As a Dark Lord, I spread Villainy. This doesn’t necessarily mean unhappiness. Not every Villain enjoys universal misery; that’s a really narrow view of monstrosity. Some of us prefer to profit from the many benefits of a thoughtful, engaged populace with a high morale; they’re productive and creative and inventive.
Do we fear that they’ll overthrow us because the Heroes offer a better life?
HAH!
Have you met the Heroes?
anyway:
a simple goal I have for every Jeff Mach Event: I make weekend-long homes for unusual people.
What does that mean?
The second martial arts school I attended was literally in the back of an alley, up a long flight of stairs. And leading to the school door, there was a pair of signs. The first was a standard martial-arts school notice, “Please remove shoes”. This simple act gave a physical reminder that I was leaving one place—“the street”—and stepping into a different world, with different rules.
The second was at the top of the stairs. “You are entering a traditional karate dojo. Please act accordingly”.
How did one “act accordingly”? I knew many common rules and practices—I also knew that every school I had seen had its own style, rules, approach. What was proper in one school might be utterly wrong in another.
Yet the practical value of that sign was enormous. It always gave me pause, called to my mind all of my associations with training grounds, what I learned there, and who and what those things made me. “Act accordingly”: know what you have come to do, know what you are doing, at least in your own mind. Or, at the barest minimum, recognize in your gut that you’ve come to a place where things are different. Don’t just take that difference passively, when it enters your space; make it a part of your consciousness.
And thus. And so.
You’ve entered our world, a place where we belong, a place where we are not the outsiders, a place where what we do matters, is meaningful, is real, and we are NOT the only ones who know it.
Steampunk, Rocky Horror, Renaissance Faires, Geeky spaces; it doesn’t matter.
We’re all here for one thing: World Dominion and pie.
Wait, I meant, we’re all here for three things: World dominion, a fun event, meeting other monsters, and pie.
There. That’s better.
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For my darkly satirical fantasy novel, “There and NEVER, EVER BACK AGAIN,” click here.
