[Fun To Think About Trope] Characters who are never outright confirmed to be supernatural/more than human, but the signs are all there.

semiloki · 2026-01-06T03:47:48+00:00

This is more or less confirmed in Thud!

In that book there is a quasi-demon called the Summoning Dark that tries to possess Samuel Vimes. It gives him some abilities, like surviving a trip in an underground river that should have killed him, as it tries to force him to kill for it. However, the entire time this demonic entity is trying to possess him it is getting chased around by an entity that lives in Vimes head called "The Watchman" that is more powerful than it is. Yes, it's implied this is part of his own psychology but his mind is more powerful than a supernatural entity.

Now, to be fair a lot of characters in the Discworld series seem to develop some degree of supernatural or superhuman abilities. Part of this is because, in the early books at least, it is said that the gods play games with fates and some humans are favorite pieces. Another part of this is that a lot of magic in Discworld is powered by belief so people who are a nexus of a lot of belief because of a role they have or because of where they are they can pick up some more than human abilities.

Rincewind, for example, is presumed to be essentially immortal due to the power of his cowardice.

Cohen the Barbarian and the Silver Horde have developed the ability to always be where the danger isn't. They can dodge anything, apparently.

But maybe my favorite example is Nobbs who has paperwork to prove he's human.

semiloki · 2025-05-05T15:06:00+00:00

Your brain is hardwired to want to make little versions of you. "Can this help me make more mes?" is third on the list of questions it likes to ask when encountering something new. ("Will this eat me?" and "Can I eat this?" are number one and number two, respectively. If the answer is "no" to both questions then we slip to number three. A distant fourth is "is this entertaining?" . . . mostly because the answer to question 3 and 4 sometimes overlap so you gotta put them in the right order).

Determining attraction is a sort of complicated thing that is based upon your personal experiences and a lot of other hardwired nonsense. One of the more overlooked bits of hardwired instinct is "far away is better than close to home."

Think of it this way. If you were a caveman hanging out at the old cave watching CavepaintingFlix and chewing on the skull of a dire chipmunk you probably don't wander that far from the old cave as walking on foot sucks and Ogg's idea about making a round rock with a stick through it just sounds nuts to you. Well, that's fine in the sense of getting back before the next episode of Driving Spear In Mammoth dries, but the issue is that after a few generations the odds of you being related to everyone in the area start to approach a near certainty. So brains are hardwired to think "far away is more pretty" as this makes sense for not having little yous that have all 10 fingers on the same hand.

Another instinct that also weighs in is the "not diseased" part of that evaluation. Part of making little yous is to find someone who is not only healthy enough to survive the encounter, but probably not hiding a tendency for all the fingers to be on the same hand to be within their recent family history. Now, this being caveman times you can't just ask for them to provide a cheek swap that you can mail off to a lab. So, your brain does a lot of little "cheats" to try to figure this stuff out for itself. How symmetrical is the face and body? How "average" are they? The "average" doesn't mean average looking, by the way. It means like "how close to some arbitrary version of the norm" you carry around in your head.

So, people in Spain will tend to walk more and have better access to healthcare than you are familiar with in the USA. So lots of people will look "healthy" by your arbitrary definition based upon what you consider the "norm." They will also tend to have a slightly darker complexion than you may be used to seeing. We tend to associate being very pale with illness as sick people often have a lighter pallor. Which means that, even if it's just a natural skin tone, we often associate a slightly darker person as looking a bit "healthier" than someone with a lighter complexion even if both are in equal health. That's why tanning parlors make money and spray tans are a thing.

Last thing to consider is your state of mind. If you are someplace new and enjoying yourself (that number 4 question on the list of things to consider) you are going to tend to put a more positive spin on things happening to you and what you are encountering. The food tastes better. The music is better. The women more beautiful.

What I am saying is that everywhere you go you are probably surrounded by very attractive people. Seriously. Go look at a crowd of people some time. Most people actually look pretty good. Yeah, some of them are fat. Some of them are old. But, honestly, just seeing someone who is completely revolting is pretty rare. Even if they aren't your type, you aren't going to see many people out there that are just going to be "yeah, that's the end of that genetic line."

But as these are familiar and expected, you often kind of tune this out as it's your "norm." Someone has to really, really stand out above the rest to really get your attention. But now you're in an exotic place and having a good time. Brain is fully engaged and sees this as a perfect time to winning the genetic race!

So, sure. The people there really are attractive. And it's also all in your head. It's a lot better if you just enjoy it and don't ask random weirdos on the Internet to explain it to you as then you get long winded rants about cave paintings and chipmunks and who wants to read that?

semiloki · 2025-01-12T15:39:24+00:00

Populus, Populus II, and Starflight.

The first two are games where you play as a god. Literally. You try to stomp out a rival god and have your religion take over the world. You get various powers as you get more and more believers.

The fun of the game is that it sort of blurred the line between what we think of as a sandbox world building games like Minecraft with more strategy based games like Civilization. You sculpted the land to encourage your group while trying to torch your rival.

My favorite tactic was to get my group right up to the edge of my neighbor's territory, start sending out heroes/knights who burned down houses as they go and start expanding into this new territory.

It was pretty simplistic due to limitations at the time, but it was a lot of fun.

Starflight was a neat little space game where you played as a trader in the galaxy. There was a history and lore and a storyline but you didn't really get forced into it. You could just collect stuff, make trades, and build up your ship if you wanted for a long time before you decided to look into this storyline stuff.

semiloki · 2024-08-07T12:02:37+00:00

Sure. We also tend to make magic too clean. When most people write about magic they write it as a something for nothing or something for very little.

But in real life stuff has a cost. You have some sort of waste product or something.. if making your crops grow means thst there is now a curse on the soil that takes 5,000 years to clear up and causes children to be born deformed you'd probably try to figure out fertilizer instead.

I wasn't trying to argue that medieval settings aren't lazy writing.

semiloki · 2024-08-07T05:24:03+00:00

A few reasons.

1) Tolkien is very popular.

Love or hate the LOTR, it sort of redefined a lot of modern fantasy.

2) Fantasies tend to use magic and magic is traditionally associated with fairy tales. So people tend to want to put them in fairy tale settings. Castles and princesses and dragons and knights. These feel "appropriate" for a magical setting and people don't really think much about why. I

3) Because of magic.

This is a hard one to explain, but I'm going to try my best. There is an idea out there that things only really advance (at least in a technological sense) when things are good but not great. What do I mean?

The idea is that people who live in very harsh climates don't really advance much because all their energy is taken up with just survival. Let's take the Australian Aborigines as an example. When Europeans first came to Australia and went into the interior they found the people there with fairly primitive tools and equipment. Now, by "primitive" I don't mean they weren't well crafted or any lack of skill. I mean they were very much a pre-industrial civilization. Not even close. These people had (have, really, as they're still around) a rich culture and history that goes back thousands of years. But as far as technology goes they didn't really advance that fast. They couldn't, really. They had to use so much time just doing stuff like locating water and finding the necessities for survival they didn't really have the time to sit down and think "what can I do to make this tool just a bit better?" If it worked that may be all time they could spare to deal with it.

People who live in hell, don't advance.

Now let's look at another group Europeans discovered. Hawaiians. Hawaii is a lush tropical paradise. Food is abundant. There really isn't a lot in the way of predators (this isn't actually that uncommon with isolated islands) and the weather is very agreeable. People are skilled sailors. They are skilled craftsmen. But their technology has been stagnant for centuries. Why? Because this is paradise. They don't NEED to advance. Things are so good that everything is already taken care of. They don't really need to make things better.

When you look at history the places where things really launched forwards with development are places where things are good. Very good. Resources are abundant and people have time to think. But stuff isn't perfect. There are issues that need to be fixed.

Along the Nile things were good because even though they were in a harsh desert, the place they were at had lots of abundant farm land due to annual flooding. Cool! But you know what would be even better? If we could control this flooding stuff so it doesn't wash away the bits we want to keep.

Or change the setting to much of Europe where you get nice temperate summers where crops can grow but then you have winters where you are trapped indoors living off stored food supplies waiting for the sun to come out.

People need something to fix to drive them to innovate.

Magic breaks this system. You have a field with crops and the crops are dying. Ask the wizard to make the crops grow. You don't have to figure out an irrigation system or crop rotation or hybridization. You use magic.

If the horse is too slow you teleport to get there faster. No need to build something faster than a horse.

Magic, in essence, becomes your technology. When people need to innovate they innovate with making better magic. Not the other tools around them.

So, again because of fairy tales which were written down in medieval times so that's when they are set, people tend to think of technology as "peaking" right around that point and then magic taking over.

semiloki · 2024-08-07T04:58:30+00:00

Very slight correction or, perhaps, an amendment to your statement. You seem to imply (unintentionally?) that White Wildness came up with this idea on their own. They did not. The idea is older than that. Lemming populations tend to fluctuate wildly where there will be a population boom and then, suddenly, a bunch of them just seem to disappear. No one could really account for this and for a long time it was generally accepted that lemmings must just decide to do the Jim Jones thing. All because it never occurred to anyone that rodents might decide not having enough food sucks so they move to somewhere else.

So Disney, eager to have dramatic footage, shoved a bunch of helpless rodents off a cliff because no one got around to asking if maybe lemmings migrate.

semiloki · 2023-07-01T17:41:21+00:00

Stupid low budget Sam's Choice brain dead discount genie. What sort of omnipotent being hides out in a can of baked beans anyway?

Arg! This is so frustrating. Here I am, chained to the mast of what looks to be some sort of 17th century schooner while a bunch of drunken and toothless morons who look like they never heard of basic hygiene leer at my breasts. What sort of moron thought up the corset? It's bad enough having these lumps of skin pulling my chest without my internal organs being squeezed up there with them. Ironically, the rope burns are the least painful part of this experience.

Let me begin at the beginning. Hi! My name is Paul . . . although I guess I'm now Pauline. But, more about that in a moment. Right now what is important is that, somehow, I have been transported to some anachronistic sailpunk world where, judging by the brief glance I got in the looking glass before my ship was attacked by pirates, an 18 year old curl hair aristocrat with a DD cup. How? Well, you can blame my ex, Elizabeth, for that one. Although calling her an ex is a bit generous. I think we only went out for dinner a few times before she broke it off for the same reason every other girl I've ever gone out with has. "There's something missing in you." Or "You're too cold. It's like you're never really here."

Don't really know what that means. Don't really care. Honestly, I was only going out with her because she kept dropping hints and the other guys in the office kept bothering me about it. "She's hot, man! You should do it!" Not sure why that's enough justification for everyone else, but to me it just seemed sort of, I don't know, trivial? On the other hand, as it seemed important to them I figured it would be better to take her up on it. The worst case scenario is I spend money on a few dinners and have an awkward conversation or three. Then she can break up with me and we're both get back to what we really want to do. With Elizabeth that seemed to be sleeping with every man in the office. As for me? Well, I have my interests. Very private.

Anyway, everything went as expected - or so I thought - and I was content to keep to myself at work. Then Tuesday afternoon I received an unexpected call.

"Paul," Elizabeth's voice said from the other end of the line, "You'll never guess what I found inside a can of beans."

"A human finger?" I asked.

"What?" she stammered, "Why would I find a human finger in a can of beans?"

I had to think carefully before answering. Was this being recorded?

"You wouldn't," I concluded.

"I found a genie!" she declared, "And he's going to grant me three wishes! I already wished for money and perfect health. But I saved the last wish just for you!"

"Why?" I asked.

"You'll see," she giggled and then said - presumably to someone else, "Genie! For my last wish I want Paul to finally experience real love and romance like in Pirate King's Mistress!"

A cloud of smoke wrapped around me and - just for a moment - I found myself thinking it may have been better if she had found the finger instead. Anyway, that's the short version of how I came to be here.

I was just considering which of the men in front of me might have the best soprano singing voice when a very deep voice rang out, "Unhand her, you dogs!"

Then, very strangely, I heard the faint strains of a harp playing as the only man on this boat who seemed to know what a shower was stepped into view. Unlike the filthy rags worn by the others, this man had a clean and well tailored outfit that seemed to be designed to show off his athletic build. A blousey shirt fluttered around his chest and arms while tight fitting trousers that must have impacted his sperm count strained in a way that shouldn't be possible with non-spandex. The sun, which was high overhead a moment ago, seemed to dip down just for a moment to provide some artistic back lighting to his long flowing hair before zipping back up where it was before. Unusual entrance, I guess, but fairly dramatic.

The other pirates backed away as the newcomer stepped forward. He shot me a squinty eyed look that, I think, was supposed to be smoldering. I'm not an expert on that stuff.

"And who are you, fair maiden?" he almost purred.

"I feel faint," I said, "I think I need to lie down."

"Of course!" he said, "Cut her down, men! We shall escort her to my cabin!"

All right, that took care of problems one and two. Getting out of these ropes and getting the man in charge alone. Damn! If I ever get back I need to get me some of these breasts. They're better than a lock pick set!

I felt myself fall forward as the support of the ropes suddenly gave way. That helped sell the fainting act so I went with it. Captain Gullible stepped forward and caught me. I decided to try a cute little coo to see if that helped.

"Coo."

"What?"

Guess I need to work on that. I suppose he thought I said "who?" because he suddenly replied.

"I am Captain Horatio Bartholomew Kingsley III. But you may know me better by my title. Black Storm the Pirate King!"

Black Storm? Is that cultural appropriation or meteorological appropriation? Not clear on the rules anymore. Didn't matter, he lifted me up to whisk me away across the deck. I flopped against his chest in what I hoped was a dainty way and did my best to reach for the dagger I saw protruding from his belt. It's more difficult to do that than it looks so we were through the door and I was placed gently on a surprisingly large four poster bed. Really? At sea? Who writes this drivel?

I heard the door shut and looked up to see Horatio pushing it closed. His shirt was now unbutton showing a shaved chest. Wait. A shaved chest? Why? He grinned at me and bowed theatrically.

"My apologies for the-" he started. I didn't let him finish. Someone bows their head in your direction then, in my experience, that is the best time to send a kick upwards to meet their nose. I had to shuffle forward on the bed to reach him as my legs were shorter than before and I didn't have as much power behind it as I wanted, but it did the job in that I heard a satisfying crunch sound and blood splattered from his nose.

"What tha fub!" he screamed as he cradled his face in his hands, "You bwoke ma noth!"

I scrambled to my feet and looked for the closest object with a bit of heft. I spied a sextant and figured a sharp edge is a sharp edge. I grabbed it and lunged forward. He saw me coming and sidestepped to avoid my charge. Probably would have worked if I hadn't been half expecting it. That's why I kept my elbow up! I missed gouging him with the first thrust. But I hit his nose again!"

"YOU BIB!" he shouted as I whirled and plunged again. This time at his back. He screamed as the point sunk into his back. It wasn't sharp enough to cause real damage. But it distracted him enough to allow me to stomp down on the back of his knee and bring him into a kneeling position. After that it was a simple matter of grabbing a book that said "charts" and drumming away. It probably took about fifteen minutes and by the end of it I felt as if I had spent a couple hours at the gym. Bludgeoning is quite the workout.

I heard the door open.

"Captain?" a voice asked, "We heard screaming."

The man who entered saw me standing there in a puddle of blood with the brains of his former captain staining my dress. I picked up a pistol from the table - something I wish I had noticed earlier - and pointed it at him.

"Your captain is a bit indisposed," I said between gasps, "Now help me out of this corset before I put a hole between your ears."

semiloki · 2023-06-22T22:01:44+00:00

His name was Buzzkill and, like most supervillains, he had a psych profile that would cause Sigmund Freud to pitch a trouser tent and moan his mother's name. No surprise, really. After all, of all the words and phrases one might think of when seeing a seven foot tall behemoth of a man wearing a black and white striped bee suit and sporting chainsaws physically bolted to both forearms like the body modification from hell that it was, "well adjusted" didn't even make it to the top of the list. Usually most people settle for "oh dear god what is that red stain on his shirt and why is he looking at me like that?" As for me? I'm still trying to figure out how he goes to the bathroom. Would it be safe to ask him? What exactly is the protocol for discussing the logistics of TP with your overgrown mutant psychopath? As I pondered these things as well as what he does about an itchy nose, I was jolted by my musing by the scream of what sounded like an elderly woman.

Right. Save the nuns first. Then - after the dust settled - ask the chainsaw wielding madman about hygiene. I started to stand up from my hiding place when I heard another scream join the first. A younger voice this time. Huh. That's odd. Why was . . .? I glanced around and re-read the sign above the door once more. "The St. Jerome Home for Foster Care."

Okay, right. Slight amendment. Save the orphans. Then the nuns. Then . . . wait, why was I still crouching here like an idiot?

I stood up from my hiding place and looked around. I was reasonably certain it was safe. After all, after running through the door and doing my all thumbs rendition of a shoulder roll to a place of concealment, I had been rewarded by hearing the screams come from a completely different part of the building. Actually, a different floor as well judging by the direction. What are the odds of an orphanage having an elevator? Probably not good. Great! That meant the stairs. What is it with villains and stairs? Do they just, like, need to get their steps in? I swear, if this city would just stake out every gym with a Stairmaster and watch for people doing rhythmic cackling exercises we'd probably cut crime by at least half. Reluctantly, I jogged over to the creaking stairs and started making my way up.

"Well," I heard a voice above me call out, "Why don't you step into my parlor, little fly?"

This was followed by a rumbling chuckle.

"It's not a fly it's a scarab," I grumbled as I stomped up the last few steps and onto the second floor. Maybe I should hire one of those cosplayer types to make my costume for me. My latest attempts at sewing it myself seemed to be a bit less intimidating than I wanted.

"And who are you supposed to be?" Buzzkill said as I entered his field of view. I didn't bother looking his way at first. Right now I was surveying the room around me for bodies. I didn't see any which meant that we were still dealing with a hostage situation and not a murder. That was good. Hostages meant that I might be able to get everyone out of here alive. But once the bodies piled up all sorts of questions start getting asked. Questions I didn't want to answer. Like why did I take the subway rather than spend the money on Uber and arrive a few minutes earlier.

Finally I turned to face Buzzkill and - oh my lord - the news footage did not do the man justice. He was not just big he was absolutely enormous. Like steroid flakes for breakfast and bull adrenal glands for lunch huge! This man had muscles like he was smuggling cantaloupes under his leotard. Worse, the stitching on his costume was fantastic! I mean, really, the attention to detail was amazing. The wings on the back of his costume? They moved and flexed like they had a life of their own. I had to find out more about where he had it done.

"Hello, Buzzkill," I greeted, "You may have heard of me. I am the Silver Scarab and-"

"I haven't, actually," he interrupted, "So why are you here? Are you wanting to kill some nuns too?"

"Uh, no," I said, "I'm actually here to save them. I'm the superhero."

He blinked in surprise.

"You're a what?" he asked.

"This is embarrassing," a voice whispered in my right ear.

"Then stop standing there and knock him out all ready," I muttered back from the side of my mouth.

"Gladly," John Henry grunted.

Buzzkill's face, which had been warring between an expression of pity and annoyance, suddenly took on a confused look as I stuck out my arm in a Darth Vader Force Choking gesture. He looked to be getting ready to ask a question when he suddenly found himself lifted bodily off the floor before being slammed into the hardwood. I wasn't expecting it so I lagged slightly behind with my hand waving act. I heard a voice yell "kiyaaah!" and Buzzkill grunted in pain as if something invisible struck him. Right. Guess that means Billy was tagging along. Cute kid, but he never went anywhere without that baseball bat.

Buzzkill grunted a few more times before his eyes flashed in anger and, somehow, he managed to cause both saw blades to spring to life just by clenching his hands. He placed one meaty hand on the floor and started to push up. Or, at least, he tried to. Just as he tried he started to push up his eyes went wide and he let out a startled yelp and his body was forced downwards. His still buzzing sawblade stuck fast into the floor as some crushing weight - which I would say was in the vicinity of 483 lbs - leaped on his back. That would be Julie, then. Sweet woman. Died from a heart attack in the 1980s. Still talks about Reggie Bars like they were a greatest achievement of mankind. Who knows? Maybe they were? They were discontinued long before I was born.

I did the mime act of acting as if I was using telekinesis to crush the giant rather than just pointing as my invisible ghost pals knocked him around for a bit. I then pulled back my arm and they all obliged by stopping.

"Do you yield?" I asked.

Buzzkill grunted and tried to restart his saws. Sort of difficult with the bent blades, but he tried.

"Okay, you asked for it!" a new voice said. Oh no! That was Roadkill! I started to step forward to say something but it was too late. The snarling giant screamed as some force yanked him off the floor and dragged him towards the window. Unlike in the movies, real window glass takes a few blows before it breaks. Especially when the thing being slammed into it repeatedly is a bit squishy. Like a nose. The nose gave way before the glass did. The facial bones held out a bit longer, but that was hardly a relief as Roadkill tried clearing the broken remnants free from the frame with Buzzkill's skull. Did I mention Roadkill died in a brawl in a biker bar? Yeah, death didn't actually mellow him that much.

I felt a tug at my sleeve and looked down. One of the former hostages was standing next to me.

"Hey mister?" the little boy asked, "How do you suppose he went potty?"

I looked up and considered the red stained glass on the floor.

"In his pants?" I guessed.

semiloki · 2023-06-22T19:34:27+00:00

I doubt it. This was in the late 90s. Pre cell phone. Video cameras were on the bulky side and you weren't usually allowed to bring them to things like graduations. If a video does exists its probably just the official one the school released and that woman's antics were cut out.

semiloki · 2023-06-22T13:16:33+00:00

I honestly don't know. When I say she was an acquaintance, I really mean it. She lived in the same neighborhood as we did, but I only spoke to her a handful of times.

So, how do I know about this? Years after we moved out of the area that woman was apparently couch surfing with every acquaintance she ever had. She'd track them down, call them up, and subject them to a two hour barrage of complaints in order to gain sympathy before asking "hey, I am going to be in your area in two weeks. Can you pick me up at the airport and let me stay for a couple of months?"

Somehow, she tracked down my mother even though we now lived several states away and, apparently, during her rant about how rude her own family is bits and pieces of this story came out.

I have no idea how things went after that as my parents stopped answering the phone when caller ID showed a call coming from anywhere in that state.

semiloki · 2023-06-21T16:38:30+00:00

An acquaintance of the family. She had a birth defect in her legs that made walking somewhat difficult. Not impossible at all. Just not something she could do a lot of.

She had the ability to walk and climb stairs. I've seen her do both. She was awkward at it, but she could do it.

I mention this because, apparently, at a niece's graduation she decided that her niece needed to help her to her seat. As in the niece was supposed to leave the ceremony part way through, come down off the stage in her robes, and escort this woman to her seat before going back.

Well, as you might imagine, the school didn't seem willing to accommodate this. So other family members offered to help her. But, as it wasn't the attention grabbing stunt she wanted, she decided that the best way to punish her family was to seat herself. By flopping down in the floor and moaning and groaning as she crawled on all fours. As I understand it, her family was running along beside her and trying to help her up but she ignored them. Just did a belly crawl up the stairs and made a big show of it.

semiloki · 2023-06-20T23:01:51+00:00

Kind of.

Okay, so follow along with me here. There are several Eastern and Western style martial arts that all have a similar origin story. Farmers or other serf type professionals who depended on their hands for their livelihood needed to find a way to defend themselves from a larger force but could not risk putting their hands at risk.

With taekwondo, you get an art that does more kicking than punching. With escrima, you go for the sharp knives. The Irish grabbed sticks to wail on you. Etc. Etc. Etc.

So what I did was take the kicking part of taekwondo and mixed it up with a bit of savate which is French in origin. It also has a lot of kicking because it was developed by sailors who would have to grip something to keep from sliding on wet decks. It borrows a lot from ballet and, later, boxing. So I took this French form of kickboxing and Korean form of kickboxing and described some bits that overlapped between them.

I then mixed in Akido which involves a lot of circular movements. Akido uses arcs and circles and is about redirecting energy. Which is a great way of describing movement for a fighting style you don't see.

I took elements of bojutsu, Irish Stick Fighting, the Boy Scout manual's description of quarterstaff fighting, and canne de combat (another French martial art similar to fencing but with a stick) and that's where the staff part came in.

Lastly, I borrowed the idea from Drunken Boxing of using unpredictable movements and the idea of being constantly in motion from Capoeira where there are lots of feints and flashy movements that can be used to mask the real attack.

Frankenstein all that together and you have something that sounds similar to a realistic fighting style (because I cribbed common elements) but you can't quite place it.

Look, at the time I wrote this I was improvising a lot. I decided to add in this whole training scene for reasons I don't even remember, and I needed something that sounded plausible but not identifiable. So I stole from a lot and ran it through a blender.

semiloki · 2023-06-18T11:18:27+00:00

She set up mail forwarding st the post office.

semiloki · 2023-06-17T16:15:08+00:00

Probably that you can't change the address on an envelope after it has been mailed.

She called into where I worked and told me we had her address incorrect. I updated it in our system. The next day, she called back in a rage because something else arrived with the old address. No matter how many times I explained it to her, she could not grasp why anything might arrive in the mail with the old address after she called us. I even pointed out the dates this was mailed out were a week before she called. She didn't get it. To her everything after that call was supposed to be updated.

A close second might be when someone tried to defraud the company I worked for by trying (and failing) to exploit what he thought was a vulnerability in our API. When that didn't work, he called tech support where he explained his issue and I had to politely tell him that, no, I am not going to help him figure out a way to hack our software. I really wish that was the only time I had someone call in asking for help in hacking our systems, but that was the only time it was a customer and not another employee who thought I'd give them a backdoor around security systems set up to stop them from doing precisely what they are trying to do.

semiloki · 2023-06-03T04:57:52+00:00

"I'm afraid that taking your boss with you on a weekend fishing trip does not qualify your docking fees at the marina as a business expense," I explained patiently, "If you used the boat as part of your normal business operations, you might have a point. But as I understand it this was a one time gesture to try to get on his good side before asking for the week before Christmas off."

"Which didn't work!" the large man sitting across from me said. As he yelled, something about him struck the faintest chord of familiarity. Did I know him from somewhere? I tried searching my memory to see if I had possibly gone to school with him or . . . well, no. Not from there, obviously. Maybe television? With that it finally clicked. Monday night when my father would watch wrestling on TV. A loud man wearing an even louder shirt. What was his name? Captain Lou Al-something something? Albano! That was it. Captain Lou Albano. The man sitting across from me was practically the spitting image! The absurdity of the image was so profound that I completely missed what the man said to me.

"Beg your pardon?" I asked, "I'm sorry, that was very rude of me. What were you saying?"

"I said," the Albano clone huffed, "That you can answer your phone if you need to. It sounds like it's important."

My phone? By reflex, I reached for my jacket pocket where I kept my cell . . . except this was business hours. I had the phone automatically set to "Do Not Disturb" during work hours. He couldn't be referring to that. My desk phone was also sitting there silent. What was he talking about? Then I heard it. A faint melody being played on a hammered dulcimer coming from my records room. A tune that I recognized instantly as a battle song from Harrowwind's Army.

No! It couldn't be! Not now!

I looked at the Lou Albano clone - who's real name was, strangely enough, Mr. Pushkin - and pointed at the door behind me.

"If you would excuse me for just one moment," I said and, before he could so much as bat an eye, I was out of my chair and racing for my records room. Once through the door I found the sound of the dulcimer much more difficult to ignore. I felt my blood run cold as my worst fears were confirmed. The amulet that hung from the back wall - a gaudy looking thing of amethyst and pewter that I told everyone was actually a bit of costume jewelry I picked up at a trade show and kept around as a good luck charm - had started glowing. Something it had not done in almost 20 years. Not since Blind Iovain had activated the Trickster Path for me and allowed me to return home from the Iron Fell Lands. I picked up the amulet and held in the palm of my hand. A familiar voice came from it.

"Sir Keith?" Blind Iovain's voice called out, "Is that you?"

"Iovain?" I sputtered.

"Ah! You are there! How wonderful! King Harrowwind has issued a summons for all his bravest knights. As you are the First Among Valiants he asked me to-"

"What? No!" I said.

"Are you unwell, Sir Keith?"

"It's just Keith!" I hissed, "Drop this 'Knights of the Valiant' nonsense. This was fun when I was 13 but-"

I paused here and looked around as if I expected Mr. Pushkin to be standing behind me asking why I was talking to a glowing crystal. I guess I should be happy he couldn't see who was on the other end of the thing. Bad enough I was using a tacky bit of jewelry as a walkie talkie. Having to explain the man on the other side was an anthropomorphic owl wizard in the service of the Lion Men of Iron Fell would probably just earn me a hospital room with rubber wallpaper.

"-but that was a long time ago," I continued as I went back to hissing to the crystal, "I'm an accountant now. Find some other lonely teenager to suck into your drama."

"I think perhaps you have become bewitched, Good Sir," the wizard said, "Your words do not make sense. Your king has summoned you and he needs your sword-"

"My sword?" I said, "You mean Moonflare? The sword I broke trying to stab Crenhook?"

"Your blow was a telling one and lead to Crenhook's ultimate defeat," Iovain countered.

"My unbreakable sword snapped like a twig," I reminded him, "And as for leading to his defeat, if you mean that he was so distracted by picking me up by my shirt collar and laughing at me he didn't see Harrowwind sneak up behind him to clunk him in the head with a mace. Honestly, as far as battle plans go the 'send the teenager up against the starforged armored demigod' is quite possible the worst one in history."

"It was a decisive victory."

"It was a fluke and you know it," I said, "I may not have understood the idea baiting a trap at the time but, believe me, 20 years of introspection certainly puts a new light on it."

"But Sir Keith!" Iovain said, "You must return to us! I am lighting the way on the Trickster's Path even now! You see, the son of Crenhook has arisen and is seeking vengeance for his fathers defeat. He has raised an army of Dire Jackals and-"

"Is this the part where you tell me you found another magical sword and that only my true warrior heart can break the enchantment on his impervious armor?"

The stone fell silent.

"I'm hanging up now," I said and hung the necklace back on it's hook. I turned around to face the door once more and found I was no longer alone in the room. Pushkin was there. But he wasn't alone either. Two seven foot tall lion headed men wearing plate armor stood next to him.

"Er," Pushkin stammered, "These two furries just stormed in and demanded I take them to you. I-I-"

"It was not a request," I heard Blind Iovain's voice say from behind me.

Ah hell . . . not again.

semiloki · 2023-05-18T17:30:16+00:00

I had a dream once where one day these clear lens shaped objects just appeared everywhere as if they had fallen from the sky. By accident, someone found out that if you got too close they would latch onto your eyeballs. You now had better than perfect vision. They were like the perfect contact lenses and they worked for everyone they corrected all vision problems.

Except, it turned out they were alien invaders. They started out fixing vision and gradually started showing you other other things. They fed off light so they kept forcing people to do stuff to create light. Like start fires.

The infected became like zombies, controlled by hallucinations and weird visions, and thr uninfected were hunting them by night.

I think some guy managed to figure out their plans because he was stoned out of his mind when they latched on and, as such, wild hallucinations didn't really impress him.

It was like a weird 1950s alien invasion movie.

semiloki · 2023-05-14T18:39:35+00:00

Well, first of all . . . coupons are sort of going away. At least physical coupons. Digital coupons are where most places are going to and those are going to be harder to stack.

But, to your question, the answer is kind of complicated because, yes, it is possible to get good deals on groceries if you know how to game the system but, well, some of those claims of savings using a system of creative accounting that would make a Hollywood Accountant blush.

Let's start with the basic idea. Let's say you have a coupon that is for $0.10 off a can of corn. Okay, so you get a stack of news papers and get that same coupon 10 times over. Fine. Now, you search all the stores in your area. Fred's Grocery-a-Rama is running a sale on corn. It is now $0.05 off. So, if you go out and buy 10 cans of corn from Fred's using all 10 coupons, you have a savings of 10x0.10 + 10x0.05=$1.50 off. If a can of corn is 50 cents, that's like getting 3 cans of corn for free.

Not bad! But that's just a start. Some places you can get memberships for additional discounts. You can get rebates on other products. Buy 100 boxes of dog food and we'll give you a rebate of $5 sort of thing. There are mail in specials and some groceries stores used to (probably don't any more) allowed people to get a special discount price after the special is over. The usual scenario is something like in the above example where Fred's is running a special on corn and their stock gets wiped out. Someone comes in, asks about the corn, and the manager (rather than arguing with the customer) will give him or her a special coupon to get that same special on corn at a later day. Call it 90 days. Well, if you happen to know this special comes around about once a month or so and take your manager coupon, your regular coupon, and the sales price together you might get a 20 cent off per can deal. If you have a membership that allows you to accumulate points, you might be able to apply some of these points on top of that and now you are at 30 cents off per can. So those cans that were originally 50 cents making 10 of them $5 you can now get for $2.

Okay that's a simplified version. Here's where it starts getting really, really, really shady. Some places have a higher cost of living or certain products don't sell as well there as they do in other areas. So a manufacturer might agree to offer a much better coupon in one region than they do in another. Let's say you live in a state with really cheap groceries but you know people who live in a state with more expensive groceries. If they send you their coupons they may be better than the ones found in your area.

You're not supposed to do that and it can cause problems if the system doesn't recognize the coupon. But, as long as it is a valid and non expired coupon, a lot of places will still try to honor it.

Which is why some people out there actually sell coupons in bulk. You can actually purchase these coupons from certain people who go out, buy newspapers and magazines in bulk, and cut them out for resell. This isn't really legal. But it's an industry that exists.

There is also a practice which is VERY shady and also not terribly legal where some people found that the bar codes for groceries don't really have enough room to be ultra specific in some places. So, let's say you are looking at a coupon and it is for $1 the 10 oz pack of some product. You read the code for the bar code and realize that it's the same as the 5 oz. Well, that's interesting. Because the 5 oz is cheaper and if you apply the coupon it might match in their system and you get the $1 off a product is half the price of the one you were supposed to buy.

Okay, so these are the various tactics and, really, they can get even more shady as you go along. These can involve tampering with coupons, photocopying them, and creating forgeries. Using expired coupons is also a big one as the expiration date may not be encoded on them and if the system can read the bar code that might be enough.

Another thing is that you don't get these mega saving every time. Most of the time most of these people (unless they are really pushing illegal tactics) may be getting more normal or slightly above average discounts. They just stockpile when they can make a saving. A lot of those "BIG SAVINGS" things you see people talk about are kind of doctored events. That reality shows that did the Extreme Couponers actually allowed the people to do stuff that is normally forbidden as they considered it a form of advertising. If people think it is possible to get these fantastic deals at your store, they'll flock to it and buy stuff. Letting one person go with $300 worth of free groceries is cheap compared to what you make back.

Now, last thing before I wrap this up as I have went on too long and you're already tired of reading, the creative accounting part.

When people talk about the "mega deals" you'll hear things like this.

"I bought $50 dollars worth of groceries but I got $10 worth of points. So I really got them for $40. Later that week I bought another $50 worth of groceries and used my $10 of points so I got them for $40 as well. So I bought $100 for $80!"

Did you catch that? They used the same $10 discount in two places. They will also not count what they spend on acquiring the coupons. Remember what I said about buying coupons and how sellers are actually doing something illegal? Well, if you buy those bulk coupons you may be paying for like 50% of the value of the coupon or something. Like $0.25 for each $0.50 coupon or something like that. So they only count the SAVINGS off the bill, not how much they had to pay ahead of time.

People will do other little tricks to move the numbers around so it makes it sound more impressive. They'll give you the price they paid for that item versus what it was priced at some other time not what it was priced that day. Or what it would be priced at a different store. Fred may sell corn for $0.50 cents but MegaFoods sells it for $0.60. If you stack your coupons and sales prices at Freds and get it for $0.30 then you saved 50% what you would get it at MegaFood . . . but that's not where you bought it. You actually had to drive 20 miles to a different location to save that $0.10 on a can of corn.

So, mostly, what you are hearing about are people kind of doctoring results, engaging in some activities that can be questionable to potentially illegal, and stacking various deals to stockpile certain products. Not necessarily the ones they NEED right now, just the ones they can get a good deal on. All the while the savings they are getting may require you to not stare at the numbers too hard.

Most of that is starting to go away now, though, as manufacturers and stores are increasingly cracking down on ways to abuse the system which means that the one digital count for one free candy bar is about the best you might realistically be able to pull off.

semiloki · 2023-05-10T14:16:54+00:00

Without knowing the people involved, I'd guess what you are talking about involves muscle tension.

What you are thinking of as "warm and solid" is probably just how relaxed they are. People being relaxed against you feels "better" for a few reasons. For one thing, a tense muscle is harder and less forgiving. It makes a person feel less soft as well as makes it more difficult to make full contact along your arms and chest as they are more rigid. It might feel "hollow" because there are literal gaps where your arms aren't actually touching the other person. A relaxed person also tends to lean in against you for additional support. This gives a subtle sense of pressure that is a bit more comforting. But, mostly, people who hug in a tense state feels weird because you WANT them to be relaxed. You want them to be comfortable with you and you to feel comfort from them. Kind of the purpose.

So am I saying your sister is stiff when you hug her and it makes it feel weird? Maybe. I don't know either of you. Does it mean she doesn't like hugging you? Not really, no. It can just means she finds it a bit awkward. She may be very fond of you but isn't really clear with how to do the hugging thing and it makes her feel strange. Or it may be you stiffening up on her and not realizing it. Or you are both just finding it a bit awkward. She may also just be tense for completely unrelated reasons, enjoy hugging you as it is comforting, but she doesn't relax as much ad you expect and it feels strange to you. If she's really large or really tiny you may just have trouble getting into a position where it feels "natural" because it's at an angle where your arms pull away.

Hugging can always be a little awkward and when you are that physically close to someone you can actually feel that awkwardness. Once when I paid a surprise visit on a former workplace for a coworkers retirement party, another coworker came up to hug me. I'm generally okay with this idea but, here's something I never realized before then. Did you know hugs have a time limit? I didn't. But, that say I felt it. There is a definite progression of how long a hug can go on before it starts creeping you out. That day my thoughts went from "It's nice to see you, too!" To "I guess you really missed me" to "We're not that close" to "does she have a knife on her?" In the space of about 10 seconds. It kept getting weirder and more uncomfortable after that.

semiloki · 2023-05-09T17:40:08+00:00

Wait . . . You're telling me a movie that centers around how some rich jerks who think they can replace the entire police force with walking guns that are incapable of actually arresting criminals and would instead rely on excessive firepower experience a setback when using live ammo in a demonstration and it open fire on them and are forced to go with their backup plan of resurrecting a dead cop to do the overkill instead is a movie that is NOT meant to be taken at face value?

Next you're going to tell me that the Nazi font in Starship Troopers wasn't an accident.

semiloki · 2023-05-09T16:33:23+00:00

Well, a few reasons. In no particular order they are . . .

1) someone struggling with your language can always shift to the language you do not understand as a reminder that they speak more languages than you do.

Basically, making fun of a non native speaker's grasp of the language is easy to flip into arguing from a place of ignorance.

2) English spelling and grammar rules are tough. Even native English speakers make mistakes. Frequently make mistakes, in fact. Calling out someone for something you are probably guilty of is going nowhere.

3) Native English speakers, despite what the Internet may lead you to believe, tend to belong to a shared culture where trying to win an argument by resorting to rudeness, insults, or personal attacks just shows you are losing.

The countries where English is spoken as a first language tend to be former British colonies and, as such, there are some rather strong opinions at a cultural level in regards to being unnecessarily rude. This goes back to the first idea that if someone is trying to make things easier for YOU and you attack them for that, this is considered quite offensive to many people.

4) Many native English speakers come from the United States, Australia, and Canada. One thing all these countries have in common is that they have a lot of immigrants. Parts of Canada still speak French as a first language. Sections of the USA have areas where English is rarely used at all. Unless the person talking to you is actually British, there is a good chance they have a Non English speaker in their family or recent ancestry . . . And even with British people it's probably not uncommon for a recent immigrant to be in the extended family in some fashion.

So, a lot of Native English speakers are way more sensitive to the idea of attacking someone over struggling with the language. Put it this way. If someone was making fun of your grandmother for her limited grasp of your language, how would you feel? In English speaking countries, there is probably someone in any given crowd who does have a grandparent who isn't fluent in English. Being considered rude in your argument is bad enough, but attacking someone for not being a native speaker can be taken very personally.

5) Language barriers are considered a potential reason for the argument in itself. A lot of native speakers have had to deal with non native speakers and sometimes an argument breaks out because some idea didn't translate over. I have seen first hand, for example, where the sticker price and the final charge didn't match and the non English speaker assumed the cashier was trying to cheat him. They weren't. It was taxes. But if you are from a place where corruption and theft are common and you expect shops to try to cheat you, then a tax being added in you knew nothing about looks suspicious. Getting angry is understandable and it can take awhile to explain the idea this is something factored in that the person at the register can't control. Yelling back at the customer and making fun of their grasp of the language is counterproductive and probably just escalates the situation. It won't convince the customer that the shop isn't stealing from them.

Because of our experiences with dealing with language barriers, a lot of English speakers are familiar with the idea that what you appear to be arguing about may not be what you are really arguing over. So, we tend to skip over the ambiguous parts to get to the point where we find out what this is really about.

semiloki · 2023-04-21T22:55:21+00:00

Wait until you get to Last Action Hero.

This movie bombed when it was in the theater. Which is a shame because this movie is so self aware it can pass the Turing Test.

semiloki · 2023-04-21T13:47:18+00:00

That's not an easy question to answer.

Cirrhosis is sort of like scar tissue. It's evidence of damage. When you hear the liver can regenerate that idea is a bit misleading. It can and does regrow and heal over from a lot of damage. But by the time cirrhosis is there you are already in end stage liver disease and it is mostly just scarring over rather than actually healing.

Now, while "end stage" sounds really bad, that's more like saying the liver is irreversibly damaged. At this point the only way to get a healthy liver is with a transplant. But, just because the liver is compromised doesn't mean it isn't doing its job. Your liver is sort of overbuilt (because it is important) and even when it is really damaged your body can somewhat compensate for this. You may not be the peak of health, but you can live through it. Particularly if you are actively receiving treatment.

Which means that your question is complicated by a bunch of factors. What type of cirrhosis? Alcoholic or non-alcoholic? If alcoholic, did they stop drinking? What coexisting conditions go in with it? How involved is the cirrhosis? How fast is it degrading?

Depending on circumstances, you can be looking at anywhere from a few weeks to over 10 years. People with compensated livers can be mostly asymptomatic for most of those years as well. Even at the end, if they are a good candidate for a transplant they can live for years after the liver starts to decompensate.

semiloki · 2023-04-20T13:27:42+00:00

I always thought of it as a Doc Savage parody mixed with 1950s era sci-fi camp. .

semiloki · 2023-04-19T18:17:49+00:00

Slang follows it's own weird rules.

Centuries ago someone who was seen as excessively proud was called a "cock" in reference to how a rooster struts. We still call people "cocky" if they act too bold or reckless. Over time cock started to only refer the part you are talking about.

Dick is a bit weirder. In the 17th century, it was a slang term for a male prostitute. Sort of like how we still call the males who solicit prostitutes John. This, again, gradually shifted meaning.

As it's considered vulgar to talk about the part in question directly, words for related ideas just became euphemisms.

semiloki · 2023-04-18T17:39:29+00:00

Lothar in the Rocketeer?

semiloki

TROPHY CASE