Tags:
#Young Wizards #fanfic #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #embarrassment squick #(so I’ve been organising my bookmarks today and found this buried in a to-be-read) #(turns out it’s actually very short) #(also hilarious)
Young Wizards
In Life’s name, and for Life’s sake, I say that I will use the Art for nothing but the service of that Life. I will guard growth and ease pain. I will fight to preserve what grows and lives well in its own way; and I will change no object or creature unless its growth and life, or that of the system in which it is part, are threatened. To these ends, in the practice of my Art, I will put aside fear for courage, and death for life, when it is right to do so—till Universe’s end.
The Wizard’s Oath, So You Want to Be a Wizard. Diane Duane.
I bet you every kid who’s ever read this book stood in the middle of their room, paused, took a breath, and then read this part out loud. Just in case. I vaguely remember what that moment felt like, feeling a little silly but a little apprehensive too. Probably similar to how kids in the late 90s and earlier 2000s felt when their 11th birthdays came and they secretly all waited for the letter from Hogwarts.
This post brought to you by my currently reading the New Millenium Edition of So You Want to Be a Wizard and enjoying myself immensely. I have the old edition open so I can go back and refer to it when I think I spot a change. I was a little sad to see that Kit’s first ever line of dialogue in the book is no longer “balls.” Balls are always funnier than not balls.
#i read the books when i was a lot older and i seriously thought about reading this part out loud #but i was too nervous to #not because of any feelings of silliness but because i was worried i couldn’t uphold it #and i make no oaths lightly (lizardywizard)
I, too, avoided reciting the Wizard’s Oath specifically because of “just in case”. I make no oaths lightly; I make no oaths I am unsure whether I would even want to uphold, let alone whether I could; I make no oaths that would be enforced by the same entities that enforced Nita’s oath regarding the Song of the Twelve, despite the fact that she did not give informed consent.
(The Sea fed the words of the oath into her mind. It could have fed her what they meant. But no, she recited the words in ignorance of the full nature of what they entailed, and everyone, including Nita herself, blamed her for not realising she needed to do more research.
(And since the Sea is an alternate form of the wizard’s manual, explicitly asking the Sea to feed her the meaning (or a manual-based equivalent action) would be the research she would do. Whenever conversations of the form “You didn’t tell me that!” “You didn’t ask.” happen, we generally conclude that the “You didn’t ask” person is a pedantic asshole trying to obey the letter of what is right while subverting the spirit. Yet this is pretty much what happens, and nobody seems to have any issue with it.))
Tags:
#also #*given* that Nita has ended up in this situation #going through with the Twelvesong is not a noble sacrifice #because you see #if she doesn’t do it they wipe large chunks of her memory #and if she does do it she goes to heaven #this is one of those edge cases #where *strictly in terms of maximising self-preservation* #it is actually better to commit suicide than to not commit suicide #(once your continued existence is assured the next thing on the self-preservation list is preserving your memories) #as you can see I have Issues with that book #Young Wizards #rants
Young Wizards x Welcome to Night Vale
The radio slips, sometimes, into a language Carlos doesn’t speak.
He tells himself he doesn’t speak it, anyway, and… well, it’s true enough. He couldn’t translate into this language. He doesn’t even know what it’s called. And the understanding that filters into his mind sometimes—more and more, lately—it’s just his imagination.
“A new man came into town today,” and that’s the last English Carlos hears for several minutes. He tells himself that the warm sense of being flattered, the words perfect and beautiful echoing in his mind, are nothing. His imagination.
After all, the segment ends—in English, again—with the darkly threatening, No one does a slice like Big Rico’s. No one. Surely there’s no room for flattery between those lines.
Tags:
#Young Wizards #Welcome to Night Vale #crossovers #fanfic
A mother helicopter tends to her newborn.
I wish you’d do some research before just spouting out any old crap. If you took two seconds just to LOOK at the picture, you’d see that it’s not a mother and her newborn. You can tell from the size and position of the rotors that it’s actually a hunting male. Also it’s a commonly known fact that whilst all helicopters are born with red tails, this fades to white in males, by the time they’ve reached adulthood. In females, the red has changed to a deep brown.
So this isn’t a lovely picture of caring parenting – in fact, this young ‘copter’s mother is probably dead, herself. There would be no way she’d leave her baby by itself at such a young age. The poor thing likely died mere moments after this picture was taken.
Have some respect.
You ignorant fool.
The common Red Tailed Boeing you’re basing your analysis on is endemic to Saudi Arabia, which has no climate zones even remotely resembling that in the picture. Helicopters being short range vehicles, there’s no way a Red Tail could be present in the picture above.
What you’re seeing is the red tailed variety of the Arboreal Russian UTair, which you’d know if you so much as looked at the distinctive markings on the parent’s flank.
The photo is a mother tending to her newborn as I stated, and you Sir have defamed the endangered helicopter with your inept observations. People like you who think Helicopters are dangerous hunting animals are why these noble beasts have been scrapped to near extinction. Arguments like yours are used to support the helicopter “blading” industry, in which millions of helicopters every year are deprived of their rotor blades and left to die of oil loss or starvation.
Support your local anti-blading protest group, and don’t listen to people like metalheadadam, if that’s even your real tumblr url.
No,it is you who are the fool here. You say it’s an arboreal helicopter, but no Russian Utair has ever been spotted out in the open in a tarmac environment before, and I think if this was the first photograph showing one, there’d have been some fanfare about it in National Helo-graphic.
I believe that what we can see here is the Lesser-Spotted Longbow, which, as has been very well-documented, has adapted itself superbly to urban life, and has also been known to disguise itself as other types of helicopter, in order to better stalk its prey. If you look at the smugness of the nose, you’ll see I’m right. Yes, the UTair is a peaceful contraption, but the LSL is a rapacious fiend, and should be removed from the world’s airspace completely.
You’re ignoring the clear signs here but the more important issue is your sickening disregard and characterization of the LSL as a “rapacious fiend.”
The LSL is a critical part of the airspace ecosystem. If there were no LSLs, then Piasecki H-21s would quickly grow out of control and soon the air would be downright cluttered with them. Do you want to live in a world where Piasecki noise sounds through the night at deafening levels? Where they land on the streets as you drive and on schoolyards where your children play?
Lesser-Spotted Longbows may seem dangerous but the fact is they kill less than five people a year across the globe. Piaseckis kill 80! And they crap all over the windshields of all those unfortunate enough to drive beneath them. Even still, we should not cull Piaseckis as some suggest, their meat is inferior and no significant research is to be done on their flesh. You’re operating from an old world point of view here, one that says mankind has the right, nay the duty to hunt and tame helicopters.
But the truth is, helicopters are our neighbors on this planet and they have every bit as much a right to it as we do. Support prohibition of industrial helicopter use, police helicopters and circus helicopters. Don’t eat helicopter meat. And donate generously to PETH, People for the Ethical Treatment of Helicopters.
Listen, PETH claim to be in support of helicopter freedom, but if you look at the statistics, you’ll see that is, in fact, a gigantic lie. People brought 652 sick helicopters into PETH’s “Care Hangars” last year, where PETH claim to repair and repaint them, and find them new owners. Of those 652, PETH dismantled and recycled 635 of them within one day, without even trying to find new owners for them.
You say we should support the prohibition of circus and police helicopters, but without the industries that have grown up around the many useful ways helicopters benefit our society, there would be many more wild helicopters, like the Piaseckis, in our skies, or roosting on the roofs of our homes and schools.
But that’s getting off topic. The LSL is still a menace, and although it helps to control the Piasecki population, there are other, more efficient ways to do that, without relying on the crudeness of nature.
Opening up factories to make clothes from helo skins, for example. Faux-helo has been all the rage on the catwalks for the last three years, and the designers have stated that they’d “love to get [their] hands on the real thing”. Paul McTarnabag said that “without the limitations of artificial fibres, [he] could create the most wonderful coats you’d ever see”.
Let’s be honest, here. Yes, it may involve some violent, painful deaths for certain, more… annoying breeds, but helicopters are basically vermin. Let’s make use of them.
“The crudeness of nature”
You lost me there. Nature is a perfect system where helicopters are concerned. It’s only humanity that throws the system out of balance. Before we came along, helicopters existed in equilibrium.
As seen in the opening of Disney’s “The Concorde King,” there’s a circle of life. Concordes and SR-71s prey upon the big 747s and Airbuses. Those in turn eat the Cessnas and puddle-hoppers, which feed on smaller helicopters and gyrocopters. When the Concordes die, they become fossil fuels which become jet fuels and which fuel the gyrocopters.
But when mankind tinkers with the system, it all goes haywire. A few rivet coats and meals of spicy Apache or Black Hawk aren’t worth it. And that’s not to mention the cruelty of foods like Chinook Gras, in which the noble aircraft are force-fueled to the point of illness so their filters can be harvested. Humankind needs to get out of the chopper business for good and focus on renewable sources of 3D printed parts and vegan alternatives, like Balloons, Zeppelins and Blimps. Human stomachs aren’t meant for heavier-than-air travel, as turbulence can convince anyone. Only lighter than air craft are meant for our fragile systems.
This is all a moot point for me as I don’t fly at all. I prefer a more natural means of transport- The whip driven dog-sled.
…:)
Tags:
#Young Wizards #sort of #helicopters
Brinens and Things 