WillWybrow.com

She burst into laughter as soon as she saw him. “Cousin! You look such a sight. By the gods, I’d never have thought we’d get you out of that grey old robe.” A faint flush crept up his neck and pooled in his cheeks. In his hands he awkwardly held an expensive lute. He lifted it up to his face to look into a decorative gilded panel, polished to a smooth shine. He was decked in grey still, although it was striped with lilac. His sleeves were puffy, as were the trousers that came to his knees. Beneath were lilac stockings that were lost in delicate, pointed-toed silken shoes, aglitter with silver thread. His doublet was lacy and frilly and a silver chain hung about his neck with a small circular pendant on it. At least they had not given me a hat, he thought sullenly, his grey hair sticking out in messy tufts, just long enough to start wilting at the tips instead of bristling with freshly-cut points. His face betrayed his hair, looking smooth and slender and, above all, youthful. No trace of stubble marred his pale, somewhat feminine face. His eyebrows and even lashes were the same grey as the rest of his hair, giving him a bland, colourless appearance at first glance. The irises of his eyes, though, glittered with lilac and silver, which his clothes had been designed to match.

The Jester. Or should that be Jestress? She looked no less ridiculous than he, though she always chose to wear attire such as this. A white-painted face beneath a mess of bright red hair. She was dressed in red, orange and yellow motley, save her seven-pointed jester’s hat, which was sewn together from cloths of the seven rainbow colours. Each spoke ended with a golden bell, some gold beaten into a hollow ball inside which a loose stone would jangle when she moved her head. She claimed to the court she served that each bell contained a precious gemstone, but none gave this remark any more truth than the other outrageous tales she would spin for the amusement of her king’s courtesans. She bounded up to him, tinkling as she did, coming to pause at the man’s side. Her hands were behind her back and she had an impish smile on her red lips and a mischievous glitter in her golden eyes. When she could restrain herself no longer, she whipped her hands out and rubbed them in the man’s hair. A cloud of purple dust went everywhere as she darted out of the way of the retributive swipe at her hands with his lute. Though impossible to tell with the yellow surface he was using as a looking-glass, she’d purpled his hair to match his outfit. That’s why there was no hat.

His arms fell to his sides helplessly as the Jestress once more erupted with giggles. Without interrupting her laughter, she idly performed feats of acrobatics, low tumbles and backwards-flips on the spot. She was never still; always bubbling with energy and drive. Much unlike her brother, who had been watching the unveiling of their cousin’s new clothes in stillness and in silence from the darkened corner of the room. While not entirely pragmatic — for what man would bedeck himself all in black without some dramatic purpose? — the dark man was now the most plainly-dressed in the room. Unadorned black tunic and trousers served him adequately for his former job as a distant monarch’s minister of intelligence, and there were whispers amongst his old employer’s subjects that he had once been a master thief before that. The Thief looked on intently as the man in purple gave him an exasperated and somewhat helpless shrug. The Thief never broke into smile, but some traces of amusement flickered about the lines around his thin mouth.

“Is everyone against me?” asked the formerly-dignified lilac-striped man forlornly, a hint of a whine entering his smooth and normally level voice.”

“I suppose we should call you ‘the Bard’, now,” intoned the Thief, his voice conveying the amusement his face barely registered. “No longer ‘the Scholar’, nor ‘the Sage’, but a man whose work is rhyme and whose office is a tavern common room. I do hope you’ll wear it when we go and see Elder Brother.”

“This is for the best, cousin,” began the Jestress, ceasing her handstands and jumps. “Nobody listens to old men and their heralding of doom any more. People listen to songs, though, and even invite them. We will be free to travel all over the land and spread word of what’s coming. No, they won’t listen at first, but they will hear. They will hear and they will remember, and perhaps, at the key moment, one of them will recall. Dark prophecy is easily dismissed. The Bard may not be. And who knows; if the worst should happen, at least you’ll be around to lift our spirits with a song!” He slung the lute at her as she bounded away, laughing once again.

I know when it was because I still remember the face and even the house of the friend from whom I drew some inspiration. I think I only went to his house one time, but he had a whole room covered in Power Rangers toys and I was incredibly envious. I only knew him between school years R and 2 because I moved school the year after that. What age are you then, 5-8? So we’re looking at an idea that’s 15-18 years old.

As far as it goes, it’s probably a better idea than some of the other creations my child mind spawned. The sentient humanoid robot who had to continually keep reprogramming himself using a little access panel on the left side of his chest doesn’t really make much sense; it never occurred to my pre-teen self that a robot would probably find more efficient means of updating its own code than using fingers to press buttons on a keypad. But, on the other hand, he had a long coat with tons of inside pockets full of gadgets to use in fighting bad guys, so that’s something.

I was in charge of all my friends when I was in infant school. We’d always play the games that I wanted to play, and I would be the ringleader. I was the green Power Ranger when we played Power Rangers, which is interesting because I was called ‘Billy’, then (thanks, Dad) and the blue Power Ranger in the show was a guy named Billy. But I don’t think they ever took to playing the weather gods, or maybe I never explained it to them. Probably because, even then, they already had their own personalities that my friends wouldn’t have been able to emulate. And I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to be the all-powerful Rainbow or whether I wanted to be the less-powerful but younger and cooler Lightning, who saw much more action and usually led the team while Rainbow stayed at home, only engaging enemies when they were too much for the others to handle without him.

Yeah, they were superhero types, as opposed to mythological gods. Somebody at the weekend suggested they were “like Thor” and the Norse gods, but what little I know of Norse mythology I have almost certainly only picked up in the past few years.

I don’t think I’ve told anybody the full extent of this little invention before. It’s a deeply personal and intimate thing, therefore, because I’ve carried around an image of these people’s faces and demeanours for over a decade. I had assumed the time had passed to do something useful with the fantasy I had invented as a child, barring perhaps a children’s book… Because what good is the invention of a child except to entertain other children?

I didn’t write a date down on the pages of this notebook when I decided to resurrect them, but it was not too long ago. In a cannabis-induced haze, the memories all came vividly flooding back along with an idea. With just a few minor adaptations, they could be incorporated into the fantasy world I was building for my Pathfinder RPG group. Of course. That is the perfect use for ideas like this, and the idea was already mine so I could change it as much or as little as I needed to in order to fit in with the things I’d already created. I put a lot of trust in High Will. He’s come up with some really great stuff before, and while it’s not as reliable for inspiration as sitting at Ben and Carol’s table with Sam’s quiet but reassuring presence nearby, when it scores a hit, it scores big.

Spoilers!

Don’t read ahead if you don’t want to know things the player characters don’t know!

The original design put Rainbow and the others in a cloud-based realm where they’d do their stuff. The glass amulets are straight from the original idea, as are Rainbow’s staff, Lightning’s jagged white-glass sword (that, at his command, turns into a living, writhing, solid bolt of lightning) and Sun’s golden double-ended spear/trident. Rain and Wind were always minor characters, really, and weren’t very well-formed in the original creation. They were the least powerful of the five and I’m pretty sure they were young males and not young females, originally. I felt a bit bad turning the lowest-powered and most easily-forgettable gods into women. I decided they couldn’t all be men but I didn’t want to change my younger self’s idea too much.

The biggest change was with the enemies. Originally every god would have a desaturated counterpart. A greyscale rainbow. A black bolt of lightning. A pale grey sun. The original sky gods lived in a cloud kingdom. When the evil gods would step onto the cloud (which they would do with suspicious frequency), it would turn flat and blackened, as though the fluffiness had been burned away to reveal rough black rock underneath. The evil gods were actually more powerful than the good ones, and Rainbow’s equivalent would turn up flanked by his group to dirty up their cloud and taunt Rainbow a whole bunch. The colourful gods would always be shaken and devastated and it would take them weeks to repair their clouds and whip them up to be nice and fluffy again. In one episode, the evil gods did actually cast them out and dark Rainbow installed himself as king and sat on Rainbow’s throne and imprisoned him. The other four, on Earth, had to rescue and free him and kick the bad gods out.

Serious serious spoilers now

In the refined creation, however, the enemy is a sixth being, commanding some generic form of bad weather: frost, snow, ice, hail, blizzards, that kind of thing. All six of them are semi-divine, having ascended from the first mortals on Chorinn and bestowed the power to paint the sky with weather by their mother, the goddess Ferberran, one of the nine creator deities and joint-eldest being in the universe. She is neutral on the good—evil axis, however, so Her divine power can’t produce something that is overwhelmingly good. Thus, while the five “Sky Lords” work towards the betterment of the world, a single being with equal but opposite power works against them. The disparity in numbers is attributable to Ferberran’s chaotic nature on the lawful—chaotic axis.

This final, dark god (demigod I suppose would be better, but as long as it is recognised these beings have power far less than that of even the lower-tier gods, it is okay to refer to them as ‘gods’) would have actively thwarted the attempts of the “Sky Lords” to shape the world, so Ferberran asked her brother, Nostecte, the Thief, to steal him away and keep him prisoner on the dark side of the Moon.

The Sky Lords were one of the few who were informed of the Time Mages’ warnings of the growing powers of Virmalequs, a power deemed a danger to the whole of the pantheon’s creation. They therefore posed as simple monks living in a castle high up in an Eocian mountain. Other powerful beings saw to ensure the unity of the other peoples of Eocia, but it was the Sky Lords who looked to what is now Alepia; a fractured, warring realm full of jealous lords and kings who each sought dominion over the other. The population was sparse and too few to resist Virmalequs’s armies and he knew it. To get his land-armies from Que Queana to the rest of the world, he would need a strong foothold in Alepia especially, as its eastern coastline is the nearest to foreign shores. Thus the Sky Lords, though it pained them to take sides, helped a single king to unite the people of the realm under one crown and they provided long summers, mild winters, and booming harvests for the people there. The population swelled to near-unsustainable levels, but without those numbers, defeat was inevitable.

When Virmalequs saw this interference, it was he who travelled to the Moon to release the Dark Sky Lord. His attack on the Sky Lords’ castle threatened to destroy or at least neutralise their powers. With a great effort, the Sky Lords subdued him and imprisoned him in the castle. The chains holding him could only be sundered by the forces of good and the cell doors could only be opened by Rainbow’s own power. In the same way a house may have a spare key under a flower-pot, however, Rainbow stored a back-up way to enter the prison on the castle premises. Just before leaving, they released the enchantments protecting the road from Alepia to the castle and attempted to destroy the way up the mountain. They then retreated to a cloud realm far from the influence of the Dark Sky Lord’s corruption.

Throwing my lot in with the Skype window photoshops. Next stop: bandwagon central.

1. Get rid of old things
2. Make things that are staying look nicer
3. Do more things (maybe)
4. ?????????
5. Fuck

Fuck you. ACTUALLY FUCK YOU FOR BEING THIS FUCKING DUMB.

Article, tweets.

Here is a quick test to find out how good your opinions are, using the student fees protest as an example case. If you thought:

“The protest was a bad idea, students should just suck it up and pay. It’s a reasonable price for your improved job prospects.”

Sorry, you don’t score any points this time. Not only does your opinion suck, but I’d bet you are a really indignant person who uses the fact that you work and pay taxes to complain about everything and I can’t shake the intuitive feeling that you probably have a weirdly-shaped head so you are going to have to look elsewhere for now.

“It’s about time someone stood up to the Government’s evil plans but it’s a shame the day was ruined by a handful of people smashing up Tory HQ.”

Uh oh, you said the magic word, ‘ruined’, and now you too lost all your points. You strike me as pretty boring and way too idealistic and we all know that people with ideals are always trying to ruin your day with them. Zero points.

“Disregard protest, acquire riot!”

Correct! Whether through apathy or ignorance you’ve arrived at the correct stance that the Government are going to do whatever they want and the worse things are now, the slimmer the chance they’ll get re-elected when their term is over. You might still be hanging on to the tiny thread of hope that comes with the alternative vote referendum that the Lib Dems might not completely let down everyone who voted for them (and hopefully Miliband will step up and do something at this point), or you might not give a single fuck. But at the same time, it doesn’t take a genius to realise that rioting is fucking badass and those guys who smashed up 30 Millbank and lit fires outside were pretty awesome, turning an otherwise shitty and forgettable event into something that brings the angry right-wing kids out from under their rocks to decry what they feel is the lefties’ false sense of entitlement to a publicly-funded (or at least heavily supported) higher education and also the boring lefties themselves have popped their heads up to loudly denounce any connection with the people doing all the fun rioting and to promise that all the actual students there were well-behaved and peaceful because everyone in Whitehall will probably think “oh, since it wasn’t any of the students fucking up that building I’d guess we’d better listen to them and do what they want, right?” and everyone will live happily ever after.

Wearing things is such a bastard. Everybody’s so happy to have the temperature inside buildings sky-high, and seemingly more so when it’s the winter. I can’t keep dealing with this. To go outside and get to places I’ll put on a jacket and be warm but inside places I’ll have to take it off and be encumbered by it to not be too hot. What’s the answer?

As far as I’m concerned, the solution was worked out long ago back when we were schoolkids and used to tie our school sweaters around our waists by the arms when it was too warm. And if it was cold enough to warrant a coat, there were nice secure coat-pegs you could leave it on during the day. I guess what I want really is for trying jumpers around your waist by their arms to not look so ridiculous and also for university to have (possibly named) coat pegs inside lecture rooms.

It’s hassle at gigs as well. Nobody wants to be bundled up in clothes in the middle of a room full of hundreds of dancing bodies. But the walk back to the train station at the end is always an icy choke-hold that can’t be avoided (unless you bring a coat and put it in the cloakroom at venues which a) aren’t always there, b) aren’t always free and c) require you to queue up for ages at the end with all the other chumps who risked taking advantage of the facilities).

Marty McFly’s jacket in the future was able to automatically adjust size. That’s a pretty shitty feature really, but what I’d like is some variation where clothes can adjust how well they insulate you. That would be just fine by me. But until someone works it out, I guess I’ll just resign to be hampered by lugging a jacket around inside or cold because I didn’t bring one out with me.

Probably.

Backstory (Facebook link, sorry).

I love overhearing people because I can silently and smugly judge the balls out of them for the awkward shit they say to each other. On the way into university this morning some dude behind me was talking to some girl about his course. Complaining about it, I think. Turns out that after taking a course in politics, he didn’t really like politics. Except for, in his words, “development”, which, to people on undergraduate degrees in the University of Warwick’s Politics department, presumably means something more specific than the common definition of the word. Ultimately, he told her, there wasn’t much to do with development in his current year, just a module called “Development and Gender”.

and that’s less about development and more about gender and I don’t want to sit through a bunch of feminists’ opinions. I’m not anti-feminist but… I just can’t be bothered with all that

By this point I’d had him pegged as more-or-less a tosser and I missed a couple of lines in the conversation that I couldn’t hear over the sound of my involuntary but very powerful eye-rolling. Upon returning to the conversation I caught a line from the girl including the phrase “thorny caress”. The guy jumped on it for some reason with this:

A thorny caress? That’s a very poetic description. A thorny caress like what your grandma gives you.

*AWKWARD SILENCE*

Ha, yeah, sometimes I take things too far!

Sure you do, pal. I had to interject here and I turned around and laughed in his face. “Too far?” I asked him. “What do you mean by that? You want to hear some real inappropriate comments?” They looked pretty perplexed that I’d interrupted them so I carried on. “More like the thorny caress of the rough pubic area of one of your mum’s old friends from school that she used to keep in touch with against your six-year-old cheek as he rakes his sweaty, semi-erect penis across your lips from base to tip, even though he’s meant to be baby-sitting you. All the while, he’s clutching your head between his grimy hands and leering salaciously as he thumbs the tears out of the corners of your eyes, telling you not to say anything to your parents or he’ll have to hurt them and your then three-year-old sister who was curled up naked in the foetal position on his kitchen floor, shuddering and bleeding from his turn molesting her. The thorny caress that you wake up startled to the flashbacks of, drenched in cold sweat and alone in your bed.” Pay attention, guys, because if you want to impress a girl you’ve really got to show them how much better you are than other dudes, especially at this kind of thing.

Well, we’d stopped walking by now and I wasn’t about to stand there while they processed my gloriously-painted scene so I turned away and kept walking, heading to lectures.

I think the moral of the story is: don’t be a dick about gender equality. Maybe?

The case for not calling Twitter a social network

When it comes to connections, Twitter doesn’t have ‘friendships’ as such. It is entirely based on one-way connections; you follow someone you find interesting but they don’t have to follow you back, nor should you expect them to. If someone finds your tweets interesting or your @ replies engaging then you can get to know someone on Twitter and become mutual followers.

With a social network you have to request someone as a friend and it has to be verified by the other person. It’s a service for people you already know in real life to index your online presence, rather like a phonebook or contact list, and of course to show the world how many people you know.

You’re not obligated to follow people you know in real life on Twitter. But with Facebook, you kind of are obligated to accept their friend request, because you can always take them off of your homepage and stop your status updates reaching them. But that’s what Facebook is for. While it’s often useful to follow people you know on Twitter (the #bskcrew, for example) because you can keep people updated with relevant local news and info and organise meet-ups. But just because that kid you never spoke to who used to sit across from you in English class in school is on Twitter, doesn’t mean you will end up necessarily following each other, even though that’s exactly the kind of person we populate our social network friends list with.

Also on social networking sites you have a profile page. Twitter’s ‘profile’ field is a 160 character bio that’s optional to fill in. Twitter doesn’t list any contact details and it doesn’t have a page full of your favourite music. It doesn’t have photo albums and it doesn’t have Flash games where you can swap cows with your aunt. Not that there’s anything wrong with this stuff, but they’re strictly social network things and that’s not what Twitter is.

You could argue, of course, that you can use Twitter to network with people socially, and so it deserves the description. But it’s kind of a new term and while yes Twitter might fit the literal wording, it doesn’t fit the idea that the phrase was coined to describe.

But people have made friends on the internet since it started and nobody’s bothered to call messaging boards or IRC ‘social networks’. Probably because they lack profile pages and photo albums and lists of favourite bands, and the only way to identify a user is by their username (and on a forum they might have a small, square avatar).

So?

Okay, up to this point, all I’ve done is say I think it’s wrong to classify Twitter as a social network. I haven’t got to the point where it makes you a cunt.

It’s because, you bunch of dickholes, now everyone wants in. If there’s one thing that average internet users can do really well, it’s ruin a web service with their presence. Once upon a time, Facebook was only open to university students. Remember that? It was a useful tool for organising events and keeping in contact with new university friends. Those were the days. But, of course, it’s for socially networking. So everyone needs to be on it so you have a complete set of people you know in a handy list. Your aunts and uncles are on it. Your ten-year-old sister is on it. People’s grandparents are on it. Emotional teenagers are on it. But that’s fine. We can deal with that because that’s what Facebook is for. But then someone said that Twitter is the new social network du jour and like the bandwagon-jumping pricks they are, a whole teeming mass of ill-educated, unfunny, culturally and educationally bankrupt people have swarmed in and are ruining it. They’ve heard it’s a social network and so they’re trying to use it like it’s “the new Facebook” or similar… they’re getting all their friends to sign up and diluting all the nice people with horrible people. And they don’t understand that it’s normal for people to follow each other because of shared interests, not because of some real-life meeting. They don’t know that’s what the nice part of the internet is about.

So you’ll get some tossers who, for no reason, delete you as one of their followers even though it doesn’t affect them in any way to have a particular follower. If a person is @ replying you with shit then there’s a handy block function but removing a follower because you don’t know them is not how Twitter is supposed to work you fucking cock muncher argh fuck all this

TL;DR butthurt over being deleted from following someone