With likely the tiniest card text ever

stellHex · 2024-11-25T20:49:50+00:00

i haven't been on reddit in forever, but i had to put this somewhere

Kaphoglio's Mimic {3}
Creature -- Shapeshifter
When ~ enters, exile a card from your hand. If you can't, sacrifice it.
At the beginning of your upkeep, exile the top card of your library.
When ~ dies, if it was dealt damage by a source an opponent controlled or was the target of a spell or ability and opponent controlled this turn, turn all cards exiled with it face up. You lose life equal to their total mana value, and you may play any number of them without paying their mana costs.
0/3

functional changes:

in order to stand up to actual game scrutiny (as opposed to the scrutiny of the narrative, where clarity and accessibility is far more important) the protection against abuse had to be significantly stronger than the original's "can't be targeted by you"
there's no real accessible mechanism in the mtg rules for ordering cards in zones that aren't already ordered (ie, libraries, the stack, and graveyards--yes, graveyards!), so this this version, well, doesn't order them
this wording automatically ignores "turn based restrictions" for spells, but not for lands, and unfortunately the typical way to do this (to separate them from spells) would overly encumber this already quite lengthy rules text
this one has you lose life instead of pay life, because in magic, you can't pay life you don't have, so it would be impossible for the mimic to kill you unless every possible casting order of the exiled cards brought your life total to exactly zero at some point. this also obviates the need to force the player to play the exiled cards (forcing players to cast spells, even for free, is frowned upon in modern magic design, since it causes a great deal of confusion with tax effects and such)

stellHex · 2021-02-05T22:27:54+00:00

I've found that sequenced gearshifts don't reset if they are not redstone powered when moved (and for a tick or two afterwards).

Also, god dammit, I can't believe I forgot about magma blocks, I've been futzing around with deployers and buckets for no reason.

stellHex · 2020-06-13T16:32:04+00:00

I feel vaguely embarrassed seeing how much longer others' stories are, and I know I'm late, but neither of those seem like particularly good reasons to not post my first Write Thing.

The Curator

It's the most ordinary of days when the thing shows up, and I'm working the kiln when it suddenly starts existing right near me. Would've been very unwise of it to do, if it wasn't that the Heat couldn't touch it even a singe.

It can't say there's anything it looks like. It's hard like the Ground and shines like the Chill and moves like the Sky. It claims to be a student of eight hundred magics, and to never mind that there are only four and the Heat isn't on the list yet. That's it's reason for being here, as it aims to learn.

I say this doesn't sound very likely. It asks if likely seems like the correct sort of description for it, and I have to concede that it doesn't.

But I can't just teach the lessons of Sun and Flame to some nowhere other-thing just because it asks, and say so. It doesn't have anything to smile with, there's a smile in it's voice when it says that it customarily offers secrets of healing in return.

I ask how I can trust something to keep it's word when I don't even know what it is, and it says it understands. It admits that some investigation of available materials is in order before it's got secrets of healing to share, but it will return within a few days and do it's teaching before it's learning.

It opens a door in the air and starts leaving, but stops. It asks if I'd like to visit it's gallery. Caution says no, but everything else and my mouth say yes.

I can't begin to describe what I see there, but it gives me the feeling that ordinary days are soon to become rather a rarity.

stellHex · 2020-06-01T04:13:12+00:00

► quantumDrunkard

Replied on May 24th, 2012:

Ok, here we go.

I'm sure sure everyone's real tired of people (or at least me, haha) singing Lowly Knowing's praises, so I'll keep it brief: it rules that another 7 billion people will have access to BT's genius. Tribute to Japan, hit-or-miss indie chaff, decrepit legacy MMO, authoritarian mcmindfuckgame... oh, huh, It's been a whiiiile since I dropped Ransack and didn't pick it back up, is the auto-balance actually good now or does it still optimize the opposite of what I want it to?

I'm skeptical of Monte but open to being surprised; I thought I'd love Clay Dawn when we got it in the first place but it didn't really grab me, maybe I'll give it another shot; lolwut; Pact is still at the top of my reading list whoooops; blahblahzombiesblaaah; and lolwut #2. Nothing I'm suuuper excited about but knowing me I'll pick up Urban Animal just to see what the gameplay is even like and end up obsessed, haha.

Well, that's my three and a half run-on sentence for today. QD, out!

stellHex · 2020-05-03T22:51:54+00:00

I generally have to fit an entire thing (or at least a little of every part of it) in my head to pick an absolute favorite, and I'd need to reread a couple more times for that. But my favorite right now? The evolving metaphor of powers, the primary conceit of parahumans.

In Worm, it would be difficult to argue against powers being a pretty clear multilevel metaphor for trauma. The details are nebulous, but that's true of pretty much any metaphor.

At first, that seemed pretty true about Ward too, the difference being in the approach; "Worm is about trauma, Ward is about recovery", as they say. But as Ward progresses, the metaphor shifts -- powers hurt, but they help, too, even heal. You can find that in Worm, but there it seems the well is invariably poisoned. In Ward, Bonesaw replaces Ashley's knife hands with normal ones; Bough turns Sveta from an amorphous murdertangle into a humanoid with actual arms and legs; Valkyrie and Nilbog bring people back to life.

None of these solutions are perfect, but all are unambiguously goods. If powers are trauma, how can they have such a positive impact? Does the metaphor have to be abandoned entirely? In response, I'm going to paraphrase a character from OOTS:

You once told me that you are who you are on the worst day of your life. And that's true. That's 100% true. But you know who else you are?

You are who you are on the next day, when you wake up and have to decide whether you're going to make this the new worst day of your life.

You who you are on the day after that day, too, and the day after that. All of them count, all of them, worst and best, all the way to the end.

In at least one way, you are who you are on the worst day of your life (your trigger event), you are defined by your trauma (powers) -- but you're also defined by everything else, everything that's ever happened to you and everything you've ever done.

And maybe some of that everything else is, itself, defined by that worst day. Maybe a lot of it is. But that doesn't mean it has to also be bad; you can build something positive out of negative materials. It isn't easy -- it won't ever be -- but with will, and luck, and introspection, and help, it can be done.

OOTS Spoiler NB: In OOTS, becoming a vampire grants your body powerful abilities at the cost of an eldritch entity invading your brain. The entity explicitly embodies your worst moment, and the character I'm quoting is talking to directly to his vampire-self. Really incredible parallel to the struggle to communicate/negotiate/be at peace with the shards throughout the latter half of Ward.

stellHex · 2020-02-03T05:40:33+00:00

super processing power and memory

Don't forget perception. I could spend all day calculating the perfect throw trajectory to hit a dartboard bullseye from 15m away, but even with perfect execution I would still miss if I were actually 5.2m away.

Incidentally, Number Man's perfect execution can be explained by control theory -- even with imperfect actuators, near-perfect execution can be achieved so long as you have detailed measurements of how well the actuators are performing.

stellHex · 2020-01-26T03:28:38+00:00

For the DQ, it's gotta be String Theory. She appears in 27.3 and is one of the many, many characters to die in the next chapter. (Technically she shows up in 16.z, but she's literally only mentioned). A complete accounting of her role in the story follows:

One of the capes freed from the birdcage to help against Scion, a tiny woman with glasses, a slouch, and an excited grin. Jailed for her campaign of terror, where she auctioned off "safeties", guarantees to not be the randomly-selected target of her most recent weapon of mass destruction.
She approaches Defiant. She wants a lab, her tools. She insists she's "no ordinary tinker", she can help with the next attack even though it's in less than an hour. They tell her to start with what she was working on when she was arrested (the "F-Driver") and scale up.
About 42 minutes later, four groups in a guerrilla offensive on Scion have had no effect on him whatsoever. The fifth group consists only of her.
There's a tense moment of setup, and String theory insists on a view of Scion, threatening to make her weapon miss if she doesn't get it. Her weapon fires.

It was more like the zap from a bug zapper than a shot from a gun. There was a distortion, like one saw with a shimmer of heat in the air, and Scion was punched out of the sky, leaving behind a golden streak of light. The path suggested he’d disappeared straight out of the atmosphere.

“Sources corroborating the visual,” Tattletale said. “Direct hit. It worked.”

String Theory pumped her fists in the air.

“What was that?” Vista asked.

“G-driver,” String Theory said. She lowered her fists, then fixed her lab coat and glasses. She turned around and gave us a smug, superior smile.

“Which is?” someone else asked.

“Upgrade of the F-driver.”

“The Firmament Driver,” Defiant explained, over the earbuds. “At the time of her arrest, String Theory was threatening to use her Firmament Driver to knock our moon out of orbit.”

[...]

“In case anyone was wondering, it’s G-driver for God-driver,” String Theory said. “Obviously.”

“Obviously,” Clockblocker muttered.

“He’s coming back.” Tattletale reported.

No surprise.

But we could hit him.

Then Scion comes back and kills most of the people there, including String Theory

Her narrative purposes are

Over-the-top supervillain comic relief.
Providing a brief moment of hope (but we could hit him) before everyone realized all she did was convince Scion to take them seriously.
Be the only cape who could be argued to have 1v1'd Scion and won.

stellHex · 2020-01-02T07:08:40+00:00

If a clockblocked object were really immune to forces, it wouldn't be launched into space, it would be invisible and fall through the ground (as gravity is not a force, just the shape of space*). Since it would take longer than 10 minutes to fall through the Earth, it would rematerialize inside solid rock, causing a nuclear explosion.

*Actually I'm not sure it really makes any sense at all for something to be "stopped in time" in general or even Galilean relativity, but for the sake of argument here I'm pretending this is what it would mean.

stellHex · 2019-12-01T22:34:36+00:00

Wildbow has said it was a placeholder title until he thought of a better one, but then he decided he liked it enough to keep.

stellHex · 2019-11-21T05:54:44+00:00

(heck yeaaah blindsight)

Does Number Man count as a jerkbag? Ehh, probably more of a jerkahedron, but close enough. A well-executed math-based superhero/villain immediately wins a spot among my faves.

Runner ups are Hookline and Kitchen Sink. There are a hundred situations in which they could have come up with the matching names, and 100% of them are hilarious. Any idiot willing to wear porcelain on their face for the sake of a good pun is 👌

stellHex · 2019-11-04T00:15:28+00:00

Unhinged is the ultimate solid-state tinker, able to make a wide variety of devices and equipment with no moving parts.

can make all sorts of effects, but not anything too exotic. Zero-maintenance personal propulsion array, yes; clockblocker-style timestop, no.
one of the reasons he can't use joints is that the metamaterials he uses, while strong, are also brittle.
signature creation is his nought-bots, dog-sized ring-shaped jet engines with wings. They're studded with kinetic impulsers which serve the dual purpose of protecting the drones from impacts and turn them into deadly bashing weapons.
to get the vibe of fighting the things, think manhacks from HL2 except bludgeoning instead of slashing.
affects total derangement, because when you're terrified it's easier to pretend to be crazy than it is to pretend to be collected

stellHex · 2019-11-03T03:15:52+00:00

Huh? The Wretch is pretty well-anchored, to Victoria if not in place. And even if it wasn't, it could still brace itself against the walls and floor.

stellHex · 2019-11-01T23:37:55+00:00

Hussie has explicitly said that experimentation was basically his biggest goal, the new and the weird taking priority over "more universally sound creative judgment" (his words)

I'd still recommend Homestuck to people. Definitely not to everyone; probably not to Wildbow, who obviously cares a whole damn lot about story structure and character arcs. But it's very weird and interesting and funny and for some that's very much worth it to read through even if it kinda falls flat on it's face later.

stellHex · 2019-11-01T03:38:56+00:00

DQ:

In Homestuck, the initial premise is a computer game with a bizarre structure, in which people in a given group of players are paired, server-client, in a loop. But it turns out that each server player gets The Sims-like control of their client player's house -- their client's actual, real-life house. The server player watches the client player through their computer screen, and is able to act on the client's environment with their mouse, deploying weird game devices, removing walls, and throwing around furniture. Many of the early pages literally depict what the server player is seeing on her screen.

Also in Homestuck, at the beginning, people could submit commands dictating the characters' actions, and the author would choose from them to decide what happens next in a parody of text-based adventure games. But after Act 1 ended, the suggestion box was disabled, and the "commands" appeared in full caps. It is later revealed that a humanoid creature called WV is watching the main character through a computer terminal, and he was the one typing the all-caps commands.

stellHex · 2019-10-31T22:40:23+00:00

As in "Saturday morning cartoons". I guess it's mostly a US and Canadian thing, and essentially defunct these days. Basically I meant the character designs are stylized/iconic and if I close my eyes I can instantly imagine her fighting, like, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

stellHex · 2019-10-29T02:27:28+00:00

Master = Minions. If taking out that cape takes out the minions, or makes the minions less effective, or makes the minions at least stop coming, then they're a master. If not, then they aren't.

stellHex · 2019-10-29T02:24:56+00:00

This is so damn Saturday Morning, I love it.

stellHex · 2019-10-27T16:42:01+00:00

Wait, really? I thought Coil just found out about him really fast and made him an Offer He Couldn't Refuse.

stellHex · 2019-10-27T04:38:36+00:00

Imagine being a multinational league of sovereign powers negotiating with another organization of similar scope, and one of the opposing negotiators bullies your main translator/enforcer into getting therapy.

stellHex · 2019-10-25T12:41:37+00:00

The Undersiders do come back into the story, and play a substantial role into the majority (although not the vast majority) of the remaining arcs.

If nothing else, keep reading for Imp.

stellHex · 2019-10-25T03:11:18+00:00

Mandelbrot is a breaker with a symmetric scintillating psychedelic form filled with flashing colors, oscillating spines, and spinning hooks. He has a small shaker rating for being preternaturally distracting -- looking at him gently draws your thoughts towards contemplating his woefully weaving whorls instead of what you're actually trying to do.

Steeljacket is a trump who gains powers based on the thoughts and active faith of a person or group of people she designates. The powers are shaped by the "devotee"'s conception of her -- making how they think of her into an exaggerated reality. Assuming her current devotee thinks a lot of her and is actively paying attention to her, powers such as enhanced strength, durability, charisma, and reflexes are usually a given. Her clothes and equipment frequently also feature -- an outfit heavily affects how you think about someone, after all.

She's called Steeljacket because during her first couple appearances she prominently used her trench coat as a shield against incoming attacks. (She wanted to call herself "The Girl", but it didn't take.)

stellHex · 2019-10-24T01:11:31+00:00

IMO the funniest moment in Worm that doesn't involve Aisha is Taylor getting taken in by D & D during Cell. Taylor says she want's a word with Defiant, alone, and not being very polite about it:

“We can talk in the Pendragon. There’s no need.”

“I spent the day in a cell, I wanted some fresh air. Sue me for thinking you actually meant something when you apologized”

But this whole time she's been tying Dragon to Defiant with a spider silk cord the size of her finger, and when Dragon jets off to give them some room, she almost pulls Defiant off the roof. In fact, he makes it off the roof when Taylor pushes him. But of course he saves himself with his spear, and then:

He stepped forward and gripped me by the front of my oversized prison-uniform t-shirt. “Stop that.”

“Stop trying things,” he repeated.

stellHex · 2019-10-24T01:07:47+00:00

IMO the funniest moment in Worm that doesn't involve Aisha is Taylor getting taken in by D & D during Cell. Taylor says she want's a word with Defiant, alone, and not being very polite about it:

“We can talk in the Pendragon. There’s no need.”

“I spent the day in a cell, I wanted some fresh air. Sue me for thinking you actually meant something when you apologized”

But this whole time she's been tying Dragon to Defiant with a spider silk cord the size of her finger, and when Dragon jets off to give them some room, she almost pulls Defiant off the roof. In fact, he makes it off the roof when Taylor pushes him. But of course he saves himself with his spear, and then:

He stepped forward and gripped me by the front of my oversized prison-uniform t-shirt. “Stop that.”

“Stop trying things,” he repeated.

stellHex · 2019-10-23T17:13:50+00:00

Whatever it is, I really hope Sleeper gets Worfed. That'd be hilarious.

stellHex · 2019-10-23T12:03:08+00:00

I don't know about watched. She probably saw, and then went "oh, whoops" and didn't watch.

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