Kobold King

It's hilarious that Fanon!Revolution is turning into our resident Shipper on Deck. Where would the Lost Ones live, though? Would there be a Peter Pan Epic presiding over them? Is there a temporal Epic among them that keeps anything from aging within the town they've made their territory?

Expect an eventual reference to a gang of child Epics called the Lost Ones. (Which would actually be kind of neat, especially if they wanted Sandman to join.) That actually sounds like something Sam and Nathan would write.

Lie detection... enhanced physical attributes, maybe? Or he could manipulate the weight or balance of his staff. Maybe all three. 0.o That's all I have to say about that movie pitch. 0.0

This one: The Lost Boy named Felix from season 3. Played by this guy. The one who wears a hood, drawls his voice, and carries a staff around. I have no idea what his powers would be.

I thought you imagined Fortuity looking like Lil' Wayne. I also had strange but vague dreams. All I remember is that the creepy guy from Once Upon a Time was an Epic. Arsenal post coming up soon.

Sorry to see you go, Tulir. You're welcome back at any time. In the meanwhile, we promise not to corral your Epics into wildly out-of-character crack ships. TwiLyght, what was the question Arsenal needed to answer again? I'm confused.

His options are between skating with Funtimes, or hiking with Mobius. And the hiking path happens to go right by a warm but cramped cabin in the deep woods, and is scheduled for a day when it's certain to start pouring down rain, compelling the two hikers to seek refuge in said cabin to avoid getting wet... and, perhaps, to learn how nice it feels to be close to one another. Calamity Claus is not a subtle supernova.

Rough approximation.

Dr. Gedankenblitz would be a great name for a supervillain. Anything you can tell us about your project?

There's not much on the Question threads he could use to his advantage... the PM discussions, however, could give him an enormous amount of usable information (as well as a substantial fright when he realizes how many people know his weakness.) He would be immensely annoyed and would judge us all as imbeciles. "Doctor Lighttimes" and "Leprechaun Revolution" would send him into a murderous rage, however.

Lightwards would probably just get ideas from this thread. "Zombie spiders... check. Zombie bear... check. Note to self: don't let anyone stare it down. Zombie mountain lion... check. Zombie game warden... check. Zombie javelina... uh, check. I guess I can send them to root around in CorpseMaker's trash... or... something."

What would Lucentia's opinion of glittering spiders be? Nathan's one of the few Oregon characters who could legitimately complain about his clashes with animals. "Oh, so you heard a cougar roar once? I'VE SEEN DINOSAURS EATING PEOPLE."

Perspective. Edgedancer has it.

T-tarantulas? Nope. I live in west Texas, so I'm prepared that I at some point may run into a tarantula... but I'm still not happy about the prospect. Snakes don't bother me; bugs don't phase me; I've casually squashed scorpions under my boots. But spiders disturb me on some basic, primal level that I can't quite shake. The argiope spiders of Illinois made me scared of walking through tall grass for years. Here in Texas I've regularly come across a type I call "glintspiders"; I don't know what their real name is, but I named them after the bizarre way their eyes reflect light on moonlit nights. They're the only spiders I know of that actually produce an eyeshine effect. And on hot summer nights when they come out of their holes to hunt... well, let's just say the scrubland becomes as glittery as Funtimes' hair. And yeah, the game conspiracy is definitely an unethical piece of bureaucracy. I'm not sure if it's still going on--one website reports that earlier this year Illinois added cougars to the protected species list, so I suppose they must have admitted there are some present at least. But it's an example of how government agencies that try to regulate the environment are particularly prone to corruption. I'm positive there are decent people working for game commissions; I just know that there are others who are woefully self-serving.

I live in Texas now, but the largest animal I've seen so far was a dead black bear. (It was apparently hit by a car just outside of Santa Anna.) Earlier this year though a rainstorm washed a rattlesnake out of its den. My cats, being intelligent and totally not idiotic creatures, were trying to catch and eat it. Arizona sounds like a very strange place. Though I did laugh at your description of it--"God's abstract period" earned a hearty laugh and a mandatory "come read what this person online said" for everyone else in the room with me. The Great Cougar Conspiracy: What I think I do: What society thinks I do: What the Illinois game commission thinks I do: What I really do:

Hordes of outback spiders. Staring down a black bear in its native environment. Why don't I have any awesome Man vs Wild stories? Oh that's right. Because I lived in Illinois for years of my life. I can't speak for the whole of the state, but where I lived in northern Illinois had long since ceased to be wild. While technically a rural region, there were more than enough human habitations littering the once pristine forests there to drive away much of the traditional fauna. Aside from coyotes, foxes, and a few white-tailed deer, very little of the original ecosystem survived the march of human progress. But every once in a blue moon, something wild and savage would find its way back to its traditional homeland... The closest I ever came to one of these encounters was when I was in my early teens. (I wanna say I was fifteen.) The sun had finished setting a few minutes previously, leaving me shuffling about at dusk finishing my farm work. Chickens needed to be closed into their coop; sheep needed to be rounded into their stalls for the night; the cow needed to be scratched behind her ears and told what a good bovine she was. It was a winter day, so I was trudging through thick snow and wearing so much warm clothing it was almost indecent. I had just finished these activities and was heading back to the house, where I was sure a warm meal and electric heating would be available. I was probably seventy yards from the back door when the Australian shepherd bounding at my feet started barking. An Australian shepherd barking is nothing unusual. The Australian shepherd is, I am convinced, a breed of dog which is so traumatized by its origins in Australia that it believes every living thing on this Earth to be a severe and immediate threat to the safety of its well-being. I do not exaggerate when I say this particular dog has been known to bark at butterflies with an intensity that would suggest the zombie apocalypse had just begun. With this information delivered, I hope you'll excuse my fifteen year-old self for chuckling and disregarding the dog's urgent warnings. My dog was eventually joined by the neighbor's terrier, which began yelping and yipping with a fervor that would suggest it was being slowly devoured by some large and powerful predator. It was only later on that I realized this may actually have happened. That's when I heard it. A sound burst through a line of nearby pine trees, freezing me in my tracks and--if you don't mind the cliche--curdling my blood. It was something between a roar and a cry; a shriek which raised every hair on my body. It was the sort of shriek which implies not an animal in distress, but an animal that knows far better than you how to eviscerate and devour a human being. Needless to say, I hurried inside as quickly as I could. A restless perusal of the Internet brought me to a site with recordings of various animal cries. Eventually I hit a sound I instantly recognized--the cry of the mountain lion. The puma. The catamount. The cougar, the Felis concolor. I'd passed within fifty meters of the largest cat in North America. I couldn't shake the certainty that if it had wanted to eat me, I would have made a delicious (if slightly bony) meal for a roaming mountain lion. The next morning I found enormous cat prints scattered through the snow. They were nearly identical to the tracks of housecats--save for the fact that each print was larger than a man's hand. The big cat had apparently crisscrossed the snow right in front of the barn before slinking away into the trees at the edge of the property. The local game warden was adamant that cougars do not exist in Illinois. "It was a dog," he insisted repeatedly. "Cougars are not present in Illinois." According to the venerable and knowledgeable game warden, the tracks I found were those of a large dog that had merely melted in the snow, seeming larger than they actually were. The cry I heard? He insisted I had misheard a dog barking. I later learned the full politics of the situation--the game department of Illinois is paid an obscene amount of money every year for exterminating deer. The extermination efforts are necessary, they claim, because Illinois has no natural predators large enough to hunt deer. Therefore, humans must fill the role by disposing of hundreds of white-tailed deer every year. They are paid so much money for the job that many of them would be quite nearly ruined by the discovery of a native predator still inhabiting the area. It is apparently their policy to quietly shush and deny any rumors of cougars or other large predators. Apparently my "sighting" wasn't the only one. There are reports of cougars still roaming the forests all over the state. But still, the game wardens deny any such thing. A week later a cougar was found dead a mile from my house, hit by a car and left for dead by the side of the road. The body was quietly collected by the game commission, declared to have "escaped from a circus," and was never seen again.

* is infused with Christmas spirit and early space age optimism * Thanks, I needed that. Randomizer? Like the thing in Doctor Who that sends the TARDIS somewhere random? I wholeheartedly approve.

To be honest I have no idea what kind of spin I'd use either. It exists in my head as only a very loose concept at the moment. Doctor Who-esque tone seems like something I'd write though. I'll definitely have to play around with the concept and settle on a good storyline. Unrelated, but are we going to give this prompt-writing-group-thing a name?

That's Darkness-Induced Audience Empathy for ya. The moral part shouldn't be a problem--Nighthound's the sort of person who'd pull the wings off Jiminy Cricket.

I wonder if we can use "And Then Nighthound Died Day" for Quiver's December writing prompt. Somehow Super!Nighthound really is more horrifying than Epic!Nighthound. There's something existentially horrifying about a man who chooses to commit atrocities as opposed to a feral beast driven to evil by forces outside his control. I'd post a picture of a vegetable, but I don't think I could top the leek.

OK, I have a rough pitch for a Christmastime short story. Santa Claus meets his equivalent in an alien culture: a bloodsucking reptile called the Winterender. The Winterender brings warmth and new scales for all the good little spider-lizard hatchlings, but feels threatened by the rise of human space-colonialism. Meanwhile, a human colonial administrator plans to destroy spider-lizard habitats and force the survivors into specially designed reservations... unless St. Nick can teach him about the true meaning of Christmas first. I am seriously considering writing this or some variation of it.

Kobold King wonders why the aunt is stated to be non-existent but the horrible cousin's existence is left suspiciously ambiguous. I honestly have no idea what I'll be doing. I don't have a fictional WIP to occupy me, so I'll have to think of something else. I've always enjoyed the pulpy sci-fi stories written in the 60s; maybe I'll try my hand at writing something short along those lines. Or maybe something where Santa Claus is a time traveler. There's a whole universe of possibilities here and I wouldn't count any idea out at this point. Ooh, here's an idea: if Santa Claus is an ageless, immortal entity that's been doing his part to enrich human lives for centuries, how does he feel about the process of human development? How would he react if humanity began colonizing another planet? And most importantly--do alien races have their own versions of jolly ol' St. Nick?

Would she amend her motto to "A fight where Nighthound dies is a fight won"? I think it'd be a tough fight for her, but she'd have a solid chance of at least surviving. (And surviving without a dog collar fixed to her neck, which is important.) If Nighthound were a Super in Susan's world, would be be considered an abnormally powerful specimen or about average? This is a kohlrabi.

Aha! I finally have an excues to write a Steelheart fanfic where Calamity is Santa Claus! ...Er, never mind that. Great prompt! I'll be thinking hard about what I'll write around it. Anyone else know what you're writing yet? I think it'd be neat if we shared our thoughts and projects as we go.

I think she'd be horrified at his atrocities at her best... Harley Quinn's rival for his attentions at her darkest. Gotcha. That is a pretty awesome power, and I like that she prefers using her abilities strategically instead of charging into battle with them like a Hollywood action hero. You said that, and for a moment I actually had the mental image of a dragon that sees the future and fights superheroes. (An awesomeness for another story, perhaps? ) Having Susan face another precog could definitely be a neat scenario though. I've lived in several states and have never experienced an earthquake. I've never lived on the West Coast though. (Or been there for that matter.)