The Wizard's Shotgun

Really nothing else to say. I've been screwing around, playing video games and having headaches instead of actually writing the sort of stuff I was supposed to be writing, so you get this silly comic instead of updates. Enjoy!

Complete and Utter Nonsense.

Is what MS Paint Adventures are. And yet this site has managed to devour something like 10 hours of mine in the past two days. Yeah, I'll grant you that I've got grand fuck-all to do with myself these last few days but cmon. For anything to have occupied anybody's time for that long, in two sittings, is something that strikes a very bizarre chord in somebody's mind.

Lemme give a quick example from Homestuck, one of three (four?) adventures on the site.

Welcome to the party, motherfuckers!

That image is of one Rose Lalonde who is barbecuing some variety of harlequin Imps with her occult knitting needles that she'd alchemised using Build Grist she'd gotten from slaying an Ogre by stabbing it in the eyes and riding it down the waterfall on the side of the house that appeared when she was transported from her world to a game world in order to save her from a predestined apocalypse that spans hundreds of thousands of years and at least three time paradoxes so far.

Yeah, it's a trippy ride. But it makes a lot of things really interesting. You can smell all of the self-references, references to gaming media (text adventures, obviously, but also mystery novels, big screen movies, roleplaying games, computer games, you name it, it's somwhere in there), it breaks the fourth wall multiple times, and it's basically utterbrual radness. It's rudenasty. It's other words that I'm stealing from the adventure itself because you probably haven't read it and even if you did, it's more of a clever homage than actual theft (see how I covered my bases there?) and it's awesome.

It's exactly the sort of bizarre, self-indulgent, free-wheeling, make it up as you go along and tie it in anyways silly-serious fiction that attracts young gamers (like yours truly, of course) to old-school gaming. There's nothing like strapping on your +2 Shield, consulting your talking psychic sword, and going into a ten thousand year old crashed spaceship filled with frogmen with tentacle faces and martian teleporting panther things to plunder the advanced technology for a fraction of its worth (if anybody knew how to use it) and selling it to some toothless old man for a fistful of silver because he's got a pointy hat and a great big shining stick.

When I get this Donjon nonsense rolling next month, it's going down. We've already got a half-started game with a Zombie Meatmancer and a Werewolf Mercenary planning on breaking into a town with the Meatmancer's bile magic to scour a hole in the walls and then wear the population's skins for some bizarre and arcane reason. I see nowhere for this campaign to go but straight sideways, because we're already on the rollercoaster of btichin' awesomesauce and the ride's just startin'.

Lovin' it, baby. Lovin' it.

Those silly Britons

This is not related to anything. Just so you know.

Did you know that the British still have a system where they call each other Earls and Barons and stuff?

I only notice because I was looking on Wikipedia about typography, then next thing I know, I'm looking at some typographer, saw that he got "Honor Moderations" (however that fits grammatically; it's a term I know nothing about) and then realizing that Oxford is run by the "Right Honorable Lord Patten of Barnes" who apparently is a politician of some sort. He also was Governor of Hong Kong and a Chancellor like, three different times.

I gotta move to Britain. Move over "Dean", I want to be a Lord of Barnes, or however that works. So weird! Everything still sounds so imperial and pompous even after they don't own anything, or get to declare any manifestoes or anything impressive. They don't even have the biggest Navy in the world any more. How sad is that?

No frilly ruffs, no spice trades, no conquerors or explorers or anything for the Queen or whatever in the world. It's funny to think now, but the British used to be like, feared. Now they're kind of humoured (see what I did there) because apparently they don't like our jokes about the Revolution. We only use it because we can't think of anything else you've done, guys. No offense or anything.

The best part about this picture is its irrefutable accuracy.