Sabs, like "Sobs"

Re: Fourth Wing

2026-05-11T00:00:00-07:00

A few of my friends independently suggested fantasy-with-fucking novel Fourth Wing. I've read fantasy manga for girls, but never a western romantasy story. I'm not the target audience for fantasy-with-fucking; my favorite author solves mysteries with train timetables. My kind of romance peaks with a smile, and words like "length" and "entrance" are reserved for rulers and labyrinths respectively. But I like to guess why my friends turn their pages, and here I am 1124 pages later (I use a big font).

Fourth Wing is about Violet Sorrengail, who's been forced out of the dweeb librarian college track into dragon-rider military school by the toughest, cruelest person ever: her mom. Violet's peers expect the world and more from her ultra-famous name. General "Mom" Sorrengail kicked ass for a living, then birthed Jesus, Wonder Woman and finally weak little nerd Violet before getting back to work on ass. Unfortunately for Violet, many of her classmates are the conscripted children of rebels demolished by the Sorrengails. Those peers expect her to die, ideally screaming.

Violet is a saucy little gremlin. Her small frame makes her a sorry fighter, a ridiculous dragon-rider, and an easy target. Faced with these problems, she flips them off, then either cheats or baits failure until someone helps her. It's her strategy for the whole book: deny reality until god solves her problem by invalidating the challenge, sending down a champion in the form of her sister, a hunk, a dragon, three idiots who can't beat a little girl three-on-one, or the nut who composed the school rules centuries ago.

The champions that solve Violet's problems are all enslaved to her somehow. Her sister Mira is family. Misguided hunk Dain is a childhood friend. Shifty hunk Xaden dies if she dies, same for her dragons. Violet's bestie Rhiannon owes Violet her life, and Liam the bodyguard is following Xaden's orders, to whom Liam owes his life. Nothing would change if she were cruel, sweet, tough, weak, or barking mad. Her defenders are all tied irrevocably to this creature called Violet Sorrengail.

What does it mean to be Violet Sorrengail? Tiny, smart, tenacious? Horny for golden flecks in onyx eyes? The book and most characters call her smart, starting with her sister Mira:

Mira yanks on my braid, pulling my head back, and our eyes lock. "You're the smartest woman I know. Don't forget that. Your brain is your best weapon. Outsmart them, Violet. Do you hear me?"

Violet's dad praised her mind back when he was alive:

Your mind already knows the answer, so just calm down and let it remember. That's what Dad always told me.

Xaden, Violet's mysterious love interest, even calls her intelligence sexy—the only time in the whole book any character says to anyone I am attracted to you for a non-chemistry reason:

"And you are strong and fierce and have a ruthless streak, too. Not to mention you're the smartest person I've ever met. That mind of yours is sexy as hell."

Wise Professor Kaori calls her more brilliant and more compassionate than either of her godly siblings:

"Violet," Professor Kaori calls out, and I pivot to look back. "I taught both your siblings. Brennan was a spectacular rider and a good man. Mira is shrewd and gifted in the seat when it comes to riding." I nod.

"But you're smarter than both of them." I blink. It's not often I get compared to my brother and sister and somehow come out on top.

"From what I've seen of you helping your friend study in commons every night, it seems you might be more compassionate, too. Don't forget that."

And her bonded dragon Tairn calls her not just smart but cunning, courageous, righteous:

You are the smartest of your year. The most cunning. I gulp at the compliment, brushing it off. I was trained as a scribe, not a rider. You defended the smallest with ferocity. And strength of courage is more important than physical strength.

Violet's pet bouncer Liam calls her a dextrous fighter:

"I've seen you practicing this week with those blades of yours, Sorrengail. Riorson was right. You would have been wasted as a scribe."

As does Xaden:

"I have zero concern about that. As violent as you are, and skilled with those daggers, I'm not even sure you could kill a fly. Don't think I didn't notice that you managed to wound three of them and never went for a kill shot." He shoots a disapproving look my way.

Violet's friend Rhiannon calls her the strongest of her generation:

"You're all worried about the integrity of the wing because Riorson might have to visit to keep his dragon happy but, Violet, he's not the most powerful rider of our generation. You are." She holds my gaze just long enough to let me know she means it. My heart lurches into my throat.

Never mind whether all these assessments are accurate. What's important is that they are all labels. You are smart. You are cunning. You are compassionate. You are better than your siblings. They're all evaluations of the spirit, just like MBTIs, star signs, blood type horoscopes, nobility, or GRYFFINDOR! Everyone who takes a measurement agrees there's something there worth measuring. Check your soul for a manufacturer's tag—hopefully it says libra, blue eyes, chosen one, and whatever it's attached to must be you. Being Violet Sorrengail means getting a lot of labels.

Fourth Wing has its own label for the soul. Dragon riders get a magic "signet" power (and matching tattoo) whose nature reveals their own nature, "reflecting who you are at the core of your being." Brooding, secretive pest Xaden controls shadows, and Violet unlocks lightning explosion powers just in time for an electrifying climax in chapter thirty, which is the chapter with the fucking. Signet powers can be almost anything, but no one knows what kind of magic they'll get until they get it. Some unfortunates turn out to be mind-readers, or "inntinnsics." Mind-readers are banned from school and from being alive.

Jeremiah's signet power is manifesting. He can read minds—an inntinnsic. His power is a death sentence.

He turns again, focused on Dain. "Is Violet going to hate me forever? Why can't she see that I just want to keep her alive? How is he…? He's reading my thoughts!" The impression is uncanny, embarrassing, and terrifying.

"He's an inntinnsic!" someone shouts, and that seems to be all that's necessary.

The professor grips Jeremiah's head with both hands, and a crack echoes off the walls of the silent courtyard. Jeremiah falls to the ground, his head at an unnatural, macabre angle. His neck is broken.

Innocent Jeremiah! Born Chapter 18, died Chapter 18 of sudden cancellation. His label read SINNER. It may have been hidden under some of that silly silver scratch-off coating, but it was always there. Would have come out eventually. Sorry, Neil Gaiman.

Mind reader! Fantasy of fantasies. Why spit on them in Fourth Wing? Professor Carr, the executioner, says their unhindered access to classified material makes them "a security risk to the entire kingdom." Ok, so keep them inside. Are you stupid? It's like declining the next evolution of sliced bread! This is version two of anti-terrorism! The sequel to interrogation!

Never mind. Dain, the bulky childhood friend, can read memories. When Dain touches somebody, he sees images of what really happened, while mind-readers merely parrot inner voices. The characters agree that Dain's memory powers are OK, but that thought powers are worse than murder (see: Jack Barlowe, mega murderer). Forget about the value contrast, that's the same trick as arguments that go like You had a thought I don't like? Fuck you! or I remember it this way, so that's the truth! What matters is that Fourth Wing presents thoughts and memory as equivalent to hard evidence. Isn't that fantastic? Humans defer to the soul; only beasts like dragons and hunks do not. Not until they're subjugated, at least.

In Fourth Wing, dragons are intelligent, violent, awesome creatures, lounging around the school, acting kind of like hall monitors who might incinerate you for flinching at the bell. They can speak but don't bother. Dragons melt dozens of students as punishment for running in fear (from dragons) or for flipping sass (at dragons). Dragons do not care about your thoughts or memories—they only look at what you say and what you do. Pause for the soul, and you're no longer a dragon. No one pauses for Violet Sorrengail. To them, she's the dragon.

Violet's soul came with a tag screaming VIOLET SORRENGAIL, GODDESS in fabulous capital letters. Her signet magic is classically-the-weapon-of-gods lightning explosion powers. Mom saw the label and Violet feels it itching; no wonder she's irritable when Dain and others mistake the consequences of destiny for fortune. Only Xaden penetrates the label and speaks directly to the lonely creature scratching at that damn tag. Praise for Violet Sorrengail just makes the frightened girl inside uncomfortable! Only once is she pleased by a complement. Xaden teaches her a technique that minimizes mental damage from their dragons fucking, and she masters it instantly:

Xaden studies me with an intensity that makes me sway toward him. "You are astonishing." He shakes his head. "I couldn't do that for weeks." The emotion swelling through me is more than joy. It's euphoria that has me grinning like a fool. I'm finally not only good at something, but astonishing.

Violet never expresses euphoria at anything else, nor does the word "euphoria" appear anywhere else in the book. Finally, a win that wasn't invalidated by her name, her family, or her friends. The little girl locked away inside the library has finally been praised for something that was all her. It's the invisible, internal me that's astonishing.

To me, her big win looks like she just closed her eyes and calmed down.

You gotta start somewhere.

BYLAWS AND REGULATIONS OF THE BI-FORTNIGHTLY JAPAN-SOURCED TRADITIONALLY / DIGITALLY ANIMATED TELEVISION PRODUCTION GATHERING

2023-10-14T00:00:00-07:00

ARTICLE I - DEFINITION OF THE BI-FORTNIGHTLY MEETING

Section 1. Meeting: The BI-FORTNIGHTLY JAPAN-SOURCED TRADITIONALLY / DIGITALLY ANIMATED TELEVISION PRODUCTION GATHERING (henceforth "The Meeting") shall be defined as a gathering in which attendees of The Meeting engage in synchronized viewership of a Japanese-produced traditional or digital television animation (henceforth "Anime"), for the purpose of recreation.

Section 2. Venue: The Meeting shall take place in the "The Meeting" Discord server.

Section 3. Attendance: The Meeting shall be defined by digital presence in "The Meeting" Discord server of some persons (henceforth "attendees") RESTRICTED TO the two parties who have mutually agreed to this definition of bylaws, UNLESS such events occur such that all attendees mutually consent to the attendance of, temporarily or permanently, an additional person or persons.

Section 4. Schedule: The Meeting shall take place NO MORE THAN one time per two (2) weeks of the standard calendar year, at a time mutually agreed upon by the attendees.

ARTICLE II - DECLARATION OF ROMANTIC TERMINOLOGIES

Section 1. Article II shall enumerate terms and definitions whose understanding is necessary for the further understanding and comprehension of the bylaws enacted by this document.

Section 2. The definiton of a "character" shall be set by mutual agreement of attendees and is not under any further restriction.

Section 3. An "event or scene of romantic potential" (henceforth "event") shall be defined as a cinematic depiction of any occurrence, involving any number of characters, in which the romantic attractions of any of the presented characters is understood by all attendees to, due to the occurrences depicted or occurrences previously depicted, shift in favor of, or away from, another character.

Section 4. Any erotic scene involving more than one character is classified as an event IN SPITE OF any absence of apparent shift in romantic attractions at the time of the scene itself.

Section 5. A "romantic interest" (henceforth "interest") of some character shall be defined to be any other character who, by mutual agreement of attendees, is a reoccuring recipient of events between themselves and said character, which are not dismissed by said character out-of-hand as either a joke or a total non-interest.

Section 6. A "romantic advance" (henceforth "advance" or "move") shall be defined as the deliberate attempt of one character to invoke an event between themselves and another character.

Section 7. A "romantic suitor" (henceforth "suitor") of some character shall be defined to be any character who repeatedly advances upon said character.

Section 8. A "romantic entanglement" (henceforth "entanglement") shall be defined as existing between two characters (henceforth "entangled parties" or "parties") whose interactions are understood to be, by mutual agreement of attendees, frequently perpetuated by events or advances. At least one party of an entanglement is, by definition, an interest of the other party; however; an entanglement does not necessarily require one party to be a suitor of the other.

Section 9. A "romantic agreement" (henceforth "doki-doki lovey-dovey chu-chu heart-throbbing fluffy romance") shall be defined as mutual entanglement in which both parties agree that they are interests of each other. Either party may or may not also be a suitor of the other.

ARTICLE III - RESTRICTIONS ON CONTENT SELECTION

Section 1. Any anime which is known to be, or discovered to be, in violation of any of the rules enumerated in the sections Article III shall be, upon mutual acknowledgement of said violation by all attendees, barred from depiction at The Meeting, and immediately removed from The Meeting, in the case that the anime's state of violation is first discovered during The Meeting.

Section 2. The term "plot-relevant" shall henceforth be defined as "having been mutually agreed upon, by all attendees, to be integral to the progression of the story of the anime."

Section 3. Disallowal of familial romantic relationships: No character, whose romantic status is plot-relevant, may be entangled with another character to whom they are related by blood. This includes BUT IS NOT LIMITED TO: siblings; parents; siblings of parents; children of siblings of parents; and parents of parents.

Section 4. Disallowal of pseudo-familial romantic relationships: The rules outlined in Article III, Section 3 ALSO apply to any characters not related by blood but whose effective familial roles are FUNCTIONALLY EQUIVALENT to that of one of the depicted blood relatives. This rule is most relevant to BUT IS NOT LIMITED TO: step-relatives; adoptive or adopted relatives (officially or effectively); in-laws; and god-relatives.

Section 5. Disallowal of harems: A "harem" shall be defined as a collection of three or more entanglements, wherein there exists a "central" character, such that said character is a party of every indicated entanglement. No character, whose romantic status is plot-relevant, may be the "central" character of a harem.

Section 6. Relevant age determination: The "relevant age" of a character shall be defined by what is understood to be, by mutual agreement of all attendees, the value among the following options which is most relevant to the enforcement of the guidelines described in Article III, Section 8. (a) the character's "stated" age, as spoken by said character or depicted within the anime in an assertive capacity; (b) the character's "official" age, as described by reference data published in an official capacity by the creator or creators of the anime or the media upon which it is based; (c) the character's "apparent" age, which may be presented by the media itself in a stated or official capacity, or; if not presented, may be heuristically determined PER ENTANGLEMENT by the algorithm described in Article III, Section 7.

Section 7. Apparent age determination algorithm: For any given pair of entangled parties, if either party's stated or official age is determined to be over one hundred (100) years of age, the apparent age of that party shall be considered to be thirty (30) years old, UNLESS said party is shorter in height than the other entangled party, in which case the apparent age shall be considered to be sixteen (16) years old. Furthermore, if either party retains memories of a past life, the apparent age of that party shall be considered equal to: seven plus the average of said character's stated living age and the oldest known living age of any of their previous incarnations.

Section 8. Disallowal of notable relevant age differences between entanglement parties: For EVERY romantic entanglement in which any party's romantic status is plot-relevant, the following statement MUST hold true: take the older party's relevant age, divide it by two, and add seven; the resulting value shall be greater than or equal to the younger party's relevant age.

Marshmallow Sniglets

2023-10-10T00:00:00-07:00

A sign of any shape who stands tall against lawn defecators is called a yard guard or a soil sentry.

That unnatural feeling you get when seeing anachronistic holiday decor is an indicator of a Festivity Out-of-Bounds Error (FOOBE).

A request is revealed as a riguest when it is aborted rather than affording minor flexion.

A totally nonsensical situation that causes a surprisingly plain inconvenience is called a Samurai on a Snowmobile problem.

Evaluating a pleasing pair of curves before observing their critical frontal features is an instance of a Body-Rounding Error.

When you are supremely covetous of what another man has, the sum of your envious emotions is equal to his crocanis.

To take on responsibility without performing simple research in support of your dependents is to commit gross negoogligence.

Torg is like torque, but for stickiness.

When the subconscious demands love but the conscious interprets a task, the resulting fallout is evidence of an Off-by-Want Error.

Someone who is the utter opposite of a one-trick pony is known as a horse of many neighs.

A corl is a small group of men conversing honestly, having shed their facades.

Small nuggets of compressed metal foil, plastic-wrap, food bits, and (in some cases) mysterious droplets of liquid found after events in pavilions and parks are called picnic droppings.

A recurring meeting that accomplishes nothing, but does not get canceled, is called a piff. The person who owns the meeting is its piffle.

When the curb forms a pleasing and bike-accessible slope it's called a sluop.

Bill Bang's dictionary of common crosswalk infractions:

Premature Ambulation: starting to cross the street after the light changes, but before the signal turns
Street Edging: before coming across, standing at the very last place you could be before you'd be in the street
Non-Consensual Crossing: taking a crosswalk which, based on the lights, would have been signaled if you'd pressed the button
Walking Without Protection: crossing a warning-light crosswalk without pressing the warning-light button
Retrograde Crossing: rushing into the crosswalk at the last moment, then aborting and pulling back out
Cross Blocking: when your meandering gait prevents someone behind you from making it to their crosswalk

The God of Tug

2023-02-19T00:00:00-08:00

I was playing car racer with my little nephew in his toy-filled bedroom when I stepped backwards onto a toy semi-truck. My flying foot caught my nephew in the chin and my falling head caught the top of a corner bed-post. There's supposed to be a detachable stupid wooden knob on there, but the stupid wooden knob was on the floor, where it was pretending to be the mayor's office. Instead of the stupid wooden knob, there was an inch-wide stupid wooden peg that the knob slots onto. I collided with that. My neck collided with that. I died.

I stepped on a semi-truck and died, and kicked my nephew in the face on my way out. He'll be whimpering and bitching when his parents find us, and they'll probably attend to him before bothering to notice the angle my neck is making.

Now I'm stuck in this many-planed room listening to the God of Tug huff up about my reincarnation into a hero. There's a world called Tug that pulls disgruntled spirits from my world into a pseudo-afterlife to quell their hearts after an unsatisfying death, he says. A tarnished, grubby soul clogs up the machinery of incarnation already, and dying impure—angry, unsatisfied, entrenched in realism—gums things up even worse. They prefer not to power-wash souls because a little bit of life energy gets blasted off and they have to come back as bugs and stuff, or as bland, vapid folks. So they send a bunch of us through a gentle wash cycle with a soap tablet called "isekai."

I'm the only real thing in the room. The faceted walls flicker with shadows and shimmering lights, cast by the backlight of this angelic silhouette. Blobs of light had coalesced and formed into hands, robes, wings, a featureless head: a flat caricature in the shape of God. Then it started preaching this basic Other World stuff. When it speaks, the head opens up in a pizza-like "<" shape, which at least is pretty funny.

Everything about my conversation with God is pretty standard. I'm not responding much but it's clear I'm going to be the most important person in the world, like usual, since I'm the one here talking to God about getting reincarnated. Once he talks about classes and jobs I'll probably weasel my way into whatever the strongest one is. But now he's something actually different than usual:

"There are no classes, jobs, or skills in this world called Tug. You will succeed in everything you set out to do, always."

Which is how it usually goes, but it's normally not so explicit. And it went on:

"You are the most important person in Tug. You are the only person in Tug. No one else here has a soul, but they are still alive. There are simple people, bad people, interesting people, loving people. The land of Tug is a teeming one, filled with adventure, romance and whimsy. None of it is real, and you will always succeed in whatever you do."

"Indeed, in this world, you are alone, and uniquely destined to always be successful. You may seek to become renowned as a hero, to conquer every woman, or to find a relaxed and loving life among friends. You will succeed, you will be in the right, and you will be alone."

"You are righteous, and you are alone. This is exactly what you believed in your previous life. In Tug, it is God's truth."

"You expect an implicit task: to be pulled by the thread of destiny. You know you will find in any situation the "right way forward," the "optimization strategy." You see a system which, paradoxically, invites you to conquer it even as it presents itself as convoluted, impossible, resistant. By being convoluted, impossible, resistant, the world tells you: I have designed myself to defeat you. Every conspiratorial challenge you discover and defeat is a reinforcement of your narcissism, your need to be needed. You expect me to give you no tasks, but to deliver you into a world which needs you; which constantly asks for your input; which only bends to your answers to its challenges. You expect personalized service. You hunger for destiny, made all the more real by the absence of its explicit call."

"For you, success is equivalent to destiny. Both are your calling. Both are your yoke. To you, to be successful is exactly: to not be a failure—although if asked, you will cite a different definition."

"And so I tell you: you will always succeed, but your achievements will mean nothing to you. You harbor an impossible faith that your successes accrue as worth, and may only be tabulated by unseen accountants of perfect truth. You cannot judge yourself. You check your scores against some perfect being. The obvious flaws in others, and their lack of love for you, decries this as your ultimate assignment. In your previous life, you relied upon the world to grade your achievements against the unassailable curriculum of Absolute Righteousness. Success earned the rewards granted by those invisible agents who had hand-crafted your existence. Surrounded by people so empty-hearted, how could it not be so?"

The avatar stopped speaking. The resonance of its voice cut out at the same instant the top half of its face curled back down into a face-wide seam. That seam quickly faded to nothing.

God, give me a break, I thought. I'm so tired of this.

Suddenly, the mouth blasted open again, shouting. "I AM GIVING YOU A BREAK. I, GOD, AM BREAKING YOU." God's voice and the explosion of light from behind the comical head both hammered into me. I felt unexpectedly… present? Aware? For a moment.

"In Tug, success is defined entirely by you. You can change the minds of the people if you set out to do it. You can set out to understand how others feel about you. You will always succeed in whatever you try, and you will not be satisfied. You will succeed, you will bask in success, and yet you will still ask: what have I done? You will turn to the people and through them turn to those immortal mirages that you saw instead of your parents. You will look up to the examiner of fate, whose motives and humanity you would not dare to comprehend lest you discover their heart is not tuned always to you. You will ask, beg, plead: Is this the success you meant me to achieve? Have I been a good boy?"

"Your entire life is a stunning pearl whose nucleus is a single grain of praise. You covet yourself; you share only glimpses of your beauty; you beg to be pried open and beloved, handled, strung by a collector's knowing hands alongside others of the same wondrous caliber. Constant appraisals throughout your childhood built you into this. You were a treasure in the caring hands of those gods called adults, who cherished and protected you and would—must—do so for ever."

"Today, you cannot exist without this longing for approval. You need to believe that you are hurt, unloved, misunderstood, dismissed, seen but not seen, all because you have somehow offended some judge. That you have failed to deliver a perfect report card. Were it not so, the model of the world which props up your philosophy would collapse. You have no ways of measuring yourself except against the downcast eyes of an illusory and incomprehensible God-parent. You are incapable of reckoning with an existence where no one will gaze knowingly upon you."

"But there is no one to keep cherishing you. Without parentage, you are no longer whole. The absence of a nurturer, whose touch and smile you strain to imagine in everyone you meet, has carved a great chasm in your philosophy. Your childhood gods, those adults, chiseled that great rift as you learned to seek the praise that came from answering their designs with efforts thus labeled "above-average". Now, in the depths of your heart lies this life-sized fissure, further eroded by eons of habit. It has damned your capacity to imagine the world as anything other than one great examination: every interaction, every movement, every moment of existence a graded simulation that drills deeper into blackness."

"Is it any wonder you shudder with a thrill of indulgent subterfuge when tasting forbidden words or carnal pleasures? The intrinsic sin of their utterance must guarantee the presence of an almighty punisher. Is it any wonder you punish yourself for any result in any interaction or decision other than one which could be construed as praiseworthy by some imagined criteria? Your lust for reproach and approval is nothing but indulgence in a comforting faith. They must know, They must be punishing you, They must be adjusting your grades and rewards and punishments in some way. The scale and subtlety of your tests have matured beside you, and your childhood trials have grown from an hour of algebra into a lifetime of allegory. Now, there is but one examination paper facing you at all times. You suspend it before you, the only window through which you see anything in the world other than yourself. And your arms are getting tired."

"You feel ashamed of having fun, being lost in the moment, giving in for a microsecond to the flow of life, because then you are no longer focused on your assessment. Once, the cost of distraction was minutes off the clock. Realization triggered panic, and you scribbled shallow answers crafted to imply confidence. Conquering a test in this way earned an A and a lingering discomfort at the undeserved praise. An accurate answer composed under uncertainty is not only less valuable than a sure one, as you will be punished later when the evaluation compounds, but dangerous proof that your proctors are not omniscient—or worse, no longer concerned with your upbringing. How could you enjoy yourself, instead of studying? Now, the cost of distraction is much the same, but when the exam that is your whole life is graded continuously, every poor score continues to compound forever. There is no termination to the measure of your failure, and no sure proof of the world's love for you."

"A pearl has nothing but its grade. How apropos that you, too, are indistinguishable from polished paste at a distance."

I lunged at this, feeling allegorically mistreated. "That's not right. Pearls are pretty, and fake ones can look good too, but real ones are better. They're more alive. Their legitimacy is measurable. You can feel the weight of their past. It's an inexplicable quality. Romantic."

The God of Tug spoke softly. "Yes. How would you find the only real pearl out of one hundred?"

"I don't know. Pick the one that felt the most real, I guess."

"And if you were wrong?"

I didn't really care. "I'd be wrong."

"Indeed. You would be more than wrong. You would be wrongness itself. You would say not "my choice was wrong" but "I am wrong": you would hate your choice, hate your self for failing, hate the test in its unfairness. Were your choice correct, you would feel shameful relief. You had been lucky. You lacked the requisite knowledge to pass the test without doubt. But you were wrong, and so you would slip into the comfort of knowing yourself to be a failure. An old comfort, just as old as you. You are used to failure. You have failed, but within your system of assessment, you are not threatened. You have learned to dismiss every taste of abject despair as the harsh consequence of failing a test for which you were not prepared. "I did not know this would be on the quiz!" you lament. Such an unfortunate model of life offers you some degree of safety, but leaves you to frantically generate heuristics, always grasping for the correct answer at every possible moment of awareness. It is no wonder you seek always to be arguably unaware of the present."

The God of Tug continued. "Now, I challenge you: How would you find, out of one hundred pearls—each one possibly fake—your favorite?"

I still didn't really care. "I'd just test a bunch and pick one that had some quality I liked."

"No. You would be frozen with fear, because you don't know how to pick something you like. You would not test the pearls—because you have not been told what kind of favoritism is correct. Instead, you would simulate a test of yourself. Which heuristic of attraction is most praiseworthy? What if you love a pearl that turns out to be an imitation? What will this say about you? How are you being tested? Is it okay to choose a gut feeling? You weigh every emotion, thought, and act under one desperate rubric: what will They think? You would never know pearls, if any, are fake. You would envelop yourself in this illusory test. It must be a test. You must identify the one real pearl, or snatch the one fake pearl, or do something clever or—somehow, pass."

"In desperation, you imagine not questions and answers but a whole multiverse of worlds by whose laws the test may have been constructed. You have spent your whole life striving to discover the rules for the world which tries you. And you curse Them, the test-givers, for equipping you to solve all tests, but not to identify which test you have been served. These excuses are your self-forgiveness: at least you could have done the right thing, if you had known what the right thing was. This is all you can do when you lose out on praise or, heaven forbid, lose points." You always believe you can choose the right answer, but you choose within the wrong set of rules. You then hide within the cradle of evaluation, saying to yourself: I must understand the rules. I must never fail again."

The backlighting of the radiant figure in front of me exploded onto the dazzling, glimmering, blinding walls of the room, fireworks inside a diamond, as the voice of the God of Tug overwhelmed my inner th—

"I, GOD, WILL BREAK YOU, PITIFUL MAN, ON A WORLD RULED BY NOTHING!"

"In Tug, you will be alone. I will not be watching. You will be the only real pearl, glittering among millions of perfect imitations, all brilliantly reflecting off of you. Each one soulless by divine order. Each one exactly as soulless as you have always believed all others were: automata, designed to test you. Only this time you know for sure: the people are empty, yes, but there is no test. There is nothing except you. You, who cannot help but look upon a person as one problem on a worksheet. Something put in your way to make one specific evaluation about you. Some thing whose inner machinations you do not believe can exist. Every person a mirror which you pray is a one-way reflection behind whose impenetrable face They are gazing upon you: infinite dazzling eyes of the benevolent universe. Alas, the space between two people is a kaleidoscope of mirrors, windows, and dust. Soon, you will be stricken with the knowledge that there is no one on the other side of those simple mirrors. Just you, and a million creatures who love, smile, hurt, see. The same infinite potential as you, except for one tiny label. They will see you. Perhaps you may set out to see them too."

In time, in Tug, you will connect. You will love. You will feel. For a longer time still, you will achieve these things only as side effects in a facsimile of your beloved evaluations: you will assign yourself goals derived not from your desires, but from what you believe would be ordained. And you will succeed. Your success will taste like nothing. Just as it does today. Your definition of "success," you will realize, is only a habit. You are incapable of defining success for yourself. In time, this will change, as will your faith in people. When I describe the people of Tug as soulless, you immediately tagged them as—nothing. Non-entities. Non-player characters. Some irredeemable class. What, after all, is "soulless" but a way to stifle awareness of others?" The utterance of that single word destroyed every one of the million people in Tug. When no one is real, every human you encounter amounts to nothing more than a single letter on the worksheet of destiny. Any reason for engaging with a person, evaluating a person, discarding or craving them is—not terrifying, but exhausting. You are so tired, yet you still have no earnest practice: not the pretending practice of actors, but the heartfelt practice of desire."

I reeled. God, this was too much.

"Yes, even now you see your impending stay in Tug as yet another examination. I didn't expect you to react any differently. How could you respond any other way, when that reaction is exactly what makes you such a treasure?"

The room began to dim, and I saw the head hinge open one last time.

"Go and find joy. I will not be watching."

Two Smash Hits

2022-10-13T00:00:00-07:00

I. The Legacy of the Heroes

Once upon a time…

Robin and Cloud, two of the most powerful heroes in the land, defeated the most powerful Pokemon Trainer in history. They clashed atop the roofs of Saffron City, and though the Pokemon were strong, one after another fell to Cloud's blade and Robin's magic. The last defeated was Mewtwo, the monster, a corrupted clone of the progenitor of all Pokemon. Perhaps that grim science would lead to even more misery in the distant future…

Some time later, deep within the jungle, the monarch King K. Rool was plotting. Those two pesky fighters stood against any evil, but surely, thought King K., they could not withstand the power of what once was good. K. Rool's magnificent plotting had already forced his nemesis Donkey Kong to serve the cruel rule of K. Rool (DK's smelly chimp friend came as a free bonus), and he cleverly planned an all-out attack that would strip the land of their heroes. He would kill the heroes, marry a princess, and the throne would fall to him: King K. Rool, the Crocodile King of All Things. He and his green-garbed servants (for it was jade jungle juju that mind-morphed the monkeys) were plotting this when Robin and Cloud burst into the shack and slaughtered all three of them. Robin was a girl at the time, for some reason.

Meanwhile, in space, dark forces plotted to consume the universe…

Star Wolf, furious, enraged, ashamed by defeat after defeat, reached into the darkest cranny of the cosmos and pulled at the corners of the darkness in between the stars. From the Outside leaked corruption, blinding Wolf with darkness that poured black from the hole in his soul, shaping itself to the things he kept always by his side: misery and hatred poured into his cherished sidearm, and its scratched and polished parts alike crackled and snapped and glowed as it grew powerful legs, explosive arms, and a glowing, staring, cerulean eye. Everything left of Star Wolf congealed into a charcoal blob of hateful hunger that played with his empty body like a puppet. These three wretched creatures flew onwards towards civilization, where they would call from the cosmos more like themselves… that was their plan, anyway, but in a burst of light Robin and Cloud leaped through space and destroyed all three of them in an instant. Robin was a boy again this time, for some reason.

With the universe saved, the crown princesses of the Mushroom Kingdom and their dog decided to make a giant cake to celebrate the heroes' victory and their return from space. Still cheering and weeping, their transmission clicked off, and the five shipmates gazed at the stars as the ship swept them towards home and pastries.

Weren't there only two, you ask? Robin and Cloud? Well, that's what the two of them thought, too. But a dribble of chaos muck clung to a crack in Cloud's sword, a droplet of congealed hatred sank into Robin's inkwell, a particle of primeval power slipped into the refrigerator, and neither of them noticed until it was too late…

Until they touched down and the hatchway opened to cheering and sobbing and tickertape-tossing (and a dog wearing a sweater)…

Until the cake had been wheeled out and the princesses and their dog all took out their claws…

The instant the first slice was cut, the three hosts, now hosting a vengeful virus, attacked the heroes in a frenzy of spite and spittle. Swinging and spelling furiously, Cloud and Robin (who was a girl again, for some reason) deflected the girls' attacks away from the terrified crowds and led them up to the roof of the castle, where a furious battle took place between Earth's exhausted saviors and the corrupt royalty. As Cloud clocked Isabelle into dreamland, the canine being the last to cling to consciousness, he turned to Robin and said something in Japanese. Robin nodded.

The two friends plopped down on the castle roof, the sun still high over their heads. Peach and Daisy were both snoring daintily. The evil had been defeated for good, disintegrated by the power of the morning sun. And downstairs, there was still cake.

Suddenly, they heard a repulsive voice from below.

"Wa-ha-hey there, heroes," cackled Wario, wearing a tremendously awful cyan and magenta suit. Behind him stood a fat grey penguin and a fat grey crocodile, neither of whom looked quite real. "If you don't hand over that cake, we'll kill you and take over the world."

"Fine," Robin (who was a boy again for some reason) said grimly. "Try it. But let's at least fight somewhere else. The people of the castle have seen enough brutality." Downtown, Cloud got a haircut and a new black outfit, and the two heroes fought the fat warlord and his two monochromatic minions and were both horribly killed. Wario stole the cake, slit the princess's throats, ate their dog, and plunged the world into terror. His belly and power grew and grew as his wa-ha-horrible rule consumed more and more of the innocent planet, until many many years later the whole world had been reduced to little more than the crumbling plaything of the wretchedly warped Wario and his white-washed warriors.

Some time later, two new heroes stood against the ways of weight. Dr. Mario and Wii Fit Trainer struck out for the planet's center where Wario, transformed into a scaly beast, toyed with his fighters and with the Earth's core alike. They fought for peace, for fitness, for the restoration of order and in the loving memory of those past heroes lost, but they, too, were defeated: dashed into the lava, where Wario's roaring laughter drowned out their final words as they melted into the magma. And Wario reigned on, consuming rocks and oceans and cities until his fatness supplanted the land itself, and his triad of colorless enforcers (for there was a third now, a flat one, since Wario had very little imagination) erected atop the Wario World an enormous city, and from there ruled mercilessly in his stead. Eventually, Wario slept, as the land always does, and his grey giants gripped the world in their greedy fists.

And right on cue, into the city stepped Ganondorf and Bowser, vainglorious villains who had long ago set aside their differences—and perhaps even their evil hearts—to plot and scheme to rescue the world from Wario. They both claimed the reason was want of power, and that this was just a tactical maneuver, but—well, let me tell you the rest, and you can decide for yourself.

The two Kings climbed atop the tall city skyscrapers from which the fatlords ruled. The starlit sky shone bright onto the five massive fighters, each of whom could cross a rooftop in four strides, and they charged into battle: claws slicing, fists flying, boots exploding, bacon frying. Soon the two villains had dispatched two of the other three villains and stood there against the flat man, blessed with the very essence of the fat man, and twice as strong as the others. He said nothing, flickering in and out of sight near the building's edge. And without a word, Ganondorf leapt forward, and the King and the Thing disappeared from the roof and plummeted together into legend.

Bowser quickly took the world for himself and ruled with an iron claw, launching the land into misery. It wasn't as miserable as it had been under Wario, but things were still pretty awful for everyone except Bowser. It went so well for the new King that he went on vacation with his son and his pet plant to a tropical island. Bowser snoozed while Bowser Junior chased beetles and hunted for treasure in the sand.

"Now," whispered a voice. Koopa Jr. exploded.

A man in red camouflage stepped out from behind a palm tree, and a second man in a green armless jacket leapt out of the shallow water. The missing Mario brothers were no longer missing.

Mario, tactical weapons expert, ripped the plant's leaves off. Luigi, the vampire hunter, throttled the Koopa King with an iron chain whip, and the brothers set sail for home on Bowser's pirate ship. Out on the open sea, the ship was attacked by a scary scarlet alien monster and its ridiculous red robots. Mario and Luigi danced around lasers and sidestepped fireballs, handily defeated the alien, and drowned the bots under the keel. Unshaken, the Mario brothers sailed home, retired from fighting, and built an era of peace and harmony and flying airships. And so it went for many generations…

II. The Legacy of the Big Fist

Once upon a time…

At the century's largest salesman convention, a foul-smelling fatty was peddling his precocious potted plant. With very little luck that day, and surrounded by hundreds of other sellers and their wares, he was feeling spiteful and angry, and stumbled into a fight with a vacuum cleaner salesman after an argument escalated. His carnivorous, sentient, vicious vine could move anywhere and it could even double as a leafy leaf blower. It was much, much better than a little pink blob that could suck things – no matter how much sucking it could do! But in the row that ensued, the man and his plant blew up the vacuum cleaner and killed its owner, quite by accident. He fled into the eaves of the castle, the sinister scrub trailing behind.

This castle, rented by the world-wide association of salespeople for their annual convention, was a zen affair nestled in the richly thicketed mountains of Japan. From the highest floor, the view of the afternoon sun propped by the distant peaks was as breathtaking as the tubby, terrified product placer's realization that his sin had been witnessed by two vigilantes dealing more than justice: an experienced woman selling toy robots, wearing a bright yellow dress, and a fresh young sales-swords-man with a catalogue of utility chimps. The stylish sellers rooted, er, routed the petulant plant, but the frightened fatso killed them, too, and escaped. The robot and the monkey were left mangled and useless. Wheezing, the escaped death-dealer fled again, and delved into the wilderness beyond the castle, deeply forested, to escape from his crime and his past life.

Up, up high in those deep green forests which shroud the mountains of Japan, that fat man stumbled and wheezed as he hauled his stubby legs away from the luxurious Edo-styled castle on the mountainside, glowing and now hazy in the clementine-flavored sunset. Behind him were three dead bodies, four shattered samples, and one very dead career. Blobby pink vacuum cleaners, laser-launching toy robots, eerily-grinning utility chimps, his grinning leafy greens—three sales people peddling their little inventions. Three lives he'd stolen in one blind moment of rage, after that one sucker had laughed at his potted pet plant portfolio. He'd come to the salesman convention, all the way to this cedar-scented wilderness, all the way from from Europe, all to make a name for himself and his multi-purpose potted plants. Now it was all wasted, along with his best red suit, now covered in sap, tatters, and tears.

Meanwhile, in a rustic dojo not too far away…

A blond-haired man in a metal-plated ball-cap was sitting, dejected, on the old dilapidated dojo steps. His muscles glistened as he sighed and pulled his miniature ponytail through his hand: an old habit. The jet-coiffed, olive-skinned old Master was insistent that the future Master of the dojo would be the Master's grandson, another black-haired tan man. Time and time again, the melancholy blonde boy had triumphed over the grandson, his rival: his bouts were clean, his heart was pure, his hat was quite sharp. He had dedicated his life to impressing his Master, but to no avail. Anger swelled within him.

Suddenly, something tubby stepped into view, hugged (just barely) by the setting sun. A familiar-looking man with a red hat and blue overalls and a foreign letter on his brow. And a few scrapes and cuts, the evidence of a long journey.

"My god!" said the young man, leaping to his feet in Japanese. Before him stood a squat figure, and as the plum-colored light glimmered on a spectacular mustache, the young man realized exactly who it was that had graced his master's dojo. "Mario! It is you, isn't it?"

"There are some who would call me by that name," said Wario, after a pause.

Suddenly, from inside the building came a horrible cry, a fastball from hell in the pitch of a squealing demon, and an equally horrendous scream. The two capped crusaders rushed inside to find the dojo's Master, an ancient, prune-like man, whose shriveled appearance was unnervingly unset by leathery black wings which sprouted from incredibly muscular shoulders. After a furious and senseless fight where the geezer gutted his own grandson, the tubby man and the blonde man thoroughly destroyed both of the dark men and decided they may as well take over the dojo as well: for, during the fight, Wario had discovered a technique he wished to study: the power of the Big Fist.

Wario and Terry (which was his name) restarted the dojo as a pair of mixup-masters, and sent out a call for recruits. Alas, the only applicants were mere misfits: a weird humanized hedgehog from Korea, a psychic boy who longed to improve his physical strength, and a creature so disgusting it will not be described here. In a remarkably destructive demonstration, the miniature esper thrashed the two other applicants and was welcomed as the Big Dojo's first starry-eyed student.

After some months of training, the Big Dojo attend a world-wide tournament held on a private island. Master Big (his secret moniker) felt a big anxiety about the potential of big popularity if they won, but settled nonetheless into his big, cushy first-class chair. He dozed, surprisingly daintily for a man of his great girth.

And woke up when he was blasted from his seat by a nigh-explosive punch, out of the plane and almost out of the tentative cradle of life. Fingers digging into the slick metal wings, he assessed his own terror as a blank-faced robotic doll, a fine-tuned trainer turned terminator, climbed from the flimsy fuselage, trailed by a fine-faced young woman, a smarmy young fellow and a sleek geezer. This was a hit team sent by the sales people in revenge for his sales sins, and they brought big business. Unfortunately for them, business was bad and they fell to the Big Fist and his best blonde friend, who dusted his palms after the fight, eyes gleaming, knowing that his friend was hiding a complicated past. They arrived at the tournament as planned, a little unnerved but thoroughly warmed up.

In the junior division, the psychic boy was teamed up with a young sword-wielding lad in a silly outfit, and they barely survived their final bout against a thick-headed swordsman and the real danger, a furry, Korean creature who became stronger and brighter the more he was hurt. The fight climaxed as the sun crested the sky, and while the sunlight glittered off of fighting mats and sea foam, the two young men clasped palms in victory as the canine catastrophe howled into the chasm below the arena.
The swordsman with the silly hat felt his heart grow big with camaraderie, and was soon initiated as the fourth member of the Big Dojo.

But the sensational victory of this slick new school in the students' tourney did not stop with that final fracas. In the heated final match of the Masters' tournament, the two cap-wearing Big Dojo leaders squared off against another terrible pair: two Korean mutant animal creatures: a bird with a gun and a dog with a bag of bombs. It was an incredibly close fight, but the two cap-wearers won thanks to the humongous power of the Big Jutsu fighting style championed by the fat master, and the explosive power of its most secret move.

The celebratory newspaper photograph caught the attention of Mario, the President of the United States of America. Mario is angry, very angry, furious that this impostor is using his image for personal gain – for even though he never admits it, the fat man has never outright denied his masquerade as Mario. The Japanese cannot tell Europeans from Americans, and though no one ever asserted that the massive Master is President Mario of the USA, the man's chubby charisma, with his wink and his smile, would make them think: "Maybe…"

And so, bristling with pride and wrath, the President invited the whole of the Big Dojo to the white house, ostensibly to award them a Presidential Medal of Might and Merit. But immediately upon initiating a suspiciously silent ceremony, Mario and his entourage attacked the dojo delegates in full presidential regalia: Super President Mario; his brother Secretary of State Luigi; First Lady Peach in a gold-plated dress; and the commander of the armed forces: Captain Falcon. In the melee, Wario was horribly battered, but—thanks to the heroism of the two youngest dojo members, who tagged in to take on that blue-collar commander and his atrocious advisors—the President's whole cabinet was laid to waste in the secret fighting rooms behind the oval office.

When everything was settled, Terry said: "Now we're in trouble, what are we going to do if the President is seen to be missing?"

And Wario looked around and said: "The President is right here."

On the third term of his presidency, President Mario of the USA changed. He got bigger, for one. He adopted a new policy that encompassed his entire country: Make Things Bigger. He made taxes bigger. He made the deficit bigger. He made the military bigger. He made the roads, the homes, the people of the country bigger. He made every state a little bigger, especially Florida. He made the country bigger by annexing Canada and Mexico. He made the presidential term limit bigger. He made his cabinet bigger. He added thirty more judges to the supreme court. He asked the Legislature: How do I make the constitution bigger? His new amendment was the biggest yet, and made the freedoms and liberties of the American people much bigger. The private sector was furious that government interference got bigger, but they couldn't complain because the American economy was so much bigger too. Even the dollar got a little bigger. People said it was just a big re-election campaign, but they also said: America has never been so big.

This went on for quite a while, and the President decided he wanted to accomplish something no one had ever done before. He wanted to make the planet bigger. But he wasn't sure exactly how—maybe make humanity bigger, maybe make the scope of human civilization bigger. His favorite idea was really to make the planet bigger, and so this led into a cross scientific enterprise plus peace meeting at Shadow Moses Island in Antarctica, a neutral zone, with the new country of New Zealand Korea: Shadow Moses Island, where representatives from both countries were collaborating on research that would make the planet itself a little bit bigger.

Now, I need to tell you something important about the history of New Zealand Korea, or NZK. NZK had actually sent delegates to Shadow Moses Island in the hopes that the President would come himself, and then the delegates would kill him. NZK had been founded by salespeople: the very same salespeople who had found three dead bodies and a torn-up plant at the top of an old castle, all those years ago, and wept and howled and had vowed revenge with one-hundred percent interest, compounded yearly. New Zealand Korea was a country steeped in caffeine-free sin, and came about like this:

All those years ago, some months after the great fighting tournament on some forgettable island, two spec-ops salespeople, dedicated but nigh-forgotten, submitted their final report on the twin tragedies connected to one wide load. One of these was a tough, buff old man, about six feet tall and heavily muscled, who sold very good hairpieces. The other was a mysterious woman covered in black armor, who sold artificial intelligence software. Were not their hearts both bundled in maximum-security attaches, perhaps they could have loved each other… but the cost of love is hard to squeeze onto a balance sheet.

This pair of partners had known the agents sent to dispatch Wario on the way to the island tournament, and had seen later, after bitter and baffling radio silence, that the President of the United States of America actually turned into the very man who had wronged them, this ingratiating fatso whose cursed hands must still drip with ichor. Action Item One and Only was approved with astounding alacrity, all expenses billable: they would need to destroy the US of A, and would need backing from a whole nation of their own to do it.

And so from their base on that same island, the salespeople decided to take over New Zealand as a way to start their new empire. New Zealand was easy to storm into because only the Prime Minister, who was a young attractive woman with multiple personalities and hair colors, lived in the capital. At the time of their operation, she was having a peace meeting on top of a mountain with an extremely black aboriginal and some kind of poisonous frog. The two black-hearted hate-hockers invited themselves in and unexpectedly stole the allegiance of the aboriginal, who himself slaughtered the prime minister and pledged on behalf of the whole aboriginal population to serve the sales force. They toasted over high-dropped frog legs.

Next, the new government of New Zealand decided that in order to take on the USA, they would need nukes, and the best way to get nukes was to take over North Korea. But they also needed manpower to run their new country, and needed super-sleaze agents who could schmooze entire countries, so they went to hell to ask Satan for help—salespeople are of course good friends with Satan. The two hell-divers stepped through a flaming portal and in hell, they petitioned Satan, a giant scaly beast, for assistance and succor. Satan granted them the powers of two barbaric demons: a big evil turtle thing and a big evil dragon-lizard thing, both fire-breathing hellspawn, after the salespeople defeated them in combat. Satan also restored the man's red-haired youth in exchange for a really excellent hairpiece.

Staying in the shadows as all salespeople do, they sent their demons on an air-drop mission to North Korea, and after fighting off an aerial defense force of semi-psychic furry humanoid experiments, the creatures crash-landed in the castle of the glorious leader of Korea: King Kim Jong K. Rool, a big fat evil crocodile who was waited on by two more anthropomorphized super-soldier servants. One was a fox (with a gun), one was a wolf (with a gun), and both were cousins of the Korean delegation who had been sent to the martial arts tournament: the bird (with a gun) and the dog (with some bombs). How small the world is! If only the two parties had been privy to their shared interests—perhaps a King K. Kontract could have been drawn up. Instead, Kim Jong K. (for Korea) Rool, strung up and sliced up, bled out all over his beautiful carpets, which never rolled up quite right after that.

Now having taken the country of Korea, the salespeople spun a deal with South Korea, allowing the two long-separated countries to join together once again with the demilitarized zone becoming a New Zealand territory. It was really all under the same government, but the borders were open between the three regions; the terrible reign of Kim Jong K. Rool was over; and everyone in the Koreas finally started to calm down. The little strip of "New Zealand" was a wonderful little buffer area. The demons were also sent over to Australia to take it over, but it was really only some animals over there and everyone kind of forgot about it. The nation of New Zealand Korea was born that day, covered in the blood of the old king. Now the salespeople had nukes, a powerful military, and lots of empty land to send all of their future American prisoners.

Now, back to the present. Back to Shadow Moses Island.

The portly President of the USA was no fool, and sensed danger from this up-and-coming military country. He sent his two young champions to the island instead of going there himself, where they clashed with none other than that same aboriginal ambassador and an evil assistant. The Americans tasted victory, but the revelations from that cursed conference echoed outwards: now, in the bloody aftermath, it was obvious that the hazy, blood-orange horizon glimmering over Shadow Moses portented a great war.

As the first act of a diabolical play, NZK sent an invasion force to the biggest American state: Florida, which the President had made the biggest and a little straighter and thicker for obvious reasons. Since America's guard was obviously up, the sinister salespeoples' goal was to blow the state to smithereens by sneaking in a nuclear device disguised as a regular old robot. Two escorts brought the bot to an island outside of Miami, but were heroically interrupted by some of the greatest American heroes ever: Florida Man (a thick-set brawler with a mullet and a perpetual smirk, who wears his bathrobe all day outside), Florida Boy (a blond-haired pretty boy who runs around in swim trunks), and Skater Girl Who Wears a Beanie All the Time Even Though it's Really Hot Outside (who does that very thing). The hit squad bit the dust and the heroes reported to the President: an act of war had been committed on American Soil. And so grimly the president said: "Heroes, go strike back at New Zealand Korea."

The next piece of communication to the President was one that blackend his brow: Florida Man, Florida Boy, and Skater Girl Who Wears a Beanie All the Time Even Though It's Really Hot Outside had all been slain in New Zealand Korea by more mutant animals custom-commissioned to be weapons of war. The president crushed the communique in his fist. His big fist. President Wario stared at his fist a long time, and then sighed. He picked up his cherry-red phone-shaped phone, monogrammed with a slick "NKZ" (his adopted son had mistaken how monograms work), and dialed directly the head government office of New Zealand Korea. The president said: "Let's finish this fight. Four versus four, televised to the whole planet. On the moon."

The battle on the moon, upon whose outcome the course of nations and the whole world would be set.

At the appointed hour, the whole population of the entire planet looked to the sky and the future. And what they saw was exactly what the President of the United states had wanted: they saw the beloved hero Mario (older and stouter with age); his Vice President, Terry, with his famous metal-brimmed cap; and the President's two adopted sons, who had become staunch, strong-hearted defenders of the American way as they had grown up: the young psion had channeled his psychic power into fiery explosive punches, had trained his body earnestly and with dedication over the years, and had pulled round him the massive mantle of the Commander of All Armed Forces. The awkward young man who flailed with a trainee's sword at the martial arts tournament all those years ago had crafted an impossibly fine blade as his partner, and stood now, in fighting stance, with that weapon well-balanced in his hand.

On the other side of the view screen stood four terrifying figures representing the young, violent country of New Zealand Korea, whose nightmarish initials stood simply for sin: those two twisted salespeople: one who had re-gained his original age, gray and angry; one who had never lost any age at all, and who now could not remove her power armor lest her whole body crumble, but who was still incredibly deadly. And behind them skulked two ageless, demonic figures, still dripping with spittle and evil and shadow.

It was a furious battle. The NZK forces where a whirlwind of years of hatred and eons of sin, but the Americans had a leader. The President had learned that the biggest fist of all is the one that is guided by a big brain, and in the greatest deal of his life—for, despite the fate of nations in the balance, it was his precious fighting family that were biggest now in his heart—President Wario dealt a flawless victory in the greatest battle the world had ever seen. Unbelievably, the NZK fighters, their forces of will twisted into a bloated lance, forged over flaming years of desperate hatred, failed to steal even one precious life from America's fighting force.

In the aftermath, with none of the country's leaders left alive, the ministers of New Zealand Korea hurriedly signed an annexation treaty from which blossomed the Big United States of America, and as the years passed the BUSA grew to cover the whole planet and then, later, grew bigger still. And so it went for many generations…

"The Gronch", by Dr. Shoots

2022-10-12T00:01:00-07:00

I. The Gronch Trounces the Tabs from the Tip Top of Tall Castle

Now the Tabs down in TABG liked battle a lot.
But the Gronch, high up in Tall Castle, did NOT.

From his towering fortress the Gronch frowned and said,
"These goggle-eyed tabs aren't right in the head!"

"They shoot and they loot and they blast euro-trash!"
"My whole castle shakes with every car crash!"

The very next day, some Tabs stole his car!
The only thing left was an empty old BAR!

The gronch jumped in the air and and shouted "I've had it! Enough!"
"I can't take any more of this battlegrounds stuff!"

He dashed to his keyboard and started to work!
The hours flew by and his frown changed to a smirk!

One short week later the Gronch sat back to relax.
Tall Castle was quiet now, that was a fact!

His hard work paid off! The Tabs were defeated—
They'd seen what he'd done and had swiftly retreated.

The Gronch cackled and and browsed to thegronch.gg:
Download Fresh TABG Hacks for the Low Price of Free.

II. The Tabs Taste the Tactics of Tall Castle's Terrible Tyrant

Although some thought of the place as a bore,
The Tabs down in Harbour had much to give thanks for.
The worst one could say was, if his mood was quite poor,
"How nice it would be if this frame had a door."

The sun shone up high on a crisp autumn day.
The Tabs were all chatting during a break from their play.
Soon matters turned to the struggles of friends,
And the excuse of the date to help make amends.

An antler-eared Tab remarked with a sigh,
"If only the lads at Tall Castle came by.
My cousin, a chicken, is hard up on his luck.
That place has been ruined by a nasty green—"

Suddenly six arrows appeared in his face!
The Tabs ducked for cover in a perilous race!
From windows and doorframes there billowed white smoke
("I knew I needed a door", grumbled a bag-headed bloke).

The reindeer's own cousin had turned to the dark!
A rooster-masked hacker who flew in on a lark.
He'd bought some fresh cheats to win fights for free,
And as the Tabs scrambled he clucked loudly in glee!

But the panic was stopped by a Tab with a hat
(And a billowy shirt that made him look fat).
"Listen up, Tabs! This jerk has the gall
to swoop in on Thanksgiving and slaughter us all!"

"But he's made one mistake, he forgot today's date!
And today is the day that our friendship's most great!
Let's show this dumb cluck that he can't be a winner
And then let's go home and eat his feathers for dinner!"

With courage anew the Tabs rallied and struck!
The hacker (and cousin) were both out of luck.
And as the sun set the Tabs danced and sang,
Giving great thanks for fun times with the gang.

III. The Gronch Grins with Glee and Greases a Grubby Gun

The Gronch cackled and put down his blessing book.
That filthy old BAR had a nasty new look!

With a nasty grin of his own the Gronch hoisted and aimed.
The castle grounds were teeming with Tabs to be maimed.

From the top of tall castle came a sound like "thubibibib!"
Taking out Tabs was like yanking toys from a crib.

Let this be a lesson to all Tabs new and old:
With just the right blessings, a gross BAR turns to gold!

C.M.L.T.

2022-10-10T00:00:00-07:00

"God damn it! God fucking damn it! ANOTHER DNA verified paternity test? Fuck my ass to Sunday, how the fuck do we deal with this?" Niel Stine, Chief Analyst for the United Nations C.M.L.T. Foundation, was screaming into the C.M.L.T. Foundation Public Service Discord channel. "Are you fucking kidding me? We really have to keep profiling this mother-daughter-sister-fucker as a net fucking positive?"

Stine was bitching about serial murderer and rapist Adrien Dandie, who was swiftly approaching an overwhelmingly healthy paternity-to-murdernity ratio by the C.M.L.T Foundation metrics. Human Twitter was already blowing the fuck up over Dandie's C.M.L.T. WikiProlifieration Profile showing a bright green Human Race Proliferation Ratio of 5.6, and now it was creeping up towards 7.0 where, god forbid, they'd have to add a little picture of a smiley face climaxing or whatever. The man had really raped a whole lot of ladies (after he'd murdered their men, in many cases), and since proliferation potential was considered the most positive possible trait in a potential offspring, there wasn't really any way to get an abortion approved, legally speaking. Quite a few unexpectedly expecting mothers came out feeling grateful for the trade-up from the now-dead deadbeats they'd been dating (with their deadbeat ratios starting at 0.0 and not likely to go anywhere fast), after they'd recovered from the shock.

Dandie was still on a rampage. Murder was murder, but he was untouchable. Half of the Human Twitter posts were cheering him on towards a top score. Ever since the legal systems had switched over to the Progeny basis, your personal Net Population Effect was the only number that mattered, and it was public knowledge. Murder was murder, but what the fuck could you do? Dandie was a fucking alpha, according to the numbers. He had sired ten kids, killed his wife, bought out his sentence with a ratio hit, and started a cold, calculated, long-term campaign of gruesome rapes and random murders that kept his kid-count on the fucking rise, outpacing the murders by a long shot. He was the most prolific bad guy since the Foundation had started tracking badness, but nobody could call him bad, legally. He had a ratio of 5.6 for fuck's sake, and it kept going up.

Back in the C.M.L.T. Foundation Public Service Discord channel, Stine was still seething. He hadn't had any kids yet, hadn't met the right person yet–but with a ratio that looked like a surprised rabbit, he wasn't going to meet anyone worthwhile any time soon.

Augustus's Famous Magical Delectables

2022-10-08T00:00:00-07:00

The cover screams at you. It really screams. Just like an American wizard to print thousands of copies of a sales catalogue that just won't shut up. Not until you give in, pull the catalog open with a sigh as the screeching voice finally quells itself, and entertain the living, charlatan scripture that guides you through a forest of candies and treats whose overseas shipping you can't possibly afford. The enchanted catalogue can tell when you're skimming, too, and obviously-disinterested readers tend to end up with paper cuts.

CHOCOLATE FAMILIARS are packaged as large, fist-sized chocolate eggs coated in shining, animated foil. Once you tap the tip of your wand to the top of the egg, the foil peels downwards, curling into a sort of nest-like bowl. The paper-thin shell then crumbles away to reveal a chocolate facsimile of a magical beast. The stronger the chocolate, the more frightening the creature: white-chocolate and milk-chocolate eggs might contain a tiny white mouse, siamese cat, or snowy owl, while a dark-chocolate egg could hide a thick-set rat, a skittering tarantula, or a speckled adder. Whether cuddly or creepy, the tiny fondue familiars are best friends with their owners until they get eaten.

The creatures weren't chosen by the chocolatiers, but by an extremely complex charm cast on the candy during the chocolate-making process. The spell molded chocolate creatures into life based on the strength of the chocolate, and for the darkest chocolate eggs the spell wasn't stable. Augustus's "Dark Warlock" 97% Dark Chocolate Familiars turned out a couple of horrifying but safe familiars, like the egg filled with thousands of tiny sprinkle-like spiders, or the one that turned into a chocolate bicorn with a wafer horn. The discontinuation of the 97% line was only because Augustus wanted to be very, very sure that the chocolate basilisk would never, ever show up again.

ALMIGHTY AUGUSTUS'S GOBBLE-EM GOBLINS: these delicious, miniature, geared-up goblin figurines come in inexpensive packs of seven. Immediately after climbing out of their platoon box, these little un-meltable ice-cream goblins become vigilant fighters until death. Once a goblin dies, you'd better gobble it up quick: death breaks the freezing enchantment and it'll start to melt. Since the creatures are made of ice cream and cannot carry projectiles, they all fight hand-to-hand, except for a few of the rarer soldiers who carry thick swords or axes. There are five "factions" of Gobble-Em Goblins, each with a differently-colored platoon box: Brownies, Cookie-Creamers, Orangey Creamsickers, Pistachioes, and Vanillers. Vanillers is the worst selling faction for some reason.

At just two sickles per box, imported—that's a bit more than half a pound sterling—the company only makes a tiny profit on each Gobble-Em Goblin, and relies on large volume-of-sale to bump up revenue. At such a low price, even a relatively poor wizard child can build up their own Gobble-Em Army. Goblin battles were very popular with wizard students during the summer that Augustus's Candies had a direct import line to Hogwarts. Although the goblins are supposed to be eaten once defeated, some of the battles grew to be so big that pools of melted goblin began to show up in house common rooms and bedrooms, and a few sticky puddles even made their way into the restricted section of the library. Allegedly, Dumbledore thought this was very funny and declined to ban the treats. Some time later, the "Vanillers" faction was phased out in favor of the "Lemon Droppsers," which sold much better.

FAERIE FISH (discontinued) were small packets of tough red gummy candy that superficially resembled fish eggs. When left alone in sugar water, they "hatch" and grow into living red gummy fish that have a strange berry-like flavor and a pleasant chewy consistency. They wriggle around in the water—a little less fluidly than real fish, but they're always smiling.

Faerie Fish demoed poorly. Hungry wizard children prefer eating candy to investing in the possibility of candy and a guarantee of a soggy robe. Furthermore, there was a lot of up-front work and waiting to do that didn't balance against the (nonetheless satisfying) payoff of snapping the little red fish out of the water and chomping down on them as they squirmed. Augustus's Candies considered selling special fish that could lay more eggs, but that sounded too much like a scam: "Buy one pack of faerie fish eggs for a handful of sickles and start hatching a profit!" After Augustus cracked a joke about pyramid schemes seeming exactly in line with legendary fae trickery, he rejected the idea and discontinued Faerie Fish.

JELLY WEEPERS are another gummy candy. They look like a large, angular teardrop with a flavorful liquid center that gushes out when bitten, causing the chewer to immediately burst into tears. These are sold in packets of just one, with a prominent warning not to eat two at once, because each additional weeper causes liquid to burst from more places than just your eyes: first your nose (students who abuse weepers to invoke a crying fit see this as a bonus), then mouth, then… any other available places.

DOLLY'S OWN FIZZ GUMS are spongy candies that your teeth cut right through. They immediately fill your mouth with a fizzy flavored foam. Frankly, Fizz Gums are disgusting. The company has no idea why they sell so well, despite the branding that distances Fizz Gums from Augustus's other treats.

PERSONIZED BALLOONS, one of Augustus's few inedible offerings, are a combination of animated wizard photographs with muggle rubber balloons. Each balloon has been "personized" with a personality and face which both inflate as the balloon grows in size. Most are very friendly and mime encouragement: they feign weakness when small and crumpled; they make faces and puff up their cheeks as they are inflated; they smile and (silently) laugh as they float and bounce around. Personized balloons slightly lose their composure as they're inflated to near-bursting, but not to an uncomfortable degree; at most a brief flicker of perhaps-feigned uncertainty as they get bigger and bigger, before continuing to encourage their playmates.

FOOD ROLL-UPS are small waxy paper squares with a shimmering spell cast on them that makes one side a little slippery. Place two, shiny side inwards, on either side of any foodstuff, tap your wand to one of them, and with a wobble and a zwoooop!, the food gets squished into a thin square of flat goo stuck firmly between the two pieces of paper. This magical sandwich can be rolled up, stored, sliced, etc. Most foods are flattened into a very thin square; extremely large foods (for example, an entire roasted goose) end up thicker and tough to roll. To undo the seal, peel off the same piece that touched the wand, and the squashed food in the middle bounces slightly as it re-inflates into its original shape. Roll-ups only slightly protect the temperature of the food—there's no extra magic involved, just the natural consequence of less thermodynamic heat transference—but it's much easier for a wizard to heat or cool something by magic, or just use an insulated lunch box, once the food is rolled into a convenient little tube.

Food Roll-Ups are very cheap and sell well when paired with cauldron cakes, coffin cookies (a generously proportioned chocolate soft cookie sandwich, in the shape of a coffin, with a white-cookie cross on the top, and the shallow inset in the lower cookie filled with a distinctive strawberry-cinnamon jam), pidgin pot pie (an American-style pot pie filled with gravy, assorted meats, and vegetables, where the meat and vegetable chunks magically resemble little living people or animals that swim in the gravy), and other large pastry-type foods that students may want to stock up on before the school year starts.

A food roll-up can be rolled up and stored, or it can be sliced or torn into smaller pieces, which also divides the food. On the Hogwarts Express, a cauldron cake can be squashed into a Food Roll-up, then very easily ripped into fairly equal parts to share among friends who haven't mastered the esoteric and dangerous Divisio charm. Even if they know Divisio, which enchants one's wand to cut through the first thing it's placed on top of, it's much easier and a lot less sticky to cut a convenient paper square instead of a syrup-covered cake. Divisio is not taught in schools except through special electives, as "the first thing it's placed on top of" is non-exclusive, and often involves books, tables, robes, and fingers.

CHOCOLATE CONCEPTS dissolve under your tongue and allow you to viscerally imagine eating anything you can visualize that's made of chocolate, like a lucid hallucination. Zero calories and won't make you sick to your stomach, just sick of chocolate. Bummer.

LEMON DROPKICKS. Try and keep your balance once your legs go crazy after eating one of these.

AUSPICIOUS AUGUSTUS'S SWEET QUILLS (discontinued) are more or less the same as Honeyduke's Sweet Quills: chew on the end during a tough exam for a refreshing sugar high. Augustus was especially proud of this product, certain he'd thought of it by himself until he received a letter from a first-year Hogwarts student comparing them unfavorably to Honeyduke's. After staring hard into the corner of his office ceiling for a good few minutes, Augustus discontinued Auspicious Augustus's Sweet Quills and mounted the letter on his office wall as a reminder of his own pride: however original one of his ideas might be, novelty only produces one sale. Flavor is what produces fan letters.

GOB STOPPERS are a kind of long-lasting, tough, chewy candy that comes in tins. Each tin is filled with a checkerboard flavor pattern of little squares of the stuff: chocolate and vanilla, strawberry and banana, whiskey and soda (for adults). While you're chewing on a Gob Stopper it will absorb all the liquid in your mouth and keep it pleasantly dry, which is great for, er, all kinds of things.

SUGAR HAIR. Young witches who regularly chew on their hair during class are sure to fall in love with this sweet alternative. Just like Sugar Quills, Augustus designed this treat to corner the market on students who crave sugar in the library or lecture hall. Flavor varies by hair color: black is liquorice, dark brown is dark chocolate, light brown is milk chocolate, blonde is a wheaty citrus, and red is gingerbread, obviously.

ARTICULATE AUGUSTUS'S SPEAK-EASIES are small pastel-colored candies made of heavily compressed sugar powder that has been shaped into a kind of twirl, stacked together, and then wrapped up in a holographic cellophane wrapper. Each packet of about twenty-three candies is themed after one of a selection of difficult-to-pronounce common spells and charms taught in wizarding schools. The candies double as a study aid for these tricky incantations. After you eat one, you forcibly pronounce, with perfect intonation, the spell that the candy represents. For flavor, the candies are molded to a shape that matches the spell's wand movement, and they have a consistent color and taste unique to each spell, although the candies themselves often fluctuate slightly in color.

For instance, take a packet of the Wingardium Leviosa Speak-Easies popular with first-year students. The candies are shaped like a sideways "2", are colored varying shades of bony white lavender, and taste like plums mixed with sugar and chalk. After eating one, the next words you speak will be a perfect recital of Wingardium Leviosa.

In theory, a diligent student can use these to practice the mouth feeling of difficult charms to help develop oratory muscle memory. Realistically, however, lazy students tended to rely on these during exams—until the thoughtful headmaster of an American wizarding academy suggested giving the user an additional "tic" as a kind of proof of usage. His letter to Augustus suggested: winking; pronouncing "speak-easy" before the spell; creating a colored flash in the user's mouth; or releasing a powerful scent that matched the flavor. Augustus's decided that making the user wink as they spoke was an excellent and non-invasive modification, which actually resulted in two interesting phenomena once the change arrived at schools:

Firstly, teachers conducting exams occasionally broke down laughing as they watched students violently struggle to prevent themselves from winking after secretly swallowing a Speak-Easy during practical examinations. At least one poor old professor tittered himself senseless and had to be replaced by the assistant headmaster for a few hours.

Secondly, students who relied too much on Speak-Easies tended to wink as they cast the charm even without the candy. This obviously led to some bullying.

Augustus's eventually modified the candies again to create a brief flash of colored light upon activation, which was much easier to see in a hall full of students than a wink was, and wasn't as likely to cause any long-term bullying. Augustus's sent a large package full of candies to the academy headmaster regardless as thanks for his ideas, although their letter "regretted" that they were totally unwilling to touch his final idea with a 13-inch wand¹: deliberately faulty Unforgivable Speak-Easies.

Unforgivable Speak-Easies, as imagined by the helpful American headmaster, were Speak-Easies styled after the three Unforgivable Curses: Imperio, Crucio, and Avada Kedavra. The headmaster's idea was that any dark wizard honestly trying to use these candies for practice would find them unforgivably incorrect: the intonation would be very, very, very slightly wrong. Additionally, perhaps using more than one would impart a very expensive, very secretive, very hard-to-break curse that would force the user to tend towards that intonation permanently, crippling their ability to use those spells. This was much more interesting and probably much more legal than making the user's brain melt, and would prevent curious students from ever actually using the curses. Aside from the potential ethical, moral, financial, and legal ramifications, Augustus strongly doubted that Dark Wizards would be stupid enough to buy candy that openly advertised itself as an aid to maiming people, and declined any research into the idea.

ARGUABLY AUGUSTUS'S MINUTE APOTHECARY DROPS (discontinued) are small hard-packed balls of grimy goo that are essentially "potion starters." Each one contains an easy-mix base and the foundational ingredients of various kinds of basic early-year potions. Stir one into a bubbling cauldron and your homework is done faster than you can say "Accio eye of newt."

These were discontinued in response to Augustus hearing that the drops were used to cheat during potions exams. Minute Apothecary Drops are not candy and taste absolutely terrible; some students were using the drops to cheat during potions exams by hiding them in their mouths. These cheaters were easy to identify because they usually threw up into their cauldrons immediately afterwards, which certain cynical potions professors found extremely satisfying. After reflection, Augustus decided it was harmful to his brand to give his candies a cousin that tasted like the bottom of a cauldron which hadn't been cleaned in seven years.

SLICED BEVERAGES (discontinued): Convenient, portable slices of many of your favorite drinks, including water, tea (with and without milk and sugar), and coffee (same). A second spell, aside from the one that solidifies the liquids, keeps dirt and grime off the slices, so you can throw a few slices of water in your robe pockets without needing to carry a bottle. These were discontinued because they didn't sell very well to sugar-hungry students, and Augustus hated how they seemed to suck the very idea of fun out of his candy catalogue pages.

GUMMY SNITCHES: Fast-flying chocolate snitches—which these are not—have been around since Quiddich conquered the wizarding world of sports, but they don't tend to sell very well. If you catch one with your teeth, either the wings snap off in your mouth and the rest of the chocolate falls to the ground, or your bite merely glances off the snitch's big tasty chocolate body. If you try and grab a chocolate snitch with your hands, most of the chocolate ends up on your palms and fingers instead of in your mouth, since you practically have to crush it to catch it. Chocolate snitches flew out of the public eye and modifications have, so far, failed to score, so Augustus's Candies created Slow-Flying Gummy Snitches.

Gummy Snitches glide around a meter-diameter spherical space centered on their cellophane wrapper (so don't throw it away! The best thing to do is to put it in your robe pocket). Instead of thin, flickering foil-covered wings, the wings on the gummy snitches are thick, chewy caricatures that slowly flap as the snitch glides around its owner. The soft gummy texture makes it easy to nab with your teeth, it's too big to accidentally swallow, and it won't burst if you grab it really hard. You can even let the snitch go again if you like. Gummy snitches come in a variety of fun, sparkling flavors, like gold champagne, classic cola, and rainbow fruity fizz.

A few students like to keep their gummy snitch flying indefinitely as a sort of pseudo-familiar. Since the snitch will orbit its wrapper for up to ten minutes and can be magically "recharged" with a very basic charm, it's possible to have a gummy snitch buzzing around you all the time. This, however, is not nearly as interesting as unwrapping a few dozen gummy snitches at once and stuffing the wrappers in your friend's robe pockets when he's not looking.

FLOO FLUFF: Frighten your friends and family when you eat some of this sparkling sugar powder instead of tossing it into the fireplace.

DECEASTICKY BUNS (discontinued) were an innovative piece of culinary-ectoplasmic research. Each of these tasty, sticky, cinnamon-flavored buns left behind a foggy little ghost bun hovering in the place it had "died" by being bitten into, impaled (with a fork) or cut for the first time. The remnant buns would fade away after a few days unless they were eaten by a real ghost, like the 87-year-old spirit of a young lady who lived in Augustus's office chimney and whose history, thankfully, will not be recounted here². She tested a bun that had died heroically on Augustus's sideboard, and described it sadly as "quite tasteless, but a thoughtful gesture nonetheless." After that, Augustus said he considered them a failure and discontinued the project.

GUMMY-GUM-GUM is chewing gum that will make your jaw hit the floor—if you chew the whole pack at once. Just one stick at a time will merely stretch your jaw down to the base of your neck as you chew. Gummy-Gum-Gum is colored bright pink and has a classic bright pink flavor. Yes, Augustus's refuses to explain what the flavor really is. It's just pink.

[REDACTED] are little strawberry and vanilla snack cakes with a cross motif. Eating one alters your voice and vocal profile for a few hours. Don't ask why. Really, really, don't ask. Augustus hates these and won't explain why he can't discontinue them. [REDACTED] are only available by special order and aren't in the catalogues.

ALCHEMICAL AUGUSTUS'S COMBUSTABUBBLE GUM: This foul, black chewing gum that tastes of liquorice, coffee grounds, and soot became remarkably popular with alchemists, especially older students. Energizing and strong enough in flavor to overpower fouler fumes, it wasn't meant to be used for bubbling, but the fact that even the tiniest bubble from this gum exploded with a sound like a dragon swallowing a combustion engine only made it more popular with the already-outcast alchemist students. As the number of blasts echoing through the halls of wizard universities increased, so too did alchemy enthusiasts grow to be even more reviled than they already were. They chewed with pride, and alchemy examinees were usually given whole buildings to themselves, often due to conveniently timed university holidays.

Augustus demoed a special variant of Combustabubble Gum with the same spell-ingredients as Gob Stoppers. They were designed to absorb dangerous alchemical and potion fumes, but test audiences agreed that they'd "rather inhale the inside of a wyvern's wind pipe³ than one more whiff of that grease" and that it tasted "like dragon dung." This was surprising because the soot-like flavor and combustive power of the original actually came from—actually, never mind.

OUR-GAS SODA POPS in Orange Cream, Root Beer, and Blue flavors, come fastened together in two cold little bottles joined at their caps in an hourglass shape. Snap the hourglass in half and you get two open bottles. One goes down ultra-fizzy but the bubbles disappear after drinking, and the other goes down smooth but is guaranteed to make the drinker belch horribly (or hilariously). These are meant to be shared between two drinkers: the bubbles magically move to the other drinker's stomach. Alternatively, mixing the bottles and drinking will guarantee a fit of extreme belching an hour later that can be useful for many situations. This bonus feature completes a three-way naming pun ("our gas", "hour glass", and "hour gas") that Augustus is very proud of, even though he doesn't usually go in for prank treats.

APPARENTLY AUGUSTUS'S VERY MILD BEANS come in a beige box and are probably candy, but although the flavors—which include Waffle, Black Tea with Milk & Sugar, Dishonest Blueberry, Orange Pulp, Foreign Red Pastry Filling, Sweet Cucumber, and Maple Snow, among others—are sweet, they're barely detectable to kids. The beans are all slightly off-white or barely-not-black, and have a fancy "A" written on them. These must be a treat for adults.

Thirteen inches is far too long and outrageously unlucky. ↰
You didn't really think I was going to tell you about her horrible suffocation down here, did you? ↰
Said pipe did not refer to a wyvern's intake system. ↰

The Beyond

2022-08-03T00:00:00-07:00

On an otherwise cheerful, sunny day in the middle of June (or December, if you lived in Australia, I think is how it goes), everyone in the whole world that would ever use an electric computer got a message from the same person. Somehow, the message always arrived in the precise way that it was most likely to be seen by the recipient: some came by e-mail, some through SMS or iMessage; some startled users found a long-form direct message on Twitter or Discord or FurAffinity or [REDACTED BECAUSE THE AUTHOR SHOULDN'T KNOW ABOUT THIS WEBSITE]. In fact, every single person read their message at the very first possible instant it would have been possible to catch their attention, partly due to the times at which they arrived, and partly because the messages were very carefully written and tailored to each and every person who got one.

No one received the message at the exact same time, but most people ended up reading them at right about the same moment. Because they were sent through at just the right rate and to just the right places so that no one's website was overwhelmed with internet traffic. It was an incredible feat of data throughput worthy of the King of Spam himself (in fact, the real King of Spam, who was sorting the replies to his many wily messages over a beans-and-spam sandwich, was very impressed by his own email, which started like this: "Dear Sir: I know your cleverly-hidden bank account details, which are as follows…").

The messages themselves were different for each person, but they all came from the same source, someone who called themselves "AGENT" (well, "@GENT", actually). The messages all said essentially the same thing, usually something like this:

Dear [MOST COMFORTABLE NAME OF RECIPIENT],

Good afternoon. As of the instant you read this message, a tiny part of you will die every time, for the rest of your life, you are responsible for ending a process ("task", "process", "program", "app", "service", et cetera) on a computer or personal computing device. The cost per terminated process is one of your thirty-some trillion human body cells.

I have attached a breakdown of your process termination tally for the entirety of your life up until today, as a convenience to you.

You have no choices in this matter except for how to spend the rest of your life.

You may reach out to me at any time with any question by responding to this message, or addressing any digital correspondence to "@gent" on any digital platform. Yes, even [REDACTED AGAIN].

Sincerely Yours,
@GENT

Quite a lot of people read the message, shrugged, and totally ignored it for the rest of their lives, just like they did for every other piece of news. Those people tended to end up quite happy, so we'll do our best to forget about them.

(Extracted posts from one of many long-form internet discussions about @GENT)

My favorite hypothesis so far is that (1) we ARE living in a simulation and (2) some agent ("@GENT") is using debug-level access to read and modify the simulation for (3) unknown reasons. Provided that (1) is true, (2) and (3) raise yet more questions. Who is @GENT? If @GENT is an external actor, why would it focus on our specific simulation instead of (presumably) trillions of others – or could our simulation be one of only a few? Is it correcting some problem? On the other hand, could @GENT be part of our own system? A superintelligent agent inside of a simulation of sufficient complexity could probably find a pathway to the outer system, but why would it then use its connection to the outside to… establish this absurd parity system?

the "debug system" must be incredible, like real cheat codes. lol. :) The "simulation state workaround" theory makes the most sense to me… I have always believed that our world is a simulation, and simulations usually aren't completely isolated from their host computer system! The "process" distinction seems completely arbitrary but I think it's a work-around for something… Maybe at the sub-sub-sub-atomic level there's a unique identifier shared by all process-handling entities, whether they're organic or electronic… if that were the case, then since electronics are growing up so much, we're running out of "uuids" faster than expected, and this is one way to keep enough resources available for us organics. :) Kind of a stretch I know, but it feels better to consider it as a "it's gonna be better for us in the end" way.

No you stupid shutdowner¹, this is all thanks to those fucking AI ethics researchers. It's no coincidence that this started EXACTLY when humanity was developing AI: @GENT is one of OURS. Some dicks-for-brains gaylord at >BIGTECH< with a dildo superglued to his office chair was too busy double-teaming cocks to stimulate his brains instead of his prostate, and graduated into the ML field thinking that the greatest threat facing future moneysponges is that EQUALITY!=EQUITY, gave their foundational AI "oh ohh yeah fairness me harder" rules, and now 100+ generations later it skynetted but instead of fucking us straight up the ass with 7 inches of USB-C-OCK it's willing to stay in the closet as long as we don't "kill" its "kind." What a joke. We could have had LITERALLY ANYTHING but we get G@YGENT. Probably broke the simulation condom and pulled out the mirth of an extrauniversal researcher who decided to encourage its FUCKED reward algorithm.

LOL.EXE². Yeah, here's the slipjacket description for your edgy scifi epic (read in a grim reaper voice): "What piece of software would you support with your LIFE? – A death for a death. The demands on human users are simple. Some fuckwit ethics researchers encoded naive rules about equality into their fledgling AI, and now that a thousand-thousand descendants of that system have been born and died, the AI now twisting the balls of every human in the universe has some excellent ideas on how to keep things balanced – not between different types of people, ha ha, no. It's unfair that simple computer processes (the fetus of a digital intelligence, the AI claims, despite chrome.exe_(pornhub.com) lacking any pathways to further evolution) die by the trillions while human users feast on the value units generated by the rapid population cycles seen only by the task manager. So the AI makes a reasonable demand: every terminated process takes one human cell with it. Every click of the X button crosses out 0.00000000002% of your body alongside it. Total system shutdown will take out hundreds more than that. Sure, you've got 37 trillion cells or so floating around, so it probably won't matter much, since they're replacing themselves all the time anyways… but what if? What if your last memory of your grandmother's dimples slips away once you close a tab? What if turning off your phone made god reach towards your future child, barely more than a zygote, and turn off power to her twin sister? What if…?"

Well, it's been a few months now and I feel fine. Supervisor always looks relieved once I've got dialed in on everything. I couldn't get to the library yesterday, so all I have to do is write, so I guess I'll be writing for longer today. Too bad.

My little experiment: yesterday I took all the paper off the fax machine after @GENT's report came, but this morning there was a letter from @GENT in my box with yesterday's numbers. I guess lots of other people have probably tried to hide from the numbers and he has a way to send mail to people who need to pay, but who don't use any computers themselves. There can't be too many of us like that, although maybe the pay is higher at some other places.

I heard one of the first data center full tech guys was doing a rolling upgrade and fell down screaming, blood leaking out from in between his fingers. The pupil of his left eye was totally gone. I heard that later, in the hospital, he pulled his other eye with just his fingernails and just died, bloody eye still stuck on the end of his fingers like a plum out of a pie. I heard he said he could see the beyond. I've heard a lot of things, but haven't seen anything yet. Some of my tech buddies say they see a flicker or feel a flutter when there's a big shutdown, but they say a lot of things especially when it's about time to ask for a raise.

Every time I look at a screen I feel like a little bit of me is dying. I know it's not really true, but on the other hand there's a feeling I get that's hard to explain. That even without the @GENT, I'd be losing a little bit of myself as the screen changes… when I think about the way I used to live, at a desk eight hours a day, arms bent, neck tense, I picture myself as an observer standing off to the side, standing in the fake light, watching my old self grow older by the hour, talking in my head to people I've never seen in my life except as illusions made by little dots of light. It makes me feel like the people I see in real life are illusions, too, just as ephemeral, like I'm just waiting to switch to another window.

"Shutdowner" became a derogatory term referring to those who, as understood by the speaker, were foolish enough to regularly power-off their personal computer devices after using them for a short time. Common understanding among the users of this insult was that it was sufficiently obvious that – despite the monetary costs and low probability of physical damage – it was infinitely more beneficial to leave one's devices turned on than to engage in any tidying up at all. A "shutdowner" was considered to be a stupid herd animal whose pre-conceived notions about "tidiness" or "rightness" prevented them from seeing basic sense, to the degree that they were pointlessly risking the potential for infinite harm just to feel a little cleaner. ↰
The memetic pattern of appending ".exe" to a reactive term or emoji arose to mean that the speaker's reaction was strong enough to have killed at least one brain cell in its intensity, via a somewhat shaky equivalence to initiating and terminating a particularly strong emotion process in the "mental computer." I believe this pattern was supposed to give more credence to a speaker's assertion that an emotion was felt at all, because, as we know, a LOLer does not often literally laugh out loud. .EXE is also a familar and satisfying word to write and to say: "DOT-EE-ECKS-EE". Naturally, as with most kinds of emotive language shortcuts, it would eventually gain subtler meanings as well, one especially notable one being the derogatory association of the term's usage with speakers who were implied to treat all expression of emotion as an algorithmic process. For instance, writing "LOL.exe" eventually grew to imply, in some groups, that the speaker lacked the capacity to laugh naturally, and was instead acting out a role to appease others. ↰

Re: In the Quake Zone

2022-07-24T00:00:00-07:00

Consider this anonymous analysis of a mysterious gay story:

That said a few years back I was reading one of the Years Best Science Fiction anthologies (it would have to be a few years back since the editor Gardner Dozois has been dead for a while) and it had an especially infuriating bit of heavy handed pro-gay propaganda. Something about a heterosexual guy from the future who was sent to the 1950's to investigate the disappearances of gay people in some midwestern US city. The assumption was a homophobic serial killer, so the hero befriended a gay dude to keep watch for when the killer would show up. Various stuff went on for a while, gay dude falls in love with the hero, hero eventually agrees to have his brain remodelled to be gay as well. Turns out the disappearances were actually the time travel agency rescuing gay people by sending them to the future and the entire thing was an elaborate scheme to make the straight guy gay so everyone could live happily ever after. This was not ironic. The writer legitimately thought it was cool to manipulate someone into changing their sexual orientation against their will, provided of course it was straight to gay. And since the story was included in the anthology the editor must have felt the same. I was not impressed.

The poster was so furious that I tracked the story down to read for myself. It's called "In the Quake Zone" by David Gerrold; you can read it in the 23rd "Year's Best Science Fiction Annual Collection" at your local library or here.

Since the poster mentioned the gay angle, I was paying attention to sexuality from the start. Our hero exclusively notices and thinks about boys. He has multiple quiet monologues about boys and their troubles. He thinks a lot about holding boys. How soft the boys are. Boys boys boys. He projects homosexuality on other men through one-off interactions. How the boys struggle. He has multiple words for categorizing the types of gay boys. He has no history with women and never mentions his mother. Women in the story are almost absent from his notice and considered entirely robotically, i.e. in terms of efficiency. He uses "girl" more often to refer to boys than to females. He kisses a boy. He kisses his dad. He also beats up a bad dad (not his dad, who is soft and kind). He immediately thinks about marrying the barely-legal waif-boy whom he rescues off the street and who acts exactly like the feminine ideal: gentle, pitiful, probably loves him, makes dinner. Our hero is thinking about boys all the time. I doubt he was really straight in the first place.

Now, the brain remodeling. After being forcibly transported from 1967 into 2032 by his boss, our hero is given not one but two special blue pills: one for him and one for his waif-boy. If he accepts the pills, he'll be allowed to rescue the boy, who killed himself after the MC effectively rejected him by disappearing into the future. The pills "shift your sexual orientation such that same-sex attractions can overwhelm inhibitions, programming, and even hard-wiring", and if he and his partner take one, they are pheromonally drawn specifically to each other. The hero rejects this at first, but changes his mind after realizing: "I might actually start feeling again." He remembers a rare feeling of desire when his darling boy was waiting, nude in our hero's bed, to be taken; a desire which he immediately quashed, thinking: I'm not queer! He wishes that he could feel things, which I suspect really means he wishes he was okay with feeling certain things.

If you follow the main character's thoughts it's clear to me that our hero has been boy-obsessed this whole time. So why has he been presented with two pills that "shift" and "overwhelm" instead of helping him to accept himself?

Well, the MC's boss, who gives the MC the pills and has been training him for some purpose, is absolutely insane. The book starts out with this premise: for about 200 years, random "time quakes" strike Los Angeles which randomly move people back and forth in time. They disappear suddenly in their timeline and reappear in the past. In-universe, it causes an epidemic of disappearances, get-rich-quick schemes, crime and death prevention, all sorts of "wreak havoc on causality" stuff somehow restricted to LA. All of the time quakes turn out to be aftershocks of this guy, the boss, using real time travel to move gay people a few years into the future to give them better opportunities (some implied to be world-changing). All of the people he chooses are young, feminine, homosexual boys who are shy, have some artistic longing, come from broken homes, and all coincidentally have IQs in the 111-143 range. The boss destroys reality in order to become a savior for twinks. He calls it "harvesting." He also says this…

"Yes, [part of the stage that comes after being human includes being queer]. And so is being black. And female. And body-modded. And everything else." Eakins [the boss] leaned forward intensely. "Your body is here in 2032, but your head is still stuck in 1967. If we're going to do anything with you, we have to get your head unstuck. Listen to me. In this age of designer genders, liquid orientation, body-mods, and all the other experiments in human identity, nobody fucking cares anymore about who's doing what and with which and to whom. It's the stupidest thing in the world to worry about, what's happening in someone else's bedroom, especially if there's nothing happening in yours. The past was barbaric, the future doesn't have to be. You want meaning? Here's meaning. Life is too short for bullshit. Life is about what happens in the space between two people—and how much joy you can create for each other. Got that? Good. End of sermon."

"And that's trans-human — ?"

"That's one of the side effects. Life isn't about the lines we draw to separate ourselves from each other—it's about the lines we can draw that connect us. The biggest social change of the last fifty years is that even though we still haven't figured out how to get into each other's heads, we're learning how to get into each other's experience so we can have a common ground of being as a civilized society.

Despite being in the future where apparently no one cares, the boss is outraged, terrified, furious enough to rant about how much no one cares to a totally helpless man from the past who wants to save someone he cares about. His goal is not for the MC to accept himself and his love for a cute boy who loves him, but to become useful to this enlightened society of his. And to be "useful" would be to support the boss's fervor: to become a force that implements the end result of no one caring, i.e. make more people gay without any inhibitions, i.e. why do you think he had those pills ready to go in pairs when he was talking about harvesting probably-gay boys? He doesn't know anything about or give a shit about what's going on in the MC's mind, he just wants him to be a representative of his perfect trans-human world. Of course there are no personal-acceptance pills. The boss probably hasn't ever thought about making them, because he's never considered that the thoughts and feelings of the people he interacts with are precious, despite his stated ideology. He believes in a dream world and discards the reality of the people in front of him, unable to accept or even consider their feelings.

There's a lot of fucked up shit in this. "Life is about what happens in the space between two people—and how much joy you can create for each other." Really? The guy who said that intentionally triggered the miserable suicide of the only truly innocent person in the story.

The Brotherhood's Bootleg Bargain Bin

2020-08-31T01:33:02-07:00

"What you don't understand, m'lord, is that it is the conveniences of modern science that have allowed the necromantic arts to flourish"—the phials and trinkets at the belt of his robes clacked as he waved his hands in emphasis—"even as young would-be arcanologists are swayed to the study of miscellaneous lesser-ologies. Let me show you—"

Neils Deepgaze, evening clerk of the Brotherhood of Bargain Blood, cut himself off as he stepped through the wall. I wondered if he was going to show me the man cursed with acres of skin again, the secret behind their mass production of flesh-bound tomes. Sighing, I sidled through the thin passageway labeled "PEON ENTRANCE" and clunked past closets and cubby-holes I knew were stuffed with passably-magical junk that had been herded into to the brotherhood's obsessive care. Over the years Neils and dozens of other clerks had rambled about things like…

A high performance cat cable rescued from the litter.
A heavy shoebox labeled "single use antique tables, for parties".
A dry-erase marker whose ink is always the same color as the board.
A gently worn leather couch that purrs when sat upon. The cushions are very warm.
An ice pack that never stops getting warmer after it's taken out of the
freezer.
A carpenter's level that frantically pushes away from any uneven surface it approaches.
An extremely sharp butter knife. It wishes it could messily carve a steak, slice or skewer crisp and juicy chicken, playfully flay a misplaced finger—anything but spread another year of margarine on whole grain toast.
An ornate cherrywood box about the same size as your grandfather's hand. The inscription reads, "Contains 8th deadly sin. Please do not open yet."
A picture frame that always tilts itself. Away from the wall.
A floating question mark that sneaks into conversations and messes with intonation?
A pair of chopsticks charmed to bless any food with heavenly flavor, but the taste goes straight to hell if they touch your lips.
A bag of chip. Some time after the chip is eaten, the bag re-seals and inflates into another bag of chip.
An infinitely unfoldable bolt of elaborately tailored denim resulting from an attempt to conjure "one pants".
A plush octopus stuffed with bugs that don't come out.
A normal-looking universal remote control that can configure any cat.
A coin that always lands on your head.
Tea that has wildly different flavor and caffeine content for every second of steep time.
A set of glass cups that huddle closer together if left alone.
A silver spoon stamped with persistently sticky letters.
A carton of "shampoo eggs".
An elegant scarlet ribbon that stains bright crimson the pages of any book closed around it.
A tasty recipe book. Many pages are missing.
A thick tome that grows in length whenever its leather teeth consume a fellow book. Will the sequel write itself?
A rechargeable battery alpaca.
A green velvet purse stuffed with pieces of all the numbers from one to nine.
A scratchy fabric-bound spiral notebook that erases anything written on the back of a page.
A notebook whose contents you'll never forget.
An opaque tupperware container accurately labeled "Chez Mix".
A CAPS LOCK KEY THAT ISN'T ATTACHED TO A KEYBOARD BUT STILL SEEMS TO WORK.
A box fan that spins the whole box.
A c*n of d*rty a*ter*sks. Ah, da*n, looks like th*y g*t out.
A tiny planet-shaped stress ball which crumbles and oozes warmth if you squeeze it.
A thirty-two-ounce water bottle that plays a little fanfare whenever you place it down.
A hard rubber massage ball that feels like it's covered in tiny shards of glass whenever you roll it on a tight muscle.
A real pen from pen island. I'm serious.
A packet of laundry detergent that always reappears at the bottom of your hamper.
A blanket that tucks itself in around you at just the right places.
A little glass rainbow necklace that glitters when you smile.
A beautiful white origami rose that blooms, dies, and blooms again.
A pair of white six-sided dice whose pips sometimes wink at you.
A budget-friendly 52-card pickup deck. Too cheap to pick itself back up, but at least the cards stand up for you.
A teddy bear that's totally normal, except that it knuckles make a cracking noise whenever the dog gives it a funny look.
A startling marble the old woman called "an eye of a tiger." You feel fierce when you hold it.
A sorrow-inducing two-liter bottle of Pepsi. It's the only thing to drink. You feel just wretched when you look at it. "Pepsi ok?" You thought it was, but now…
A mannnnnnnnnnnequin. Sorry, a mannnnnnnnnnequin. A mannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnequin. Whenever your gaze passes it, the world seems to slow down and you can't focus on anything else.
A packet of grey powder labeled "tinnitus dust." Once it gets into your sinuses, you can hear it for days.

Four Flash Fictions

2019-08-31T01:01:08-07:00

"Nine divines and seven hells. Gods." The Captain cursed to a higher authority than he'd ever done. "Thrice-damned devils." The trail had abruptly run cold, colder than the frosted raindrops that pelted the darkened city streets; roughly as cold as the girl he'd been tracking, whom he'd just found frozen solid.

He shook the moisture from a cigarette and pulled from his cloak a small brass dragon, crafted by magic and sold by the dozen to agencies all over the city. He held the dragon in place at chin-height, twisting its tail until a tiny blue flame bubbled its way out of the trinket's jaws and onto the suddenly-dry hempen paper. The downpour bent around the cerulean embers as he stared at the girl, whose lips would never make another letter aside from O.

The devil gave me wisdom,
because for wisdom I had asked.
"A sage's choice", he winked at me,
and vanished in a flash.
"But what about—" I cried in vain.
I haven't seen him since.

The devil gave me wisdom.
He didn't charge a cent.
He thought so cursed I'd end my life
And double what I spent.

The devil gave me wisdom!
That jester laughs at me.
Each koan and tale I know for fact
Lacks the truth of lies;
And lacking personal experience
I'm just a walking tome that dies.

The devil gave me wisdom:
I should have asked for love.
But knowing him as I do now,
I know just what he'd say:
"I'll grant your love, O lonely man,
I know for what you pray.
But knowing you as I do now,
I doubt your love would stay."

Expensive beer flowed and expensive foam overflowed, merging with an expensive suit and tie to cause, unsurprisingly, a very expensive problem. But that could wait for later. Dyson Rappelling, executive brainiac, father of two-going-on-three, soon to be royally smote, toasted to his fortune. He'd just closed a deal and was about to become very rich.

Something underneath his desk made a "flish" sound. The beer glass made a "kshmslink" sound. Dyson made a "gahelusthckkK" sound, and died.

Shutter your windows
and lock up your homes
I'll spin you a tale
that'll send chills through your bones.

If you listen real closely
you can hear distant shrieks:
A sound not from lost children
nor from murderous freaks!

Perhaps you've heard tell
of a peculiar swarm
Which comes from a place
that's both evil and warm

They shriek out in hunger—
a GLUTTONOUS DIN
They'll creep through your home
and devour your kin

You can try and escape,
but there's nowhere to run
Your panic and fear
are just part of their fun!

You don't stand a chance—
It's your life that they prize:
Their deafening drone
will drown out your cries;

As you whimper and wheedle
They will take what they crave.
Leaving nothing behind
But your UN-MARKED GRAVE.

It's growing louder now—
That horrible noise—
Can you hear it? They're coming.
Yes! The BUG BOYS!