Tindalostalbot

Chapter One  - Chapter Two - Chapter Three -

 Chapter 3.5 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5 - Chapter 6

"Shut Up And Take The Pain"

So we talked about the hatemob calling trans creators' work transphobic, and calling Jews Nazis, and siccing dictators on game designers but this chapter contains the worst part. I'm tempted to skip straight to it, but first I want to spend some time with the other people who worked on the game.

So you know what I think and you saw some of what Kenneth Hite had to deal with because of Evil Hat hatemobbing on Vampire--but what about everybody else? While it started with me, Ken and The Art Director, by the end I'd been gone for over a year and there was a whole team of socialist Swedes and other RPG creatives working on the new edition.

Privately they all said a lot about being angry at the mob, but people also talked about depression, mental breakdowns, and destroyed careers. I'm going to stick to quoting the less personal stuff, so none of them get in trouble.

This is during the second wave, when Dog With Dice wrote the Jews-Are-Nazis article:

Someone else, much later, after the damage had been done...

In a world that made any sense, what happened to Vampire should have been a Pizzagate-style cautionary tale about the danger of believing conspiracy theories. And it should've been that immediately. Because--as-noted way at the beginning--sales were ok and more people signed a petition supporting the game than spread the conspiracy theories.

While a diplomatically-worded petition leaving the names of all the bad actors out couldn't save Vampire, the sentiment that spawned it should have at least been enough to prevent the situation generally in RPGs getting worse later--everyone looks at the steaming crater full of troll-takes where once there was a city and goes "Oh wow, what a mess, let's all agree not to do that again"--but it wasn't. By way of explanation, I'm going to zoom in on one example:

Meet Chris Handley, Chris has had a World of Darkness podcast for over ten years, Chris has written World of Darkness stuff for Storytellers Vault, and Chris was also someone who read this blog and liked my work. Years ago he said he wanted to be my friend on social media, so I added him.

One day, before all this, Chris and another WoD fan were talking in a thread casually about having a beer with Olivia Hill. I did literally the only thing any responsible adult seeing this could've done: I warned them and anyone reading the thread that Olivia Hill was a certifiable harasser and to watch the fuck out. Like: where Olivia lived, you could legitimately be arrested for doing the shit Olivia did to her colleagues. I didn't call Chris or Chris' friend names, I didn't act like they should've known already, I didn't say a word in anger. I just told them what I knew because obviously it's not ok to normalize the presence of someone known to be that dishonest and dangerous.

At the time, Handley thought this was just gosh darn rude and so...joined the hatemob. So far, so normal: you tell someone their trollfriend is a troll, they disagree and start smearing you, too. That's a normal day on the internet, but what happened next is what makes this a story:

So years later, after all the things I discuss in this series happened to Chris' beloved Vampire, Chris--being a relatively typical World of Darkness fan--is up in arms, Chris is completely pissed, Chris signs the petition supporting White Wolf, Chris has a phone conversation with the White Wolf guys in May 2017, Chris writes me to say...

• He now recognizes Olivia Hill's role in all of this and says she and her usual suspect pal Holden Shearer had acted in "God awful ways".
• He treats Olivia and her circle with "a fairly large barge pole" due to their "pearl-clutching" and says Olivia's "gone off the deep end".
• He says all of Olivia's accusations against me were "bullshit".
• He believes Olivia screwed over backers on a Fate-system Kickstarter and used the money to move to Japan. 
• He says he was on my side me about Olivia's wife attacking us over the Maxim article, Chris calls it "misplaced outrage".
• He also throws in, for good measure, Olivia and co were also unnecessarily pearl-clutching about Kingdom Death.
• He likes and buys my work.

And you would now expect this series of emails to end with "Thank you so much for trying to warn us--years before this happened to Vampire--about Olivia Hill because nobody else did. I am so sorry I didn't listen and I'm sorry I gave you any shit about it."

But it doesn't. Chris was actually writing to say he was still mad that I warned him and his friend about Olivia Hill. Here they were trying to talk about drinking beer with the delightful proven hatefactory Olivia Hill and here I had to go and say something unpleasant.

Remember the snakes have legs video?

This is how it ends:

The snake (who, being a snake, clearly has no legs) tells the guy to stop telling people that snakes have legs, so the guy unfriends him. The snake.

The reason nobody took what happened to Vampire to heart in later years is that instead of doing anything about the harassers, people attacked anyone trying to warn them.

And it's somehow worse if you have receipts? In the middle of this, Patrick Stuart, my co-author on Maze of the Blue Medusa, had a mental breakdown and joined the hatemob. He wrote in his hatepost that while, yes, while Olivia Hill had done fucked up things, the fact I had pointed it out and collected evidence to prove what Hill was doing, in the form of her dozens of public posts, was insane and "creepy".

I want to write the next sentence nine-hundred times in letters of fire 300 feet high:

I don't know what kind of world anyone lives in where a creator can just make up a lie that a colleague threatened their children and that's not a Jesus shit, full-court press, all-hands on-deck, holy-fuck, mother-of-all-that-is-holy-and-unholy 100% epic emergency where that creator is recognized as a massive threat to anything they touch that you need to do something about asap. Chris knew Olivia was lying, Patrick knew Olivia was lying. And somehow their reaction was Zak, why are you telling people?

Let's leave out all the things I've reported and only talk about complaints other people have about her: Olivia's been thrown off twitter for harassment, Kickstarter backers on several projects have said Olivia ripped them off, she was thrown off RPGnet for doxxing, behind-the-scenes every full-time developer I've met calls her a piece of shit, Shoe Skogen says she sexually harassed her, and her girlfriend/employee Francita said she was an abuser. What does Olivia Hill have to do for it to be ok to call her out? Dynamite the Eiffel Tower? Hijack a schoolbus and eat the kids? Shoot your mom down in a public street and drop her corpse in lime? 

(Asterisk*)

And then on top of that: all the other stuff Olivia did. And then all the stuff Ettin did. And all the people from all the other forums and game companies. The most sympathetic and well-informed people decided it was not only better for them to do nothing, but that it was also bad to do something.

Since then:

Paradox basically closed White Wolf down.

Robin Laws, probably the most respected voice in the game industry, has kept right on podcasting regularly with his friend Kenneth Hite--and still has publicly said nothing.

The Vampire team, despite being privately pissed-off and supportive of each other, has said nothing. 

Olivia Hill smeared more people and grew her Twitter following to over 10k until her girlfriend called her out for abuse, at which point a few RPG people complained and then, well, nothing. She's suffered no consequences. She also said her "views have changed" since she first began her harassment campign.

Ettin kept on and smeared more people until I sued him.

Rob Donoghue at Evil Hat has seen zero consequences.

Crystal Frasier has seen less than zero consquences. WOTC hired her on the new Ravenloft.

And pretty much everyone else has either kept quiet, joined the hatemob or themselves been cancelled. A few have freaked out at their own behavior and left the game scene.

Literally no-one now publicly defends any of the accusations made against the game in any detail. 

The end.

I designed this and wish I hadn't

Next

You might have heard I was involved in a secret email conspiracy with Mike Mearls, longtime creative head of Dungeons & Dragons. You might've heard I sued him. You might've heard a lot of not-terribly-informed things spread by a lot of people already featured in the story you just read.

Next up, if anyone reading genuinely cares, I will tell the whole story, soup-to-nuts, with receipts, about what happened with Mike Mearls. I'll get you the details tomorrow (EDIT: Within the week. I'm travelling.).

Chapter One  - Chapter Two - Chapter Three -

 Chapter 3.5 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5 - Chapter 6

*Ooh, edit: Earlier I wrote she got permanently banned and made a new account, but I just realized (9:43pm Pacific 18 May) it's possible that Olivia changed her @ name on twitter to the new one, then some troll took her old @ name and got themself banned, thus resulting in her old twitter name having a ban notice due to no fault of her own. I have no way of knowing which, so I am defaulting to caution. She may be simply a lying abuser and not a lying abuser who has been permabanned from twitter.

It’s interesting to see two characters come to terms with each other in spite of the flaws they have. A review today of the first work in a series in which the story revolves around needs and wants, but also the problems that arise when characters tell stories to themselves.

It’s not uncommon for characters to find it difficult to express themselves to others. Understanding is one thing, but getting lost along the way isn’t always a good thing.

• Title: His Demon Prize
• Author: Stella Del Mar
• Published By: Star Sea
• Length: 93 Pages
• Format: eBook
• ASIN: B092HPB5WH
• Publishing Date: April 13, 2021
• This work in Kindle Format at Amazon.com

The work tells of:

I made a deal with the devil, but now his daughter is the only prize I want. Her body broadcasts sin. Her curves scream seduction. When I hold her in my arms, the rest of the world disappears. I can’t get her out of my head—the devil’s runaway daughter, the succubus who haunts my fantasies. Yet spending a single night in Elle’s bed promises almost-certain death. But if anyone can survive this beauty’s kisses, I can. I’ve dispatched countless demons to Hades, and my contract is paid in full. Still, hunting demons is a gamble, and a good gambler knows when to walk away. Elle is a risky bet if there ever was one. Too bad she’s also everything I want. I’ve always been a reckless man, and I’m determined to make the devil’s daughter mine—even if it costs me my immortal soul.

Finn made a deal for which he’s looking for a payout. But there’s one more thing to do and that’s to get what he really wants. Her name is Elle, she’s one of the devil’s daughters, and she doesn’t want to play the game to lose.

The work reads very much as a heist movie mixed with some D/s themes and a bit of mystery mixed in. Finn is interesting, holding much of his true intents close and not really letting anyone, especially Elle, into what he really wants until there’s no other choice. It does make for some confusion along the way and that’s mostly in Finn’s internal monologuing, something that both main characters do continuously. At times that’s a bit long winded and occasionally it can be a bit over the top, but getting through both of them trying to figure themselves out leads to some really inspired moments.

Elle is described as a succubus, but she really doesn’t show herself to be one, save for reflecting on her past, or the notes that Finn makes about her. Elle is a mystery as a whole, her past is skimmed over, and that was a bit disappointing. I’d have liked to know more about her, especially why she made the choices she did. Beyond that, her personality gets muted under the story which is focused on Finn for the most part.

The erotica has lovely heat, Finn and Elle are made for each other and when their truths come out, and the reality of both of their situations appears, it’s a satisfying means to take the story towards something better than I expected at the beginning.

This is a delightfully fun story, the characters are fleshed out and their emotions are told well. I’d have liked more background to Elle’s sisters as well, there’s a lot of story there to be told. Elle herself is overall still a mystery when the story climaxes and, again, learning more about her and her past would have been nice.

Perhaps the most promising thing is where the story ends, there’s a multitude of threads that can be picked up and brought to the fore. As this work is billed as the first in a series, it does bring the question if all of Elle’s sisters are succubi or not, and if the following works will focus on them more. It will be interesting to see where things go.

Four out of five pitchforks.

Well written, interesting characters and things transpire that are both unexpected and delightful. A good opening to the series and I look forward to where the author takes the series from here.

Tera

It is, as I am writing this, Mother’s Day. It’s been a long time, at least when I wrote this, since I’d written anything, let alone something to mark this day. It’s … never been an easy day for me, of late it has become that much more difficult. But there’s something to remember on this day, and that is …

Our Mother’s Love
By TeraS

The book was well worn. The cover was a bit frayed: a tear in one corner, the image of various edible delights printed there, a little faded from time. The spine had a crease in it, marking a particularly favourite creation referred to many a time before.

Hands opened the book, watching the pages leaf to that particular spot, the words on the one side telling of the ways and means to the creation that appeared in full colour on the opposite side. A slim finger drew itself across the page, double checking that she had everything needed; it was, after all, a favourite recipe. Perhaps not the most complicated of things to create, but even though she could have recited the ingredients, the steps, the baking time, and how to serve the delight. It was important to not leave anything out. She remembered running into the kitchen, peering over the edge of the countertop, sneaking a bit of the batter, and giving an innocent smile.

She missed those days.

A calloused hand drew itself over another page in another book of memories. He recalled the joys she had in creating that dessert, the smile when she watched the delight from others in tasting her creation. It was a tradition, in a way. Birthdays, family gatherings, whatever the reason was: it didn’t need to be much more than her being there. The handwriting was a bit faded, little notes stuck to the ruled lines noting a change here, an option there. She’d never been content with good enough; there was always room for improvement.

He missed those days.

A pair of eyes scanned a bookcase, one shelf holding his thoughts and memories. It was … too soon. It felt wrong, somehow, to touch her recipes. There was a feeling of not quite being able to see the words, remember the joys she’d brought to so many. He could still see her in the kitchen, smell the latest bit of wonder in the oven that her hands created. Then one book caught his eye, and his hand touched the spine.

He missed those days.

It took as long as it was meant to; she didn’t rush through the steps. Things were to be done in a certain way and that’s how it was. The kitchen was a bit of a mess, but that was part of the recipe as well. She popped the mixture into the oven and settled in to wait, flipping idly through the book that had led her through the steps and the memories.

There was no rushing for him either, though this recipe would take longer than hers would. He didn’t mind that; the mixture had to set, the bottom layer needed time to cool after the oven had finished with it. The time allowed him to trace over her handwriting once more and smile softly at the moments remembered.

It took a while, to be honest. It’s hard to read with tears in your eyes. Every word came with its memories. He found that the ingredients were still in the pantry: the mixer in its place, the cookie sheet shimmied into its storage spot when he opened the door looking for it. The recipe was there, if he needed it, but he found the memories guiding his hands, adjusting a pinch here or there as needed. He stumbled on occasion—at least in his thoughts he did—and wasn’t quite sure everything was as she would have done it when the baking sheet slid into the oven. Not content to wait, he busied himself with cleaning up the kitchen; she would not have been pleased with the mess, after all. He did manage a smile at that memory.

The cupcakes were done, a small pile of them placed upon the cream-coloured serving plate. Oh, there could be icing, of course, but this was how they were meant to be. Angel food cake with chunks of chocolate within; possibly the simplest of her creations, but it felt right.

The cheesecake was done, the springform removed, positioned on the cake plate she’d had for longer than he could remember. Strawberry sauce in a serving boat to the side, the cutting knife soaking in hot water before the cutting would commence. She’d always made sure of the presentation, and so he did, too.

The smells filled the kitchen now, accompanying him as he finished putting the last bowl into the dishwasher. They were a comfort, in a way, a reminder of how things were: the love, so many good things she’d done for others. The bell sounded, telling that it was time. The sheet came out, was set on top of the stove to cool for a bit. He knew exactly where the cookie jar was; it had waited patiently for him. One by one the sheet was emptied, the cookies in their place, and he found himself with a smile, knowing she’d be pleased.

Three souls, on this day, remembered their mothers, their love, and the connection of the family they were. The comfort of their memories, reminding them that a mother’s love was for always, especially on this day.

After too long without musing… and with the help of my Heart, a beginning anew…

Sunrise
By TeraS

Time passes in ways that can’t quite be explained by even the most attentive souls. Something happens in some way to divert one’s attention and, when that comes to be realized … well, perhaps an eternity hasn’t passed, but certainly more time than one expected, or wanted, has.

The Realm … however … is.

Time is less of construct than it is a means of marking one moment from the next there. The moments come and go, some marked in passing, others known but not really brought to the fore as they might well have been. That’s not to say that the passage of time isn’t important … even if a certain red-tailed Queen of the Realm continues to insist that one specific day of the year not be marked in any way.

Of course, that never quite works out that way.

But this moment finds two red-tails entwined—yes, it is not just the tails, but the red-tailed people—on the patio of their home, looking towards the distant horizon where the first inklings of the beginning of the new come to appear. Resting against her Eternal, her thoughts are of what stories she hasn’t heard, the ones inside that need to be told, all the moments past when the words were there, on the edge of moving from the space between her horns and fingertips to leap into the universe.

She feels his hands in her own, wonders if the words can still make their way to be shared in some small way, however meaningful they may be. The doubts are there, as they always are, for that is part of her soul. She smiles to think of her heart, his promise, waiting, as long as it has been to see her words, and she wonders what he will think of where she starts from now. Perhaps it will not be the best thing she’s ever done, certainly her ellipses will be no end of problems, they always are, after all …

The thing is … every story starts with the first word and grows into what it was meant to be. Not trying is … not trying, after all…

Perhaps the sunrise is a metaphor for her own tales returning, the stories starting anew. Or a sunrise might just be a sunrise in the Realm: two Eternals watching the moment come, the day begin, and the promise of new tales … and tails … Either way, something good will come from the words put down and shared.

For all of the questions she has, Tera holds on to the thought of her family, holds on to the stories they tell, and gets ready to let fly the stories she tells in return …

Made this Ani-gif back in… 2009-ish.  Our Sea-Dog is breathing flames gules.

From Johnny Appleseed by Writer Paul Buhle and artist Noah Van Sciver.

Click image to see larger.

Mich Foust creates wonderful art and it’s been some time since one of his works has appeared on the Tale. A work of art then for the Succubi of the Week that is captivating in the personality of the succubus shown…

You can find the original page on DeviantArt with this work here and if you’d like to support Mitch through his Patreon, please see this link.

One of my favourite Succubi artworks from this artist, I love the princess vibe her look and form has. The details in the work, from her wings, the jewelry, the texture of her horns are amazing.

Tera

There’s a DORK TOWER Patreon! Dork Tower is 100% reader-funded, and updated Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, thanks its generous Patreon supporters. The next goal is four strips a week! Enlist in the Army of Dorkness today, and help us reach that! We have a ton of fun! Also: Igor Bars!

alicemccombs:

Welcome June.

Photo from Guardian of the Woods.

🐇 🐇 🐇

alicemccombs:

Photo from Spectrum on Facebook

HI DUDES!

This weekend Redbubble – where I have my main merch shop – is having a massive sale! The code is

FINDYOURTHING

to get..

20% off stickers

25% off tees

30% off magnets and posters

40% off notebooks

and loads more!

such as…

NEW: the Odysseus Paper Doll Fridge Magnet set!

Or what about these pretty Classics things?

You might also like these other Redbubble shops belonging to awesome Classicists!

HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND!

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Watch this comic as a video on the YouTube channel!

The post Epiphanies whisper. appeared first on Indexed.

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
If only we could merge relativistic bullshit with quantum bullshit.

Today's News:

A piece of photorealistic art this week on the Tale and that’s mainly because this particular work has a “Queen on her throne” vibe that I really like very much…

This work is by the artist killbiro on DeviantArt and you can find the original page with this art here.

The slightly aloof expression and look works really well with the throne and her almost there outfit. Lovely tail, that does make me smile as well. Overall there’s a intensity in the image that I do like, it gives this portrait of a succubus on her throne that little bit extra that moves it from sexuality to presence.

And, after all, any Succubus Queen should have a presence that demands those around her heed her commands…

Or so I am told…

 

Tera

Yes, Digit was heavily inspired by Gadget. Okay, actually, there’s this poster… I mentioned this in a comment on the previous page, but here it is with a little more info.

Whoever this lady is, combine her and Gadget and you get Digit. Then just her minus the torch but still with the heat powers and you get Heatwave. Weird the things that influence you when you’re an adolescent.

Okay, not that weird. She has nice boobs. (You can click on it for a slightly larger version.)

So anyway, Digit is one of those fairly typical scatterbrained inventors. Her original incarnation was an in-the-streets gadgeteer superhero, but I decided since I already have a lot of other fieldable heroes, she’d be more useful in the basement. Also, less immediate danger to the public. She’s also one of those women (who probably only exist in fiction) who has no understanding that she’s sexy. And not in the glasses and ponytail way where she wants boys to notice her but she can’t figure out how, but in a wearing skintight overalls because she doesn’t want them to snag on things and unbuttoning her shirt because all the welding is making her sweaty and can’t figure out why guys keep tripping over things and staring at that little rivulet of sweat slowly traversing her sternum. I guess she’s the closest to being asexual as anyone on the team, in that the hormones normally responsible for arousal instead light up her brain when she thinks about spot welds and torque ratios.

On an tangential note, Gadget was voiced by Tress MacNeille, who has also voiced… let me see… oh. Everyone. Every female character in every cartoon. Okay, not literally EVERY female cartoon character, but look at that link and scroll down. And keep scrolling, and keep scrolling. Those are the just the voices she’s done for Disney. She’s also worked on nearly every episode of the Simpsons and Futurama. Her IMDB page is pushing 400 credits, many of them for series, and many of them for multiple voices per show. It may not be an exaggeration to say that she has voiced THE MAJORITY of female cartoon characters.

I don’t have a point here, I just think her career as a voice actress is pretty fucking impressive. Well done, Tress!

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The new vote incentive is up! Some of you got sort of invested in Lapha and Garamm, so here she is testing out her new duds. I don’t know if or when they’ll show up in the comic again, (probably more a question of ‘when’) but we’ll have to see if she got any other options besides the tail. Personally I’d go for retractable, venomous fangs, but presumably if you get those, you also have to get a special upgraded pancreas or liver or something, in case you accidentally bite the inside of your own cheek with your fang.

As usual, there are a few variants over at Patreon, and as is becoming more common, a little follow-on comic.

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Double res version will be posted over at Patreon. Feel free to contribute as much as you like!

The odds of a coin flip are actually not 50-50 but 51-49

Support the DORK TOWER Patreon! Dork Tower is 100% reader-funded, and updated Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, thanks its generous Patreon supporters. The next goal is four strips a week! Enlist in the Army of Dorkness today, and help us reach that! We have a ton of fun! Also: Igor Bars!

jayrockin:

I only use my ability to draw passable horses for evil. Related: centaur equestrianism.

Concept Centaurs riding horses…

The universe (which others call the Library) is composed of an indefinite and perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries, with vast air shafts between, surrounded by very low railings. 

             -Library of Babel, Jorge Luis Borges

 When famas go on a trip, when they pass the night in a city, their procedure is the following: one fama goes to the hotel and prudently checks the prices, the quality of the sheets, and the color of the carpets. The second repairs to the commissariat of police and there fills out a record of the real and transferable property of all three of them, as well as an inventory of the contents of their valises. The third fama goes to the hospital and copies the lists of the doctors on emergency and their specialties.

After attending to these affairs diligently, the travelers join each other in the central plaza of the city, exchange observations, and go to a café to take an apéritif. But before they drink, they join hands and do a dance in a circle. This dance is known as “The Gayety of the Famas.”

When cronopios go on a trip, they find that all the hotels are filled up, the trains have already left, it is raining buckets and taxis don’t want to pick them up, either that or they charge them exorbitant prices. The cronopios are not disheartened because they believe firmly that these things happen to everyone...

-Cronopios Y Famas, Julio Cortazar, tr. Paul Blackburn 

The Merchant is a blue skinned man sitting on a blue-green rug next to some cards, a small chest, a bag, and a knife. He is wearing a mask covering his face and a blue cloak. He acts friendly towards the player and talks to them while they view and purchase his wares.

-Slay the Spire Wiki 

There is a specific genre--or maybe just category--of fantasy I'm going to call "Bottle Fantasy". The simplest way to describe Bottle Fantasy is literally no-one has a normal life.

Let me be precise, though:

While most imaginative fiction (from the Godfather to Lord of the Rings) simply tells a story which focuses on something more exciting than human life as we know it, Bottle Fantasy takes place in a whole universe with no clear place recognizable human life as we know it. In a Bottle Fantasy, nobody gets born, then lives a whole life that looks (at least from the outside, regardless of the physical laws involved) like one that would happen in the real world, and then dies in a real-world way.

This isn't the same as just an imaginary world or universe--Middle Earth, it is strongly implied, either is the past of our world or one a lot like it, which means it both has people living normal lives in it and that it might one day mellow out and look like our world. Star Trek makes a place for our lives: in the past, Star Wars posits itself in the past--and far away. Moreover, all these fictional worlds at least want us to believe they have basically recognizable economies, human biologies (decapitation kills humans), etc.

Aside from the absence of Christianity, vanilla D&D could plausibly take place in the world that a very superstitious peasant suspects is just outside his door.

To simplify, hopefully: in most fantasy, there are dragons but the average peasant hasn't seen one. In Bottle Fantasy, there aren't average peasants and there never have been. All people eat starlight instead of meat, or there may be no people, only spheres, or all people are just stacks of owls in costumes.

Bottle Fantasy is in a bottle--while things may be analogous to our world, there is no in-world connection to our normal world.

Pac-Man, as presented in the original video game, is technically a Bottle Fantasy: there are no people, only Pac-Man, ghosts, dots and fruit. In Borges' Library of Babel there is literally no world except the library full of hexagons.

The world Julio Cortaza describes above in Cronopios Y Famas might be a Bottle Fantasy--there are doctors and taxis, but it's suggested that all people in the world of the book are Cronopios, Famas or Esperanzas--creatures who all act in a stylized way. It is unclear whether the doctors and taxi drivers are people who act in a normal way other than giving trips to Cronopios et al.

Like most genre categories, there's a spectrum. With "Total Bottle Fantasy" (world unconnected to our own operating on rules all its own) to "Almost Bottle Fantasy", some examples:

• Planescape is the closest official D&D comes to Bottle Fantasy. Though you can travel and get to a world where regular people exist doing regular things, it's assumed you'd spend almost no time there and that the vast majority of the action takes place in worlds with alternate life patterns, economies and day-to-day physical laws.
• Lewis Carroll's Alice books would be Bottle Fantasies if it wasn't for the fact that Alice is an ordinary girl from our world.
• Likewise, it's spawn Red & Pleasant Land would be Bottle Fantasy if it weren't for the fact you can get there from a more recognizable world.
• Mario's gameworld would be Bottle Fantasy if it wasn't for the fact that the early games posit that Mario and Luigi were regular plumbers from our world who just went into the pipes to clean out crabs and turtles.
• Eberron is right on the edge, because it's implied everything that you can do in normal D&D is somewhere in Eberron, that means that there are people who just, like, go to taverns and work as regular blacksmiths, etc. There's probably versions of Eberron where even the farmwork and daily drudgery is obviously magic-based, but I don't think anyone's ever gone into that much detail. 
• Slay The Spire is a Bottle Fantasy: there is no clear evidence of normal life anywhere. The clearest examples of real lives we see are communities trying to live within The Spire who definitely survive on weird unreal processes.
• Candyland is an example of a minimalist Bottle Fantasy. There is naught but travelers and candy.
• A lot of OSR gameworlds posit or begin to posit Bottle Fantasies.
• Superhero worlds aren't generally Bottle Fantasies, since normalcy exists as a thing from which superheroes and villains emerge.
• Sci-fis usually aren't Bottle Fantasies because they posit a normally-functioning historical Earth either far away, in the past, or existing just before the introduction of some sci-fi idea.

Some general characteristics of Bottle Fantasies in different media:

• Bottle Fantasies are more common in video games and board games than most other media because the effort to create this kind of game starts with the fun/action/adventure part of the world--the part you, as a main character, play with--and programming in the normal world or references to it is often just more work than making something up. As a game creator with these games you start with what's unusual and then work your way out. You start with jumping on turtles and only tell us what a normal day as a plumber is like if you have extra time.
• Bottle Fantasies are less common in tabletop RPGs (especially popular ones) because, conversely, the players' tactical choices and the game master's adventure-building choices rely heavily on assuming there's a world outside the game text that functions in a familiar way. For example: few RPG texts bother to explain that rivers are full of water and flow in one direction or that wood floats--but most RPG creators assume that these two facts can be assumed by players who want to build a river-raft to get somewhere. Everytime you want to remove a real-world assumption you need to type at least one sentence ("there are no rivers in the world of Dark Sun") and every time you want to change it, you need to type even more ("instead there are seas of silt"), and then you have to explain the implications, because it's an RPG and the world has to function even when the author isn't narrating it ("Most people get their water from...")
• Bottle Fantasies in live-action film are even rarer than in tabletop RPGs because in these films (1) You have to take the raw material of reality and transform it to get a fictional world (2) This is expensive (3) Expensive films often have to pay for themselves by being popular (4) A wholly Bottled world, though offering opportunities for exciting special effects, is less likely to be relatable, which limits its popularity. The compromise live-action film generally makes is to offer a Mario or Alice-style "visitation" narrative like Tron where someone from our world goes to a mostly Bottled world. It is a feat of rare daring for a filmmaker to make a complete Bottle World, especially for adults.
• Conversely, Primitive Bottle Fantasies in animation are common--especially in experimental or student animation because, say, "Dots vs Lines" is very doable.
• Bottle Fantasies in written fiction are common in short stories, but rare as novels. While many fantasy, sci-fi, and straight literary writers have produced Bottle Fantasies as short thought-experiments, its hard to think of a novel's worth of conflict over things that don't exist in our world, and you have to be pretty good, or at least pretty driven, to do it.

In sculpture, they talk about additive and subtractive sculpture--in additive sculpture you pile up material (say: clay, or legos) until it looks like the thing, in subtractive sculpture you carve away (stone, or the like). In fiction, we can talk about reality like a material: there are media where you start with a real thing, like actors on a stage, and alter them to seem like characters in your story, and there are media where you start with nothing--an empty canvas or page--and add things.

The pattern here is: if working a medium starts with reality and then alters it in order to produce its basic material, then Bottle Fantasy is unusual, if working in a medium starts with nothing and getting something to resemble reality is itself a complex act of craft, Bottle Fantasy is more common, since a fantastic world is often easier to produce than a real one. Bottle Fantasy is easy in painting (look: a world consisting of a circle and nothing else) and hard in theater (every actor needs to be disguised as not-an-actor, the stage might have to be rigged with wires and mirrors to present alternate physics).

Oddly, this puts tabletop RPGs on the "start with reality, then alter it" side of the equation. 

Bottle Fantasy in RPG or live-action film are, thus, very ambitious projects. Building a world that functions for hours without any parts that default to the real world (or at least some shared conception of it) is a bit like trying to build a car that works without gas or electricity or even steam.

Bottle Fantasies are, almost axiomatically, imaginative but inaccessible. And the more imaginative they are, the less accessible they become.

Probably the ur-example in tabletop is Empire of the Petal Throne / Tekumel --while there are farmers in Tekumel, they're from no extant culture (when it is earthlike, Tekumel itself mixes South Asian and Mesoamerican influence, so you can't rely on one or the other the way you can assume anything left undescribed in Middle Earth is just "as you guess England circa 1200 would be") and the layers of ritual and invented religion intentionally insert themselves between players and their assumptions. Even Tekumel has a "visitation" narrative built in--players in the original game are supposed to be untutred foreigners. It might not be technically Bottle Fantasy as I've defined it, but it's close and presents the problems and opportunities of the genre.

Bottle Fantasy in RPGs is kind of great, in that it appeals to the game-masterish desire to invent everything from the ground up--"All arrows are petrified snakes here because there's no wood!" and it's kind of horrible in that it forces you to invent everything from the ground up--"Uh, if there's no wood, is there wine? What's it aged in? Wait, if there's no wood, are there vines?" etc.

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An Orc at College

I’ve recommended this Liam Lawson series before. I love me some good xenoanthropology, and my favorite thing about this series is the “fish out of water”/”Tarzan in New York” bits where the Orc main character has to figure out all the weird cultural stuff humans (and other races) do.

Well, Book 8 is out, Trorm’s family is coming to visit, and the xenoanthropology spills out onto the front lawn in the form of fistfights and flaming maces, much to the horror of the hand-wringing and probably slightly racist HOA. Mmm mmm! Good stuff!

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Entangled Fates

A near future, proto-cyberpunk novel. As in, the main character is, through circumstances beyond his control, the first guy with a quantum linked AI in his brain. It’s kind of like he’s got “The Machine” from Person of Interest riding shotgun, only instead of being an enigmatic and vaguely creepy superintelligence, his machine decides it likes the human experience and adopts very anthropomorphic (feminine) qualities right off the bat. Corporations, governments, and organized crime antagonize, and eventually a bunch of ex-military female bodyguards are hired because they blend in better than burly dudes in suits and sunglasses. Yes, it’s a (slow burn) harem, obviously.

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Savage Ascension

There’s a lot of stories like this one, i.e., displaced hero makes good and grows his household and gets his revenge, partially by living well, but mostly with head chopping. I’m recommending this one because from among the similar books I’ve read recently, I thought this one stood out. I immediately bought the second book when I finished the first, which is a pretty good gauge of a series I think. I have a lot of orphaned Book #1’s in my library. This one is like, Isekai-lite. Instead of being from another world, the MC is a “Savage” from the north, forcibly taken to the “civilized” city where he proves that being a skilled hunter is advantageous in slave arena battles. So, it’s kind of a bummer at first, but then he finds out that if he wins, he gets to pick a wife from an assembly of female combatants, and the ruling class here has a way to combat a blight of infertility sweeping the land, so the MC is like, “I guess I’ll pick up a wife or two before I get my revenge on everyone.” So, yeah. As books of this nature go, I thought it was one of the better ones.

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The Lost Fleet

This series is a little different from most of my recommendations. It’s more akin to the early Honor Harrington books, which I quite liked, for their technical fleet battles. (I’m as surprised as anyone I enjoy that stuff.)

The hook of this series is; Guy wakes up from 100 years in cryosleep to discover 1) The war he was fighting is still going on, 2) Everyone thinks he’s some mythical super-tactician cause he fought in a famous, desperate battle before jumping in his pod. 3) He kind of is, because now, after 100 years of constant war, so many people have died that advanced fleet tactics have been lost as the war chewed up all the old captains and admirals, and most warfare has devolved into “charge forward and hit them harder than they hit you.”

Something I like about this series is that it recognizes that space is stupidly huge, and when a ship that is 10 light minutes away from you does something, it takes ten minutes for you to know about it. Fleet battles held at .1 lightspeed still take hours and hours when fleets start off in distances measured in AU’s.

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
I wonder how many times people have gotten a divorce that could've been avoided with a timely granola bar.

Today's News:

The DDC was in its 21^st Edition when geocaching was first played in 2000. Geocaching is an outdoor pursuit where players use GPS technology to track down hidden “caches”. The caches are more likely to have little trinkets, or even just a logbook, but the activity speaks to one’s inner child, or perhaps even the archetypical pirate’s hunt for buried treasure. Despite these romantic aspects, geocaching was sparked by a fairly technical change to GPS technology, which made it much more accurate as of 2000.

After receiving a request for a DDC number for geocaching, I knew I’d want to start at 796.5 Outdoor life. Presumably one could create an indoor geocache, but players would quickly run into trouble accessing it, so outdoor life it is. Since most of the subdivisions of 796.5 are already in use, I thought I could add geocaching as a “roommate” to another topic. Orienteering is an older game than geocaching, but both are fundamentally about taking navigational technology and turning it towards fun, competition, or both.

Along with other changes approved at electronic EPC Meeting 142D, the scope of 796.58 has been widened to both orienteering and geocaching. Two new subdivisions have been authorized for the individual pursuits: 796.582 Orienteering and 796.587 Geocaching.

Now that geocaching has its own DDC number, who wants to create a cache with coordinates that incorporate 796.587? Or maybe print out this post and put it in a cache near a library? The possibilities are endless!

 

It's time once again for another meeting between  the former "hosts" of this blog, not to mention my favorite characters from Marvel and DC.

They have, of course, met before in other Lost Issues -  They had a boxing match in STF #2455... They faced a fiery situation in STF #554... They topped off an Anniversary Issue in STF #500... before that, They battled the Riddler/Trapster team... earlier, The Thing discovered the Bat Cave... and was handed control of The Outsiders... not to mention This Whole Blog... and finally, they first appeared together in one of my earliest covers...

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Morrigan by Naklac

As found at:

https://www.deviantart.com/naklac/art/Morrigan-814315039

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