Alicornutopia

Alicorn wrote:Venom does not count as food.

I thought the thing there wasn't strictly about food, it was about 'taking something that you can't in theory give back'?

Yes, but it's prototypically about food, and venom is not consumed in the same (conceptual) way. (Fairies drinking each other's blood also doesn't work, though vampires drinking fairy blood does. Destroying other people's stuff, including their food, does not do the thing either.)

Does the fairies drinking each other’s blood not work because fairies don’t get anything out of it, or for some other reason? If a human were to drink a fairy’s blood and get nutrition from doing so (such as if the human had iron deficiency and the fairy happened to have iron-rich blood), would that count?

What sort of non-food and non-nutrition things would count as taking something that cannot in principal be returned instead of destroying it? Would taking something and using it for a magic ritual which consumes the components it uses (so not a Names!sorcery ritual, which consumes nothing in and of itself, but for example a cloudpine witch’s herb spell) make you a vassal? Releasing information they’d been keeping secret (taking their privacy)? Taking something from them and burning it, because you need the fire instead of to destroy the thing (would it make a difference if you used the fire to cook food instead of to keep yourself from freezing to death?)?

What happens if you somehow do return the thing that the fairy magic thought you could not in principal return. For example, a mint (with only squares, which I’m assuming are not powerful enough to counter vassalization) eats a candied dewdrop, becomes a vassal, and is not asked for their name but is forced to do the fairy’s chores. Later, they learn the “take something that cannot in principal be returned” rule and square up “the candied dewdrop I ate from right before I ate it”, which they give to their master. Now what?

Fairies drinking each other's blood doesn't work for fuzzy aesthetic type reasons that I do not think I can communicate to you if I haven't already. It might work on a human, but I'm not committing to that.

In the Lord Ruler box we used the contents of metalminds which Promise used as a non-food thing. The magic ritual would not do it. Privacy doesn't count. Burning doesn't count. Intention wrt the individual act, in general, is not a factor here.

You cannot make a numerically identical candied dewdrop with a wish, just a physically identical one. Doesn't help.

I have some feel for the aesthetic, but not as much as I would like. However, I wouldn’t expect a sugar water dart to fit the aesthetic, but you explicitly allow those; I’m not sure when the aesthetic overrides what I’d expect from mechanics.

The sugar water darts fit my aesthetic but as an edge case.

I also thought it was an edge case of what I imagined as your aesthetic, I was just putting the edge on the other side. I guess I just need to remember that the aesthetic is more mechanically important than I’m giving it credit for.

Also, it makes sense that you can’t wish the same candied dewdrop, only an identical one. That doesn’t seem like it would apply to the Admin’s ability to instantiate things, though; if she gave that to somebody who was a food-only vassal and they instantiated the food they’d eaten to present to their master, what would happen?

I mean, the admin can instantiate a thing multiple times. She does create copies, it's just that they are especially accurate copies.

Ok, so they still count as copies. I guess only past-time-travel could retrieve the thing, and then only some models of that would make it relevant whether you presented it to the person who fed you. Since past-time-travel isn’t likely to mix with glowfic much if at all, that shouldn’t be a problem.

Alicorn wrote:The sugar water darts fit my aesthetic but as an edge case.

So... what you are saying that sugar water darts is part of Thorn's aesthetic?