- Location
- Sol;Terra;EU;D;NRW
Yay, dis DC is secretly a crossover with SCP.
The girls may want to get John to run.
The girls may want to get John to run.
Pocket System
- Thread starter theaceoffire
- Start date
- Crossover Fantasy
Didn't it start out like that with P&F? MIB could be like that if you squint. Heck, even the card dueling game was founded on containing eldritch horrors. The Power Rangers were straight-up SCP except they focused on sending everyone home as the easiest solution to the issue.
I'd actually feel better with SCP in DC or Marvel. They couldn't screw it up worse. Plus, there are tons of entities and properties that need idiots kept away from them. That's like 90% of their job. Security to keep idiots alive. If they are criminal idiots, they get recruited into the disposable class.
I can see the Realms trading notes and figure that they need to retroactively create a local SCP to handle issues.
. . . . I know that you didn't mean it that way.
But I'm so used to you making inappropriate comments or such puns that my knee jerk reaction was "Damnit TerraBull, you didn't need to phrase it like that!" Then I was all, "Oh, wait.... apparently they didn't this time."
But I'm so used to you making inappropriate comments or such puns that my knee jerk reaction was "Damnit TerraBull, you didn't need to phrase it like that!" Then I was all, "Oh, wait.... apparently they didn't this time."
Oh joy.
- Location
- Here
Aside from the daily nine hour classes, turns out there's also an enormous amount of written work as well that the teachers were unaware were actually available for the students at the time. So I'm going to churn through that as fast as possible.
Everyone stay safe and have a great day! I'll get back on documenting stuff as soon as I can get this all under control.
Everyone stay safe and have a great day! I'll get back on documenting stuff as soon as I can get this all under control.
- Location
- Cookeville
Stay safe and good luck in your future learning.
John is trying to be a book
- Location
- Here
I'll cover what's going on this Wednesday. Slight spoiler: It looks like some of the information that John sees, as well as some of the things he hears and understands, are only knowable to those who have a deep relationship with the act of generating and gathering Faith.
So I am pretty sure that will impact the next Realm they visit.
So I am pretty sure that will impact the next Realm they visit.
"I was told I could be anything when I grew up, so I decided I wanted to be a book!"
- Location
- Sol;Terra;EU;D;NRW
I am now assuming that some greek gods are about to have their code seem and become embarassed.
- Location
- Planet Earth
Fable is a pretty Faith&WILL dominated realm... But I get the feeling that is not where we are headed...
The Riordanverse?
Danmachi?
The Riordanverse?
Danmachi?
- Location
- United States
They should visit bleach, just to drive Kisuke more insane. John just has a casual conversation with the soul king who is actually taking a centuries long nap and is not as out of commission as everyone thinks.
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Given the Threadmark name... Someone's going to throw John at someone else, aren't they?
Well, provided John doesn't do something like build a catapult, and flings himself by accident(?).
Well, provided John doesn't do something like build a catapult, and flings himself by accident(?).
The problems of one's Faith.
- Location
- Here
After Crafting and Converting Faith into and out of all sorts of materials, John came to a firm conclusion!
He had no idea what was going on here. Faith-wise, at least.
But at least he DID accidentally learn some stuff about Magic along the way! So, that was good?
Anyway it was a couple of days later now, and Sindella Dear had popped in to try and help John figure out this mess early on… With no results or success.
Oh she enjoyed suggesting experiments to understand what was going on, and she supported him when John teased her daughter and all that, but no real progress was gained in understanding how John was Crafting Faith or why (almost) nothing could detect it or how this stuff interacted with other materials or anything like that.
Faith turned out to be tricky to play with for anyone other than John so far.
So the rest of the time, especially when Zatanna and her mom wandered away busy with their own thing, he just kept messing with the stuff and Magic to keep himself occupied.
John was also firmly ignoring the growing number of unseen eyes trying to lick the protective defenses of this home and library. Ick.
…Seriously though, the god-like entities of this Realm were a bit gross. Oh sure, some looked like people or creatures or whatever, but the things that John had somehow alerted were more squishy than that. Less defined, more Conceptual.
Which was a problem for later.
Back to the Magic thing! It all came down to one's ability to provide power (or energy or Magic or whatever) while making requests for something to occur.
The real fun part was attempting to nail down the costs involved, and the efficiency.
Even with NO knowledge or practice, an untrained baby could do ANYTHING they desired with Magic!
….For a cost.
A massive, 'more than sacrificing all of this Realm' cost.
Because there were certain penalties or demerits, and accepting even one drastically increased the energy required for magic to operate… And they were not additive, they were exponential.
Don't know a spell? Big penalty. Casting without preparation or components? Another demerit. Dropping other bits, like spell words or gestures or wands or whatever? Even more penalties.
One penalty could be handled by most Magic users without issue.
Powerful people could probably handle two or even THREE marks and still afford to pay for the results they wanted… Even if they needed to ritually sacrifice a few things to cover the 'loans' required.
But beyond that? Nope.
An attempt at Magic with four penalties was too costly for one solar system to handle. If you moved on to FIVE? Well, even trying to calculate the costs became near impossible on a theoretical level.
Now normally Magic users got around this mess by breaking their works up into steps, components, and so forth. Or even MORE vital than all that?
They found, constructed, or summoned Catalysts. A component or action or material or idea that would interact in odd ways while you were casting something, that would offset some or many of the other demerits you accepted when setting up some Magical effect.
Rituals did this often, where each stage was a chunk of the end results you wanted… Just gathering components and preparing for the various later stages all counted as individual works of Magic instead of just waving your hand and altering reality.
Every one of those tiny chunks of casting would ALSO attempt to cram in as many Catalysts, overlapping and reused components, and self reinforcing loops and cycles as possible… Sometimes even MORE than possible, if the resulting backlashes were deemed acceptable loses.
And from what John could tell, Zatanna's whole spell casting method? It used this trick.
Seriously, crazy stuff there! Backward talking, no components most of the time, nearly no burden on the user? Holy crap!
Well, that sort of Magical setup required a TON of tiny rituals and steps done by her entire family line. A billion Magical legos carefully arranged block by block over dozens of lifetimes, all focused on simplifying the process and enhancing the benefits for some future great grandchildren!
And towards the end there, the entire process sort of built up this momentum that continued to perpetuate itself. Special additions or effects fell into place, guided by echoes of long forgotten actions and rituals of the distant past.
Guided and bound and focused around one family bloodline… Probably an unstoppable aspect of local reality after all these years, one that reverberated from nearby dimensional layers to self reinforce the entire mess.
It was a surprisingly forward thinking masterwork of Magic and Genetics, really. Neat stuff!
Back on topic though, Magic was expensive to use… So MOST magical communities or societies focused on two things: Cost reduction and spell efficiency.
Entire groups of magicians and wizards and witches, all building up big toolboxes of focused mystical tools and workings and stuff so that even mediocre casters could do neat tricks and play with existence just a little bit.
And it worked pretty well too!
If you broke it down? Magic crafting had a few steps: Avoid as many penalties as possible; Define as many steps and variables as you can, to prevent Magic itself being required to fill in any gaps; Reuse prior defined steps, components, or Catalysts if whenever feasible; And limit the results of any spellwork if possible to the smallest amount of reality alterations required while still accomplishing your desired goals.
The more control you had, the 'stronger' you were as a Magician, Wizard, Spiritualist, or whatever!
Normally. There were exceptions and bylaws and all sorts of stuff according to what John had read so far in the library, but those may only be local laws and rules based on THIS Realm. More testing would be required after leaving this one.
Anyway, the point is? John didn't do that.
He didn't do ANY of that.
After all, those tricks? Those methods to reduce Magical costs and enhance spell capabilities and effectiveness?
They only worked when you lived within a single framework. When you lived in one reality, or worked with one Realm.
Basically? Local Magic was researched and defined by locals to the point where they began to actually communicate to reality itself via the LANGUAGE of Magic, whatever it happened to be.
Instead of just asking Magic to sort your laundry, the locals were using tricks and abbreviations and gestures and shortcuts to simply detail all the steps REQUIRED to accomplish that, allowing Magic to mindlessly follow the steps with as little interaction required as possible.
Magic could LITERALLY do that in its sleep. And did.
So it (relatively) cost nearly nothing to use such Spells for a local.
But for John?
Well, John couldn't speak the local dialect. And learning it would be beyond pointless, as NONE of it would help with the NEXT Realm he visited. No overlap whatsoever, even if the actual results were identical.
After all, how many thousands of ways could you make a cheese sandwich? Especially with infinite cheeses and unlimited breads and legions of cooking utensils and impossible kitchen equipment?
Instead, John apparently needed to poke Magic awake, whatever local version existed, then nudge it in the direction desired.
Instead of being very specific and rigid about how things got done… His method required vagueness. High level concepts.
Then local aspects of Magic would spend power to find at least one of the infinite solutions to his current problems, and John could build off that. Casting the same thing a SECOND time would drop in energy costs to near nothing, and the power fee for finding similar spells or whatever to gain a resulting effect would then become more manageable.
It meant that every new Realm he'd need to find a way to cast any spells desired at least once the expensive way before he could regain whatever tricks he came up with in the future for local use.
So show up somewhere new, ask Magic to make a glowy light or something while focusing on ONLY requiring the bare minimum or results… And if it could be afforded? Then that would get John's foot in the door, so to speak, and would allow full Magic use to be possible on that stop.
But it required power. Forget actually configuring that first spell to do ANYTHING useful, as just attempting to pick a color of that spark of light would cause the power costs to surge beyond belief…
No, the first step for fully understanding Magic was to basically start a conversation with Magic itself FIRST, then have it act as a translator between his desires and the local layer of reality.
…Which should be fine, yes?
Probably. Most of the time, Magic itself wasn't an asshole… Just heavily influenced by local users and stuff. Oh sure, some locations were polluted and corrupted and insane and stuff, but not raw Magic itself. Just that specific region.
So like, he could just Cast some Magic right here as a test case! Something basic and cheap, something researchable!
John hummed to himself… Yeah, it should be fine. Totally!
"...Hey John?"
He blinked, pausing in the middle of setting off an investigative 'magic flare'... Well, more like a 'magical spark' honestly, considering how EXPENSIVE any actual Magic was to cast this way. "Yes Zatanna?"
"...What ya doin?"
He looked down at the fragments of a mote of energy between his hands. "...Nothing?"
"...What kind of nothing?"
The whole mess was quickly converted into more untraceable Faith. "Almost no kinds of nothing. Why?"
Zatanna sounded concerned. "Well, I was just wondering what you were up to in there."
Hmm? "Right, well you know how we have had… Less than an amazing amount of progress as I try to get Magic standardized and all that? Like, we had theories and stuff, but we've bumped into a few walls and stuff?"
…She sighed. "John, you learned and performed more magical acts in a few days than most people ever accomplish after a lifetime of hardcore dedication."
Huh. "But like, aside from that stuff. I mean, you've seen how slow our attempts have been to redefine the framework of Magic itself into something usable outside of all existence and time and space and stuff… I mean, eventually we need it to be researched and understood within other domains of Time and Space and all that, right? Up to the level where Concepts and Power and Fate and stuff start meshing, you know?"
Zatanna was quiet for a bit. "Let me rephrase my original question, John."
He blinked in the darkness. "Yeah?"
She rapped her knuckles on the wood. "Why are you hiding inside our bookcases?"
The young lady knocked again. "And while we are at it: HOW are you hiding inside Shadowcrest's bookcases? There isn't enough room for that."
John set aside the most recent book that his sister's Agents had finished with onto one of the piles surrounding him, and considered the situation… Fine. "If I tell you, you can't laugh at me. Alright?"
"...Against my better judgment, fine. No laugh zone here, promise."
He glanced at the other stacks of books inside this space. Not that he could physically see any of them, considering this whole area was pure darkness. "Well, I mentioned how I was frustrated at how slowly my investigation into Magic was going, right? Especially after how nothing worked when we tried to look into my whole Faith Crafting situation."
Another examined book was pulled from his Pocket and returned to a stack. "I just thought that almost ALL Magic was being shared in this world via books. So clearly books at least understand what is going on, right? They'd have to, if one wanted to document anything, you know? I thought, maybe I could understand Magic better from a different point of view, see?"
He felt the cozy world of literature around himself humm with the shifting of this beloved library. "So I decided to shelve myself. At least until someone decides to read me or check me out or do a quality control check to ensure my cover is of good standing or see if I need to be rebound or whatnot."
Zatanna seemed to be overly quiet for some reason, but it felt good for John to talk about this without worrying about being mocked or whatever! "And it's been great so far! I've got all these book acquaintances now, not full Pocket pals obviously since we are all just basically coworkers for this shelf row, but sometimes it's really nice to find other books that just cover similar topics even if we all tend to enjoy a bit more peace and quiet than usual and…"
Stop John, don't go too far off topic. "My point is, like I said: I decided to shelve myself! And your bookshelves are all magical and stuff, and they don't discriminate against books of unusual composition or made out of people or whatever, so the automatic sorting and shelf resizing mechanics and all that just found me my perfect spot."
The whole experience had been a bit magical, ironically. "I've never felt MORE Dewey Decimal-ed before… It's been a wonderful experience!"
He hummed happily for a bit, since Zatanna seemed to be rolling his words over in her mind for some reason.
Eventually, she spoke up again. "John?"
Hmm? "Yes?"
She sounded a little exasperated. "Please come out of the bookcase. At least while we're talking, I mean."
…Ugh. "Do I have to? It's icky out there."
Yep, that was full-on exasperation and now a touch of annoyance. "What do you mean icky!? Shadowcrest is ALWAYS kept clean and…"
Huh? "Of COURSE Shadowcrest and your library is fine, I'm not talking about that!"
That caught her off guard for some reason. "What?"
No idea why she'd think he'd ever insult this lovely {{Home}} like that, John had manners after all. "I just feel grossed out seeing all those Faith-formed teeth and eyeballs licking your defenses and trying to suckle inside the walls. That's SO unhygienic."
"WHAT!?"
John blinked at her shock. Why was she so surprised… Oh. Oh shit!
Had he forgotten to mention those things to anyone besides those in his Pocket? "I did mention the undetectable things outside that are trying to eat me, yes?"
"NO, you DID NOT! Stay there, I'm going to get mom! MOM!"
What!? Surely he had talked about those things! It was on his to-do list! It even had a star next to it because it was important he didn't forget to mention it!
Wait, where was that thing? It had been right there and…
Damn it, the shelves must have magically shelved it off somewhere, didn't they? And he hadn't noticed, because keeping track of the list itself was pretty far down on the list if he remembered correctly.
A bit of an oversight there, honestly.
Oops.
Oh well, these sorts of mix ups happen now and then.
John idly retrieved another book from the teams of SPYRAL agents examining the things and placed it to one side to be reshelved.
It would probably be best to wait for Sindella Dear to get called in before he continued with this whole 'understanding literature' experiment anyway.
Although… He wondered if he had time to cast the new experimental 'Spark' spell before everyone came back to check John out into circulation?
It shouldn't be a problem, right?
He had no idea what was going on here. Faith-wise, at least.
But at least he DID accidentally learn some stuff about Magic along the way! So, that was good?
Anyway it was a couple of days later now, and Sindella Dear had popped in to try and help John figure out this mess early on… With no results or success.
Oh she enjoyed suggesting experiments to understand what was going on, and she supported him when John teased her daughter and all that, but no real progress was gained in understanding how John was Crafting Faith or why (almost) nothing could detect it or how this stuff interacted with other materials or anything like that.
Faith turned out to be tricky to play with for anyone other than John so far.
So the rest of the time, especially when Zatanna and her mom wandered away busy with their own thing, he just kept messing with the stuff and Magic to keep himself occupied.
John was also firmly ignoring the growing number of unseen eyes trying to lick the protective defenses of this home and library. Ick.
…Seriously though, the god-like entities of this Realm were a bit gross. Oh sure, some looked like people or creatures or whatever, but the things that John had somehow alerted were more squishy than that. Less defined, more Conceptual.
Which was a problem for later.
Back to the Magic thing! It all came down to one's ability to provide power (or energy or Magic or whatever) while making requests for something to occur.
The real fun part was attempting to nail down the costs involved, and the efficiency.
Even with NO knowledge or practice, an untrained baby could do ANYTHING they desired with Magic!
….For a cost.
A massive, 'more than sacrificing all of this Realm' cost.
Because there were certain penalties or demerits, and accepting even one drastically increased the energy required for magic to operate… And they were not additive, they were exponential.
Don't know a spell? Big penalty. Casting without preparation or components? Another demerit. Dropping other bits, like spell words or gestures or wands or whatever? Even more penalties.
One penalty could be handled by most Magic users without issue.
Powerful people could probably handle two or even THREE marks and still afford to pay for the results they wanted… Even if they needed to ritually sacrifice a few things to cover the 'loans' required.
But beyond that? Nope.
An attempt at Magic with four penalties was too costly for one solar system to handle. If you moved on to FIVE? Well, even trying to calculate the costs became near impossible on a theoretical level.
Now normally Magic users got around this mess by breaking their works up into steps, components, and so forth. Or even MORE vital than all that?
They found, constructed, or summoned Catalysts. A component or action or material or idea that would interact in odd ways while you were casting something, that would offset some or many of the other demerits you accepted when setting up some Magical effect.
Rituals did this often, where each stage was a chunk of the end results you wanted… Just gathering components and preparing for the various later stages all counted as individual works of Magic instead of just waving your hand and altering reality.
Every one of those tiny chunks of casting would ALSO attempt to cram in as many Catalysts, overlapping and reused components, and self reinforcing loops and cycles as possible… Sometimes even MORE than possible, if the resulting backlashes were deemed acceptable loses.
And from what John could tell, Zatanna's whole spell casting method? It used this trick.
Seriously, crazy stuff there! Backward talking, no components most of the time, nearly no burden on the user? Holy crap!
Well, that sort of Magical setup required a TON of tiny rituals and steps done by her entire family line. A billion Magical legos carefully arranged block by block over dozens of lifetimes, all focused on simplifying the process and enhancing the benefits for some future great grandchildren!
And towards the end there, the entire process sort of built up this momentum that continued to perpetuate itself. Special additions or effects fell into place, guided by echoes of long forgotten actions and rituals of the distant past.
Guided and bound and focused around one family bloodline… Probably an unstoppable aspect of local reality after all these years, one that reverberated from nearby dimensional layers to self reinforce the entire mess.
It was a surprisingly forward thinking masterwork of Magic and Genetics, really. Neat stuff!
Back on topic though, Magic was expensive to use… So MOST magical communities or societies focused on two things: Cost reduction and spell efficiency.
Entire groups of magicians and wizards and witches, all building up big toolboxes of focused mystical tools and workings and stuff so that even mediocre casters could do neat tricks and play with existence just a little bit.
And it worked pretty well too!
If you broke it down? Magic crafting had a few steps: Avoid as many penalties as possible; Define as many steps and variables as you can, to prevent Magic itself being required to fill in any gaps; Reuse prior defined steps, components, or Catalysts if whenever feasible; And limit the results of any spellwork if possible to the smallest amount of reality alterations required while still accomplishing your desired goals.
The more control you had, the 'stronger' you were as a Magician, Wizard, Spiritualist, or whatever!
Normally. There were exceptions and bylaws and all sorts of stuff according to what John had read so far in the library, but those may only be local laws and rules based on THIS Realm. More testing would be required after leaving this one.
Anyway, the point is? John didn't do that.
He didn't do ANY of that.
After all, those tricks? Those methods to reduce Magical costs and enhance spell capabilities and effectiveness?
They only worked when you lived within a single framework. When you lived in one reality, or worked with one Realm.
Basically? Local Magic was researched and defined by locals to the point where they began to actually communicate to reality itself via the LANGUAGE of Magic, whatever it happened to be.
Instead of just asking Magic to sort your laundry, the locals were using tricks and abbreviations and gestures and shortcuts to simply detail all the steps REQUIRED to accomplish that, allowing Magic to mindlessly follow the steps with as little interaction required as possible.
Magic could LITERALLY do that in its sleep. And did.
So it (relatively) cost nearly nothing to use such Spells for a local.
But for John?
Well, John couldn't speak the local dialect. And learning it would be beyond pointless, as NONE of it would help with the NEXT Realm he visited. No overlap whatsoever, even if the actual results were identical.
After all, how many thousands of ways could you make a cheese sandwich? Especially with infinite cheeses and unlimited breads and legions of cooking utensils and impossible kitchen equipment?
Instead, John apparently needed to poke Magic awake, whatever local version existed, then nudge it in the direction desired.
Instead of being very specific and rigid about how things got done… His method required vagueness. High level concepts.
Then local aspects of Magic would spend power to find at least one of the infinite solutions to his current problems, and John could build off that. Casting the same thing a SECOND time would drop in energy costs to near nothing, and the power fee for finding similar spells or whatever to gain a resulting effect would then become more manageable.
It meant that every new Realm he'd need to find a way to cast any spells desired at least once the expensive way before he could regain whatever tricks he came up with in the future for local use.
So show up somewhere new, ask Magic to make a glowy light or something while focusing on ONLY requiring the bare minimum or results… And if it could be afforded? Then that would get John's foot in the door, so to speak, and would allow full Magic use to be possible on that stop.
But it required power. Forget actually configuring that first spell to do ANYTHING useful, as just attempting to pick a color of that spark of light would cause the power costs to surge beyond belief…
No, the first step for fully understanding Magic was to basically start a conversation with Magic itself FIRST, then have it act as a translator between his desires and the local layer of reality.
…Which should be fine, yes?
Probably. Most of the time, Magic itself wasn't an asshole… Just heavily influenced by local users and stuff. Oh sure, some locations were polluted and corrupted and insane and stuff, but not raw Magic itself. Just that specific region.
So like, he could just Cast some Magic right here as a test case! Something basic and cheap, something researchable!
John hummed to himself… Yeah, it should be fine. Totally!
"...Hey John?"
He blinked, pausing in the middle of setting off an investigative 'magic flare'... Well, more like a 'magical spark' honestly, considering how EXPENSIVE any actual Magic was to cast this way. "Yes Zatanna?"
"...What ya doin?"
He looked down at the fragments of a mote of energy between his hands. "...Nothing?"
"...What kind of nothing?"
The whole mess was quickly converted into more untraceable Faith. "Almost no kinds of nothing. Why?"
Zatanna sounded concerned. "Well, I was just wondering what you were up to in there."
Hmm? "Right, well you know how we have had… Less than an amazing amount of progress as I try to get Magic standardized and all that? Like, we had theories and stuff, but we've bumped into a few walls and stuff?"
…She sighed. "John, you learned and performed more magical acts in a few days than most people ever accomplish after a lifetime of hardcore dedication."
Huh. "But like, aside from that stuff. I mean, you've seen how slow our attempts have been to redefine the framework of Magic itself into something usable outside of all existence and time and space and stuff… I mean, eventually we need it to be researched and understood within other domains of Time and Space and all that, right? Up to the level where Concepts and Power and Fate and stuff start meshing, you know?"
Zatanna was quiet for a bit. "Let me rephrase my original question, John."
He blinked in the darkness. "Yeah?"
She rapped her knuckles on the wood. "Why are you hiding inside our bookcases?"
The young lady knocked again. "And while we are at it: HOW are you hiding inside Shadowcrest's bookcases? There isn't enough room for that."
John set aside the most recent book that his sister's Agents had finished with onto one of the piles surrounding him, and considered the situation… Fine. "If I tell you, you can't laugh at me. Alright?"
"...Against my better judgment, fine. No laugh zone here, promise."
He glanced at the other stacks of books inside this space. Not that he could physically see any of them, considering this whole area was pure darkness. "Well, I mentioned how I was frustrated at how slowly my investigation into Magic was going, right? Especially after how nothing worked when we tried to look into my whole Faith Crafting situation."
Another examined book was pulled from his Pocket and returned to a stack. "I just thought that almost ALL Magic was being shared in this world via books. So clearly books at least understand what is going on, right? They'd have to, if one wanted to document anything, you know? I thought, maybe I could understand Magic better from a different point of view, see?"
He felt the cozy world of literature around himself humm with the shifting of this beloved library. "So I decided to shelve myself. At least until someone decides to read me or check me out or do a quality control check to ensure my cover is of good standing or see if I need to be rebound or whatnot."
Zatanna seemed to be overly quiet for some reason, but it felt good for John to talk about this without worrying about being mocked or whatever! "And it's been great so far! I've got all these book acquaintances now, not full Pocket pals obviously since we are all just basically coworkers for this shelf row, but sometimes it's really nice to find other books that just cover similar topics even if we all tend to enjoy a bit more peace and quiet than usual and…"
Stop John, don't go too far off topic. "My point is, like I said: I decided to shelve myself! And your bookshelves are all magical and stuff, and they don't discriminate against books of unusual composition or made out of people or whatever, so the automatic sorting and shelf resizing mechanics and all that just found me my perfect spot."
The whole experience had been a bit magical, ironically. "I've never felt MORE Dewey Decimal-ed before… It's been a wonderful experience!"
He hummed happily for a bit, since Zatanna seemed to be rolling his words over in her mind for some reason.
Eventually, she spoke up again. "John?"
Hmm? "Yes?"
She sounded a little exasperated. "Please come out of the bookcase. At least while we're talking, I mean."
…Ugh. "Do I have to? It's icky out there."
Yep, that was full-on exasperation and now a touch of annoyance. "What do you mean icky!? Shadowcrest is ALWAYS kept clean and…"
Huh? "Of COURSE Shadowcrest and your library is fine, I'm not talking about that!"
That caught her off guard for some reason. "What?"
No idea why she'd think he'd ever insult this lovely {{Home}} like that, John had manners after all. "I just feel grossed out seeing all those Faith-formed teeth and eyeballs licking your defenses and trying to suckle inside the walls. That's SO unhygienic."
"WHAT!?"
John blinked at her shock. Why was she so surprised… Oh. Oh shit!
Had he forgotten to mention those things to anyone besides those in his Pocket? "I did mention the undetectable things outside that are trying to eat me, yes?"
"NO, you DID NOT! Stay there, I'm going to get mom! MOM!"
What!? Surely he had talked about those things! It was on his to-do list! It even had a star next to it because it was important he didn't forget to mention it!
Wait, where was that thing? It had been right there and…
Damn it, the shelves must have magically shelved it off somewhere, didn't they? And he hadn't noticed, because keeping track of the list itself was pretty far down on the list if he remembered correctly.
A bit of an oversight there, honestly.
Oops.
Oh well, these sorts of mix ups happen now and then.
John idly retrieved another book from the teams of SPYRAL agents examining the things and placed it to one side to be reshelved.
It would probably be best to wait for Sindella Dear to get called in before he continued with this whole 'understanding literature' experiment anyway.
Although… He wondered if he had time to cast the new experimental 'Spark' spell before everyone came back to check John out into circulation?
It shouldn't be a problem, right?
Lots of sourceless Faith and then a "let there be light." I think I see where this is going.
ProtagNeptune
[Cute is Justice] ଘ(੭ˊ꒳ˋ)੭✧
- Location
- The Local Reality (A Shitty Game)
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
Did he literally make himself into a book or somehow conceptually changed his presence to a book, and then get sorted into the library? Like, is he a Book-shaped John or a John-shaped Book? 🧐
. . . .
...
*long, drawn out, weary sigh*
Sometimes... I just wonder. Could never tell you what about, as that would mean I know what it is... but sometimes, I wonder. Then I shudder in some existential dread when I realize the subject is one of your character's Ace. Then... then I worry.
{Edit}... Still not sure what about. I can never tell if I'm worrying about you, your character, or the story... it's just a ever present sort of feeling of worrying. Once I can get my mind of it, it goes away, thankfully. But until then, ... there it is.
...
*long, drawn out, weary sigh*
Sometimes... I just wonder. Could never tell you what about, as that would mean I know what it is... but sometimes, I wonder. Then I shudder in some existential dread when I realize the subject is one of your character's Ace. Then... then I worry.
{Edit}... Still not sure what about. I can never tell if I'm worrying about you, your character, or the story... it's just a ever present sort of feeling of worrying. Once I can get my mind of it, it goes away, thankfully. But until then, ... there it is.
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Given the other hints in this chapter, I think he is "The book of John"
It's the sort of thing in which the only answer is "Yes" No hint to a specific, no clue as to why, much less how. "What" is only tangentially covered by the modifier "is" following. But beyond "Yes", there is no clearer answer.
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Giving similar items should be shelved together, John's list is probably next to other to-do lists. And the grocery list. Maybe even on a cork board placed on the end of a book shelf? Or next to the library door? Possibly just on the fridge, since Shadowcrest is the whole house...
Of course, being put together, if John finds it, he might end up accidentally assuming that all those other lists are part of his list. Even if it's in different handwriting.
And if John skips ahead to the 'easier' items on 'his' list... Especially if it helps distract him from the 'these things are trying to eat me'. Well, he'll get to the others eventually.
Though there is the hilarious idea that he ends up with a to-do list that has only one item on it, one that has been mentioned as being on there: Keep track of the to-do list.
Of course, being put together, if John finds it, he might end up accidentally assuming that all those other lists are part of his list. Even if it's in different handwriting.
And if John skips ahead to the 'easier' items on 'his' list... Especially if it helps distract him from the 'these things are trying to eat me'. Well, he'll get to the others eventually.
Though there is the hilarious idea that he ends up with a to-do list that has only one item on it, one that has been mentioned as being on there: Keep track of the to-do list.