TwiLyghtSansSparkles

I did, but apparently my subconscious thinks he should look more like Hitler. He even had the weird combover. Which one? The image isn't working. :/ Sweeeeeet.

That must be it. I woke up just before Funtimes came barreling around the corner, clapping her hands and turning Fortuity's bullets into jellybeans.

No. No I am not. For all I know I could've been a powerful High Epic attempting to kill him in a way that made vanillas look responsible, and his grabbing an assault rifle from our gun safe could have been a last-ditch attempt to save his own skin. I kept applesauce in bags, for crying out loud! Only a crazy High Epic would do something that deranged!

I dreamed Fortuity tried to kill me last night. I don't recall the exact circumstances, or how I escaped, but I clearly remember being forced to bring him home with me for some reason. I locked him in my room and went downstairs (I think he was unconscious at this point--not sure how the heck I managed that) to get my brother. He immediately went for weapons while I went to the fridge and found we had instituted the sound policy of storing leftover homemade applesauce and marinara sauce in gallon sized freezer bags. It's probably best that I don't remember all of what happened next, but according to my dream, Fortuity looks a lot like Hitler. This is what I get for rereading Steelheart before bed.

Does he want Autumn to send the twins out to help stop the invasion, even though they're currently unregistered with the City Guard, or should she keep them with her and wait out the siege? Wildly out of character crack ships it is. We'll keep them in character.

Sorry to see you go. Hope you can rejoin again soon. Would you rather shift your characters to NPC status, or put them up for adoption? Edit: Panda, The Dalles thread follows roughly the same timeline as the Portland thread.

"Pardon me, Calamity Claus, but you seem to have made a mistake in my gifts." "Explain." "Well, you gave me a day of skating with Funtimes, followed by a hiking trip with Mobius. Both of these activities seem designed to get me as close to them as possible in situations known for their presence in both romantic dramas and romantic comedies. In other words, Calamity Claus, you seem to be attempting to pair me off with one of two women I hate." "And?" "And I seem to recall requesting martial arts lessons with Traveler." "Hmm….that is a problem." "Good. So you'll give me what I asked for, then?" "No, no, of course not. You see, punching Traveler made Funtimes quite angry. Quite angry, indeed. She is somewhat aware of the fact he hasn't the first idea how to throw a punch—of course, given his background, this should not surprise you." "I don't care about his background! I just want an excuse to punch him again!" "Yes, I understand. But you see, were I to grant this request, Funtimes would arrive just in time to see him receiving the pounding of his life. Placing you in a position uncomfortably close to her at her darkest. And I think we both know that is not where you want to be!" "So what are you saying? That my Christmas gift, the one thing I want this year, will kill me?" "I'm afraid so." *sigh* "Fine. Give me the hiking trip."

"A coupon for a free rollerskating session on Saturday at 7 PM? Didn't Funtimes get the same one?" "Did she? What a coincidence." "Are you—" "Trying to ship you and Funtimes by setting you up on what could be a blind date where you'll almost certainly run into each other, argue a bit, and finally decide to skate on your own at which point she'll teach you how to stop falling on your face and you'll both realize you have pretty decent chemistry? No, not at all."

I would pay good money to see his face when his perusal of the shipping chart led him to "Leprechauns in Space." Why do I get the feeling Nighthound wouldn't be in the least upset by "And then Nighthound died"?

"And--and then I got arrested just for walking through town! They didn't even say what I'd done wrong!""Uh-huh. Tell me about the time you got drugged and strapped to a table for doing your job well and never complaining about the psychopath murdering your friends." "Uh...that never happened to me. But I got arrested!"

They'd probably remind her of that glittering abomination's hair and launch her into a rant on how she was a disgrace to Epics. I have a feeling most of the vanilla characters could shut down most whine fests after all they've seen.

No matter how many glittering spiders surround you...you will never have to hear Lucentia's opinion on anything at all.

Mighty hunter cats, indeed. It's bizarre. There was a tarantula in our yard this past summer—about the size of a teacup. Bruno, who usually catches and eats flies and moths, took one look at that tarantula and bolted back into the house, then barked at us until we moved away from the door. Mostly, it's just hot. During the hottest part of the summer, I can't even walk my dogs during the day because the sun bakes the pavement. And then the winters are so mild that they attract all of the elderly from colder climates to drive very very slowly down here. Though it does have its high points. In the spring, everything blooms. You'll see cacti covered in these bright red and pink flowers, saguaros sprouting white blossoms on all their arms. There are these poisonous toads whose skin secretes this hallucinogenic venom (I call them hypnotoads) and all through monsoon season, you'll hear them croaking between storms. The first time I heard them, I thought they were sheep. And monsoons are something I hope everyone gets to witness at least once. The first year I lived here, I went to the store and arrived just as a monsoon started. The rain poured down like someone had tipped a bucket over the city, and thunder boomed so loud and so close that it set off some poor guy's car alarm. That game conspiracy, though….that's actually kind of disturbing. Hushing up all evidence of cougars, even when it's clear they present a danger to people and pets? Call me old-fashioned, but I find that unethical to say the least.

Dang. Swarmed with spiders, staring down a black bear, confronted with a conspiracy to keep extant cougars under wraps…all of my Man vs. Wild stories are either heartwarming or anticlimactic. When I was four, I was on a trip to Yellowstone National Park with my parents and little brother. I was picking flowers in a field when a ranger called my name. I don't remember much about that moment—I remember the flowers, blue and yellow, and I remember hearing my name and thinking I had to go. I learned years later that a small group of buffalo was making its way toward me. When I was eight or nine, I lived in a little town in Wyoming. My house was across the street from a park, and the park bordered land—I don't know if it was BLM or city land or what, but it was basically just miles and miles of weeds and sagebrush. My friends and I liked to hike through those weeds and pretend we were explorers. One day, I was alone—I think my brother was finishing up his schoolwork and my friends were too, so I was waiting for them. I was on the playground, but I got bored, so I decided to go a little ways into the weeds. When I turned around, there was a group of about five whitetail deer, a buck and some does. I remember thinking how tall they were, even though I was a good twenty feet away from them; thinking how if I were right there beside them, the does would've been taller than I was. The buck and most of the does scampered off, but one of the does stayed behind. She stared at me for a long minute, and I'm still certain it was me she was looking at. I remember thinking how beautiful she was, standing there all still, nearly the precise color of the weeds brushing up against her legs, those big dark eyes fixing me in a stare. After a minute, she bounded off into the sagebrush. Years later, we moved to a town in the middle of the Washington desert. When most people think of Washington state, they think of Seattle—miles and miles of pine trees flanking stretches of rocky beach, with omnipresent storm clouds hovering overhead. That's the far western side of the state. The far eastern side is a bit similar, though there are actually four seasons and a good deal more variety where the trees are concerned—birches, willows, maples, oaks, and a few others I can't name in addition to the pines. I think that when God made Washington, he made the eastern and western sides of the state first, but he put so many trees there that he ran out. So he just left the entire middle stretch of the state bare. The only trees there were planted, and there's not a lot of wildlife. Save for the black widow spider my brother and I found in our backyard when we first moved there. We put it in a jar and told our mother, who was still homeschooling us, that it was a science project. She gave us an A on the condition we release that spider into the wild as far from the house as we could. Fast-forward to today, when I'm living in Arizona. When God made this state, I don't think he really intended for people to live here. I think Arizona was his abstract period—that point in time where he experimented with the strangest-looking plants and animals he could come up with, and then sat back and watched in horror as people began to flood the borders. I imagine him turning to one of his angels and saying, "I made this place as a joke, but people are moving there! Maybe I'll just let them. They'll get it eventually." Millennia later, Arizona is still flooded with people who swell the population between November and April, and others who live here year round. It is, without a doubt, the strangest place I've ever lived. You know how on The Princess Bride, there are the ROUSs? We have those. They're called javelina, and they look like wild pigs, but they're actually a type of rodent. Yes, we have rodents the size of pigs, that look and smell like pigs, and will run up to your garbage can at night and tip it over to get at whatever's inside. You'll wake up in the morning to coffee grounds and old napkins strewn all over the street, with everything even mildly edible gone. In the fall, my mom likes to put pumpkins on the front step—they'd last for weeks in Washington, but here, the javelina get to them within the first few days. She'll wake up to find half-eaten pumpkin shells in the yard. We find all kinds of strange things in our pool filter. We've found scolopendra, dead mice, dead lizards, and even a bright blue caterpillar that looked almost exactly like the one from Alice in Wonderland. Once, a strong wind blew a baby king snake into our pool. Since king snakes eat rattlesnakes, we rescued it with a pool net. Mom wanted to take pictures. She took two while he waited patiently, and on the third, the little snake opened his mouth wide and hissed at her, so she decided it was time to put him out in the wash. I'm very excited to leave this state.

Nope. Nope. Nope. Never going to Australia, never ever ever. Nope nope nope.

By the time he stood on the table and belted out a heartfelt rendition of "Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall," complete with the downing of those ninety-nine beers, Nathan decided he loved his job.

Especially if he showed up on a night when Snakehands was there. Snakehands was hilarious on his own, but drunk Snakehands? That's comedy gold right there. And if Intervention decided to see if it really was possible to get Fortuity so hammered his enhanced reflexes were useless and the only future he saw was more and more glasses of wine, who knows? Those servers might declare Intervention their hero.

This is acceptable. Maybe Randomizers for short?

You mean he hasn't already? I was thinking about Intervention earlier. Namely, how when he was still in idea form, he couldn't affect Epics and was thus considered a gifter. Well, gifters can only gift their own abilities, right? And Intervention's power is getting people drunk. So if he were still a gifter, his primary power would be either 1) becoming drunk at will, or 2) existing in a state of permanent drunkenness. Either way, Chicago Joe would be jealous.

More human, certainly. Maybe even more relatable. I remember one book where both the protagonist and the antagonist were pretty much irredeemably evil, though they both had Emotionally Scarring Backstories ™ to explain why they were the way they were. And it almost worked. I did find myself relating the tiniest bit to the narrator—not in a "Oh, yeah, I'd totally do that if I were in your shoes" kind of a way, but in a "I hope I wouldn't take it that far, but I do understand how you feel deep down inside. Still, dude, tone it down a little" kind of a way. (I stopped reading before the 25% mark because by the time I stopped, the author had abandoned all sense of restraint and the "story" had become little more than nonstop f-bombs and drug references, interspersed with seriously disturbing character insights and "I want to see him bleeeeeeeeeeeed"s from the narrator. Add to that the complete lack of anyone to really root for, and I had a bad case of Ican'tstomachanymoreofthisitis.) Susan's world had a brief upswing in scientific know-how and technological advances due to Supers and the study thereof. When governments across the world collapsed or split, available technology decreased what with major manufacturing countries like China and India now in little shape to export their products and import countries like the US and Britain in little shape to import them. The countries with knowledge of how to manufacture things like computers still have that knowledge; it's just they've lost the ability to mass-produce it and it is thus unavailable to the average user. Scientific research from pre-Super days still exists, and it is still being conducted. In this environment, finding a way to steal another Super's powers would be difficult, but not impossible. Nighthound would need to first find research on the few leeches (power-stealing Supers) in existence. He would need to understand what was written there well enough to duplicate the experiments, as well as take them to the point where he could effectively give himself a leech's power-stealing abilities—preferably permanently and with the ability to turn them off and on at will. Once he could leech powers, he would need to find Supers whose powers he wanted. Stealing their powers would leave them permanently depowered, and significantly weakened. Without serious and immediate medical intervention, preferably from a healing Super, these depowered Supers would die or be left in a permanent vegetative state at best. So in other words, if Super!Nighthound wanted to steal powers, he would need grit, determination, and the ability to permanently shut up that yapping little thing most people call a "conscience."

I'd read that. Not sure what spin you'd put on it; you could put a bunch of spins on it, really. Depending on the tone, it could read like a novelization of an old-school Christmas special, a parody of old Christmas specials, political satire, or a Doctor Who episode. No matter the spin, I'd read it.

"The effigy of Nighthound burned all through the night. When the straw turned to ash and the flames to dying embers, a new effigy was strung up and set ablaze. Little children danced around the figure chanting 'Ding dong, Nighthound is dead' and 'Meanieface, meanieface, Nighthound was a meanieface.' When their throats were sore from cheering and their feet weary of dancing, they returned to their homes and feasted upon waffles and Cocoa Puffs. With Nighthound dead, they all lived happily ever after." That's what I'm aiming for with my villains. Granted, I don't know them very well yet, but I'm hoping to capture part of that "why" sort of terror—"why does he exist, how did he get this past his own conscience, what in his brain told him this was okay?" I've always found characters who know that what they're doing is wrong, know they could stop at any time, and do it anyway more horrifying than characters who sincerely believe they're doing the right thing. But Super!Nighthound won't make an appearance. First of all, that would be plagiarism, and second, he's too scary.

I would not have sat on that guy's lap. I'm sorry, but I said it.

Or "Happy And Then Nighthound Died Day! Let's celebrate our newfound safety by burning him in effigy!" Calamity at least gives him an excuse. Transfer him to an alternate universe—any alternate universe you like—and his evil becomes even more terrifying. In the Reckonersverse, Calamity pushed him down the wrong path and kept him going that way; in Susan's universe, all of his atrocities would have been committed entirely under his own free will. And in this universe, Oregon is alive and well, green as ever. There's a leek in the boat.

More like "A fight where Nighthound dies is cause for celebration by women everywhere." He would be considered abnormally powerful. Her world generally operates by the "One person, one power" rule, save for in cases where a passive secondary or tertiary is needed. (For instance, flamethrowers have the ability to conjure and control flame, as well as immunity to fire and heat.) Those single powers are fairly individualized (Susan being blind to her own futures while the as-yet-unnamed-but-definitely-extant Dragon is blind to every future but those that involve him directly) and vary in strength (the weakest precog would have more of a Spidey-sense, while Susan—who can chart out up to a month of potential futures for any given plan—is considered very powerful). There are exceptions, such as one Super who can fly and lift up to ten times her weight, but for the most part that is the rule. Nighthound, with his incredible strength, stamina, healing factor, and mid-range mind control, would be considered extremely powerful and perhaps guilty of some sort of unethical experimentation that allowed him to steal the powers of two or three Supers and leave them depowered and dead or worse. Most of the Epics in this RP would be considered unusually powerful for this universe. Minor Epics, like Cricket and Mundivore, would be considered average so far as powers go; perhaps not powerful, but their powers would not be considered unusual. Lightwards' resurrection ability would not be considered unusual, since his resurrections are usually quick and brain and organ damage would not be considered a problem within that time frame. His ability to gift and create zombies, however, would be considered highly unusual. Funtimes' teleportation would place her at the powerful end of the spectrum, but her matter transfiguration ability would be considered extremely bizarre. Here is a beet.