Andrew Moore's Blog, page 17

Furor and Nobility

The page sent to investigate the dismal clouds hanging over the route returned with his report too late to save his master the trouble of mounting but comfortably in time to avert disaster. "Your Lordship, please stop! The rain is a very flood, and the storm barons smite the wetted earth with their terrible bolts!"
"What of it, if barons have their trifling sport? We who have higher duties are not dissuaded from touring our lands by that." Saying that, Count Fandeghen rode forward. He dismissed his retinue, but no other concession did he make.
The tempest did not prove the page a liar, nor did it dissuade the count. The missiles of the storm barons struck the ground closer and closer, and never did he honor them with his attention till his steed forced the issue, for it shied when a bolt came too close for its animal courage to bear. The rider wrested his horse back to placidity, but he himself was wroth. He dismounted and declared this.
"The fright you caused my beast will have its consequence, vassal!" He stretched his great bow and loosed a shaft upward to the bolt's originating point. The roar which followed was not thunder. Soon the wounded storm baron appeared and gave notice of challenge by raising his furious mace.
The battle ended this way, that Count Fandeghen was too much for any baron of whatever realm. He pinned his foe to the ground and made of him a prisoner. The ransom the count gained was seven talents of silver, for that baron's bolt forked seven times, and a fulgent lance difficult to withstand on the battlefield. If you go to the current count and ask to see it you will be refused, for the grandson of the man who won it gave it as a gift to a knight who did him great service, and that was well done.
Finis

Combining Literature and Animation

If we only print words on every other page, almost nobody will notice. Every third and we can still get away with it.

Looming Phoneme Disaster

There you are, writing about the mysterious artificially created superstructure Ogg Vorbis your hero has just discovered in space, when you decide to check and find out something's already called it. I estimate we'll run out of things to call the stuff we make up somewhere around 2037. The only solution is a total language reboot.

Setting Aesthetics Particulars

If you have masers, is your science fiction necessarily a retro future? Some kind of maserpunk? Do the computers have to be quite large? Or can you just throw those in anything?

Adapting Shannara

Obviously it should already have been a gacha game years ago. Don't ask silly questions. Genre? Who cares?

Addendum

The secret is that I just wanted to roll out "thaumatocracy."

Against Thaumatocracy

Given that being capable of magic is better than being incapable, what are some reasons mages might not be in charge?

- There aren't enough of them
-- It requires innate talent which few have-- It takes too long to learn-- They keep dying-- Numbers are limited by the need for some external resource. For example a mage has to bathe in dragon's blood or make a contract with a manticore
- There are too many of them. Being a mage isn't a big deal, and hiring some is less of one.- Magic isn't that good
- The kinds of people who learn magic are bad at maintaining political power
-- They're too busy with magical studies
-- Magic is linked to certain characteristics such as lack of ambition or gullibility
-- Magic alters mages, for example removing the need for food and replacing it with an insatiable urge to visit places of power-- Magical expenditure requires long periods of isolation or hibernation- The kinds of people who learn magic don't want to maintain political power
-- Magical talent isn't hereditary. Ensuring your family will be passed over for some genius discovered in a village is distasteful.
- The kinds of people who learn magic can't maintain political power
-- The gods who give them power forbid it
-- The terms of their contracts forbid it
-- The dragons who rule the world forbid it, and they do check regularly
-- Magic circulates through the bonds between people, so that the more subordinates one has, the more his magic is divided among them- The rulers are capable of preventing it
-- They aren't mages, but they have magic
--- Divine sanction
--- The approval of the land itself
--- Contracts with manticores--- A store of artifacts
--- Hereditary talents
--- They're the source of magic
-- They're above magic
--- Gods rule directly
--- Dragons/manticores/basilisks etc. rule directly
--- Aliens rule directly (they came to research magic)

There are a few reasons. As for how mages might become an oppressed minority, they can't, cut that out, your allegory stinks.

On Conscientious Governance and Adapting in Response to Circumstances

The provincial capital's most eminent, or those who aspired to that position, had lined up outside the governor's residence earlier than some of them awoke on a typical day. They awaited the new governor.
He came. Striding toward his door, he moved as if unaware anyone was there aside from him, but he began speaking before he passed the first well-wishers in rapid words full of good sense. "Gentlemen, the custom for freshly installed officials is to set out their program for their terms, and I cannot imagine violating it. First is this. The most knowledgeable about local conditions and the most studied in the law will consult for the purpose of creating a code of laws to apply to a group of people which I am told is now over eight percent of the population, higher than the thugs who stand in a field and wait to be killed an looted, another problem our energies must go toward solving. What is that you're wearing?"
The governor had finally stopped, square in front of one young man.
"It's a baseball cap."
"I don't know what that is. Are you one of them? How did you get here?"
"I fell into a canyon and died, then I woke up here."
"My condolences. These people are who I mean, gentlemen. Special skills?"
"Magic-suppressing magic."
"Of course, of course. Stay steady and we'll take care of you." The governor resumed his march to the residence. "Second, the administrators of the magic schools here, a strangely large number it seems to me, are to provide an explanation of why they're always wrong about which talents are good. It saps confidence, gentlemen. Third, I want a justification for the policy of distributing bullies among these schools. Fourth, respecting these multiple reports of amnesia . . ."
Finis

Addendum

For the modern audience uninterested in mischief, they should make a show about two detectives solving crimes in Las Vegas but there's magic (not prestidigitation (also prestidigitation)).

Innovation in Television

Now that season three of Wheel of Time is over, Amazon should announce a new season, but it's just season one again, then two, then three. At no point should Amazon acknowledge they're reruns. It's thematically resonant syndication for the mischief-loving modern audience.