You know the ex-girlfriend wasn't a sphinx by one simple fact, 'ex'. Well, that and they're probably not real, sphinxes that is, not ex-girlfriends.
Loved it Ape. Lotta folks try the blend of mundane and fantastic, but often it's trash. This hit the notes.
Particularly what most struggle with is the nature of fantastical creatures, a sphinx is a person, but not a human.
Of course one sphinx is a lot easier that doing two as you can lean more heavily on the nature for the personality of just one without breaking the magic.
How do you feel about sphinxes with variants of feline, avian and humanoid? Say some manner of orange housecat mixed with raven and some weefolk race for example?
Thank you for the high praise, it's greatly appreciate. Mixing the fantastic with the every day and ordinary is a trope I enjoy greatly but, unfortunately, when it's done often times in modern Western media, it's rendered down to a ham-fisted (and often very poorly thought out) allegory for racism or some other form of prejudice. In my opinion, it pretty much undercuts all the fun and whimsy from the scenario that should be... well, fun and whimsical. Mostly becaue what you said about sphinx applies to all sentient fantasy creatures, I think - they're people, but not human. It's an interesting dichotomy.
That being said, I'm a particularly big fan of mixing, matching, and generally exploring a great variety of any magical beings. If there's one breed of elf, I like it when there's twenty different subspecies (i.e. I always thought that if there's a "night elf" in a setting their should be "dawn elves", "twilight elves", and you can extrapolate it to be as silly as you want with "midday elves" or "afternoon tea elves"). It only makes sense. Given that there's multiple types of sphinxes to be found in various mythologies, I see no reason why there couldn't be smaller ones based on domesticated cats with the features of less regal birds. I can already see the potential in the concept of befriending such a small sphinx by leaving food out for it behind the back door, and it repaying the favor by leaving dead birds and rats by your the backdoor as a sincere but misguided attempt at repaying the favor with a sphinx's definition of a "gift". I bet a small sphinx roaming around your property would also be great natural pest control for wiley pixies and sprites.
The dead corpses of cute humanoid pixies would be even less charming to most people than rodents.Though the potential depths of 'biggers' hatred for weefolk could potentially make human division look like peanuts. Rodents are easily hated enough by those who experience their raids, but a tiny person who keeps stealing your stuff and occasionally widdling in your butter? A rat might go for that too, but a pixie could steal your game cartridges and sell them to a pawnshop! No, it'd be well easy for different sizes to have legitimate and illegitimate reasons to hate each other.
Still, such a pixie slaying sphinx would be greatly appreciated by a creepy taxidermist regardless of his opinions on weefolk, though as happy as she might be to give gifts, formaldehyde jars of the gifts... would she be creeped out, or appreciate the preservation of knowledge?
There's sometimes writing problems that arise from tons of breeds, but given you get a lot of bloodlines of man and beast, dogs being a strong example, it's only logical to have many breeds of a given fantastical creature. Mongrels naturally lead to all kind of stories too, though often 'coming of age', 'finding your place' or 'ugly duckling' type stories.
There's an irony that for all as obsessed with the racial as the moderns are, they don't delve into the wealth of stories that naturally arise from the interplay of bloodlines, peaceful or filled with strife, there's even comedy in the difference of man, let alone elf!
Having so loose a grip on the real, the unreal escapes them. It's one thing to constantly do stories of prejudice and discrimination but to fail to make an interesting conflict or comedy? Utter waste.
Of course, as much as there is stories to tell there, it's easy enough to ignore for more fun things. After all, sometimes you just want a little slice of life with some fantasical spice.
After all not all paintings use all colours, and when enchanting with the whimsical you mute whatever betrays the whimsy. In such tales, even normal humans are a little fantastical even in non fantasy whimsy stories. Some sentiments and human conditions are harder to turn to whimsy, though with enough skill, surely one could do a whimsical version of the Count of Monte Cristo. The wisdom of doing that is a seperate question completely.
Sometimes when you have fourty flavours of elf, it isn't for having complex racial interplay, but the base simple reason that it's kinda neat or cool.
No, you're an ape after this teller's own heart, or perhaps this teller yearns after that kind of sentiment, in the end it's fun to have variants.
One can always work out reasons later, and in many a tale no reason need be given.
It certainly a lot easier to work forty elf variants over fourty stories than one though.
To careen off in finish, different fruit tree dryads are underused.
This teller has heard though that lemon dyrads are very bitter...
Now I would love to write a story about a small-breed sphinx that hunts fairies for a deranged taxidermist. That could easily be a horror story unto itself from the fairies' perspective, and a macabre comedy from the perspective of the other two. Or a story about a lemon tree dryad getting snippy with someone who takes one of her fruits unsolicited. Or different breeds of elves belligerently enacting their ancient blood feuds in the middle of a supermarket. The possibilities are endless, and time to explore them all woefully limited. It would also just be kind of fun to write up dossiers on these various subspecies in a sort of scientific journal way.
If it happens it happens. Personally this teller would give up a few portions of his neverending inspiration for some work ethic.
Got a series about a 'Magi of Mating' Ronova Casameo cooking in the noggin. It'd be a bit like an advice column where he points out the ins and outs of romancing and marrying non-humans, claiming that through his magic avatars he's got an alter-ego married to all the non-humans that live. It'll be up in the air if he's telling the truth or just a super well read virgin who has done all the research.
I was hooked from word one. There's nothing better than a riddle contest with a sphinx, unless it's a riddle contest with a hobbit. And, the T-Shirt, awesome....
I'm glad you were so engaged! Sphinxes are one of my favorite mythical creatures. I could easily lose hours playing games with one, provided they were real, and also if the punishment for incorrectly guessing a riddle wasn't violent death.
You know the ex-girlfriend wasn't a sphinx by one simple fact, 'ex'. Well, that and they're probably not real, sphinxes that is, not ex-girlfriends.
Loved it Ape. Lotta folks try the blend of mundane and fantastic, but often it's trash. This hit the notes.
Particularly what most struggle with is the nature of fantastical creatures, a sphinx is a person, but not a human.
Of course one sphinx is a lot easier that doing two as you can lean more heavily on the nature for the personality of just one without breaking the magic.
How do you feel about sphinxes with variants of feline, avian and humanoid? Say some manner of orange housecat mixed with raven and some weefolk race for example?
Thank you for the high praise, it's greatly appreciate. Mixing the fantastic with the every day and ordinary is a trope I enjoy greatly but, unfortunately, when it's done often times in modern Western media, it's rendered down to a ham-fisted (and often very poorly thought out) allegory for racism or some other form of prejudice. In my opinion, it pretty much undercuts all the fun and whimsy from the scenario that should be... well, fun and whimsical. Mostly becaue what you said about sphinx applies to all sentient fantasy creatures, I think - they're people, but not human. It's an interesting dichotomy.
That being said, I'm a particularly big fan of mixing, matching, and generally exploring a great variety of any magical beings. If there's one breed of elf, I like it when there's twenty different subspecies (i.e. I always thought that if there's a "night elf" in a setting their should be "dawn elves", "twilight elves", and you can extrapolate it to be as silly as you want with "midday elves" or "afternoon tea elves"). It only makes sense. Given that there's multiple types of sphinxes to be found in various mythologies, I see no reason why there couldn't be smaller ones based on domesticated cats with the features of less regal birds. I can already see the potential in the concept of befriending such a small sphinx by leaving food out for it behind the back door, and it repaying the favor by leaving dead birds and rats by your the backdoor as a sincere but misguided attempt at repaying the favor with a sphinx's definition of a "gift". I bet a small sphinx roaming around your property would also be great natural pest control for wiley pixies and sprites.
The dead corpses of cute humanoid pixies would be even less charming to most people than rodents.Though the potential depths of 'biggers' hatred for weefolk could potentially make human division look like peanuts. Rodents are easily hated enough by those who experience their raids, but a tiny person who keeps stealing your stuff and occasionally widdling in your butter? A rat might go for that too, but a pixie could steal your game cartridges and sell them to a pawnshop! No, it'd be well easy for different sizes to have legitimate and illegitimate reasons to hate each other.
Still, such a pixie slaying sphinx would be greatly appreciated by a creepy taxidermist regardless of his opinions on weefolk, though as happy as she might be to give gifts, formaldehyde jars of the gifts... would she be creeped out, or appreciate the preservation of knowledge?
There's sometimes writing problems that arise from tons of breeds, but given you get a lot of bloodlines of man and beast, dogs being a strong example, it's only logical to have many breeds of a given fantastical creature. Mongrels naturally lead to all kind of stories too, though often 'coming of age', 'finding your place' or 'ugly duckling' type stories.
There's an irony that for all as obsessed with the racial as the moderns are, they don't delve into the wealth of stories that naturally arise from the interplay of bloodlines, peaceful or filled with strife, there's even comedy in the difference of man, let alone elf!
Having so loose a grip on the real, the unreal escapes them. It's one thing to constantly do stories of prejudice and discrimination but to fail to make an interesting conflict or comedy? Utter waste.
Of course, as much as there is stories to tell there, it's easy enough to ignore for more fun things. After all, sometimes you just want a little slice of life with some fantasical spice.
After all not all paintings use all colours, and when enchanting with the whimsical you mute whatever betrays the whimsy. In such tales, even normal humans are a little fantastical even in non fantasy whimsy stories. Some sentiments and human conditions are harder to turn to whimsy, though with enough skill, surely one could do a whimsical version of the Count of Monte Cristo. The wisdom of doing that is a seperate question completely.
Sometimes when you have fourty flavours of elf, it isn't for having complex racial interplay, but the base simple reason that it's kinda neat or cool.
No, you're an ape after this teller's own heart, or perhaps this teller yearns after that kind of sentiment, in the end it's fun to have variants.
One can always work out reasons later, and in many a tale no reason need be given.
It certainly a lot easier to work forty elf variants over fourty stories than one though.
To careen off in finish, different fruit tree dryads are underused.
This teller has heard though that lemon dyrads are very bitter...
Now I would love to write a story about a small-breed sphinx that hunts fairies for a deranged taxidermist. That could easily be a horror story unto itself from the fairies' perspective, and a macabre comedy from the perspective of the other two. Or a story about a lemon tree dryad getting snippy with someone who takes one of her fruits unsolicited. Or different breeds of elves belligerently enacting their ancient blood feuds in the middle of a supermarket. The possibilities are endless, and time to explore them all woefully limited. It would also just be kind of fun to write up dossiers on these various subspecies in a sort of scientific journal way.
If it happens it happens. Personally this teller would give up a few portions of his neverending inspiration for some work ethic.
Got a series about a 'Magi of Mating' Ronova Casameo cooking in the noggin. It'd be a bit like an advice column where he points out the ins and outs of romancing and marrying non-humans, claiming that through his magic avatars he's got an alter-ego married to all the non-humans that live. It'll be up in the air if he's telling the truth or just a super well read virgin who has done all the research.
Another banger, I'm flattered to be quoted too. From the muse's mouth to my ears to my keyboard to your... well, you get the idea!
Don't worry, I get what you mean. That being said, any way you can send them my way more often?
Anything is possible if we wait long enough. *dies*
I was hooked from word one. There's nothing better than a riddle contest with a sphinx, unless it's a riddle contest with a hobbit. And, the T-Shirt, awesome....
I'm glad you were so engaged! Sphinxes are one of my favorite mythical creatures. I could easily lose hours playing games with one, provided they were real, and also if the punishment for incorrectly guessing a riddle wasn't violent death.