Blackmoor Vituperative

This is one of a few in-character World Of Warcraft blog posts I wrote in the early 2000s and posted to rp-haven.com. The author of this is Figli Brassboots, a gnomish warrior, like his father Fugli before him.

November 2, 2007, “Ze troll slaying begins”

To mein dearest sister Migli,

Ze adventuring is progressing well, und I am already meeting with ze brave warriors of ze Alliance. I have met with ze dwarf Lorith und ze good elf Arasminna, und I have been accepted into the warrior guild. I told them of papa und his legacy as a great troll slayer, und I think this was the deciding factor in my favor. They also complimented me on my new pink shirt, und then we fought a ghost which was missing his head. I would say that this was a very good meeting.

After I was accepted into the warrior guild, I was finally permitted to kill the trolls! Unfortunately, ze trolls are much taller and more difficult for ze chopping than I realized. I was forced to run away from them, many times, killing only a few of ze terrible monsters. Fortunately for me, I met another brave gnome warrior named Nosbren, und he and I made a most excellent team! We went into the den of ze trolls, und chopped so many of them up that my chopping arm was sore. Papa would be so proud!

Nosbren is being a bachelor, who is also from ze mountains, like us. I mentioned to him that I have a sister named Migli who is an excellent cook, und he asked to meet you! So I think perhaps you may be having a suitor very soon. I am planning to ask him to dinner with us, und I will let you know what day to be expecting us.

I am keeping my promise, and dressing warmly, and eating often, and drinking plenty of beer. So please do not worry.

Your faithful brother,
Figli

[red pild]
adjective

To internalize a set of misogynistic far-right beliefs popular with certain corners of the internet; the product of a noxious blend of junk science, conspiracy theory, and a pathological fear of social progress.

Origin and etymology of redpilled

based on the “red pill” philosophy, using a metaphor borrowed from the film The Matrix (1999)

First known use by far-right misogynists: 2012

Do not seek marriage

Seek humour
Seek dignity
Seek adventure
Seek reliability

Do not seek marriage

Seek vulnerability
Seek strength
Seek kindness
Seek lust

Do not seek marriage

Seek independence
Seek intelligence
Seek passion
Seek friendship

Do not seek marriage

Wait for it to find you
With the realization
That all it will give you
Is a label
For what you already have

[sīəns fikSHən]
noun

“Science fiction” is that subset of fantasy that uses the vocabulary of science to lend verisimilitude to the story.

First known use: 1925

[in-sel]
noun

1. Someone whose behaviour is so repugnant that not one of the approximately seven billion humans on Earth will have sex with them.
2. Someone who blames others for their mental and social shortcomings.
    
   “Yesterday Ryan wrote a Facebook post calling himself an ‘incel’. He claims that all women are shallow and exist to torture men by ‘denying’ them sex.”

Origin and etymology of incel

blend of involuntary and celibate

First Known Use: 1997

This is a public service message (mainly for myself, as I try to be a better person).

When someone¹ posts, “Here is something I like!”, there are five acceptable responses. I will list them here.

1) “Tell me more about this thing you like!”
2) “Did you know this fun² fact about the thing you like?”
3) “I like that, too!”
4) “The thing you like reminds me of this other thing, which I like!”
5) (silence)

Now you know.

1)  “Someone” means “Someone who is not a full-blown Nazi, sexist scumbag, or overt racist.”
2) “Fun” means actually fun — not mean, snide, derogatory, or judgemental.

[vur-choo siɡ-nl-ling]
verb
gerund or present participle

1. a phrase used by sociopaths when trying to explain the behaviour of someone who has empathy.
    
   “she is collecting cans of food for the hurricane victims, but that’s just virtue signaling”
   “my rape jokes were funny, but I got fired because my supervisor was virtue signaling”
   “people who call Donald Trump a bigot and a sexist are just virtue signaling”

I just spent too much time pulling my hair out trying to figure out how to get Google Docs to paste spaces and keep them spaces, rather than turning the spaces into tabs. I couldn’t find a way to prevent it, so here is what I did.

1. Paste my text into a text editor, such as Notepad++.
2. In the text editor, find & replace every instance of a space ” ” with a character that does not already exist in the text, nor in the document you intend to paste that text into. In my case, I used a tilde “~”.
3. Copy this modified text, and paste it into Google Docs.
4. In Google Docs, find & replace every instance of the placeholder character with a space ” “.

Is it ridiculous that you need to do this to keep Google Docs from corrupting what you are pasting? Yes. Yes, it is.

What a day. I tracked down a very devious bug of my own design and fixed it, so hopefully that project I am two days behind on will be finished before I am four days behind on it.

Then I cleaned the hot tub thoroughly with a mop and a bucket of bleach-water, in the dark. Thank goodness for security lights and cotton string mops! There’s nothing quite like a cotton string mop for a job like that. Then I filled the tub and started it up. The pump is running and the tub doesn’t appear to be leaking, but there’s a lot of water splashed all over the place so I can’t be absolutely certain about the lack of leaking. The current water temperature is 58 degrees — let’s hope the temperature rises!

And now I get to spend the next couple of hours before bedtime working on the Character Sheet Helper for Bulletproof Blues. I have renamed it from “Character Builder” in the hope that the new name will better convey the notion that this spreadsheet isn’t required to play the game: its main purpose is to help make attractive, easy-to-share character sheets.

I had an idea a couple of months ago. It would be a marketplace for writers, editors, and artists to come together as collaborators. It would be driven by the authors: in the new model of book distribution, authors are in control. They set the prices, they decide where the book will be distributed, and they are the ones that get paid by the distributors.

But authors need talented editors and gifted artists. Most authors aren’t either of those things. How is an author to find an editor with a good track record, one who sees themselves as on the authors side? How can an author find a cover artist or map artist who can meet a deadline and produce work according to spec? And how can the editors and artists find the authors who need them and who will pay on time (editors and artists want to feed their cats, too).

So my idea was a marketplace for this, where authors, artists, and editors would meet as peers. Everyone would be able to review everyone else, but only if they’d worked with them. The marketplace site would make sure that everyone got paid, and would act as the middleman to keep everyone honest. For this service, the marketplace would keep, say, 10% of the transacction (which should be enough to cover the site’s costs).

I pitched this to the company I work for, but it was too far from our current business focus to interest them. I would love to get it started, but I don’t have the start-up capital or the business acumen to make it work. I wish I did. So, here it is: a business that I believe is desperately needed. If you have the resources to start a business but just lack the idea, feel free to use this one.