Lynthecompleteidiot

Like… how does the magic determine where technology begins? I mean, a gun is just a little house for tiny explosions to live… what part of that process is interrupted by magic? Does gunpowder simply not combust in Magictopia?

“What seems to be the matter?” asked the Elf, in that same insufferably airy tone that would have made it a fortune doing voiceovers for shampoo commercials.

Khalil sighed miserably. “Phone’s dead,” he said, scowling at the shimmering city. “Figures. Of course it lets me take a thousand blurry cat pictures and then konks out on me the moment I find something worth photographing.”

The Elf laughed. Khalil suspected it was meant to be a scornful laugh, but his companion had the emotional inflection of an automated voice messaging system, and it lacked punch.

“Foolish human,” said the Elf. “Your ‘phone’ will not work here. No technology functions past the borders of Faerie.”

If Khalil let his eyes unfocus and used his imagination, the expression it wore could almost pass for smugness. “Now hang on,” he said. “That’s a fucking lie. No way is that true.”

“Foolish human, I cannot tell a l—”

“Oh, shut up. You say no technology works here, but you’re clearly wearing some kind of ritzy elf sword. Are you gonna try to tell me that they grow on trees here? Obviously you’ve got smelting and forges and metallurgy. You’re wearing woven fabric, and you stole a bunch of medicine from that pharmacy in Detroit. We rode my bike over that troll bridge and it didn’t stop working.”

“That’s different,” protested the Elf, a shallow groove between it’s eyebrows betraying profound distress. “That’s not technology.”

“It is, though! ‘Technology’ doesn’t just mean guns and electron—”

There was a hand clamped tight over his mouth, smothering him before he had even registered movement. “Hold your tongue before I cut it out of your head,” hissed the Elf in his ear. “You don’t know what you’re messing with.”

It released him, and Khalil stumbled back, staring wildly. It had moved terrifyingly quickly. No doubt it could make good on its threat if it cared to—six years of boxing and he still had no hope of defending himself against something that could move like that.

“What magic doesn’t know can’t hurt it,” said the Elf in a low and strangely unsteady voice, sounding for the first time like a living being. “Be careful what ideas you give it. Some things seem right, and that’s what matters.”

The Elf must have grabbed him hard, Khalil realized, tasting the tang of blood where his lip had been torn open on his teeth. He swallowed, and stared at the Elf in horror. “Are you telling me,” he said slowly, “That your entire magical system, the physics of your entire world… is based… on vibes?”

The part of him that was a twenty-seven year-old peace activist recoiled in disgust even as the ten year-old pirate fanatic vibrated with excitement. If I live through this, he thought, I’ll have to tell my mom that all those hours glued to the History Channel weren’t wasted, after all.

Very gently, he tipped a little of the powder down the barrel of the gun. He had no way of knowing the appropriate amount to use and simply guessed; after all, if his suspicions were correct, it might not matter much in this world.

He pried the moldering leather bag out from under the skeleton’s arm and reached inside. A few dozen lead balls clinked together under his fingers, along with a little bundle of greasy cloth. With trembling fingers, he tore off a square of fabric and wrapped it around one of the bullets. Like a swaddled baby, he thought grimly, and pushed it down the barrel until it was nestled snugly over the gunpowder.

Almost ready, he thought. He dropped a pinch of powder into the flashpan on the top of the gun, flicked the frizzen back into position, and rose to his feet.

“Step away from the Fabio impersonator,” he said, kicking the rotten door off its hinges. “Or I will shoot you with my gun.”

The Promachoteuthis sulcus, a recently discovered species.

THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE PHOTOSHOP

this is what we’re doing now, huh? custom ordered anxiety? you know what fine. fine. let’s talk zebras.

 first of all i don’t know why you wouldn’t be anxious about zebras. a zebra will happily kill you. they will bite off your hand and fucking laugh. they are filled to bursting with aggression & spite. i know they usually get a pass bc ‘haha stripey horse so goofy ’ but. this is a species that regularly survives harsh conditions while being hunted by apex predators so. they’ve got a dark side. 

you know how dogs are domesticated and wolves aren’t? horses are domesticated. zebras are not. i don’t think it’s biologically or ethically possible to domesticate a zebra in any meaningful way. we’ve tried it, it doesn’t fucking work. this is because zebras are angry violent fucks with horrifyingly strong legs. they will happily break a human jawbone with one single graceful kick. they occasionally murder lions in this manner. yes i know it is provoked and self-defensive. yes, i know they don’t actually eat the lions they kill. no, this does not in any way make me more comfortable with the concept of a stupid fucking striped horse that occasionally kills lions. they also sometimes kick each other to death but anyone who knows anything about zebras will finds utterly unsurprising. 

in general, zebras have terrific senses of sight, hearing, smell and taste, which supports my budding theory they can smell fear. also they have night vision. that’s just a fun fact, there’s no reason that should induce anxiety. unless you’re thinking of facing off w/ a zebra at night. which i don’t recommend. bc, you know, angry murder horses.  

also zebras don’t have black stripes. the’re black with white stripes. that’s not creepy, it just pisses me off. two more things: 

1. i won’t be discussing this in detail but i’ve been developing a theory that zebras fill the same evolutionary niche that clowns & mimes fill in the hominid kingdom. tell me that’s not fucking face paint:

for safety reasons i will not expound on this. 

2. there’s a theory zebra stripes use motion dazzle to confuse predators. i get so overwhelmed picturing it. imagine being a predator, crouched on the savanna floor, your prey grazing at the watering hole. all is peaceful, all is calm. you are the most dangerous creature present. so you assume. when all of a sudden our are thrust into a dizzying monochrome swirl of spinning stripes, your heightened senses obscured by a rising cloud of dust and the thundering of angry hooves! you jerk around in panic, but are surrounded! surrounded by the trembling blur!

all this to say, i’m working on a short fic portraying what it might be like to be stampeded by mimes.  

You see if a carnivore sees you strollin around, you could be very screwed. Like don’t get me wrong, they can and will very much rip you to shreds. But they could be full. If they’re full, they’re not gonna waste their energy on some scrawny human with no nutritional value. They know they’re dangerous, they don’t get hunted. Unless they’ve got cubs or you’re really intruding, they’ll probably at most just slink away.

Herbivores though? Those fuckers are on red alert CONSTANTLY. If it hurts, or could hurt, it needs to go. You stroll past a hippo? Fuckin rip mate see you in the afterlife. Hell, even crocodiles won’t fuck with that.

Giraffes and Zebras? Those legs may look scrawny but they carry those bitches away from fuckin cheetahs. You get kicked with that and you’re toast even without taking into account the hoof.

I mean fuck, even Elephants. Most people think of them as intelligent and humanize them. They’re so smart right? This one went back to humans for help! They must be good right? Wrong. You get too close and they’ll trample your ass 6 feet into the ground. Especially if they’ve had problems with humans before.

Sans:

In 1912 British Antarctic explorers discovered that penguins engage in gay sex, and also “promiscuity, infidelity, and even prostitution.” A zoologist wrote a manuscript but it was marked “not for publication.” A British natural history museum hid it away for a century before it was rediscovered.