NOTICE: The Management is very responsible for wonder and bedazzlement,** for the soft click in the back of the mind when a story suddenly helps you understand something you hadn’t thought about for years, for the sudden conviction that the ordinary world is thinner than it pretends and that somewhere just out of frame something magnificent and slightly illegal is happening,
for the temporary belief that unicorns are only twenty percent paint and their horns are merely on long-term loan from Vinnie the Horn Shark, for the return of the sensation that the Force might in fact be disturbed in your favor, for any and all lingering effects of Faerie gold that refuses to vanish on schedule and for the corresponding rise in Faerie alcohol tolerance, for unmanaged but highly productive mischief,
for TARDIS malfunctions that unerringly leave you exactly where you needed to be, for the reappearance of the weird box you bought in that strange shop the moment you stopped looking for it, for the moment mythological beings decide they believe in *you*, for golden apples that still somehow read “Kallisti,” for acts of Gods and Goths and particularly peculiar Thursdays, for both losing and finding the One Ring in the same afternoon, for the highly illogical decision to keep reading,
for Magick that refuses to stay ascendant only in books, for the pleasant erosion of the illusion of Reality, for rebellion against the Capital conducted entirely in daydreams, for tulips that bloom out of season just to make a point, and of course for Puck, always and especially Puck, who has never once been disclaimed and never will be;
**and further**, for the Villainly Monologue that gets a terrible rap in stories told by Heroes, yet remains therapeutic and pleasurable because “It’s not, and I repeat, NOT the Villain’s problem that the Hero has Plot Armor,” and because “Dead men don’t write books,” and because intellectual equals are hard to find and “Good help IS hard to find”;
for the certainty that “99.9% of the time, THE VILLAIN MONOLOGUE WORKS AND THE HERO DIES,” and that one should therefore “Monologue! It is NOT true that monologuing is the CAUSE of your troubles. The CAUSE of the troubles of those destroyed by monologuing is that they’re in stories where they have to lose no matter what. Don’t be in those stories. Be in our stories, instead”;
for the Order that has been granting wishes since your kind was busy figuring out which tree branches were most inedible, that has disarmed all the traps and monsters except the last one so you can honestly tell the Djinn *you* overcame it, and that will sincerely try to help when you fail (though “I promise we can’t”), while maintaining the Garden Of Former Humans Who Thought They Could Outsmart Djinn and the Museum Of People With Ridiculous Looks On Their Faces;
for the Djinn of the Bottle who insists “You’ve been reading WAY too much science fiction,” whose seven-room suite and wet bar are rent-free forever, and who after acquiring a smartphone lasts an average of ninety-five minutes before screaming “PUT ME BACK!!!” because “It’s a terrifying World you’ve built” and Solomon was, if anything, *gentle*;
for the admission that “EVERYONE AROUND YOU IS A FRICKIN’ IDIOT,” which is why you monologue, why you explain yourselves to henchmen who will either betray you or fail to understand, and why the eventual solution is to rob pretentious fools until you can surround yourself with people who are *not* frickin’ idiots;
for General Zignard who insists on the same rations as his robot army and therefore tears off limbs mid-battle to gnaw, for Dr. Toast who ate nothing but toast and discovered you cannot avoid the Brooklyn Bridge by jumping off it, for Captain Omega who invites crimefighters to souvlaki and walks out while they are in a food coma, for the Giant Mantis who eats the heads of her lovers after well-worth-it ecstasy, and for every other dietary peculiarity of the properly villainous;
for the International Villain Council’s firm advice against the Master Plan that puts too many eggs in one basket, against making The Speech only one-third to five-sixths of the way through, and in favor of succeeding against idiots in a few well-chosen gambits and then retiring to Tokyo for good food and a good think;
for the absolute necessity of a disreputable accountant long before you think one is needed, as demonstrated by Severus Sneed who stole all the gold in Fort Knox, substituted cardboard for all-beef burgers, and discovered that customers swore the cardboard was “high quality beef” until he needed a huge tax shelter and ended in debtor’s prison while his Swiss accounts grew musty;
for the alphabetized list of deductible lair features (acid pits are a definite maybe if you breed acid-proof piranhas for sale; alarm klaxons yes, *but* check local noise ordinances; acid fountains are decoration and therefore an uphill climb after Bernie Madoff ruined it for the rest of us);
for the minimalist sanctum that requires only a Chair, and for every other furnishing decision that prioritizes the ability to monologue in comfort while prehistoric crocodiles wait patiently;
for necromancy whose ethical ramifications were settled by summoning a thousand professors who all answered “YES!” to the question “Is it right that you’re back from the Tomb?”, for the subsequent coexistence of Zombies and Triffids, for the majority of the population (living, undead, and photosynthetic) finding this the best of all possible worlds, and for the necromancer who still runs like Hell before the older corpses can eat him;
for the world in which it is a good life to be a Vampire *and* a good life to be a Peasant because the ancient ones ensure only the foolish and classless die permanently, wooden stakes are not banned, and a healthy twenty-five-year-old carried off without a struggle is blamed on the parents for failing to insist on a big garlic dinner;
for the return of Disco as the anthem of Evil, bound into a mortal body of tentacles and armored spider-legs that is also a great dancer, so that one may unalive a group of dancers while playing “Stayin’ Alive” and thereafter boogie until the mind is no more;
for Gremlins who once plagued the aerial fighters of World War I, who have now invaded the ones and zeroes, who invented spam, who make every opponent a proven jerk, and who can still be killed if you see one and—quickly!—PUNT;
for Dr. Septonius Nightfall’s nanobots that married underwear, poison ivy, and skin until every major world leader was incapacitated by scratching, and for the subsequent realization that ransoming the world is an unwise economic move because inflation will render your Swiss billions worthless while you organize a ragtag group of survivors around excellent coconuts and really fresh seafood;
for the Other Naming of Cats, wherein they are likely both Demons and Gods, command the Mi-Go on the Plains of Leng, draw pentacles while you sleep, and answer every description of apex-predator malevolence with the single correct reply: “A cat”;
for the Accumulated Grief Machine that finally activated when the Red Sorceress called it a clanking idiot, releasing Ignavel the kvetch who rose through the ceiling declaring “NOW I AM A GOD!” while the Machine itself hopped out the window in pursuit;
and for every Dark Lord who never wanted the war in the first place, who finds ruling a gigantic order of idiots far less appealing than keeping idiots out of her house, who invents Alice’s Spell For Destroying (ONLY) Very Large Things while drunk and then has to live with the consequences, who receives an Ambassador Plenipotentiary who is a reluctant Dwarf named Sam, who prefers research into the connection of body and soul via psychic membranes over practical applications that tend to end *really* horribly, and who ultimately leaves a smiling Moon and a world protected (or at least distracted) by Dragons that prefer property damage and teaching princesses to read;
**in short**, Management claims full and cheerful responsibility for every soft, dangerous feeling that the world might still contain doors worth opening, thrones worth questioning, and stories that do not end when the heroes win—stories in which the Villain monologues successfully, the Djinn want back in the bottle, the frickin’ idiots are finally admitted to be frickin’ idiots, the taxes are paid (or creatively avoided with proper accounting), the Zombies and Triffids coexist, Disco reigns, Gremlins are punted, and the Dark Lord retires to the library with a twelve-hundred-page book while the Moon keeps smiling.
We reserve the right to continue this policy indefinitely.
You have been unwarned.
___
Why not read The Wonder of Elves: some lore and an anthropological thought on their dining habits — Jeff Mach Writes ?
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