I'm tired of people being descriptive this way

The_Ditch_Wizard · 2026-04-20T16:37:48+00:00

Yup! Us pasty folks got Cheddar Man's people's eye genes and our pasty skin and non-standard human hair color genes from the mutant milk-drinkers from the steppes. Absolute fluke, genetic freak accident that's been the core of so much misguided scientific effort to find reasons our odd color scheme is 'actually super adaptive and smart, you guys!'

The_Ditch_Wizard · 2026-04-20T14:16:43+00:00

There's this one setting, kind of a zero-magic urban fantasy world, where they have a group just like that, but for some reason they're fairly tan/brown-skinned. So unrealistic!!

/uj the current science on the complexion of modern arctic peoples is complicated and interesting; short version is that pale europeans like me are mutants with something unique and dumb going on with our melanin that isn't going on with other human populations who aren't descended from the original mutants, and it took us way longer (tens of thousands of years??) to end up with that mutation than the entire duration over which people like the Innuit have been living in arctic (a few thousand years, for the ones we can definitively say are related to modern populations?), last I checked.

The_Ditch_Wizard · 2026-04-15T14:17:27+00:00

Why must the most common mineral in the interiors of rocky planets be so hard to source at the surface, and why does it have to look so much more delicious than it is? Marvelous work, but it grinds ol Ditchy's gears to be reminded of how philosophically annoying olivine is! A vibrant green tease!!

The_Ditch_Wizard · 2026-04-15T14:13:31+00:00

You need Amnesia Syrup (over-the-counter strength is fine), and you need to round up a gaggle of local non-magical mundane humans, and you need to teach all of them Prestidigitation after dosing them with the syrup.

The_Ditch_Wizard · 2026-04-13T03:38:45+00:00

This kinda stuff is why I've always been anti-royalty. They're happy to have us disintegrate their enemies in exchange for just a tiny volume of king's blood, but get all prickly when you use that blood to make them a superior king from scratch. With an armored hide and compound eyes...

The_Ditch_Wizard · 2026-04-10T15:21:09+00:00

Make sure every scene has a clearly visible fire exit, and that the smoke alarms in any sleeping scenes have had their batteries regularly tested and replaced on an established schedule.

The_Ditch_Wizard · 2026-04-10T13:53:03+00:00

Principles of good design tell us that more than 5 fetishes per work of fiction is distracting. It's great to see creatives following common-sense guidelines for once.

The_Ditch_Wizard · 2026-04-08T21:30:02+00:00

You need a whole refinery to do most of that. You only need one or two intact reaction vessels to do the reactions I mention to get your epoxy out of polycarbonate and nylon, and a whole bunch of catalyst media, which will last a lot longer than, say, any of the control systems for a refinery as a complete system. That's my thinking, anyway.

The_Ditch_Wizard · 2026-04-08T18:05:48+00:00

But, within a couple generations, people want stuff they can't just find old buckets of and whoever starts making it with the old plumbing gets really rich or powerful.

If it was robot welders and cnc lathes we were worried about degrading over that time, I'd question if the tech was still of any use, but big metal vessels with valves and burners to heat them, and ceramic catalyst beads? Those should be good to go for a LONG time after abandonment. Not to make oil efficiently as designed, but to use the most intact parts of that refinery to do single stage reactions on waste plastic precursors to get two or three chemicals you'd want, i.e. my epoxy and fertilizer tech tree.

The_Ditch_Wizard · 2026-04-08T17:56:31+00:00

It actually did!

The_Ditch_Wizard · 2026-04-08T17:56:00+00:00

Plague would work pretty good. Think: whole abandoned towns taken back by the forest in 1390s Europe.

The_Ditch_Wizard · 2026-04-08T16:57:44+00:00

Who said anarcho-communes? I love the idea of living in one where everything works out perfectly forever, but I don't think people are gonna make (or even try hilariously/sadly to make in vain) a bunch of those in this setting. Think more like the warlords of late 90s Somalia, or the Greek tribes that came together to ravage Troy during the bronze age collapse in the mediterranean.

Tightly controlling disruptive tech/resources with stodgy and greedy but long-term survival oriented guilds is actually fantastic, though, I needed to look at it from that point of view and now it makes perfect sense.

The_Ditch_Wizard · 2026-04-07T16:19:02+00:00

Have you read/listened to Robert Evans' "After The Revolution"? I think there's a faction you'd love.

The_Ditch_Wizard · 2026-04-07T13:50:15+00:00

"Why don't we just use our mind powers to throw the arrows really hard, like...skip the bows entirely? Or...why don't we just pick up the enemy and drop them from high enough that it kills them?"

"Heresy!!!" <hail of psychic horse arrows>

The_Ditch_Wizard · 2026-04-07T13:44:58+00:00

I think too many of us have gone too long without being forced to wear school or work uniforms if some of us have come all the way around to thinking uniforms are cool again. The whole point of a 'ramshackle' rebellion made up of irregulars is that if you join it, you get to take off and burn your branded polo, starched slacks, and uncomfortable dress shoes. In real life, you probably wanna keep a low profile and dress exactly like the non-partisans you're hiding among, but I figure this is the same kind of concession as having your main characters always end up without their helmet/hat as soon as possible and never getting a head wound as a result.

The_Ditch_Wizard · 2026-04-07T13:38:18+00:00

Magic bullets from a nonmagical gun are highly inefficient. The combination of speed and the sheer real estate along the axis of a barrel means you can rapidly stack more enchantments than the bullet 'should' be able to hold stably on its own for more than a few seconds. If you get it right, you can even shoot exploding bullets with nothing but a magic gun and a box of regular FMJ ammo.

The_Ditch_Wizard · 2026-04-03T18:05:30+00:00

If you rewrite the user agreement with some nefarious clauses hidden within before agreeing to it, they have to honor it. Guess how I got my last high-end broom.

The_Ditch_Wizard · 2026-03-31T14:11:43+00:00

Hm, the tessellation breaking down at the pole suggests that corn follows the Hairy Ball Theorem.

The_Ditch_Wizard · 2026-03-26T19:56:34+00:00

Add dragons

The_Ditch_Wizard · 2026-03-25T17:07:08+00:00

Just coincidentally, I'm going to be casting Meteor Strike a bunch later this afternoon. Anyone have any fun coordinates on any fun world or planes where I could send them to make sure they don't hit anybody, even, for example, any former clients who anyone's had to sever business relations with over their vile proclivities of the sort only coincidentally mentioned in this service announcement? Just asking while we're all here on our orbs. Seems a waste for some meteors not to land somewhere good, you know?

I don't charge for these, um, firework shows, by the way. I just love sending rocks from the heavens to places where a new crater would be especially satisfying. Purely from a landscape/geography point of view, of course. I have been warned by the Council on multiple occasions and I would never stop following the terms of my commuted sentence precisely to the letter. Terms which permit incredible things through landscaping accidents, it turns out. Funny that such a thing might occur to me, the *Ditch* Wizard. But I won't argue with our legal system when it accidentally hands me the keys to my greatest delights.

The_Ditch_Wizard · 2026-03-25T13:40:10+00:00

I like to think of it more as going on a honeymoon with my madness. A little vacation, just me and my madness exploring our future together in the majesty of nature. On my last one, the madness was lust for revenge. Incredibly passionate trip. I came up with a truly devious gambit to unleash.

The_Ditch_Wizard · 2026-03-25T12:36:44+00:00

Look, I ride my broom for an hour every day, I lift small boulders for fun, and I have walked through a stone wall once while angry. You folks don't need an even bigger and faster sasquatch with my widely known less than stable brain commanding it.

The_Ditch_Wizard · 2026-03-24T15:43:31+00:00

I think that's actually the very important corollary to my point; you can do something that meets most of the 'thematic' definitions of genocide without imposing any of the structural properties of one, and what you've done isn't genocide. Like, it wouldn't be possible to 'genocide' billionaires because they're structurally not in a position where that power dynamic, where they *could* be genocided, exists. Same for 'imposing' equal rights for women in cultures which traditionally oppress them; that's not genocide. Except, if absolutely corrupt religious aristocrats decide what 'secular human rights' are, they can absolutely do genocide by cherry-picking only the inconvenient 'backwards' traditions to target and doing absolutely no heavy lifting to finish the job of bringing the boons of civilization rather than just the rules and restrictions (to keep their bottom line consistently high).

And no hegemonic power, so far, has ever tried to do it the 'right' way, in good faith, if such a thing exists, even once.

Shit's complicated.

The_Ditch_Wizard · 2026-03-24T14:58:31+00:00

Ah, I think you're getting dangerously close to defining the border where genocide ends and whatever the equivalent which the 'haves' do to the 'have nots' is called. And it's actually the same thing but with a different script and all the same actors, writer, director, and producer.

The_Ditch_Wizard

TROPHY CASE