sixthrangerknight

[sixthrangerknight]

Un pèl tard, però feliç Sant Jordi!

[sixthrangerknight]

now that i am a real adult i am starting to realise. media lied to me about the availability of rooftops to go hang out on. every day i wish i could be hanging out on a rooftop somewhere looking cool as fuck

[sixthrangerknight]

Here is some Gideon art from last year!

[sixthrangerknight]

[sixthrangerknight]

Apr. 8 2024 Eclipse

Credit: Victor Toth

[sixthrangerknight]

[sixthrangerknight]

the day cass learns to flirt its over for stephanie

[sixthrangerknight]

pros of corded headphones:

Cant lose phone

dont need to charge headphones

they look cool and are amazing

cons of corded headphones:

Every doorknob in existence is now out to get you

[sixthrangerknight]

tuo sllup dneirfyob flowerew ym nehW

[sixthrangerknight]

Duck Amuck | Director: Chuck Jones | Studio: Warner Bros. | USA, 1953

[sixthrangerknight]

Bumblebee By Jahnoy Lindsay

[sixthrangerknight]

Ahoy !⭐

[sixthrangerknight]

they need to invent a writing that is easy. and fast also

[sixthrangerknight]

Someone send the god of arms to inspire me to add arms 🙏🏼

#cassandra cain #batgirl #black bat #cassandra wayne #fanart

[sixthrangerknight]

War Thunder update looks awesome

[sixthrangerknight]

I don't know if you've come across the discussion already, but do you know where the trope (to quote op of the discussion i found)

"a deity's power directly corresponds to the number of their believers / the strength of their believers' faith?"

comes from?

(I think that's in American Gods, if I read the book right)

It's in American Gods. I ran into it in lots of places, from Harlan Ellison's Deathbird Stories to Richard Garnett's Twilight of the Gods (1888).

It's also an accurate observation about the power of specific religions.

[sixthrangerknight]

Do you happen to know the origin of the fantasy trope in which a deity's power directly corresponds to the number of their believers / the strength of their believers' faith?

I only know it from places like Discworld and DnD that I'm fairly confident are referencing some earlier source, but outside of Tinkerbell in Peter Pan, I can't think of of any specific work it might've come from, 20th-c fantasy really not being my wheelhouse.

Thank you!

That's an interesting question. In terms of immediate sources, I suspect, but cannot prove, that the trope's early appearances in both Dungeons & Dragons and Discworld are most immediately influenced by the oeuvre of Harlan Ellison – his best-known work on the topic, the short story collection Deathbird Stories, was published in 1975, which places it very slightly into the post-D&D era, though most of the stories it contains were published individually earlier – but Ellison certainly isn't the trope's originator. L Sprague de Camp and Fritz Leiber also play with the idea in various forms, as does Roger Zelazny, though only Zelazny's earliest work is properly pre-D&D.

Hm. Off the top of my head, the earliest piece of fantasy fiction I can think of that makes substantial use of the trope in its recognisably modern form is A E van Vogt's The Book of Ptath; it was first serialised in 1943, though no collected edition was published until 1947. I'm confident that someone who's more versed in early 20th Century speculative fiction than I am could push it back even earlier, though. Maybe one of this blog's better-read followers will chime in!

(Non-experts are welcome to offer examples as well, of course, but please double-check the publication date and make sure the work you have in mind was actually published prior to 1974.)