Brine Eighting

There's a lot of fiction out there with a lot of fantastical abilities in it. This is known. There's a problem with a lot of these abilities in literature, in that writers don't seem to have a disconnect between the language that forms the world they're writing in and the world itself. It's rarely acknowledged, but many of these worlds are unabashedly run by rules of linguistics rather than physics or magic or anything else. Sadly the only example I can think of right now is Macbeth, where ah-ah-ah! Macduff wasn't technically born, because "born" means something slightly different it's just bad news. It's like if somebody is declared to be bulletproof and then gets killed by a BB gun because that's a pellet, not a bullet. It's ridiculous.

I think it's because of this thing that I've observed that Alphabetic Transposition Man exists. Instead of railing against this trend, I've decided to make a world that at least acknowledges that that's what it's doing from the get-go. Alphabetic Transposition Man can change any situation by switching a letter in a word with another letter. Of course, since this is one of his early stories, he has only realized enough of his power to change one letter in one word by one position in the alphabet, but you'd be surprised how many options that gives you. More than one!

Of course other heroes are in the works! Non-Alphabetic Insertion Man can insert non-alphabetic characters into situations, which, what? Who knows. Maybe if he needs to stall for time he can add a lot of periods? Or he could change it to "he's got a 2% gun" which is either two percent of a gun or shoots milk. Either way, not as scary.

And better ones, even! But we save those for later. And a villain! I know factually that The Quizzard will be coming to Polytopes. He's got a costume design and everything!

Speaking of villains, the one pictured here is the dastardly 37 Black. Which is an impossible thing to achieve with roulette. Maybe he's out to get all the money that ever would have been won on bets on 37 Black, if it had existed? Maybe he's lobbying for Roulette to include a 37 Black. Maybe he just likes making vague references to gambling. It doesn't really matter. As long as history contains a villain with a penny theme, anything else is a step up.

I failed to step up in the graphics department. I had a plan for reflections, and even a decent first attempt, but by the time I got to confetti and balloons I said Fuck It. Because seriously.

P.S.: Anyone else think it's funny that Alphabetic Transposition Man is ATM? In a bank?