Kobold King

...now I wonder whether fantasy!Altermind would be willing to engineer this trap. And the added discomfort of having Hawk pinch his butt would also give a little pinch of karma to fantasy!Quota. What image would that be? Shiny Sparkle in the woefully impractical armor unique to the fantasy genre? I usually disapprove of that trope, but it would almost make sense for her.

Still think alternate universes are all fun and games? They can lead to quite horrifying realizations, chief of which being that Deathwish has no standards whatsoever. Also, am I the only one who thinks Shiny Sparkle would be the realm's most sparkly succubus?

He probably wouldn't make a new title for her, but all men and women of the faith would be instructed to come to her aid if necessary. Why don't you think it over, Twi. She possessed the ability to influence the strange force that grants magical powers. While she could help grant others powers, she herself possessed only water-related powers. She'd be extremely old and withered as a human, but as a nymph she'd still be youthful and attractive enough for fantasy!Deathwish to hit on. This is a universe where canon and fanon Epics are all magic users or enchanted creatures. Who do you think the water nymph was?

Maybe this is my heatstroke talking, but I can't say I mind. I'm surprised, but this one of the tamer things I've come home to find you lot chatting about. Though I'm a touch annoyed you had the discussion of What Happened in Fantasy!Oregon without me. I want to say we've talked about this before, but because we can never discuss these alternate universes enough... Lightwards, I think, would still be a necromancer in the enchanted kingdom of Oregon. However, he'd be a different breed of necromancer; once a professor at one of the kingdom's highest centers of magical learning, he began dabbling in dark arts with the intention of curing human mortality. He succeeded... at a cost. He gained the ability to resurrect the dead, including himself, but the sorcery took a terrible toll on his mind. His sanity slipped. Every skeleton he animated drove him further into paranoia. Every death he resurrected himself from drove him deeper into delusion. Eventually he massacred the students of his university, and fled into the countryside to begin his dark quest. He has now deceived a runaway princess into aiding him, and resides in a floating fortress she enchanted for him. Even now he strives to create a new empire... an Empire of Light, he calls it. Aldo the Enigmatic was a court mystic, who bamboozed nobles and princes into believing he possessed magical power. More recently, he stumbled upon ancient texts that taught him real magic, and has begun roaming the kingdom meeting other sorcerers. He travels with a snarky pixie named Cricket, so named because she's six inches tall and has the legs of a cricket. A recent addition to the Empire of Light, Steven is a low-born peasant man who stumbled across a pair of magic glasses made of pink crystal, which have mystically bonded with him and allow him to see into the past. While this ability should make him the most powerful man in the kingdom, as he could find the weaknesses of powerful sorcerers or learn the battle plans of any rival lord, he instead uses his ability in pitiful attempts to impress damsels and tavern wenches, and has been pressured into working for the Emperor of Light. Samantha, daughter of Trattner, is a young village girl and daughter of a local baker. She's of low birth, but has somehow survived to the age of seventeen without being struck down by a sorcerer or great lord for her defiant attitude. Fantasytimes recently chose to kidnap her for that very same defiance, which has caused the young girl nothing but trouble. Revolution Sunburst is a peasant of a far-off, isolated community, one that resides far from the sorcerer-run kingdoms and claims to have nymph blood in the heritage of its members. She has little experience with nobles or dark wizards, but is confident--perhaps overly confident--in her ability to survive them with her morality and pacifism intact. The nymph blood is strong in her, and she seems more energetic when she's been in direct sunlight. Meanwhile, in the city-state of The Dalles, men have withstood the turmoil in the rest of the kingdom by forming a militant religious order called only the Guard. Led by Commander Pope Vondra, the Guard keeps sorcerers on a fine leash as it uses their abilities to defend the town. Of the many magic-users coerced into service by the Guard, one of the most powerful is the man once known as Hawk. He once fought for a fierce barbarian tribe, laying waste to many towns and villages. Eventually, however, he was banished from the tribe for an incident that may or may not have involved sleeping with the barbarian king's daughter. This forced him to flee into the wilderness, where he encountered a powerful water nymph. The nymph, fed up with his attempts to 'woo' her, eventually granted him the magical arts of flight and damage reflections in order to get him out of her hair, and Hawk proceeded to terrorize the country before being captured by the Guard. While sorcerers are usually stripped of their liberties by the Guard, one is actually the right hand man of Pope Vondra. The Bishop Daniel knows but a single spell, simple but versatile--the ability to conjure weapons and tools out of thin air. The knights of The Dalles are well-armed with swords, battleaxes, and every other melee weapon under the sun. Their farmers and blacksmiths are also well-stocked, and the city wants for nothing--though the Bishop's strict decrees, both religious and practical in nature, have annoyed many to no small extent. A certain pair of "young witches," one with power of gravity and friction and the other adorned with myriad tattoos, are prone to convoluted pranks to knock the Bishop down a peg.

I just worked for nine consecutive hours helping a pair of fellow churchgoers move their furniture from their old house to their new one. The furniture was heavy, and the bottoms, though hidden from view, were intricately carved with elaborate swirls that made it impossible to get a good grip on. And like I said, it was heavy. Chair upon chair I stacked onto a U-Haul truck. Couch upon couch. End table upon end table. Shelf upon shelf. Bed upon bed. Coffee table upon coffee table. Eventually I stopped seeing the furniture. It was as if the Sun beamed straight into my brain, showing me visions of... eternity. I saw Lucifer and all his angels cast down from Heaven. I saw the winds of time, the lives of peasants and emperors scattered upon it like mayflies before a tornado. I saw galaxies form and coagulate and spiral into the void. I saw the gates of Heaven on fire. I saw the entirety of Hell frozen into black ice. As I walked, zombie-like, furniture in my aching arms, I was briefly omniscient. ...Then they gave me a Gatorade and told me I was dehydrated and possibly a little bit heatstroked. They... were probably right.

Actually, seeing them both together I think I prefer the American covers. They're more explosive and dynamic; the others are a bit too grey to really do justice to the source material's theme, in my opinion.

Would I ever stop smiling? I think not. Also, I found a comic that makes me totally rethink Moby Dick. ...Or at least, I would be totally rethinking Moby Dick if I didn't already feel this way about it.

Frankly I wish Red were a little older. Right now the age gap between her and Nighthound is enough to make their relationship just a touch Squick-y.

If you ever shoot a video of Mollie with a shoe, I'll officially have a Patronus thought for the dementor apocalypse.

I haven't even played this game and now I want to switch my profile picture back to Sadness.

Brandon Sanderson's philosophy on worldbuilding:

I have not one single murky clue about how this sort of thing works. However, the Incognito screen in Chrome takes pains to inform me that So I'm guessing that wouldn't really benefit your covert ops.

I only just now realized the reason for Sadness' coloring in Inside Out. It's because she's feeling blue.

That's the thing about society. There was no one person who decided these things--everybody has tiny, sometimes nearly imperceptible prejudices, and when we add them all together we get societal rules and taboos.

Thanks for all the sympathy, guys. It helps. It's part of human nature to attack minorities, I suppose. It doesn't matter if the minority is separate because of race, creed, sexual orientation, or TV preferences--we're pack animals, and we pick on anyone we don't see as part of our pack. Trying to reason with a lot of these people is like trying to convince a bonobo to stop flinging dung at you. All you can really do is shake your head, sigh, pray, and hope someday they'll be enlightened in this world or the next. And then listen to MLP songs, because they're a good cheerer-upper.

Well... putting on my counter-culture hat for a minute, there's sort of a stigma attached these days to relationships where one party is older than the other. The stigma exists for reasons, but these reasons ultimately seem to boil down to the gaps in maturity and the potential for abuse from the older individual. It's worth pointing out that some primitive societies see marriages with an age gap as par the course. While a thirty year-old man marrying a twelve year-old is disturbing no matter how you look at it, in some societies it's perfectly acceptable for a twenty year-old to marry a sixteen year-old so long as elder family members as long as it's consensual and family elders are keeping a watchful eye on the couple. Big Al has been a complete gentleman to Rita thus far, with their relationship extremely wholesome even by real-world standards. Heck, even the stiffest seniors at my church probably wouldn't disapprove too much of the relationship given there's been no hanky-panky going on behind the scenes. Even if Rita were a few years younger I for one wouldn't feel too strongly about terminating the relationship, and as it is I think it's completely, 100% acceptable.

Considering the kinds of relationships we have in this game in other corners of Oregon, a young adult dating a consenting teenager is pretty wholesome. Add to the fact that she's not even a teenager, and it's hardly that big a deal.

There's no saying Sam can never wind up in The Dalles. And from there, who knows? Thanks.

Yep. Voidgaze would love to be friends with Sam, I'm sure, but Sam still thinks she's a monster in disguise just waiting to murder her the second Funtimes' back is turned. I think Sam would make for a pretty good helper at Game's clinic, as she can be a hard worker if she wants to be.

My father informed me that he could check our router and find out what I was looking at, but assured me that he did not do so. He said he'd only breach my privacy like that if he suspected me of viewing hardcore porn or something else ethically dubious--which I've never done, just so we're clear. Sucks that your parents are less trusting, Lark.

Just a visual reminder that I'm melancholy. Just in case people wonder why my prose is flatter and my manner is more subdued than usual.

This is temporary. And I can't hear your screaming, so it's all good.

The difference between Sam and Revolution is that only Sam's really terrified of Epics. While she's snarky and doesn't have a lot of respect for them, Sam's afraid of them and hates them vehemently as a consequence. Revolution, on the other hand, is aware that they pose a powerful threat, but has been too sheltered to have the visceral fear of them that Sam has. To her they're just bogeymen, and to an extent she prides herself in not letting her fear of them rule her. So if Shiny Sparkle flirted with Sam, she'd be met with sharp derision and anger. Sam would be afraid of being blown up, but she'd be afraid of being an Epic's concubine even more, and would make it abundantly clear that she's not interested. Revolution, though, would mainly find the flirts amusing. She wouldn't reciprocate, but so long as Shiny didn't try to force the issue they'd get along a lot more smoothly than Sam and any other Epic. In short: Sam would tie Shiny to a train track with her weakness given half a chance, while Revolution would be amused by harmless flirting.