Has anyone done a tournament style story where they all (or many of them) meet and battle?

~SE++

There is sort of an element of that in The Cruel Finale, but other than that, not that I can think of.

Not as of yet no, although the way the War of the Wheel is going that might happen for quite a few characters...

Again I feel like Planechaser's battle tower idea is worth exploring.

The problem is finding a way to get different characters to participate in a tournament. That's... literally Asher's whole character plus some mercenary stuff on the side, but there's not a lot of other characters that seem that prone to tournaments. Maybe Kimberley Talon? Maybe Beryl if given the right incentive? Beryl vs Asher could be pretty incredible because I see that getting way, way out of hand really, really quickly, potentially with tragic consequences. (And god knows we thrive on tragic consequences these days.) Raef and Lukas both miiiight if, again, given the right incentive. We don't know a lot about Jade but she might. I feel like Rishima might if she felt it would benefit her egotism. I bet Denner'd do it for the favor of a beautiful lady and get knocked out twenty seconds into the first round.

Yeah, he's a wannabe lover, not a wannabe fighter...

I have to admit, I really like the idea now of an Asher/Beryl throwdown. and post-fight makeouts??

So should I add an Epic Tournament template to the random generator? You know you guys can request stuff like that and I'll do it as best I can, right? I'd love to get suggestions on what more I could add.

Hmm. Maybe something about a misunderstanding being blown way out of proportion?

Or [person] falls madly in love with [other person], drawing the jealousy and ire of [another person].

The first might be a little tricky to structure syntactically...

The second is easy as pie, though. Just have to decide on the frequency of appearance. In fact, you've almost got the syntax down perfectly:

[planeswalker] falls madly in love with [planeswalker], drawing the jealousy and ire of [planeswalker].

It seems to automatically rule out previously chosen options, interestingly, so you can assign the same pool as many times as you need

I might be able to do the first with something like:

[Planeswalker,#first] gets into a misunderstanding with [planeswalker,#second], and [#first,as gender] [interaction]* [#second,as gender].

*the stuff like "gets into a conflict with" or "falls madly in love with" or stuff like that, that pool of materials.

Also, I just got home from a walk and found my family watching O Brother Where Art Thou, and it reminded me that my conception of the Jakkard demons came from that movie... but I also caught the bit with Babyface Nelson and it reminded me of another of our characters who experiences ups and downs. The extreme ups are obviously not as extreme as George Nelson's but still. I wonder how Fisco feels about cows...

That's a great movie. Occasionally, I will admit to a friend of mine from college that I thought he was a toad, at which point he'll warn me not to seek the treasure.

I really do make too many references...

Okay, I'm sure everyone's sick to death of my little workplace foibles, but I do have to share this one...

Recently, my department got converted into a "guild" as part of our new organizational philosophy. (Apparently, this is a new big thing in the tech world.)

So, at our leads group meeting, we decided we needed a tabard and a Latin motto for our new guild.

After a brief discussion, we all settled on "we're so [bleep]ed" as our motto.

One of the people on my team has a Classics background, so I asked her if she would translate "we're so [bleep]ed" into Latin for me. She accepted this task with a very serious look.

Fifteen minutes later, she comes down to my desk and says to me: "So, it's a little too idiomatic to translate literally. Do you want me to translate it as 'we're in a very difficult spot,' or more as 'we're being forced to have sex against our will?'"

The first one, I said.

I made a note to mention "seeks appropriate clarification when tasks are unclear" on her annual review.



Please don't stop. I'll be so lonely.



You know, for me, one of the funny things about Beryl has been that I don't have a clear picture of her sexuality. She has essentially been forced into a celibate life by virtue of spending her entire adolescence under house arrest and her entire adult life up until now as a social outcast. It's an aspect of her character which feels undefined to me so far.

That story's hilarious.
Don't worry, I won't.
You could always write a story wherein Beryl meets the most eligible bachelors and bachelorettes in the multiverse and see what she does in the situation. Or, of course, we could introduce her to the Dual-Walkers and see which one she prefers...

Run, Beryl! Run!

(I feel like I'm saying that a lot recently...)

That would actually be a very interesting run-in. I wonder how they would try to handle her.

I was about to make a joke about them "handling" her and then I remembered who specifically we're talking about and now I want to sear that wordplay out of my brain. D:

I mean obviously I ship Beryl with a ridiculously wide range of people, though... in part because she probably hasn't really had much experience at all and I feel like giving her a chance to explore things would make for an interesting story (or stories) in its own right. (Also that's why I ship her furiously with Aloise--because I feel like Beryl would be too cautious to make a move but Aloise is all about not being afraid of things and exploring and adventures and makeouts with fire mages fit under all those categories of behavior really well. And we know [as long as Barinellos wasn't serious about giving up on the story] that Aloise isn't exactly shy about expressing her desires, even if we haven't seen her experiencing them that much.)

And that was a great work story. I like your work stories.

My work never has fun stories.... I did recently get a gun drawn on me for playing a video game, but that's not work related. It was kinda funny, in a crap-your-pants kinda way.

~SE++

...Ok you can't just drop that and not tell the full story you realize that yes?

Clear some space around Beryl on the shipping wall.
And strap in. You're in for a bumpy ride coming up....

Sure I can. I can also tell you that I have been sued in a federal court for three quarters of a million dollars. I also broke my spine as a teenager but still manage to walk, most days without a cane, even. Oh, and also been hit in the head by a bullet. All true stories.

~SE++

See, all joking aside, I love hearing all of your 'shipping scenarios, because they provide food for thought. I'm sure that Beryl has a sexual side to her; it's just a mystery to me at present.

Although, I think there's a real, non-zero chance that Beryl's first sexual encounter ends up a little along these lines:



Editor's Note: I love that, when I searched YouTube for "Midnight Oil Beds Are Burning," the sponsored ad at the top of the search results was "BP Safety in America."



I have a good friend whose boss once used the laser sight on his pistol as a laser pointer when his regular laser pointer stopped working during a presentation.

Thankfully, my workplace follies are a little tamer.



Defcon 1. Incoming.

I now really, really want there to be a Season for planeswalkers, complete with their own debutante balls and everything. Curse you non-hereditary nature of the Spark!

@OL: That sounds like an interesting workplace. Actually, it sounds like a horrifically boring workplace that forces its employees to take every advantage of whatever creative outlet they are given. Either way. (How is there no shrup smiley?)

@Squinty: You are a relentless tease.

I work in a university lab, so I'm just excited that I actually got an office recently. We have way to much storage space in the office, so me and the coworker I share it with have turned one of the filing cabinets into a snack drawer. We get a lot of free time while we run our code, so we have become very adept at catching skittles in our mouths.

...I need better work stories.

Heh, so I am. But to be honest, most of the stories are more interesting in concept than in the full tale, because your mind makes up much more interesting tales of silly events. But, let's get a few of them out of the way, and perhaps one day I'll tell more terribly boring stories from my life.

(1) I got hit in the head with a bullet. Okay, so this story is really just a tease, because it was actually kinda boring and a little pathetic for me. I had never fired a handgun before a few months ago, so my buddy brought me to the firing range with his nine millimeter and showed me how it worked. He showed me loading the clip, the safeties, and all the little things about it. It held eight rounds, and then he gave me a paper target and sent it halfway down the firing range. I held the pistol out, unsure of how it would feel, and actually quite sure I would soil myself since it's loud and a little intimidating since I had never fired one before. I squeeze the trigger, the shot fires, and I hit the red zone on the target with my first shot. I was elated. But now that I knew how the recoil would feel, it tainted my next shot severely, because I tried to anticipate it, and when the gun fired my arms moved up enough that when the shell ejected, it flew out and struck me across the forehead. Thus, I was only hit by the shell. See? Boring.

Moral of the story: Squinty is a poor shot.

(2) I had a gun pulled on me while playing a video game. So, I'm a big fan of the game Ingress on Android. If you've never seen anyone play, it's what they call an augmented reality game, because you actually have to go out into the world and visit locations to play. It's meant to be social, but there are times when you just hand out and play it yourself. Well, there's level 1 through 8 portals to go visit, and near my house in a parking lot for the Homeowner's Offices, there was a level 7 portal. It's fairly late at night, but there are streetlights and a bench by it, so I drove over, parked and hung out on the bench. The portal had been augmented to be able to be used repeatedly for more goodies, and the cooldown reduced to the point where I didn't have to wait, I could just keep going for about half an hour getting more and more gear in the game. Well, about ten minutes in a white car pulls up and a police officer gets out. He's in uniform, but in his civilian car. He asks me what I'm doing, and I explain I'm playing a game. He than asks for my ID, I slowly stand up and reach for my wallet, and pull it out, no sudden movements. But when I finish and go to take out the ID for him, he get's nervous and pulls his sidearm and points it at my chest and tells me to get out. If you've never had a gun pulled on you, there's that cold feeling you get in your stomach that's not a pleasant thing to ever feel. I slowly back away and head to my car, I look back and the entire way he's holding his pistol on me until I leave.

Moral of the story: Gaming can get violent.

(3) I broke my spine when I was a teenager. I was in my senior year of high school, and it was winter. I was driving to school, and decided to stop at Dunkin Donuts for a cup of coffee and a bagel. It was freezing cold out in Massachusetts, so it seemed like a good idea at the time. On my way back to my car, well, apparently they didn't salt their parking lot, because I slipped on some black ice. Now, in this situation, most people would drop their coffee and bagel and brace for impact. They'd either fall forward and throw their hands out in front of them, or fall backwards and try to roll onto their shoulder (which they shouldn't do, they should fall flat and slap out both arms to spread the impact as wide as possible, but most people don't know that). Well, I chose option C, which was to slide forward and land on one knee, good and hard. It hurt, but I thought nothing of it and went on my way to school, coffee and bagel still in hand.

The next day my back began to hurt, and I wrote it off. It continued to intensify for about a month, and I continued to ignore it. One day in January, I was walking to the dinner table and my left leg stopped working and I fell. I had no idea what to do, and honestly, I was a little bothered that my left leg didn't function. My parents took me to the doctors, who x-rayed my leg, and said it was fine. Well, over the next half year, the pain worsened and I could only use my left leg on a good day. Finally, in the fall, a doctor at Mass general Hospital figured it out, and sent me for yet another MRI. This time, they checked my spine. Yada yada yada, technical crap, the end result was this: When I fell, saving my coffee and bagel, my spine was perfectly straight with the knee that hit the ground. That impact caused my disks in my L4 and L5 region to rupture, which sent all that lovely fluid out into my spine, and cut off my nerves that controlled my left leg. I lost over and inch of mass from the circumference of my leg, but finally they restored most of its functionality, though I still can't feel all of it. They told me to get a wheelchair and walkers, but I wasn't a fan, so I spent years in physical therapy learning how to compensate with my right leg, and now I walk just fine. Well, unless I go long distances, then I need a cane.

Moral of the story: Coffee is good enough to save.

(4) I got sued in a Federal courthouse for $750,000. This is a long one, maybe another time, but hey, after reading those, you see they're kinda boring stories after all. Maybe I won't bother typing this one out, it took over four years of my life to deal with, who wants to have to sit through reading that? Not I.

~SE++

I kind of suspected on the bullet to the head one (I actually assumed that someone had just thrown a cartridge at your head). The other two stories are top notch though (if sad).