Addendum

Unless dodo magic facilitates travel between worlds of course, which, upon reflection, it almost certainly does.

Addendum

As for the other myths, the internet has made their meaning obvious. For thousands of years people wondered about the symbolic significance of, for instance, Cronos and his devouring of his children. Turns out it's just fetish stuff. All of it. We just didn't know people existed who liked that kind of thing.

Mythological Interpretation

Certain myths have the obvious purpose of explaining why a place or thing has the name it does. The Hellespont, for example. However!!?!?!! If that's the case, why do so many names not have myths appended? Do we just not have them? Were the sources of most names widely known or obvious similar to the approximately 5,000 places called Newcastle after translation? The likeliest cause is that the Hellespont was actually named after or at least by somebody a persuasive mythographer didn't like and wanted to erase. The second-likeliest is that mankind came here from another world and carried over most names from there but needed a few new ones. Third-likeliest is that all such myths, when put together and interpreted, tell us where the treasure is, and that's the one on which I'm banking.

A Christmas Saga

A young man shuffled along beneath disorderly seasonal lights which lent character to flat streets and sidewalks distinguished for most of the year by imperfect conditions alone, cracks and weeds and a chip broken off. One might imagine them to have pools and depressions.
"With all the classics and specials, you'd think I'd have some idea what the true meaning of Christmas is." His thoughts were something like that, though not so organized; in that at least his state comported with the environment.
Just then, he vanished and appeared before a council of mystical adepts who said, "Aid us! Free us from the Three Christmas Terrors. Only someone from another world where the season is as it should be can do it. The first is a rider of a sleigh swifter than slander who corrects the count of every chimney that the taxes might be made more oppressive. The second is the chorus whose carols cause madness, nor is their thirst appeased till the house has nothing left for those who live there. The third is the tribe of butchers whose duty is to hang heads from every tree in Browngird Forest."
The young man did exactly that, and in so doing he discovered the truth of Christmas in search and struggle. Never again, when he was returned to his world, did he neglect a quest for the perfect present or quail when invited to watch a seasonal movie for the fifth time that year.
Finis

On Conscientious Governance and Adapting in Response to Circumstances

The provincial capital's most eminent, or those who aspired to that position, had lined up outside the governor's residence earlier than some of them awoke on a typical day. They awaited the new governor.
He came. Striding toward his door, he moved as if unaware anyone was there aside from him, but he began speaking before he passed the first well-wishers in rapid words full of good sense. "Gentlemen, the custom for freshly installed officials is to set out their program for their terms, and I cannot imagine violating it. First is this. The most knowledgeable about local conditions and the most studied in the law will consult for the purpose of creating a code of laws to apply to a group of people which I am told is now over eight percent of the population, higher than the thugs who stand in a field and wait to be killed an looted, another problem our energies must go toward solving. What is that you're wearing?"
The governor had finally stopped, square in front of one young man.
"It's a baseball cap."
"I don't know what that is. Are you one of them? How did you get here?"
"I fell into a canyon and died, then I woke up here."
"My condolences. These people are who I mean, gentlemen. Special skills?"
"Magic-suppressing magic."
"Of course, of course. Stay steady and we'll take care of you." The governor resumed his march to the residence. "Second, the administrators of the magic schools here, a strangely large number it seems to me, are to provide an explanation of why they're always wrong about which talents are good. It saps confidence, gentlemen. Third, I want a justification for the policy of distributing bullies among these schools. Fourth, respecting these multiple reports of amnesia . . ."
Finis

Big News!

People are still reading fantasy! I'm not sure they should, though. We should be living it by now. Does anyone think the major governments of the world don't control portals into other realms full of magic and exotic materials? That's why they aren't building cooler tanks.

Addendum

And then it's back to the harem, but that goes without saying.

The Fate of an Inconvenient Premise

I Got Staked by a Texan and Sent to Another World Where I'm Still a Vampire but There's Garlic in the Air So I'm Weaker Than a Normal Human
Volume 2

"This quest reward magic item negates my vampiric weaknesses!"

Finis

The Too-True Meaning of Christmas

One winter, the priests of Wessario and the people all joined together in supplication, chanting, "Great Farden, the sun in the day and the sun in the night, the bridge across every chasm, the inventor of what is good and imprisoner of what is improper, answer our prayer and our question."
Farden stepped among them, glittering, and said, "What is your question, mortals?"
Everyone knelt except those who fell prostrate. "Great Farden, this wonderful celebration, this Christmas, what is it? Why do we celebrate it?"
Farden smiled at their simplicity. "Christmas is simply the day we choose to commemorate the birth of the Savior, the Son of God." "You have a son, O Farden?"
"Uh . . ."
"Where is he? What is his name? What are his powers?"
Farden looked upon the radiant faces of the mortals as they pressed closer and closer. He gulped. "Uh, well, you see . . . Here, drink from this flask. Be merry and whatnot."
As the people passed around the miraculous flask Farden gave them, they forgot all about that stuff he really, really shouldn't have said. He listened to a bunch of carols later and hoped Santa wouldn't mind a little memory-erasing, though the bigger problem was probably reaching other worlds like his in the first place.

Merry Christmas!
Finis

Some Smark Fantasy Titles to Get You Started

"Legit Heat in the Back: A Smark Fantasy Adventure"
"Butts in the Seats!!"
"I Was Transported to Another World to Do the J O B?!?!"
"What Players These"

Yes, you do have to pay me if you use any of these. No, you don't have to make sure it's good. That's between you and your readers.

Christmas Gift Ideas

Attack your friend's village so he can go on a journey to defeat you!
Become a vampire so your friend can feel great sorrow when he has to kill you!
Invent faster-than-light travel so your friend can go on a space adventure!
Buy a truck and hit your friend with it to send him to another world!
Chocolate orange!

This One Is for Charles III

"How does it feel to have another temple designed by you go up? Getting tired of it?"
lenWalis shook his head. "Not of buildings, because I know they will see use. And to be entrusted with something so costly cannot help but tickle my pride. For there is no question of flippancy, either in the backers or the builders. I can only respond to that with all my ability." It was in that way that lenWalis always responded to such questions, and never yet did he lie. He left the site feeling the pleasing weight of a serious task, an awareness that what he did had meaning for others.
"Look out!"
He never saw the laden wagon coming.

"Is he coming around?"
lenWalis opened his eyes and knew wonder. Where else could he be but the realm of some god whose temple he had built? Strange buildings unsuitable for human occupation rose to trouble the clouds, and around him were such noise and lights as none but the gods could comprehend. He tried to sit up that he might abase himself. The figures around him, however, looked on him with the curious eyes of men and women rather than the knowing gazes of gods.
"He's alive, but who is he?"
The concerned passersby had no idea that somewhere nearby, a short commute away in an upscale suburb, a self-taught magician debated with himself how likely that the ritual to summon a hero from another world to save his had succeeded. Not exactly in those terms, though. "Man, I sure hope I grabbed somebody who can come up something other than these ****-*** ****** piles of sun-hardened ***-**** with their ****** ****-loads of ************ concrete that break down like overused *********** used to *********** ************ after thirty ****-covered years, like what the ********. Seriously, the ****** suicide rate must triple for any ********** ************ unlucky enough to get a job in those, and they don't even have to look at them for most of their **********, ************ working days." And that hope was not in vain.
Finis

Addendum

The obvious conclusion is that if you're ever sent to another world and don't know what genre it is, a good start is to murder the first few people you see and find out what happens. Better hope it's not a detective story, idiot!

Question of the Week

Does Buck Rogers count as isekai? The answer is yes. Come back next week for more questions with a clear correct answer!

Detailed Review of Re:Zero Collaboration in Konosuba Fantastic Days

Terrible story but I got all three of them. 10/10.

I've Been Reincarnated in a World Where They Solve Disputes with Pinball!

"How am I supposed to beat a guy named Master Pinball? I'm not even that good at it!"
"I wish you'd thought of that before you killed me and usurped my place as Knight Champion of Railand."
"I wasn't thinking of anything. I was just defending myself. I didn't ask for your title, and I sure didn't ask for you to take up lodgings inside my soul."
"Fair enough. In lieu of rent, let me tell you about a pinball technique no one native to this world can perform."
The onlookers gasped and clung to one another for support when they saw it. The legendary forbidden skill: Tilt!
Finis

A Spur to Creativity

Is your fantasy story stalling because you said to yourself, "I'll set in the Bronze Age! That will be interesting," only to find out it wasn't interesting at all? Try working in the following words and phrases to "pep up" your "novel, novella, or short story."

Orrery
Cartography
Avuncular
Fabian tactics
Cat's meow
Lenticular
Corn
Uxorious
OSHA-compliant

You have to use all of them. Not some of them. Every last one.

Happy Slime Day!

Two holidays in a row? It's getting positively Roman here. Be sure to celebrate and remember the old saying, the best time to build a monster city was twenty years ago, but the second-best time is now.

And People Thought Pangloss Was Dumb

Super Robot Wars 30 is available for preorder on Steam. Who's the dummy now?

Inspirational Quotations

"Madam, I may be drunk, but you are ugly. Tomorrow I shall be reincarnated at level one in another world, but you shall still be ugly." - Winston Truckkilled