Alicornutopia

It might be a reference to /r/nosleep, a subreddit that I think is dedicated to (at least somewhat) creepy/scary stories? I'm not sure what else it would be in response to.

If you search for 'random stairs in woods', one of the first results is this /r/nosleep thread and a couple others link to it.

Yep, referencing reddit's no sleep.
There are a bunch of great stories.

This is the first one referencing the stairs.
It's delightfully creepy.

Is Tobias completely deluded or does he realize that if Alex is Sadde’s dom he probably knows at least some of Sadde’s opinions of his dad?

Half-deluded half-as if I care, Sadde's where she is because I allow her to be and if I don't approve of this relationship and school then neither thing will be a part of her life anymore.

I guess that makes sense. Sadde can get around that, now, but he probably doesn’t care that much. He might look bad in front of the nice dom and his family, but I bet he doesn’t care about that either. Especially since the “nice dom” is somehow even worse than Sadde, and his sister and mother are also weirdos.

Is there a Phil potentially in the picture at some point?

Also, completely unrelatedly: if Nick wants the Randi Prize (in An Unexpected Arrival), he’d better hurry up. They stop accepting applicants in a few months from when he is (presumably some time in spring?). Is that why you chose to set it in 2015?

DanielH wrote:Also, completely unrelatedly: if Nick wants the Randi Prize (in An Unexpected Arrival), he’d better hurry up. They stop accepting applicants in a few months from when he is (presumably some time in spring?). Is that why you chose to set it in 2015?

I had absolutely no idea they did that. I picked 2015 just because I didn't know what year to pick, and this Eva might as well be born in the same year as all my other characters (1997). Lucky coincidence?

Apparently. It shut down in September to change their rules. They estimated they would have new requirements up by early 2016, but that has not happened yet.

Late last year, I got the idea to see how easy it would be for various actually-magic fictional characters to get the prize if teleported to a Standard Unpowered Earth, which is how I learned about this. I never did find the full details, but I did see that Cam (Cooper) would have definitely not been able to get the prize that quickly on this Earth, unless Randi decided to expedite a random application for some reason.

EDIT: Although, to be fair, if he had shown up invisible and demanded to be tested immediately, they might have actually gone for it. They did complain about people who “show up in person and demand to be tested while they wait”, but somehow I think Cam could have gotten away with that. They don’t allow nearly that much anonymity, though, and I doubt Cam could get around that (on this Earth) just by being invisible. My fan theory for why it was easier for Cam is that some wizard deliberately kept it easy just in case some other wizard decided to claim the prize, but I don’t know who would do that or why.

EDIT 2: The real-life form requires a date of birth and prefers a note from a college professor. Are you using approximately this form? If so, what did Nick put down for DoB?

#handwave and/or Blatant Lies

Blatant Lies is always a good choice. He looks 20 or 25; take his real appearence-day and use that date sometime between 1990 and 1995.

Or he could have just given his real 1800s appearence-day and list durability as a paranormal power, but I guess he didn’t want to go with that.