Actually, a useful note in general given population demographics, likely travel, etc., is that basically anyone from the Empire visiting the US is, within epsilon of certainty, older than the country.
Having heard enough stories of Navy shore patrol, Marine MPs, Army MPs, and similarâŚ
âŚyou would be shocked at how many nominally smart people got in trouble during leave doing things that were only slightly worse. And only rarely under the influence of alcohol and/or narcotics (the usual reason was âin the Sandbox for six consecutive months without relief, so long that the wank socks and the porn are solid enough to use as body armorâ).
Since theyâre presumably human⌠I really wouldnât. The richardcognition is strong with these ones.
(Lack of this may be a sign of an engineered species, on the grounds that scientists hate it when their experiment is derai- OOH BOOBIES
âŚyou know some Japanese H-studio is going to see this as a challenge, to create boobies that can sexually arouse any species and not use something like a basilisk hack or suchâŚ
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Iâm pretty sure most Japanese H-studios would take up that challenge, if only as a professional matter. âYes, we can create things that inspire all forms of lust! Itâs what we do here.â
Theyâd definitely consider YGHM/basilisk hacks to be cheating.
So, I happen to have been reading a bunch of one-star recipe reviews recently, which are always interesting. âI didnât want them to be too rich, or to send my child into a sugar comma (sic), so I substituted mashed banana for the egg, polystyrene for the milk, and my grandfatherâs ashes for the sugar. My oven exploded and my child hated them. One star.â
Basically, itâs a really large genre, is what Iâm saying. Summed up by one metacommenter as âI love the concept of baking but hate butter, sugar, oil, flavor, and joyâ.
Well, Vermilion Harvest and their Delicious Delicacies subsidiary have no patience for this at all:
[imagine, at this point, the camera panning over acres of deliciousness while the richest, smoothest voice ever intones in the background.]
Fat Bastardâ˘âs Scrumptious Gourmand Cookies. Made with real butter. Real honey. Real cream. And the real tears of people who hate food.
[a hand reaches into frame. a cookie is eaten.]
Mmmm.
Fat Bastardâ˘. Eat what you want. Die like a man.
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"In all honestly, I should have been dead ten years ago.
"âŚokay, maybe six. But pretty close to ten.
"I had a half-dozen different genetic issues that insured that I was going to die in terrible pain prior to First Contact, and within a few days after the first Imperial medical companies showed up, they asked me if I wanted to volunteer for medical testing. Lots of paperwork, lots of paperwork.
"And I nearly died twice. The third time, it took. But they had finally figured out how to install a cortical stack(1) on me, so my death was only temporary.
"I found a whole lot of employment when I was digital. Code editing, content moderation, wrote a book, wrote several books, started this blog, eventually working with the Japanese government to develop a complete rent-a-thought package for tourists coming there. That job migrated into working with the Takada Body Couture Firm, and itâs why I own one of the original, first-generation Motoko bioshells and Iâm still wearing it today. Mostly on weekends, I admit, but stillâŚ
"Am I grateful that we got found by the Empire? Absolutely. Iâd be dead if they hadnât showed up, and being dead isnât something that I wanted to be even before First Contact.
"There are just times that I donât think they understand that quite a few of us are trying to thread that four sided eye of a needle of not committing suicide, not becoming space elves with rounded ears, not getting conquered or genocided by somebody ambitious with no morality at all, and not sticking our fingers in our ears and yelling very loudly âI canât hear you!!!â
âSome days, the eye of that needle seems so very, very smallâŚâ
(1-Yes, I am that annoying guy that would be yelling at kids to get off his lawn. Mostly because the kids think that thereâs dinosaur bones under the turf.
(I know itâs a vector stack, itâs a shell not a sleeve, and other such things. But, against Fate and Cultural Memes even the Gods do not fight.
(At least not without payment in full, in advance.)
-Things That I Really Should Have Known About, PC+15
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⌠Are we uncritically echoing racist memes that even the original poster retracted now?
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âThe magnificent irony is that, despite it being painfully obvious to the casual observer, the Terran Anti-Xeno League never did figure out that on this point, they and the relevant Shadow Ministries were in full accord.â
- Corala Morvaraquen, âHistories of the Transveilâ
(No-one wants a GFCF.)
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Gluten-free, casein-free diet?
Well, pretty sure no-one wants one of those, either, but -
Geseptian-Fardesile Cultural Federacy
Yâknow, the Cultureâs embarassing fanboys who just donât get it.
Ah. I seem to recall the Empire having its own analog
It occurs to me maybe I should also remind folks that the Empire has a long-standing policy on nation-building, which reads in its entirety as follows:
(The standard-issue local prejudice is that if you could sit down and reason barbarians out of their barbarism over a nice cup of tea, they wouldnât be barbarians in the first place.
They can, however, usually understand âpunitive expeditionâ, on the grounds that âI donât want everything to be on fire againâ is a thought that fits inside even the smallest and least-exercised of brains.)
As a side note, your major concern about fatal self-defense incidents with visiting citizen-shareholders where randoms are concerned isnât so much revenge (everyone involved is dead, after all) or lawsuits (filing lawsuits in that court system?); itâs what diplomatic concessions youâre going to have to give the Ministry of State and Outlands to stop them from making an extraordinarily public point of your incompetence at keeping the peace across the whole darn extranet.
Iâm sure they have something in mind.
Now if anyone survived, on the other hand, then it gets messyâŚ
Weary sigh.
âSeveral.â
- random State and Outlands staffer, Tuesday
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So I was reading a random Tumblr repost about modern complaints that the Knights of the Round Table are depicted as being âtoo animeâ in the sense of weird supernatural abilities and bizarre adventures, countered with examples from the original legends demonstrating that the Knights of the Round Table were, in fact, anime as fuck.
This gets me thinking about the horrors about to be visited on historians and archaeologists on Earth given that thanks to great record-keeping and a terrible lack of burnt libraries and dark ages, they have all sorts of legendary foo that is not only well-documented in the historical records but remains extant. I mean, sure, the Sword That Cuts All Without Distinction is legendary if not mythic, but itâs also right there in the House ShĂłtarĂĄ family archives and you can go and look at itš, or the House of Dodeciad Doors, or whatever other mystic widgetry based on Precursor litter you care to name.
Can you say âarbitrary number of conspiracy theorists and dreamers becoming near-impossible to persuade that Earthâs legends arenât also possibly true²?â
Youâve got to feel a little bad for the archaeologist whose grant is awarded for searching the northeastern US for any remains of an unusually large man and his unusually large ox, right?
- But you canât try it yourself, since after the rolkifier incident everyoneâs deeply concerned that you might be able to cut metaphors.
- Well, sort ofÂł.
- King Arthur is in cryostasis somewhere in the Kuiper Belt! Of course thereâs no asteroid named Avalon! The lizard peopleâ´ are making the British government cover it all upâŚ
- No, not those lizard people. The sneakyâľ lizard people.
- If youâve heard of them, theyâre not sneaky enough.
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"One of the biggest things that Iâve tried to explain to my Eldrae friends is that Iâm not worried about the Empire just deciding to drop a couple of thousand Flapjacks on Earth like an all-you-can-eat-special at IHOP. The Empire of the Star doesnât do that kind of imperialism, not anymore(1). Not cost-efficient for the most part, requires you to do nation building and have occupation forces for a long time, tends to get you talked about by the wrong sort of people, that kind of thing.
"Instead, the Empire is like this five kiloparsec giant space amoeba that just sucks things in and makes it a part of it. Shwoop, there goes this uninhabited system and now itâs full of miners and service providers. Shwoop, there goes a part of the old Vonnie Republic that realize that if they want a proper utopia, they need to do things like be a part of a Society of Consent and have a lot of high-end and genuinely enthusiastic AI support. Shwoop, there goes a bunch of striving primates that are now the strange, sex-obessed cultural providers for the Empire.
"I donât want to be a part of a giant space amoeba. Or at least on terms that I can live with, for the most part.
"And then you get into the lovely baseline primate psychology issue of what happens when you encounter something that is completely unknown to you-attack it, try to eat it, try to fuck it, play dead, or supplicate to it. And the people trying really really hard to be space elves with rounded ears are the ones that scare me the most.
âNo greater fanatic than a convert, after allâŚâ
-Things That I Really Should Have Known About, PC+17
(1-Yes, I know there have been major exceptions, even recently. But for the most part, if the Empire is invading you, you have just earned their attention in all the wrong kind of ways.)
I should point out that it is my head-fanon that at least one of the several preexisting races of lizard people in the Worlds will take to posting conspiracy theories about the secret humans controlling everything on the grounds that whatâs good for the tzym is good for the tzymti and they might as well have some fun with these whackos.
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And in his secret mountain lair, Kevin Bacon is just steeping his fingers going, âKeikaku Dohriâ at the confusion and chaos as he begins his thirty-billion step plan to take over Everything.
(Speaking of that, what is âjust as plannedâ in Eldrae in this context?)
Iâll do you one better:
el quor merlen idaharisĂĄr bar-el val anselath
ALL EVENTS ARE PROGRESSING IN ACCORDANCE WITH MY PLAN.
(muahaha not included)
âŚI suppose you could leave off the subject and just say
idaharisĂĄr bar-el anselath
and leave it to the listener to make assumptions about just what is progressing and whose plan it is, but really, why would you? Never gloat with a half-dozen syllables when you can gloat with two dozen.
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Maybe because youâre David Xanatos and you want your opponents to wonder which plan is proceeding according to plan, because you have so many plans running at the same time, somehow ending with the Emperor of the Star taking a cream pie to the face.