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Owl City

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“Weirdly, D&D didn't encourage my leanings towards trying magic of my own at all. In fact, it frustrated them. Even the most pompous and ambitious historical magicians, from the Zaroastrian Magi through John Dee, Francis Barrett and Aleister Crowley, never claimed to be able to throw fireballs or lightning bolts like D&D wizards can. So D&D was never going to feed the fantasies of practising magic in the real world. That is all about gaining secret knowledge, a higher level of perception or inflicting misfortune or a boon on someone rather than causing a poisonous cloud of vapor to pour from your fingers (Cloudkill, deadly to creatures with less than 5 hit dice, for those who are interested). The game, as we played it, just doesn't support the occult idea of magic. In fact, it might even be argued that, by giving such a powerful prop to my imagination, D&D stopped me from going deeper into the occult in real life. I certainly had all the qualifications—bullied power-hungry twerp with no discernable skill in conventional fields and no immediate hope of a girlfriend who wasn't mentally ill. It's amazing I'm not out sacrificing goats to this day.”

MagicNerdOccultDungeons And Dragons2007D DAleister CrowleyJohn Dee
Book:The Elfish Gene: Dungeons, Dragons And Growing Up Strange
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“This, since junior school, had been virtually my only experience of women—as fantasy figures. Reading about women in fantasy novels had set me an even more unrealistic point of view. The Lord of the Rings doesn't help, with its sexless visions of elf maidens who may as well be speaking paintings, and neither does other fantasy literature, where women seem to exist solely to be rescued or slept with. The men they want are sorcerer-kings, doomed warriors or deadly assassins. I think the idea that women might fancy good-looking, well-adjusted men who are nice to them is too much for the average fantasy-head to bear.”

FantasyRape CultureObjectificationTolkienDungeons And Dragons2007Women In Literature
Book:The Elfish Gene: Dungeons, Dragons And Growing Up Strange
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“He said he would have a program running in the background to monitor the game. If my true name is ever spoken aloud, the dungeon will smite me even if he’s not paying attention. … You’re not the one being monitored by some kind of auto-smite program.”

Dungeons And DragonsNethack
Book:Vanishing in a Puff of Logic: The Tediously Charmed Life of RegretMeNo(t) the Elven Wizard
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“He sighed and opened the black box and took out his rings and slipped them on. Another box held a set of knives and Klatchian steel, their blades darkened with lamp black. Various cunning and intricate devices were taken from velvet bags and dropped into pockets. A couple of long-bladed throwing tlingas were slipped into their sheaths inside his boots. A thin silk line and folding grapnel were wound around his waist, over the chain-mail shirt. A blowpipe was attached to its leather thong and dropped down the back of his cloak; Teppic picked a slim tin container with an assortment of darts, their tips corked and their stems braille-coded for ease of selection in the dark. He winced, checked the blade of his rapier and slung the baldric over his right shoulder, to balance the bag of lead slingshot ammunition. As an afterthought he opened his sock drawer and took a pistol crossbow, a flask of oil, a roll of lockpicks and, after some consideration, a punch dagger, a bag of assorted caltrops and a set of brass knuckles. Teppic picked up his hat and checked it's lining for the coil of cheesewire. He placed it on his head at a jaunty angle, took a last satisfied look at himself in the mirror, turned on his heel and, very slowly, fell over.”

HumorFantasyDiscworldDungeons And DragonsAssasin
Book:Pyramids
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“If your ship goes down in the middle of the open water, you don't give up and sink. You tread water, clutch onto a spar, do 'something'." He stopped, wrung his hands. "Realistically speaking, if you're in the middle of the sea, you're a goner. But you tread water until you can't kick another stroke. Not because you're optimistic. I you polled ten random shipwreck victims treading open water in open sea, every one would tell you they're not optimistic. What they are is 'hopeful'. Or at least not hope-'empty'. They don't give up because that means death and living people can sometimes change their situations, while dead ones can't change a fucking thing. I've never been lost at sea, but I think if your buddy was weaker than you, and you were holding him up, you'd kick just as hard, because you'd be hoping for both of you. Because giving up for someone else is even harder than giving up for you." "Now I'm walkaway, I've been shot at and chased from my home, but I can't feature going back to default, because default is the bottom of the sea and walkaway is a floating stick we can clutch. Default has no use for us except as a competition for other non-zottas, someone who'll do someone else's job if they get too uppity and demand to be treated as human beings instead of marginal costs. We are surplus to default's requirements. If they could, they'd sink us. So what we're doing, Gretyl, is exercising hope. It's all you can do when the situation calls for pessimism. Most people who hope have their hopes dashed. That's realism, but everyone whose hopes 'weren't' dashed 'started off by having hope'. Hope's the price of admission. It's still a lotto with shitty odds, but at least it's our lotto. Treading water in default thinking you might become a zotta is playing a lotto you can't win, and whose winners - the zottas - get to keep winning at your expense because you keep playing. Hope's what we're doing. Performing hope, treading water in open ocean with no rescue in sight.”

HopeOptimismLuckPessimismLotteryWinnersSinkExpenseTreading Water
Book:Walkaway
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