You’re walking through the woods in a fantasy novel when you are suddenly confronted by a Count, a Baron, a Marquis, and a Chancellor. They demand that you choose which of them is most likely to be the Evilest One of All.
To whom do you offer the Golden Apple of Villainy?
Do the wickedest thing possible and eat it yourself.
Actually I was being Contrarian and Unhelpful and for that I apologise, but I stand by my position:
What are all these chucklefucks doing out in the woods harassing random fruit-bearing civilians? They literally identify themselves by the jobs they’re clearly playing hooky from. If this gang of deplorables has hoofed it out of thier assorted fortresses and palaces to ask ME who’s the worst of the worst, I draw some conclusions:
1. They’re asking me to rank, and therefore, order them. They’re depending on me for some kind of structure here.
2. Given that these are Fantasy Woods (that are probably) in a Fantasy World, it’s good odds they’re looking to me to solve the hierarchy issue they face so they can stop squabbling and go back to enjoying the spoils of their various misdeeds.
3. At the very least, they’ve got money riding on it.
In their defense, they DID make sure to ask me to choose “Which of them is most likely to be the Evilest One of All.” So I’ll pick one of them as requested, based on how laborious thier facial-hair routine looks, but being that we’re in a Fantasy World that the Golden Apple of Villiany is capitalized, it sounds like the kind of artefact that comes with its own terms and conditions* and isn’t the kind of thing you go foisting off on any cape-wearing machevelian weirdo you meet on the highway. Besides, they only asked me to pick one, not award them the Apple.
*Not, unlike the real world Apple Corporation, curiously.
But we’re also at kind fo a crucuible here, and Fantasy Rules Of Checkov’s Gun dictate that I can’t just keep The Apple in my pocket. (It’s a fantasy world, I can have pockets big enough to keep apples in)
Since they’re looking for order, probably to end a poinless war that is causing all manner of suffering, and The Golden Apple of Villiany should go to whoever does the most Evil things. The Nature of Evil is Nebulous and Debatable, but we’ve got a few generally agreed upon axioms, namely “All Evil needs to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” Completely failing to end a civil war despite having the artefact to do so is a pretty spectacular example of Doing Nothing and therefore a spectacular triumph of Evil and since we’re having a contest I Can’t NOT eat this Most Maleficus Malus.*
*This is a trick.
I am CLEARLY not A Hero, esp if my first instinct is to Eat The Golden Apple Of Villiany. and since we’re in some kind of didactic narrative-driven fantasy world, Only A Great Hero can actually resolve this nonsense.
Destroying such a powerful artefact and ruining The One Shot these various villians had of something resembling peace (at least enough to prevent the peasants from revolting), will almost certainly escalate the situation to the point where A Great Hero will be forced into existence to deal with this gang of assholes.
Thus actually resolving the problem and reducing the overall amount of Evil.
Which isn’t very villianous of me at all, but as an idndividual action does not violate the Terms and Conditions, SUCK IT APPLE.
This entire ramble is actually just an excuse to point out that you can call The Golden Apple of Villiany a Most Maleficus Malus.
You’re walking through the woods in a fantasy novel when you are suddenly confronted by a Count, a Baron, a Marquis, and a Chancellor. They demand that you choose which of them is most likely to be the Evilest One of All.
To whom do you offer the Golden Apple of Villainy?
Funny, isn’t it? All you need to reliably bait the most qualified and evil people in the land is a shining, golden prize and a title of the ‘very best’. All you have to do is wait a couple of decades, enough for the tale to fade into obscurity for a while and then start up the towns rumor mill again and hope that no Aspiring Heroes try to apply.
The Baron blusters with ruddy cheeks about how he executes townsfolk for his own entertainment, the Marquis counters with the heinous taxes he imposes on his lands and laughs as the poor get poorer and his coffers grow. The Count argues that his research into the Dark Arts and his sacrifices to further his endeavours speak for themselves. The chancellor laughs at all of them, for he doesn’t have the time nor the care to list his crimes. Its far too easy to rack them up in government, after all.
The smile you grant them perhaps has too many teeth, too sharp to belong to one of the peasants they work to the bone on their lands for pittance, eyes too cunning and sly. They do not notice, fixated only on the golden apple you have taken out of your humble satchel their attention arrested on the one rumored objects of their desires.
There is stillness in the forest for only a second before each of them tumble forward, pushing each each other aside in their frenzy to claim the Apple.
The Marquis pulls out a dagger and thrusts it into the heart of the Baron. The Chancellor’s sword finds the calves of the Count, though not before he looses a bolt of necrotic energy at the Marquis.
All the whole you stand there, apple in hand, smiling.
Bloody minutes pass, and the Chancellor approaches. His robes are tattered, one eye closed from the blood that flows from a head wound and a limp from a freshly broken leg. His ability to mislead and wait things out was his winning strategy, the other three taking care of themselves with a little help from his spelled sword.
He looks at his prize still held in your cold, cold hand, and he laughs. Slowly at first, then maniacally as he continues.
“I knew it would be me!” He cackles gleefully, “I know the rest of those buggers didn’t hold a candle against me,” he reaches for the Apple, avarice gleaming in his eyes as he seems to forget there’s a whole ‘nother being holding it.
His fingertips only have to brush across the surface of the fruit when a shudder wracks the very earth beneath them, jogging trees out of place and shifting their roots.
A splitting screech rends the air around you, though you are unburdened by this sound. You’ve learned to acclimated to it, when the sounds of the souls of the damned are the music to which you work most days. The Chancellor stands stock still, his long face drawn out into an agonising scream that simply blends in with the chorus. It is mere seconds before his lifeless body slumps to the quiet forest ground and you sigh, hefting the apple, slightly heavier now with another soul, back into your bag.
“Perhaps the next generation will yield someone truly terrible,” you muse to yourself, leathery wings unfurling as you open the portal back home. “I really do need to fill the Deputy General Manager position sometime this century, but applications these days are all so lack-lustre.” After all, Hell is getting very oversubscribed these days.
My cat is touched-starved and demanding because everyone else but me is unwilling to pet her. They are unwilling to pet her because she is a bad person who loves crime and hurting people. She doesn’t understand how these things are connected and so I must bear the full load of both her affection and her bloodthirsty violence.
#she is currently poking holes in my body and vibrating
#while i am still bleeding from when i reached towards my computer and she decided that was punishable
Ever since he killed Net Neutrality with dirty tricks and illegal tactics,
Donald Trump’s FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has been claiming that his actions
had stimulated broadband growth in America, a claim his spokesvillain
repeated yesterday in response to Democrats introducing legislation to restore Net Neutrality.
But the data that Pai has touted was badly distorted due to a monumental
error (or, less charitably, a massive fraud) by a company called
Barrierfree, who seem to have incorrectly completed their their “Form
477” report of broadband availability in a way that vastly overstated
the availability of their service, creating an error of such magnitude
that it distorted the figures for the whole country.
Barrierfree – the trading name of the Barrier Communications
Corporation – claimed that it its first year of operation, it had made
fixed wireless and fiber service available to 62 million people – 20%
of the population of the USA. In reality, Barrierfree offers a small
number of people access to a poky wireless service that caps out at
25mbps.
Companies submitting Form 477 are instructed to enumerate each “census
block” where they offer service; Barrierfree appears to have simply
reported that service was available in every census block in every state
it operates in.
The extent to which this distorts Pai’s figures can hardly be
overstated: for example, Barrierfree’s claims account for 2m of the the
5.6m rural connections that Pai claimed had been made in 2017/8.
More importantly, Barrierfree’s entries allowed Pai to avoid a
legislative duty – under Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act –
to intervene if the FCC determines that broadband deployment isn’t
happening quickly enough.
The incorrect claims by Barrierfree were detected by the nonprofit Free
Press, who found it obvious that there was no way that a company like
Barrierfree could go from zero availability to deployment serving 62
million people literally overnight.
Frank Wu writes, “Today Brianna Wu, progressive Democrat and cybersecurity expert, is launching her 2020 bid for US Congress in MA-8!
She has a brand new video, in which she introduces herself, and talks
about being disowned by her family when she came out as queer. He also
talks about the alt-right hate group Gamergate, founding her software
development firm, and progressive policies she supports. Simultaneously,
Brianna has re-designed her website, which outlines her platform,
accepts donations, and allows supporters to volunteer. ‘It’s time to be
bold,’ Brianna says.”