Local doodler and OC-hoarder Crispy Parsnips has released what he optimistically refers to as his first animatic!
Have you ever wondered what the Outliers' relationships to their parents looks like, specifically through the very particular lens of a greetings-card-based commercial holiday? Then look no further because, uh, you'd go too far, it's right here, stop looking further, where are you going?
Aktenistos, (literally 'unkempt hair'), may be the unluckiest Satyr in the isles of Thylea. This scruffy healer and herb-handler hops from hamlet to hamlet in search of folk in quick need of help and the next meal.
His hot-hoofing isn't for want of honesty nor desire to settle, rather that he has been inflicted with a curse of accumulating misfortune. Should he stay in any one place for an extended time, all around him shall fall foul of a fearsome, fickle fate.
His first memories were having been welcomed into the comfortable and inviting home of a rural brewer and his family.
Six months later, in the midst of repairing the flooded business, they bottled and had him hop over to a friendly baker's family.
Not a season passed before a concussive, custardy blast caused custody to be handed to the town librarian.
Before long Akten was taking a leaf from the angry ashes of that enterprise and booked it for the hills.
To Akten's knowledge this curse is not his alone. He knows almost nothing of his tribe or family who, presumably, must wander in the same disaster-averting fashion.
His sole serendipital familial connection exists in another satyr whom he calls sister, Authades. In lieu of birth certificates or DNA testing, their shared recollection of an otherwise unknown nursery rhyme is proof enough of a family bond. Both of their belligerent barnets could, of course, be coincidence.
[Upper & middle left] Palaemon and his dragon Aria belong to ChibiNetherlands; [Top] The minotaur Azreal belongs to ADeliciousStrawberryMan; [Right] Sirius the Medusa belongs to Jigsaw-yer
At present Akten is travelling with a band of oracle-coralled adventurers to avert a forthcoming apocalypse caused by, uh, *checks notes* a contract running out. He never liked administrators anyway.
Thusfar on their grand epic Akten has spawned new myth by becoming blind drunk due to being unable to refuse drinks from dwarves, getting hog-tied to stop him hitting people after a bad dream, and learning how to cook eggs because... well, people need to eat.
Rest assured that he'll be looking out for all of the friendly incidental folk along their journey, primarily to ensure that they don't trip down too many stairs or find dangling above them any precariously-balanced anvils.
I'm not sure what homophones are, but they do sound familiar. Did you know that out of all of the hundreds of thousands of words in the dictionary the word 'correctly' is the only one that is spelt correctly? I've heard magaritas are quite tasty, but I'd take that with a pinch of salt A little advice for any budding script-writers out there: The more you can get your screenplays recommended to producers the more likely they are to be turned into a full show. Just look at The Sopranos, that was pitched very highly. Beurocracy takes many forms.
- Artichoke n. The inability to draw when someone's watching
- Flammable adj. See inflammable
- Gnaw adv. How one disagrees with a gnome
- Inflammable adj. See flammable
- Ringroad n. The build-up to a proposal
- Zebra n. Stripy German lingerie
As the internet is want, I was recently presented with this Fun Fact:
Combine their second halves together and you get DENMARK.
I was initially rather fond of this fun linguistic novelty. Alas my brain won't leave well enough alone and soon realised that this was hardly a fact at all! The load-bearing information here is simply that the letters DEN both end 'SweDEN' and start 'DENmark'. A similar trick could be performed with NiGER and GERmany. Or indeed ChiBI and BIscuit. The possibilities are uncountable and, frankly, not all that interesting.
But what if this were interesting? What would it take to turn this from a near-triviality into the point of real intrigue I originally mistook it to be? I'd personally prefer if the words didn't overlap, and in doing so the split and recombined words would be *different*. Ooh, that would be fun, I thought. And thought some more. And then researched. And then programmed.
A quick hour or two later I'd downloaded this list of (alas US) English words and whipped up a janky little program trying to find more interesting spliced quartets. My criterion was thus:
Two (ordered) words which, when split (roughly) in half create two different words when their first halves and second halves combine.
After a few janky programming failures - one of which at least taught me how you can ABSCOND with your TRACTOR to get an ABSTRACT CONDOR - I managed to bodge something efficient enough to finish its search in but a few hours. After a quick skim through the 8532 results for something pleasing, I can now present to you my favourites:
when they've BUSTED the HELIUM.
Tired? Better be a COFFEE FINDER
or feel like a COFFIN FEEDER.
When CONTEXT endures TORTURE,
it'll CONTORT in TEXTURE.
Is that a CRAVEN YONDER?
Nope, just a CRAYON VENDER.
Whether you DEFLECT or ENDURE,
I will DEFEND my LECTURE!
If you've FLARED up in SHYNESS,
your cheeks have a FLASHY REDNESS.
To make something GENERALLY ROUSING
takes some GENEROUS RALLYING.
A GROUSE that's WINGLESS
might feel like they're GROWING USELESS.
Is your Greek ORACLE bent on TORMENT?
A different ORATOR may be more CLEMENT.
Beware any MEASLY SURENESS
as a MEASURE of SLYNESS.
She'll no longer PERFORM SISTERLY duties,
but did PERSIST FORMERLY.
For SUFFRAGE to become USEFUL,
they had to SUFFUSE the RAGEFUL.
Find yourself in the SUPERMARKET, STARING?
Now that's some SUPERSTAR MARKETING!
In-TRANSIT QUILTING
makes for some TRANQUIL SITTING.
Wearing your old school UNIFORM QUEERLY
made you UNIQUE, FORMERLY.
The vast majority of the results involved overtly compound words which I've elected to eschew, regardless of how pleasing a CANDLEPOWER LIGHTHOUSE being a CANDLELIGHT POWERHOUSE may be.
However, as if to bring us full circle, we conclude with a final fray into a familar fact-bearing country: A GARLAND in DENMARK may well be considered a GARDEN LANDMARK!
In deference to June being dubbed 'Pride Month' by the internet (the US's largest colony) a little pseudo-themed crossword crosses your path.
Why is it in the shape of a pretzel? Why is one of the simple clues the same as the cryptic clue? Why does Britain celebrate Pride Month in June when the first such rally here took place on the 1st of July 1972? None of these questions and more answered below!
Click here to play the puzzle in the browser.
Thanks a lot for reading! I hope you enjoyed this inaugural whatever-it-was. If you did (or, arguably more importantly, if you didn't) please forward it to someone who you reckon might get a little chuckle out of it.
If you have any constructive feedback or inclusions you'd like to see in the future issues, do feel free to let me know through the social channel that's the least mean inconvenience for the both of us!
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Be seeing you,
Crispy 💜
