You know, a lot of the books I've been reading lately involve wholesale slaughter of evil warriors and such. That stuff gets shrugged off far too easily, making each of that multitude a mere cypher. And that's not the way it really is. Perhaps someone should write a book of short stories of the lives of the dozen or the hundred of these folks that our heroes have despatched to the netherworld.

The first, a member of the opponent's hoard, slashed neck to hip by our hero's magick sword, left home to support his wife and kids, having no other option. The second, a thief in the forest whose skull was crushed by our hero's mighty warhammer was just a kid looking for a little excitement who picked the losing side and deserted, as there was nothing and no one left to serve, and he was just trying to get home and needed to eat. The third wanted to visit exotic places, and found himself dying in such a place, pierced through the gullet by our hero's (mighty) dagger while guarding the horses. The fourth ...

It's never as clearcut as the storybooks make it out to be. The pawns in the story have lives too. Uh, had lives too. But I suppose the novelist wouldn't be well-advised to do character development of anyone who appears, does his part, then dies in a single paragraph, huh?

Yeah, I'm reading yet another of those now. I think I need to switch genres soon.

This is Desiree again. I had trouble deciding between the last picture and this one for the last post, but I figure there's no such thing as too much Desiree, so here she is again.