Taking the Plunge

Oooh, I like this idea! I'm picturing him being one of the "main villains" you'd face off against in your magical girl form...and throughout your encounters, he becomes more and more intrigued with you. Probably also tries to theatrically flirt with you in the middle of your battles...but can you trust that the Beast of Deceit genuinely means any of it?

Of course, with some sleuthing on his end, he figures out your civilian identity (plus the identities of any allies you may have). But while he could share this with the others (the Beasts plus Dark Enchantress)...he keeps it secret, knowing they'd all hunt you down once they knew who you were.

I mean, I think I was also mind-blown by the fact that people have been talking and writing about aliens for all of recorded history, even before there was any scientific precedent to guess that they could exist.

But that very thing (asking questions without a scientific precedent) was instrumental to proto-scientific thought ever becoming a formalized scientific method. These guys had a baseline for asking questions. So there are these scholars in the 1600's seriously articulating ideas like "So if God created the universe, doesn't that mean it's likely that every planet is inhabited, since it would be created for a purpose?" And "No, no, that doesn't make sense, Jesus would have to come to every planet and die, and that would be messed up." And then "Okay, but what if the people on other planets never sinned?"

And they speculate in great detail about the composition and environment of the other celestial bodies, and it was a real paradigm shift for my mind because of just how little they were working with. They had to debate questions that never occurred to me because I took the foundational knowledge for granted, like "Could the Sun be inhabited?" They thought that maybe if you viewed the Earth from outside, the outer atmosphere would appear bright like the Sun from a distance, so the Sun might be the same "kind" of celestial body as Earth.

I think we often misrepresent the misconceptions of the past too—the geocentric universe wasn't accepted just because of the Bible, it was also because we hadn't cracked chemistry yet and we didn't know how gravity worked, and our models had to explain why everything seemed to be attracted to the center of the Earth.

like, chemistry and biology are fundamentally built from things that aren't directly observable without certain technology that is very difficult to make. We can't directly observe microorganisms using any of our senses. We can't directly observe how chemical elements are different. The guys who first cracked important parts of chemistry did so through stuff like evaporating the solids out of gallons and gallons of human piss.

you have been turned into this cat breed!

All of them would step in to help you in some way, of course.

Dark Cacao would stand between you and the other Cookie...probably wrap a hand around your shoulders and give them a fierce glare, telling them gruffly to leave you be.

Golden Cheese doesn't hesitate to tell the other to stay away from "her greatest treasure!" (maybe even pointing a spear at them) before carrying you away...perhaps even scooping you up and flying far away with you, to make the message clear.

Pure Vanilla focuses on holding you close, asking if you're alright...he'll firmly tell the other to leave you alone, but his main goal is to get you away, to safety...somewhere where you can relax and he can make sure you're okay.

Hollyberry steps between you and the other with her shield, prepared to defend you! Once they back off, she'll take you someplace cheerful, probably treat you to a drink or two to help you feel better after the experience.

Let’s play the biggest game of kick the can on the internet.

I don’t remember what version it was, only that it was a very long time ago. Food healed hearts directly, and- this is the important part- mossy cobblestone could not be crafted or mined anywhere in the overworld save the floors of dungeons.

It also was a brilliant, vibrant green, so much more aggressive than its current gentle texture, but that’s neither here nor there.

I was playing on a survival server I’ve long since forgotten the name of, and I was putting the finishing touches on my lovely brick house. But the floor, no no. I was a picky child; only the finest of flooring would do.

I wanted mossy cobblestone.

Immediately I was at an impasse. I could strip mine and explore caves in the hope of finding one dungeon; but I needed two whole stacks of it for my floor. There was no /locate command at the time, and I knew nobody else well enough to ask for it. And at the time, chunkbase and other seed scanning tools didn’t exist; not that it would have helped, since I didn’t have the world seed.

Perplexed, I logged off and consulted with friends at school the next day.

There, I was advised to try an x-ray texture pack.

So I did.

And it worked a treat! The dungeons were rendered perfectly visible to me, and I easily dug straight down (smart and subtle!) and raked in the precious mossy cobblestone I needed.

At one point, one of the mods asked me in chat if I was x-raying. Having just turned off the pack minutes before the message came through, I cheerfully said no and skipped off to finish my floor.