them with an encouraging smile.

 

 

"I know we seem different," she reasons to the pair of Poke-ponies, "But we actually have so much in common! The same Earth, the same air, the same sky. What if we started looking at what we have in common instead of what sets us apart?"

 

The flaming ponies share a look, and slowly, they nod. Together the three new friends embark from the desert, eager to share their new philosophy with the warring parties.

 

Because there were still so many fighters out there... and they had to befriend 'em all.

[+Slowswift]

 

They're musicians from Utah, a pianist and cellist, who do awesome covers.

[RandomRevival]

They are initially conflicted, as their external traits could put them into either side. As the other sides do battle, they seek refuge on the edge of a scorching desert.

 

Days go by, and then do weeks. After months, a night comes when lay on the desert sand and sleep as they always do. But on this night, they are chanced upon by a purple alicorn on her nocturnal scouting mission.

 

Pokemon, she thinks angrily, summoning magic to blast them into craters. They've hurt my friends enough.

 

But then she stops. She looks upon their hooves, and their muzzles, and their flaming manes. While their flanks are bare and devoid of cutie marks, she begins to see that they're not so different after all.

 

She wakes them up, and while they're initially frightened, she calms them with an encouraging smile.

 

 

"I know we seem different," she reasons to the pair of Poke-ponies, "But we actually have so much in common! The same Earth, the same air, the same sky. What if we started looking at what we have in common instead of what sets us apart?"

 

The flaming ponies share a look, and slowly, they nod. Together the three new friends embark from the desert, eager to share their new philosophy with the warring parties.

 

Because there were still so many fighters out there... and they had to befriend 'em all.

That...was beautiful. :'(

[A Joe in the Bush]

Kobold, if you completely remove one important event from history, (Something like Pompeii or 9/11) Which event would you remove, why would you remove it, and how do you think it would change the modern world?

[Orlion Blight]

Do you remember your President Nixon? Do you remember the bills you have to pay? Or even yesterdaaaaay?

[RandomRevival]

Kobold, You have complained you are only asked about pokemon and ponies. Well, time for a hard question.

If Brandon Sanderson and James Dashner were to fight shirtless in a pokemon field with Rick Riordan as the referee and Stephen King as the Cute Kawaii Cheerleader....who would win, why, and how?

[skaa]

Homo sapiens sapiens have been roaming the Earth since at least around 195,000 years ago. The earliest evidence of writing we've discovered so far is less than 8,000 years old, around 70,000 years after the species almost went extinct due to the effects of the Toba eruption. In the ~125,000 years between the dawn of anatomically modern humans up to the near-extinction event, there wasn't a single reasonably advanced civilization that left any trace for us to discover.

 

What is your favorite theory as to why civilization did not arise during that time?

 

(You could make up your own theory, if you want.)

Edited June 29, 2015 by skaa

[Kobold King]

Homo sapiens sapiens have been roaming the Earth since at least around 195,000 years ago. The earliest evidence of writing we've discovered so far is less than 8,000 years old, around 70,000 years after the species almost went extinct due to the effects of the Toba eruption. In the ~125,000 years between the dawn of anatomically modern humans up to the near-extinction event, there wasn't a single reasonably advanced civilization that left any trace for us to discover.

 

What is your favorite theory as to why civilization did not arise during that time?

 

(You could make up your own theory, if you want.)

 

 

 

My beliefs on this matter are often considered unconventional, as I've rejected some standard thinking in favor of my own beliefs. My own beliefs I have formulated over several years, inspired by some outlying writer/philosophers like Derrick Jensen and Daniel Quinn.

 

Now. Let us begin the road to Crazyville.

 

The key point in my beliefs surrounding civilization is as follows: civilization is not a natural step in our evolution. It has become increasingly common for writers to treat it like it is. You see it in science fiction writers all the time--in the eyes of men like Carl Sagan or Arthur C. Clarke, a species goes through a very set path during its evolution. The path they believe all sapient races must follow looks something like this:

 

• Life develops.
• Over billions of years, a species attains sapience and higher awareness.
• Species develops agriculture, and subsequently civilization.
• Species advances technologically to the point of interstellar travel.
• Species colonizes the galaxy.

 

It's a pretty picture, I won't deny. And I'm guilty of utilizing this idea in my own science fiction. It's fun and even comforting to imagine that we as a species have a concrete goal in mind, that someday we'll leave this puny planet behind and explore the universe. It's good to imagine that all the violence and wars and holocausts throughout our history were building up to something good. That somehow, it will all be worth it just for a few of our colonists to walk on a distant planet, taking our place among all the higher races that have already done the same.

 

Unfortunately, this picture breaks down at a simple realization.

 

If civilization were part of a natural progression, just a single step on a road that we were destined to follow, a road that countless races across the universe have followed before us... why did we only take that step five thousand years ago? Why did tens of thousands of years go by without a single human being even conceiving of what we call civilization? And if we're somehow more evolved than hunter-gatherer societies... does that have the unfortunate implication of making us superior to them in some way, like was argued when European peoples exterminated indigenous cultures around the globe?

 

The answer I have tentatively come to is simple. Human civilization wasn't evolution. It wasn't advancement. It was a fluke. The development of complex agriculture and the founding of the first cities don't have any kind of special significance for our race. After tens of thousands of years of development, civilization arose as a statistical anomaly. And it wasn't even the good kind of fluke. Since civilization started on the planet, it has caused more plagues than it's cured, started more wars than it's ended, created more problems with its advanced technology than it's even come close to solving, and most of all, has snuffed out more lives than it's saved. For every penicillin-like discovery there's been a cancer or a new retrovirus that hunter-gatherer cultures never had to suffer. For every global charity movement there's been a genocide, like the conquest of the Native Americans, or the enslavement of Africans, or the outright extermination of the Tasmanian Aboriginals.

 

Civilization isn't a step along some evolutionary path. It's not our ticket to the stars, away from all our troubles. Civilized cultures are just as violent, if not more so, than any of the so-called primitives that inhabited the planet in the past two hundred thousand years. Not only that, but it spreads out of control and wipes out or forcibly assimilates any society that rejects its way of life. Civilization is a fluke, and it's a dangerous one.

 

 

 

Which brings me to the Only Joe's fascinating question.

 

 

Kobold, if you completely remove one important event from history, (Something like Pompeii or 9/11) Which event would you remove, why would you remove it, and how do you think it would change the modern world?

 

What an opportunity! The ability to turn back any of the evils recorded in our history. But... only one. I could stop the Holocaust but leave the Rape of Nanking untouched. I could save Hiroshima but let Nagasaki go up in its mushroom cloud. I could save Europe from the Mongols, but then let the Europeans ravage the Native Americans.

 

It's an impossible choice. Civilization will always commit atrocities, and commit them on a heinously larger scale than any primitive tribe could manage. Like the mythical hydra, for every evil I cut down two more will take its place.

 

Unless...

 

No, I can't do it. The mere thought would be madness.

 

But it would save so many...

 

Ah, what the heck. This is only a hypothetical situation anyway.

 

I choose to erase the Toba eruption.

 

Occurring around 70, 000 years ago, the volcanic eruption that occurred around Lake Toba was a geological event that made the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius look like a violent sneeze. The Toba eruption was 100 times more powerful than the largest volcanic event in recorded history, and the ash that settled in the atmosphere caused climatic disruption across the entire planet. Humanity was nearly wiped off the face of the earth; only around 3, 000 to 10, 000 individuals survived the period of global cooling that followed.

 

That's right. This volcano was so huge, after it blew it top the entire surviving human race could have fit into a single U. S. football field.

 

By wiping away the Toba eruption, I allow humanity a second chance. The human race will never have to struggle through this apocalyptic event. Our improved genetic diversity alone will be staggering, as modern humans are descended from only about three thousand people.

 

But more importantly, this change will be so huge, so monumental, that all of recorded history will change. The statistical fluke of civilization might never occur at all, if we're lucky, which means all the massive wars and the bloody genocides of history will be wiped away. No Roman Empire. No slavery. No Black Death. No Hundred Years' War. No World War I. No World War II. No Vietnam War. The only wars known to humanity will be the simple conflicts of hunter-gatherer tribes, which while violent, are nowhere near as terrible as the fights between civilizations.

 

 

 

So there you have it. I hate civilization, because I think it's caused more problems than it's solved. I think it's less of a natural growth of humanity and more of an unnatural mutation, like a cancer. And if I could stop any event in history, I'd stop the eruption that wiped out millions of our Stone Age ancestors and hopefully prevent the cancer of civilization from developing in the first place.

 

For the record, you don't have to agree with me. I respect all opinions. I appreciate this thought-provoking question, and I hope my answer was as thought-provoking for you as it was for me.

Edited June 29, 2015 by Kobold King