I Am So Totally An Evil Overlord [Original Setting]

[X] Fireflies
[X] Cuteness
[X] Ugliness

 

[X] Dandelions
[X] Pink
[X] Dirtiness

 

[X] Candy
[X] Cuteness
[X] Ugliness

Candy golems.

Candy houses.

Fill you so full of candy you explode.

Candy beasts so cute no one would hurt them.

The world is such an ugly place.

Let's make it better, under our candy coated fist!

 

[X] Fireflies
[X] Cuteness
[X] Ugliness

 

Edited for reasoning.

[X] Sunshine.
The magnificent might of the sum may not be traditionally evil, but how malevolent the villain who corrupts a symbol of light and glory into Picnicstyranny and Beach tripsdevastation?

[X] Smiles.
Mhuhahaha! They will have no choice but to smile when they see usWe command it!

[X] Aversion to Hugs.
We shall hug whoever we want! None shall escape our embrace!


Oh, and also: Nice writing, Darkened. Really, very evocative. (I'm having difficulty putting it to words. Just, nicely done.)

 

Vote changed.

 

[X] Sunshine
-Gotta love corrupting symbols of good, yo.
[X] Smiles
-Not being happy is TREASON.
[X] Anger
-They can't oppose our reign if they don't feel strongly enough to rise up against it!

 

[X] Sunshine
-Go for the eyes, blind enemies
-Sunshine in a beam-form - lasers
-Concentrated sunshine - sunburn
-VERY concentrated sunshine - Why hello there Mr. Oppenheimer
[X] Happiness [Write-in (1PP, subject to QM approval)]
-Reward people with Happiness if they obey us. Like a drug, drug them into behaving the way we want. Soon they won't even be able to imagine not obeying.
[X] Dirtiness
-Always look clean, never have to do any cleaning up chores ever again.
-Also, redefine people as trash. Hello annihilation!

 

[X] Candy
I like the thought of candy golems.

[X] Smiles
Being forced to smile while horrible things happen is creepy as fuck.

[X] Masculinity
What better way to prove that we are the manliest man to have ever been a little girl than by destroying the FALSE manliness of what ever mewling heroes we fight.

 

[X] Dresses
[X] Smiles
[X] Masculinity

Because sometimes the classics are the best.

 

[X] Fireflies
[X] Cuteness
[X] Ugliness

 

[X] Sunshine.
[X] Smiles
[X] Masculinity

 

[X] Sunshine
[X] Sparkles
[X] Dirtiness

TIME TO CLEANSE SOME FILTH WITH PURIFYING AND (UN)HOLY FLAME.

PRAISE THE SUN.

 

Current vote Talley. Nothing locked yet.

[6] Sunshine- Valette Serafina, Curious, Guardian Box, Redaeth, Chibi-Reaper, Alphaaleph
[5] Fireflies – Xicree, C613hulu, Nekraa, Hextroyer413, Pipeman
[3] Candy- Mr Gazzer, ttd0000, Carrnage
[1] Dandelions- Grosstoad
[1] Dresses- Adyen
[1] Fairies- Bflyq

[5] Smiles- Valette Serafina, Curious, ttd0000, Adyen, Redaeth
[5] Cuteness-MrGazzer, C613hulu, Nekraa, Hextroyer413, Alphaaleph
[3] Life- BFldyq, Xicree, Pipeman
[2] Pink- Grosstoad, Carrnage
[1] Happiness- Guardian Box
[1] Sparkles- Chibi-Reaper

[7] Masculinity- Nekraa, Bfldyq, ttd0000, Adyen, Redaeth, Alphaaleph, Pipeman
[5] Ugliness- Xicree, MrGazzer, C613hulu, Hextroyer413, Carrnage
[3] Dirtiness- Grosstoad, Guardian Box, Chibi-Reaper
[1] Aversion to Hugs- Valette Serafina
[1] Anger- Curious

 

[x] Sunshine
[x] Cuteness
[x] Masculinity

 

I am amused at the inconsistency here.

 

[X] Candy
[X] Pink
[X] Ugliness

 

Shhhhhhh

 

Pretty sure I chose candy.

 

Votes fixed, and count up to date as of now. Voting still not locked.

 

Guys candy is a great vector for spells.

 

Since everything I could update seems tied and I kinda want to write something, have an info dump on magic that your character might know. In general, I don't think this information is necessary to make votes, and nothing should be particularly shocking, but it might inspire some people to break the tie.

What can magic do?
In general, the description of each element: "Create X" "Make things into X" and "Destroy X" describe the notional limitations of that power. Or rather, let's take pink for example, if it can be conceived as making something pink you can notionally do it. At the most obvious stage this would simply be altering something's color to be pinker. This is probably relatively useless for your purposes. However, what is pink? A color? Well, what's the shape of a color, the size? The mass? Given sufficient power you could almost certainly collapse someone's entire existence into pinkness, erasing their entire life because pink tolerates no personality or history. Magic may also combine these effects. Taking creation of candy and making things pink would give you an easier time making pink candy or the ability to make candy which would turn things pink when eaten.

On the other end of the scale, there's definition fiddling. You could never make some turn blue, but you could definitely make things pink in non-literal ways with sufficient practice and power. What is a pink thought, a pink action?

Limitations:
So what stops every mage from being omnipotent? Well, first, while definitions may be flexible and things might be different in different contexts, there are limits. For another, there's the matter of sufficient power and practice. You won't start out by creating an army of sapient magic eating dragonflies, you'll start with the most obvious normal extensions of your elements and gradually work your way up.

Part of this training is simply learning how to use your power and building more and more magical energy to push things through, but the greater part is meditative, contemplating the nature, the meaning, the dharma of pinkness. The reason this helps is still somewhat unknown, but the two leading theories about what elements actually are have very different answers. Likewise, most applications must be practiced over and over again to be effective. Changing relatively small details about an application you already have, say making candy that appears in people's mouths rather than in your hands, can take substantial effort.


What are Elements?
Firstly is the internalist school: that each element refers merely to a concept in someone's soul. You don't really have 'fireflies' as an element. You have some vast aspect of your nature that you could only know to express as 'fireflies' when the initiation ritual forced you to come to terms with some small part of it. In this view learning to apply your element in unconventional ways is both a process of maturatation (thinking differently, changing yourself so the element changes) and comprehension (understanding the underlying conceptions that the initiation called forth in a simplified word.)

By contrast the externalist school views elements as a part of the world. They are platonic ideals. While better understanding what those elements mean is important, they are eternal and unchanging concepts. In this vein changing any aspect of one's element is as impossible as changing what it means to be a car. Well, actually, this camp is divided. A more recent theory holds that if you could successfully alter the entirety or majority of these things, you would alter your element. For example, if you dyed every dandelion blue, you might only be able to create blue dandelions. Given the impossibility of such a task, there's little empirical verification either way.

In practice both schools have the same practical advice in most cases. There is, though, one very rare and dangerous exception. The externalist school which treats elements as real things acknowledges the existence of imaginary elements. Take dragons for example. Before a dark lord with "Origin: Dragons" came about, there was no such thing as a dragon. It was an illusion, a concept without reference. This then, theoretically, gave that dark lord the ability to create ANYTHING which might fill the empty category of 'dragons'. Internalists, who don't acknowledge elements as part of the world, deny the existence of such imaginary elements as anything special.


Power limitations and Growth:
At its most basic level magic consumes energy in proportion to the mass/energy of the effect used. In particular, momentary energy effects such as motion or fire are fairly easy to create or imbue, while creating matter is harder and creating abstractions is far harder than that.

For transformations, the smallest transformations are the most easy. In particular, for bestowal, abstract concepts are more easily manipulated than simple things. Turning something into fire will cost a lot of power, while turning someone's hair pink would be pretty easy as would making someone happy or making their personality cuter. (The last one might still require intensive training to be able to do, but wouldn't cost half as much energy as, say, destroying someone's cuteness from an emotional perspective.)

Destruction is almost the opposite of creation. Destroying physical matter is fairly easy, destroying energy is fairly difficult, and destroying abstractions or conceptual things is extraordinarily energy intensive. The most blanket destructions are easiest. Destructions that create their antithesis are more difficult. For example destroying 'ugliness' would be a little difficult in general on a person. Destroying ugliness in a way that say, left a person handsome rather than bland would be more difficult than learning to destroy ugliness by simply vaporizing the offending features.

So What Does This Mean for Each Element?

Creation: Creating large amounts of energy tends to be fairly direct. Using fire offensively isn't hard, or sunshine into lasers is fairly spammable. However, on the other end, things which have a form are very versatile. Candy could notionally be used to create swords or spears or keys simply by creating candy of different hardness and shape. Living things could be made in smarter and bigger categories most easily. Raining down meteors of candy is very hard, while you can easily scorch cities, but dandelions or candy are far better for creating cities in general, though it might be entirely possible to make 'solid' sunshine or the like. Relatively few hard limits exist, but things like sunshine will, fairly obviously, lend themselves more to destructive or offensive one-off effects vs creating armies or constant ongoing powers.

Transformation: The most easily terrifying uses of this power are also the hardest. Someone with bestowal of wind or fire might never get much any use out of their element at all, or might simply do things like turn electricity into fire or fire into wind. By contrast, qualities, like most of the default states are much easier, though less terrifying and generally useful. It's easier to murder someone by transforming them into fire than by transforming them into pink, but it's harder to give someone a fiery demeanor than a cute one and also harder to use something like fire here at all.

Destruction: Concrete, physical destruction is probably the easiest to use but the least versatile. Destroying 'people' would let you murder fairly easily, but would be pretty limited to actual people at first. Destroying 'life' by contrast, could kill a much wider range of things in its initial form but would probably be generally more energy intensive and difficult to train each simple application. Destroying fire would be great for a fireman but would require mountains of work toward destroying the fire in someone's heart. Those destructions most commonly used to create their converse, such as masculinity, are probably the most unworkable but the easiest to make versatile once you do have them working.


And for Anrietta?
Rare elements (all the ones listed are basically unheard of) tend to be very potent. All the listed ones for Anrietta are unworkable shit that will be very difficult to make useful by design, though they are not equally so and a few valid write-ins might actually be pretty terrifying. Most every plan described so far (solar lasers, candy golems, etc) is viable in the long term, some will be easier to push forward than others.

For write-ins, the limit is thematic rather than usefulness. Or rather, they must seem shitty to Anrietta and kinda inappropriate for a dark lord, but they could actually be pretty terrifying if you think about it for a few seconds.

 

IRC logs:

Changing vote to:
[X] Fairies
[X] Life
[X] Masculinity

 

with candy could we make candy with magical effects?

 

[X] Laser beams
[X] Life
[X] Damage


Healy pet user that brings objects to life and heals by 'destroying the damage done'.

 

Ultimately.

Going to deny the first and the last there.

 

[X] Fireflies
[X] Life
[X] Masculinity

 

Votes updated. Still tied though.

 

[X] Sunshine
[X] Smiles
[X] Masculinity