TMQ #139 -- Don't Kid a Kidder

[blaqlives]

Discussion of The Magic Quill #139 -- Don't Kid a Kidder by Robbie Fischer.

+++DOUBLE CHALLENGE+++

SURVEY: What is the scariest curse in the Harry Potter books?

CONTEST: Rumor has it that a potions expert can "bottle fame, brew glory, stopper death," etc. Describe something that would be really unusual to find in liquid form.

[Dragonic]

Survey: either Crucio or Sectusempra. I really can't decide

Contest: What about a spell in liquid form? You could pour a little drop of potion on a lock and alohamora it open. I don't see a practical use, except maybe for Squibs and muggles.

[Quercitron]

As far as the curse, well, both crucio and sectumsempra would be horrible, but for me, petrificus totalus would be terrifying. Imagine not even being able to scream!
As far as the potion, halitosis? Bottled halitosis could give the drinker dangerously bad breath, enough to knock out the whole room.

[greyniffler]

Scariest curse? Either the Imperius Curse or Legilimens. Taking you over, reading your mind ... what's left? Of course, if the Daydream charm were turned into a curse, you'd have a Nightmare curse, and that would be pretty bad too.

As to bottling things ... well, of course there's Time in a bottle, and Bottled Ocean. Tolkien gave us bottled light. You could bottle darkness, but that's kind of like Peruvian Darkness powder. What if someone bottled your history, and it ceased to exist--you became totally anonymous in the world--until someone released it? But that sounds like something that Bobs would get involved in. Bottled weather ... naw, Oddesseus had the four winds in a sack. Bottled charm or charisma ... no, that's something Snape would know about.

How about a bottled choice? Open it at a critical moment and you are given a choice that makes no sense at all, but either saves your quest or destroys it. A singularity, an inflection point, a key to catastrophe, a chance to choose the wild card.

[FishEByrd]

Originally Posted by greyniffler

As to bottling things ... What if someone bottled your history, and it ceased to exist--you became totally anonymous in the world--until someone released it? ... How about a bottled choice? Open it at a critical moment and you are given a choice that makes no sense at all, but either saves your quest or destroys it. A singularity, an inflection point, a key to catastrophe, a chance to choose the wild card.

Ye gods. You should be writing fantasy. Why don't you?

[Linda_Carrig]

Someone bottling your history.... Quite frightening! Good one greyniffler.

Of the three unforgivable curses, I think the 'crucio' would be the worst. With 'avada kadavra' it's all over forget it and with 'Imperio' the witch/wizard can fight it off.

As for a potion, how about 'mortus ambulantis'? A potion to create zombies. (I made that one up for my fic)

[greyniffler]

Originally Posted by FishEByrd

Ye gods. You should be writing fantasy. Why don't you?

With your help, I am. Besides, remember what Edison said: 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration. Or maybe 99% craft (no pun intended).

I think the bottled choice might be regarded as Dark Magic of a very nasty kind. Does your foresight exceed the ability of the wizard who bottled it? If you possessed it, would Bobs want it? What would he offer in exchange? Or would he give it to you in exchange for something else? Perhaps the bottled history of someone the world should not want to remember?

Actually, if someone were trying to deal with a deadly enemy, it might be useful to bottle one's own history. If your enemy forgets that you ever existed, it could give you a free shot at them. Of course, your allies forget, too. I don't know about Gringott's; goblins might not be affected by the magic. Or house-elves.

But this drifts a bit from the question, which was not about things bottled, but about things in liquid form. Might the liquid temporarily grant common sense to the clueless, or the Sight to the mundane? But that gift of prophecy might be as perilous as the gift of Choice.

[Dragonic]

greyniffler, it's good to know that there are other people that have heard of webcomics.

And what would happen if you drank someone's history? That's a pretty creepy idea to me.

[greyniffler]

That is a scary thought ... but the history is out of the bottle, so to speak. I expect that the drinker would somehow be destroyed by the attempt (Mwa Ha HA!) but I don't have a preferred route to doom.

(I don't follow many webcomics, but that one has a story that is evolving nicely, and a sense of humor I like: the van Rijn of this page is almost certainly a reference to a real van Rijn who lived at the time indicated, and who is better known by his first name.)

[Linda_Carrig]

How about a potion that is the reverse of 'felix felices' (not sure of the spelling)? Instead of good/liquid luck it would be bad luck. You could call it 'mal mal'. Or something

[greyniffler]

Originally Posted by Linda_Carrig

How about a potion that is the reverse of 'felix felices' (not sure of the spelling)? Instead of good/liquid luck it would be bad luck. You could call it 'mal mal'. Or something

Would it be derived from Malaclaw venom? (FBa***T: 28) (Drat, the naughty-words filter keeps splatting out the abbreviation for Where to Find. Sorry.)

What about liquid music, liquid sound, liquid noise or cacophony?

We already know that thoughts and memories can be made liquid. What about liquid skill?

[Linda_Carrig]

The list is endless!

[Dragonic]

Ideas:
Dragonic: Liquid spells
Quercitron: Liquid Halitosis
greyniffler: Liquid Time
Liquid Ocean
Liquid Light
Liquid Darkness
Liquis History
Liquid Weather
Liquid Charm
Liquid Choice
Liquid Music
Liquid sound/noise
Liquid Cacophany
Linda_Carrig: Liquid Zombies (kinda, read post for details)
Liquid Bad luck


And that is the list so far. If I come up with more ideas, I'll post them.

[FishEByrd]

Originally Posted by Dragonic

Ideas:...Liquid Ocean...Liquid Zombies...

Hmmm. Now "powdered ocean" would be really good. "Just add water..."

As for zombies, I think there's a powder for that, too. It's made from dragon's teeth; see Diana Wynne Jones' The Ogre Downstairs, Rick Riordan's The Titan's Curse, and some of the Pure Dead books by Debi Gliori for examples of how to use it. (In Riordan's case, whole teeth are used.)

[greyniffler]

Note also the liquid skill. What about liquid knowledge? Six hours, let's say, of being an expert. What if this were administered to someone surreptitiously? Or if someone was given it to take without knowing what expertise was involved? Someone being sent on a very secret mission, perhaps?

(We should note the distinction between liquid, which Robbie asked for, and bottled, which I started. Any ocean is liquid, but an ocean in a bottle is something special.)

Years ago on misc.writing I introduced liquor bottles that seemed to have cobwebs on the inside of the liquid ... and someone else arranged that they refill themselves. And the idea was brought to its end by someone who decided that various missing persons had been incorporated into the bottles. Not in the liquid, but in the corks, which could be convinced to restore their prisoners with much noise and smoke, at the cost of losing the magic of the bottles and their contents. There was this bottle whose contents smelled of old socks ... and the bottle that contained Elf and a pixie named Gunsel.

[Linda_Carrig]

I like that powdered ocean Robbie said--just add water! hehehehe

Having the corks being something other than corks..... hmmm...

[greyniffler]

Since whatever it is is bottled, do we replace the incantation with a decantation?

[Quercitron]

Bottled Animals? Plants? Life?
Something that would be really useful would be bottled forest/glen. Just sprinkle in your backyard for a enviromentally friendly decoration.
Or how about bottled fire? Really useful for camping? Arson? Then, one you were done burning, you could just put the fire back in the bottle to stop it from causing real damage. It would be very useful to remove invasive species, or controlled burning in ecosystems dependent on fire
How about bottled bottles? If you could bottle one bottle, then you could bottle that bottle, and soon, you'd have a large supply of bottles all in the space of one bottle.
Oh, and bottled rabbits would be really useful for magicians; if they put the bottled rabbits in their hats, they could actually pull rabbits of their hats (or any other place, for that matter, if the bottle was small enough.

[Linda_Carrig]

A bottled forest would come in very handy here, and anywhere else that suffers from mass forest fires for that matter. Good one, Quercitron!

[greyniffler]

Of course, not everything goes well when preserved. Consider canned laughter, for example.

Speaking of things in bottles, did you hear about the new wizards' rent-a-broom service? They specify their rates in miles per galeon.

Some wizards toured the American west. They were especially fascinated by the cowboys. Why would anyone spend ten galeons for a hat?