hwango

LJIdol 3 Strikes - Week 22 - Woke Up and Chose Violence

Fri, 04 Nov 2022 22:47:52 GMT

Hello, children. Oh, I was just looking at the clouds. Yes, they are pretty, but I'm actually watching them specifically because that one over there looks suspicious, and I don't trust it. You can never be too careful when it comes to giant things floating overhead, such as zeppelins, or the moon, or especially clouds. Actually, that reminds me of a story.

There once lived a reclusive faerie called Sludgewick Myrmisnoot. One reason Sludgewick was reclusive is that he didn't particularly enjoy the company of other faeries. Sludgewick was one of those rare faeries who might be slightly mischievous now and then, but who was rarely malicious. Although, it would have been difficult to engage in much malice even if he wanted to, since he preferred to avoid others as much as he possibly could, an inclination to which I'm sure we can all relate. Well, I can, anyway.

The other reason Sludgewick was reclusive is that he spent most of his time crafting artisanal clouds, and you need a lot of open space for that sort of activity.

Now, not all clouds are raised and managed by faeries - there are plenty of wild or feral clouds out there. Wild clouds form when accumulations of like-minded water vapor coalesce together around some airborne object, usually a particularly charismatic bit of water vapor. However, it is not unheard of for clouds to form instead around things such as unwary birds, stray kites, restless ghosts, and so on. Sludgewick preferred to build his clouds around the little fluffy things that carry the seeds of milkweed, thistles, and dandelions, but he would sometimes depart from this preference when struck by other inspiration.

Sludgewick would sometimes create bespoke rainclouds for farmers who wanted to water their crops, or for malicious faeries who wanted to ruin birthday parties or murder individuals for whom water is inimical, such as salt golems, origami foxes, and certain witches. Mostly, he made clouds simply for the satisfaction of making them. I believe he found stacking water molecules on top of each other very relaxing.

One day, Sludgewick espied a pretty red leaf dancing along in the wind, and thought it would make an interesting heart for a cloud.

Alas, Sludgewick did not realize that this particular leaf was filled with rage. It had fallen from the branch of a very ill-tempered tree, and it was the very first leaf shed that autumn. The leaf, once separated from the hive-mind and granted terrible self-awareness, was outraged that it had been deemed so superfluous, and just callously thrown away. The tree had cast the leaf into a strong breeze that would carry it far, far away, almost as if the tree couldn't even bear to be near it. The leaf had spent months converting sunlight into chemical energy for that ungrateful tree, and this was the thanks that it got? The leaf hadn’t even gotten to say goodbye to its favorite squirrel.

And so even though Sludgewick was only trying to make a whimsical little cumulus cloud that would flitter about in the wind, he instead got a raging cumulonimbus that spat lightning everywhere and made a terrible racket.

A typical faerie probably would have torn the cloud to pieces and salvaged it for scrap, or sent it to exterminate an entire family reunion of water-soluble witches, but Sludgewick knew that part of being an artist is realizing that not everything you make is going to be a masterpiece. So Sludgewick released the cloud to wander off on its own and live out its existence as it wished. The cloud responded by drenching Sludgewick with a great deal of very cold rain. Sludgewick certainly couldn't spend as much time as he did making clouds if he was bothered by getting a bit wet, but such insolence could not be left unanswered, and so he placed a terrible curse upon the cloud and then summoned a sharp gust of wind to blow it away.

The cloud, disoriented by the wind, meandered aimlessly across the sky for some time. Eventually, the cloud found itself floating high above the tree that had shed the leaf that had come to be used as the cloud's heart. Lightning crackled like diabolical laughter as the cloud realized that it was poised perfectly to seek revenge.

First, the cloud threw hail and rain at the tree, attempting to knock off all of the other apparently more important and valuable leaves. The tree was quite hardy, however, and so the cloud managed to dislodge only a tiny fraction of the leaves. Driven to madness by frustration and thoughts of revenge, the cloud turned instead to a merciless barrage of lightning, which ultimately blasted the tree apart in a shower of splintered wood. Only after the cloud looked down in satisfaction upon the devastation did it remember that its favorite squirrel had still lived in that tree.

Overcome with remorse, the cloud attempted to hurl itself into the sun, which had always seemed so close by in its memories of being a leaf. Alas, it turned out that the sun was rather further away than the cloud thought, and the cloud froze into a ball of ice in the empty blackness of space.

Now trapped in the form of a tiny comet, the former cloud drifts through the solar system desperately trying to return to earth so it can melt and end its tormented existence. Every few decades, it passes quite close by, and Sludgewick waves to it.

The lesson to be learned here is that just about anything could be hiding inside a cloud, and so you should always fear and distrust them. Also, it is unwise to antagonize even relatively benign faeries, because deep in their hearts always lies the capacity for unspeakably disproportionate revenge.

Now, all of you should really be getting home. That cloud I was worried about is getting closer.

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LJIdol 3 Strikes - Week 16 - Soup's On!

Wed, 24 Aug 2022 20:01:32 GMT

Hello, children. Alas, now isn't really the best time for you to visit, as I'm afraid I'm preparing for guests this evening. Friends? What makes you think - ahem, that is to say, no, they are not friends. Unfortunately, not all guests are welcome guests, which, now that I come to think about it, is obviously a truth you have yet to grasp. Oh well, I suppose I can spare you a few minutes for a story.

There was once a feud between three faeries that was so poisonous and all-consuming that it practically monopolized the time of those ensnared in it. All other concerns were secondary, or perhaps even tertiary. Nothing was more important than the seething contempt and fiery malice that they felt for one another. Did they fight? No, though I can see why you would think so. You are no doubt thinking of the many faerie stories you have heard involving impulsive, violent persons who would not hesitate to murder anyone who wronged them in the slightest. I am ever so pleased that you have been paying attention.

Indeed, under other circumstances, any of the three faeries under discussion would probably have resorted to quick, efficient violence, or possibly elaborate and inventive violence, thereby avoiding a lengthy confrontation and letting them return to their other pursuits, such as exploring volcanoes into which they could throw people, or surveying bogs in which to drown people, or going out to socialize and meet new people to despise. Alas, the particular disagreement at the core of their relationship regarded a matter of etiquette, which lead to an extensive argument over which of them was the most courtly and refined. Before they realized what was happening, they all found themselves trapped in a position where violently eliminating one another would only serve to prove that they were not as civilized as they had claimed, and would make one of the others the winner of the argument. An intolerable outcome!

Thus, all of the interactions between any of the involved parties in the feud were conducted with absolutely impeccable courtesy, while inwardly they hated each other with such intensity that nearby crops failed and local volcanoes roared and spit and shook and wondered why no one was being thrown into them.

Eventually, this situation resulted in one of the fairies, Magnari Doomkettle, hosting a dinner party for the other two, who were called Perfidious Floop and Glaur Pavo.

Magnari planned a meal of exquisite decadence. Dinner would open with razor thin slices of gelatinized anticipation intricately folded into origami hummingbirds, each hovering over individual carnations constructed from rose petals. Following that would be fried kraken dipped in bioluminescent algae. For the salad course, Magnari and his guests would dine on spiced pumpkin grown by Selasko Timmertamblin himself, who the oldest of you children might remember cultivated pumpkins of such majestic size that they would be quite difficult for ordinary mortals to carry, if in fact ordinary mortals could get close enough to one to lift it without having their souls annihilated by their overwhelming pumpkinity, which of course they couldn't.

After salad, dinner would progress to the main course of roasted mushrooms imported from the moon itself, drizzled with honey made from verdigris harvested from copper flowers by clockwork bees. Dessert would consist of flawless strawberries chilled to the very precipice of freezing with ice from the far shores of Hell. For mignardise, six drops of poached sunlight on a caramelized wisp of cloud. Mignardise? It's dessert's pretentious cousin.

Anyway, that was the plan at least, and things started off well enough. Magnari's guests both arrived exactly on time, Perfidious Floop looking very stylish sporting a new set of antlers he had grown especially for the occasion, and Glaur Pavo looking quite dashing in a long coat dyed a new color he had invented also for this specific dinner. The three of them exchanged pleasantries and sat down for their meal. Everyone carefully unfolded their hummingbirds to read the dire prophecies written in squid ink on the insides, and Glaur and Perfidious laughed and decided to swap theirs. Perfidious complimented Magnari on the rubberiness of the fried kraken, and Glaur said that the bioluminescent algae were the brightest he'd ever tasted. They were about to move on the salad course when all of a sudden there was a knock at the door of Magnari's castle.

Everyone froze while Magnari's hobgoblin servant, Fusarium, scuttled to see who was at the door. Fusarium returned shortly, accompanied by a faerie unfamiliar to all of those present. The stranger introduced himself as Litharge Viscera, and he apologized most sincerely for the intrusion, but he had been ambushed by brigands on the road, and in the ensuing melee his carriage had been turned back into an eggplant and then trodden upon, and the two wolverines that had been pulling it had run off. He had spotted this fine castle and wondered if he might impose upon its master for the loan of some replacement beasts and perhaps a large vegetable he might transmute into a new carriage. Having now discovered that he had interrupted a formal dinner, he was exceedingly embarrassed, and expressed his most sincere regrets for the intrusion.

Well, there was nothing for it but for Magnari to insist that Litharge join them for their meal. One couldn't simply turn away a traveler in such obvious distress, and one couldn't very well have even an unexpected guest just sit there while one ate without sharing one's meal. At least, not with Perfidious and Glaur there. If Magnari had been alone he would have thrown Litharge right back out the door and turned his boots into snakes without a second thought.

The problem was that the meal had been so carefully arranged for exactly three diners. There was not enough of each dish for them to be re-apportioned for four without making each course too small to be presentable. Furthermore, many of the ingredients were rather exotic, which is a nicer way of saying that they were deadly poison, and the meal had been precisely calibrated for certain courses to be the antidotes for others. Split four ways, there would not be enough verdigris honey to counteract the fried kraken that Magnari, Perfidious, and Glaur had already eaten.

Magnari excused himself for a moment to speak with Fusarium in the kitchen, and he insisted that Litharge take his seat at the table while he was away. The table! The table was triangular, with only room to accommodate three. Magnari would need to replace the table as well as modify the meal being served upon it. This was a disaster.

After some frantic discussion with Fusarium, Magnari ordered him to add a soup course to the dinner that would fill out the meal and compensate for the adjusted portions, and into which whatever necessary supplemental antidotes could be incorporated. Fusarium argued that it was too late in the meal for a soup course, and should they not consider a cheese course instead? Magnari was so appalled at the idea of having both a cheese course and a mignardise that he felt quite faint for a moment, but then rallied, and ordered Fusarium to get to work on the soup. Fusarium countered that he could make a soup, but with the ingredients on hand and the antidote requirements it would probably look and taste revolting. Magnari threatened to add him to the pot if he didn't work gastronomical miracles, but they both knew it was an empty threat, as Fusarium would both taste abominable and serve only to make the meal even more poisonous. With a final glare, Magnari left to attend to his guests before his lack of attention became inexcusable.

Well, you can imagine what a relief it was to return to the dining room and discover that Litharge had actually been a ghoul in a clever disguise, and that he had already killed and eaten Perfidious and Glaur while Magnari had been distracted in the kitchen. This solved so many of Magnari's problems! Furthermore, the ghoul had helped himself to the entire salad course, and thus he had inadvertently consumed lethal amounts of eldritch pumpkin. The ghoul keeled over and then died an excruciating death while Magnari inspected the damage to his dining room and the stains on the carpets and walls and determined that it was all a fair price to pay to be rid of Perfidious and Glaur.

Magnari sat down in the most intact of the chairs to finish his dinner in blissful solitude, and with the proper portion sizes. Everything was delicious. It would have been a perfect day all around, and Magnari probably would have gone on to lead a full, rich, and happy life, except that he remembered too late that he had missed the salad course. With no eldritch pumpkin in his system, the poached sunlight would kill him in minutes. His only hope at that point would be an emergency serving of cheese, but that would require admitting that Fusarium was right all along, and so he died an agonizing death sprawled over the remains of the dinner table.

The lesson to be learned here is never to eat mignardise - if your dessert isn't a satisfying conclusion to your meal, then it's not doing its job properly. That, and anyone knocking on your door unexpectedly is probably a bloodthirsty ghoul.

Now, you all really do need to run along so I can get back to preparing for my guests. I haven't even folded the origami hummingbirds yet.

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LJidol 3 Strikes - Week 13 - Kintsugi

Wed, 20 Jul 2022 05:30:45 GMT

Oh, hello children. As you can see, I'm a little busy repairing this intricately crafted clockwork toucan, and can't really talk at the moment. What do you mean, "why?" Obviously I'm fixing it because it's broken, and unless I fix it I won't have a functional clockwork toucan. Buy a new one? Where would you suggest I - no, that's beside the point. Honestly, children these days. I'll bet your clockwork toucans don't even have time to break down before you've replaced them with fancy new clockwork toucans in a slightly different color that know two additional songs. You know what, now I'm far too agitated for delicate work like this, and I'd best set it aside before I ruin it completely. I guess that means you can have a story after all.

There once lived a dreadful faerie who was known by the dreadfully unwieldy name Internecine Alstroemeria. Like many faeries, Internecine Alstroemeria was easily enraged and prone to overreacting, and he would frequently challenge people to a duel to the death over such perceived insults as mispronouncing Internecine Alstroemeria, shortening Internecine Alstroemeria to something less unweildy, or using circumlocutory techniques to avoid having to say Internecine Alstroemeria at all. Internecine Alstroemeria felt that if he had to carry the burden being called Internecine Alstroemeria, then other people should at the very least have to say it, and to say it properly. That, and fighting duels gave him a way to channel the boiling rage he felt at having to bear the name Internecine Alstroemeria. He fought a lot of duels. He also won a lot of duels, which should go without saying, since people rarely develop a habit of losing duels to the death.

One fateful day, Internecine Alstroemeria was dueling another faerie who had committed the unforgivable offense of referring to him as "my esteemed and learned colleague." To be fair, the other faerie had said this with enough sarcasm to stun an elk, so this challenge was rather more justified than many that had come before it.

Anyway, the duel was a dramatic spectacle of flashing swords and fiendishly insightful improvisational allegory, with spectators intermittently applauding when one combatant or the other executed a particularly impressive maneuver in either aspect of the conflict. Finally, Internecine Alstroemeria presented some eloquent commentary regarding the dichotomy of reason and emotion and then stabbed his opponent through the heart with his sword. Though this did achieve victory for Internecine Alstroemeria, it had the unfortunate consequence of breaking the blade of his sword into several pieces. That's what you get for stabbing something as hard as a faerie's heart. Remember, children, if you ever get into a swordfight with a faerie, go for the throat. That's not the lesson of today's story, it's just good advice in general.

Well, Internecine Alstroemeria was understandably distraught about his broken sword. Without it, he couldn't very well continue to challenge other faeries to duels, which was essentially his defining characteristic. And no, it's not as if he could simply get another one. Nor, in fact, could he just get another sword, either. Faeries don't typically discard and replace things like swords just because they break - they only do that with people. People are easy enough to replace, but it takes skill and power to make something like a faerie's sword. Simply tossing one aside to replace it would lead people to doubt the value of that skill and power, and since value is entirely subjective the skill and power would in fact become less valuable, and because perception and opinion can affect faeries more effectively than something as mundane as the truth, they would consequently become less powerful, which would be completely unacceptable. Besides, while a new sword might be full of youthful enthusiasm, Internecine Alstroemeria preferred a weapon that had slain a hundred foes and already had a taste for blood and an aptitude for shedding it.

This is all a very roundabout way of explaining why Internecine Alstroemeria needed desperately to fix his sword. He had tried to gather up all of the pieces, but some had gone missing. They had probably been stolen by magpies or vaporized by the caustic obscenities the other faerie had managed to utter with his dying breaths. This was terribly inconvenient, and it was going to make repairs more complicated.

The next best thing to having all of the original pieces would have been to patch the gaps with more of the same substance that was used to create the blade in the first place, but Internecine Alstroemeria's sword had been made from a moonbeam reflected in a pool of tears, and Internecine Alstromeria didn't think he could afford to wait for the next full moon to make repairs, and the moonbeams of any moon short of full would be too weak to serve his purposes.

Eventually, Internecine Alstroemeria decided to fill the gaps with lies. They were just as solid as moonbeams, were excellent for inflicting injury, and, like any faerie, Internecine Alstroemeria had a ready supply of them.

The end result was pleasantly unsettling to look at, with the pieces seemingly held in place by nothing and swishing through the air with their neighbors in tight formation and apparently in complete defiance of gravity. This would hardly be the first time a faerie had disregarded gravity, though, and it was long past giving them the satisfaction of seeing how much its feelings were hurt. But then other faeries found the aesthetic so delightful that they started breaking things on purpose just so they could put them back together with lies, and the whole thing quickly go out of hand.

Internecine Alstroemeria was a skilled and savvy craftsman, and had been careful to use convincing lies in his work, binding the pieces of moonlight together with plausible fictions not easily disproven and unlikely to be carefully scrutinized in the first place. Other faeries did not exercise the same restraint, and used lies so outrageous and deceptions so clumsy that it wasn't long before it became commonplace for objects reconstructed with the technique to fall apart again under the weight of inspection as light as an admiring second glance. That is to say, incredible things became literally incredible.

And so it was quite a short-lived fashion, and soon everyone thought that Internecine Alstroemeria was an uncultured buffoon completely out of touch with modern trends, and he was the target of almost constant ridicule. Naturally, this prompted him to challenge even more people to duels, and eventually he had killed so many people with his sword that it developed sentience and demanded autonomy and he had to go on an epic quest to hurl it into a volcano and then make a new one after all.

The lesson to be learned here is that you should make an effort to learn how to pronounce people's names correctly, and you shouldn't give people nicknames without their permission. That, and we should be careful how much we let our weapons learn if we want them to remain ours.

Now, you should all run along home so I can I can get back to working on this clockwork toucan. If I don't finish it before tomorrow morning I'll have to wait almost a whole month to get more parts.

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LJIdol 3 Strikes - Week 9 - All Hat, No Cattle

Sat, 04 Jun 2022 06:44:32 GMT

Hello, children. Why yes, this _is_ a silly-looking hat. But the sun is very bright today, and this silly-looking hat is keeping the worst of the sun out of my eyes and helping me avoid a terrible sunburn, so I will happily accept your ridicule in exchange for its benefits. Well, not _happily_, but I'll accept it. Hmm, actually, that reminds me of a story.

Our tale begins with a mysterious old enchanter who was desperate to acquire some meat to feed to the nightmarish horror that lived in his basement. As many of you children who live in a house with a basement already know, they are often home to terrible, bloodthirsty monsters. The enchanter's monster was especially horrific - whoops, that is to say, the enchanter's horror was especially monstrous - and he feared what would happen if it grew so hungry that it went mad and broke loose and rampaged across the countryside. He grew so desperate, in fact, that ultimately he traded three magic beans to a young man for an elderly cow.

You are no doubt aware of the unfortunate consequences of this transaction. A giant? Well, yes, the greedy human used the beans to create a magical beanstalk and climb into the clouds, whereupon he then invaded a giant's home, stole his magical possessions, and then murdered him. Obviously that happened, and it was terrible. But I was referring to the devastating effects on the local economy.

The exchange of a single cow for three magic beans set a ridiculous precedent that encouraged poor families all over the region to bring their cows to town in the hope of trading them for magic beans. The surplus of poor-quality cattle meant that not only were those families unable to acquire magic beans in exchange for their cows, but that when they were forced to settle for ordinary currency instead they also ended up with less compensation than they would have before the market was disrupted such as it was. Also, all of these attempts to take advantage of the opportunity to obtain magic beans meant that there was a shortage of cows in the outlying countryside where they would have been more useful, and the entire delicate system of infrastructure on which the region had previously operated all came tumbling down.

It is into this chaotic economic apocalypse that there now arrives a young man by the name of Sven, who had been instructed by his mother, whose name was Grethe, to bring their cow into town and accept no fewer than five magic beans for it, because she was operating on information so tragically out of date that it brings a tear to my eye just thinking about it.

Well, Sven quickly learned that he wouldn't be bringing home any magic beans, might not be able to find a buyer for his cow at all, and even if he did his mother was sure to be furious at him for how little money he brought back. And so when a mysterious stranger approached him and offered him a magical potato and a grubby old miner's cap in exchange for his cow, Sven leapt at the opportunity.

Sven's mother was, in fact, still angry with him. However, she planted the potato all the same, and they both hoped desperately that they might end up with a potato plant large enough to enable some epic burglary of their own.

Well, what they actually discovered the next morning was the opening to a tunnel right where they’d planted the potato. This at least retroactively explained the old miner's cap that the mysterious stranger had included along with the potato. Grethe secured the cap to Sven’s head, armed him with nothing but a large sack, and sent him off into the depths in search of valuables. She was not going to win any prizes for responsible parenting.

It has been observed that clothes do not make the man, and it must be further stated that a hat alone certainly doesn't. Sven's hat did not make him an experienced miner, spelunker, or monster-hunting adventurer, and he was still just a somewhat befuddled young person who had never been underground before and was now wandering down a magical tunnel because his mother told him to. It was very dark and claustrophobic and soon Sven was bitterly envious of a certain someone who got to climb a beanstalk out in the sunlight and the fresh air.

Sven was supposed to be searching for riches, but all he found were some dribbly rock formations, eerily-glowing fungi, and some rather amateurish cave paintings, none of which qualified as riches as far as Sven was concerned. Sven wasn’t sure what sorts of animals usually lived in caves, but he was fairly certain he shouldn’t expect to find a goose that laid golden eggs down there.

And Sven was absolutely correct in this, and in fact the only animal he did see was some sort of albino cave platypus, which should have been just as surprising if he’d had any kind of decent education at all. It did appear to lay golden eggs, but on closer inspection they turned out to be only fool’s gold. Sven was just deciding that this magical cave was a serious disappointment if not an actual fraud, and hardly worth an elderly cow at all, when he suddenly fell victim to the the cave’s other inhabitant, which you have probably already guessed was a dragon, but was actually a bear wearing a dragon costume because it really was a rather disappointing magical cave after all.

Meanwhile, up on the surface, Grethe was busily planning how to spend all of the untold riches she was hoping Sven would bring back with him when she too was suddenly devoured, though in her case it was by the nightmarish horror that had finally escaped from the enchanter’s basement and which had come looking for the missing pieces of its stolen collection of magical produce, and also some people to eat.

The lesson to be learned here is that everyone suddenly deciding to invest in some stupid alternative currency like magic beans can ruin many lives. That, and don’t keep feeding the horrific thing in your basement, because eventually you will run out of magical produce to trade for meat, and then it will break loose and consume your entire community.

Now, away with all of you. I’m not wearing this hat just for show, and I need to get back to planting if I expect to harvest any platypuses this year. I mean potatoes. Yes. Potatoes.

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LJIdol 3 Strikes - Week 8 - "You are an opossum living in the trashcan of my heart"

Sat, 21 May 2022 00:04:34 GMT

Oh, hello children. No, I'm not working today - I'm taking the day off, and I'm just going to sit here and read because I'm old and tired and falling apart. A story? Did you not hear what I just said? You know what, never mind. I’ve just thought of the perfect story for you today.

There once lived a loathsome hobgoblin called Fuligo. Fuligo was not a particularly happy hobgoblin. Indeed, Fuligo felt that life mostly consisted of suffering, disappointment, and despair. Accordingly, he took perverse delight in bringing things to life so that they might share in this suffering, disappointment, and despair.

Hobgoblins with less ambition or artistic flair might have brought simple objects like doormats or salad tongs to life so that they would be doomed to live out nightmarish existences of being trodden on by muddy feet or being forever thrust into bowls full of lettuce drenched in thousand island dressing, but Fuligo constructed golems. No, golems aren't just magic robots. That would be like saying that humans are just magic corpses. Although, okay, I guess that's a better metaphor than I had originally thought.

But just to be pedantic about it, a robot is a machine designed to perform work, but a golem is a person or creature crafted from inanimate materials and then brought to life. Most traditional golems are made of clay or stone, but they can be made of less likely materials such as glass, or salt, or paper, or the stitched together discarded pieces of people, although at that point things start to become very ethically questionable, and you also get into philosophical arguments about whether you're really building a golem or just quilting a zombie. But I digress.

Fuligo made golems out of garbage.

Right now you might be picturing Fuligo (a mistake on your part I assure you, as he was exceedingly grotesque) just taking any old random pile of garbage, waving a magic wand over it, and then "zing!," it was a golem. Well, you would be wrong. Fuligo was an artist, carefully choosing his materials and precisely shaping them to his designs. In fact, like many artists, Fuligo would sometimes work tirelessly on a project for weeks only to grow dissatisfied with what he had wrought and then throw it all away, or spend days at a time procrastinating and accomplishing nothing, or lose entire afternoons to reading books about color theory.

Also, no magic wands were involved. Furthermore, at no point in the process of awakening a golem does anything go "zing!"

So, Fuligo could sometimes spend weeks upon weeks crafting a single golem, but even at that slow a pace you might think that the countryside would soon be crawling with his creations. However, partly due to the materials he used and partly because Fuligo felt that art should be be fleeting and ephemeral if it was to be truly appreciated, Fuligo's golems seldom lasted more than a few weeks before they fell apart and died. Now, if it seems horrifying to live a life of uncertain duration and then gradually wear out until you eventually die, then all I can say to you as an old person is that I am way ahead of you.

But wait, I can practically hear you thinking, why did he go through all of this trouble and effort just to make something that would only suffer and be miserable and then fall apart and die? But the truth is that many things in this world pretty much only exist to make more versions of things like themselves. In fact, this is true of most animals, plants, educational institutions, and organized religions.

The process was not always so time-consuming, though. One particular afternoon, Fuligo was seized by so much inspiration and enthusiasm that he crafted a golem in just a few hours. The materials he used were not even the higher-tier trash that might have been interesting to scavengers, but the true garbage that no one could possibly want.

Golems can have varying levels of sophistication and autonomy, and if you plan to have a golem perform labor for you like some sort of mere magical robot, then you probably build it with specific capabilities and not a lot of autonomy. Fuligo had no particular purpose in mind for this golem, except as an instantiation of the concepts of ephemera, waste, and the nihilistic dread that can only come from meeting your creator and knowing for a fact that they care nothing for you and that your existence has no meaning. Accordingly, he created it with no particlar skills, a high level of awareness, and loads of autonomy.

“Awaken, my creation!” Fuligo cackled as he held aloft his magical orb, and with a dramatic “twang!” the golem awakened to life. See, you were nearly right after all.

The golem opened its eyes, gazed upon its creator, and experienced several emotions. It did not look happy.

Fuligo was delighted, insofar as he was capable of feeling so admist all of his suffering, disappointment, and despair. Then his stomach growled insistently, and he instructed the golem to wait there while he fetched himself some lunch. Fuligo scuttled off to his kitchen and assembled something vaguely edible in a large bowl, armed himself with his finest spoon, and then sat down with the spoon in one hand and a book about color theory in the other. Fortunately, he did not mix up which of these to put in his mouth...mostly.

While Fuligo ate and read a particularly venomous essay about whether incarnadine could beat vermillion in a fight, and occasionally paused to extract pages from between his teeth, the golem decided that it would rather not wait for Fuligo to return after all, and it exercised its abundance of autonomy by getting up and wandering out of Fuligo's workshop. By the time Fuligo had finished learning about the latest research into whether metapurple was real or not, the golem was long gone.

Oh, the magical adventures the golem had! In no time at all, it had experienced the full panoply of emotion! Despair! Apathy! Other kinds of despair! And also...true love?

Could it be? Was this truly what it was to love? But, oh no - its love was fading! How could this be? Was love a lie? Are we all truly alone? Probably, but in this particular case it was simply that an opossum had crawled up the golem's leg and eaten the overripe banana that formed part of the garbage golem's rotting heart. It's easy to confuse an overripe banana for love - they both start off sweet but eventually turn into blackened filth, and both can make you fall head over heels.

Losing your first great love can be very upsetting, particularly when you lose it because of an opossum, and the golem felt all of its despair turn into rage as the opossum also helped itself to some shriveled pieces of onion. The golem knew very well who was responsible for its tormented existence, and it ran all the way back to Fuligo's workshop, smashed through the door, and...

Well, suffice to say that afterwards Fuligo was a good candidate for being included in a zombie quilt.

The lesson to be learned here is that emotions are the result of complex chemical processes, even if sometimes those processes are happening in a decomposing banana. That, and inevitably death comes for us all, possibly hastened by the appearance of an opossum.

Now, go away all of you so I can get back to my book. Apprarently, there's exciting new evidence that heliotrope evolved from ultraviolet.

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LJIdol 3 Strikes - Week 6 - Pursuit

Tue, 26 Apr 2022 08:28:17 GMT

Oh, hello children. I have an awful lot to do today, so I'm not sure I have time to tell you a story right now. So much to do. Busy, busy, busy. Although, that actually reminds me of a story.

There once lived a particularly malicious faerie called Caramel Antithesis Mangletusk. Faeries are wicked and cruel almost without exception, but Caramel's zeal for dispensing wickedness and cruelty made other faeries feel tired just watching him. Caramel, on the other hand, put off feeling tired until he was done with his day of evil and depravity. One Tuesday night after a particularly exhausting day of poisoning wells, replacing children with enchanted puppets, and overturning tortoises, Caramel yawned theatrically, climbed into his bed, and dreamed.

Or at least that had been the plan. But once asleep, Caramel found that his dreams were missing. He spent several hours searching for them, but they didn't appear to be anywhere in his sleeping mind. All he found was one shabby little nightmare, and it squeaked and ran away when it saw him coming because it could tell when it was clearly outmatched.

Some time later, Caramel awoke to a beautiful sunrise and the musical chirping of birds. Outraged by this shocking disregard for his personal distress, he immediately stole the birds' voices and shoved some dark clouds in the sun's face. That done, he took stock of the situation. Had someone stolen his dreams? No, there was no one who would dare. But what else could have happened to them? Caramel checked around his bed for clues, and quickly discovered some tracks leading away from his bed and out the window. Caramel's dreams had run away.

This was unacceptable. Caramel couldn't have his dreams out wandering about where anyone might see them. Some of them were incriminating, or embarrassing, or would give his enemies forewarning of the terrible things that he planned to do to them. And so, deciding to follow in the footsteps of many idealistic youths, spiritually enlightened visionaries, and megalomaniacal supervillains, Caramel set out to follow his dreams. He didn't literally follow in the footsteps of those people, though, since he had these other footsteps to follow.

Like many people attempting to follow their dreams, Caramel encountered setbacks - in fact, an entire pack of setbacks. The alpha setback of the pack was a particularly intimidating specimen with massive brass antlers and several pairs of luminous crimson eyes. It drooled molten glass as it snarled a command for its packmates to attack. Caramel wasn't about to let a few setbacks stop him from chasing his dreams, though. He had tenacity! Resolve! And, most importantly, he had Hubris, which was the name he had given to the knife he had forged from the heart of a dead star.

The fight that ensued was extremely violent and not at all appropriate for children your age to hear about in detail, so I'll just tell you that Caramel eventually prevailed. After Caramel finished wiping off a great deal of blood, viscera, and rapidly cooling molten glass, he resumed his chase. Cutting his way out of a setback's stomach had cost him valuable time though, and he needed to hurry.

The trail he followed led him into Adversity, which is an ugly, disreputable little town with poorly maintained streets, a public garden filled with nothing but poison ivy, and only one decent tea house. I don't recommend visiting. Anyway, Caramel knew the then current mayor of Adversity quite well, and through the simple expediency of a large bribe was able to continue on with little delay. He did not even stop for tea, since he did not know which tea house was the good one.

And so Caramel's pursuit of his dreams continued, including an arduous, steep uphill walk through Hardship, and a most unfortunate and time-consuming detour through the maze-like streets of Distraction. He did at least manage to take a shortcut past Doubt due to his enormous ego. And of course, like anyone following their dreams, he had to fight a hydra.

At last, though, he caught up to his dreams just outside of Success, and was very grateful that they didn't make it into the city proper, since the place was filled with insufferably smug jerks. Also, he was getting tired of walking.

Alas, Caramel was uncertain what to do next. Many people will encourage you to follow your dreams, but significantly fewer of them will have any good advice about what to do when you catch them. Caramel's dreams looked a bit bedraggled from their lengthy adventure outside of his head, but he was still fairly certain he wanted them back. After all, not dreaming enough can lead to madness, hallucinations, or becoming a menial drone toiling away in aid of some else's success.

And so Caramel reclaimed his dreams through an arcane and complicated process that certainly didn't involve simply jamming them back into his head through one of his ears. That would be ridiculous.

The lesson to be learned here is that if you allow yourself to be distracted you can waste a lot of valuable time telling a story to children who will misinterpret your entirely factual historical anecdote as an extended metaphor and subsequently make poor life choices, end up fighting a hydra, and eventually turn into a bunch of artists, astronauts, and marine biologists instead of valuable menial drones. Also, there's an excellent chance that at least one of you is actually an enchanted puppet.

Now, all of you should get home. I have a lot of menial tasks left to do today.

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