Critical Missives #43
Chapter: Comic, Level 9 — Hotel Califormian
Rusty & Co.
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“We disguise ourselves as unassumin’ pieces of furniture…”
The problem with the fireball “test” is that ordinary furniture will get destroyed just as easily as mimics, if not easier.
One of many reasons adventurers are always short on cash
It’s not a test. It’s a way to be sure. Until you get new furniture, at least.
So … how do they reproduce? Sounds like sexually … but rarely … so … ridiculously large broods?
So this got me looking up Mimic sex. Depending on your source they reproduce through Mitosis, or through budding like some plants. Mimics therefore do not reproduce sexually, which causes me to wonder how Mimic can be a he and leads me down some dark and nightmarish pathways.
The question about Mimic reproduction was answered in the 1958 science fiction storey “Or All the Seas with Oysters” by Avram Davidson. (You can find this 8-page storey online).
The baby Mimics start in their pupa-form as safety pins, then hatch into clothes hangers Mimics. The clothes hanger forms grow into bicycles, either boy’s bike (male Mimic) or girl’s bike (female Mimic). These Mimics explain why you can buy bunches of safety pins, but can never find one when you need it. And you always have an excess of clothes hangers, and how there are lots of unclaimed bikes at police auctions.
Well the mermaid wasn’t sure:
https://rustyandco.com/comic/30/
I can’t remember where I read it. But someone had the theory that mimics reproduce via goldcoins.
What I mean is. Mimics pretend to be treasure-chest full of gold, and then eat people who attempt to take it, right?
Well sometimes they let people take the gold. But some of the gold is actually tiny mimic-hatclings just pretending to be goldcoins. They stay in their goldcoin form until they find a suitable habitat (such as a chest in a cellar or dungeon). Here they then take over the form of the chest and you got a new mimic-chest. (and they will already have gold at hand, to lure in victims).
There is a scene in Kill 6 Billion Demons where a crew of thieves finds out that every single item in a room is a mimic, including the gold coin that one of them just picked up.
Lore:
“Here’s a warning to thieves: mimics are not creative creatures, so if you ever find yourself in a room with ENDLESS replicas of the same chair… RUN.”
Prey 2 does the same thing. Eventually you learn to to just flamethrower anything you see two or more of, go into an office see two identical chairs, two trashbins, etc.
That’s not how they reproduce, though, just how their offspring spreads to new habitats.
Oh you sweet summer child. Do not ever google search “Rule 34” and “mimic” at the same time.
So car keys and left socks are all mimics?
Almost. Car keys and left socks are frequently borrowed by mimics.
Burnham, Presti![0]
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[0] Burnham, Parry, and Williams were, for a while the proprietors of Baldwin Locomotive Works, whose largest and latest facility was in Eddystone, PA.
We know that Mimic is somewhat attracted to human females, at least based on the running gag about him and Roxy.
Which is ironic in hindsight considering that mermaid. Maybe she gave up too soon…
Come to think of it, she’s technically a legal character for the poll.
Unclear if getting women to sit on him is in any way sexual for Mimic; maybe he just likes the texture, the way some people like wearing cashmere sweaters. You’d hardly say they were attracted to those.
If it’s not sexual, then he should find being sat on by men just as appealing, since the texture is pretty much the same. Then again, it’s not 100% clear that he doesn’t. So far he’s always done it with Roxy specifically, rather than women in general. For all we know, maybe it’s something about the fabric of her clothes that he finds appealing. Bards do tend to wear fancier clothes than average…
Or maybe he just likes annoying Roxy and knows that it’ll get to her.
Presti’s “we never see any other mimics around here” reminds me of Discworld, and specifically of Lord Vetinari’s academic record at the Assassins’ Guild. Perfect marks in nearly everything, but he failed his Stealth course by not showing up for the examination.
It’s a “Catch-22”, really.
If they could **TELL** that he was there, then they’d STILL have to fail him!
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Maybe if he appeared later, bearing an item that he could’ve stolen off of a teacher’s person — but ONLY during the teacher’s presence during the exam?
Nah. The problem was he showed up, but was so well camouflaged the Professor didn’t spot him, unlike all his classmates who also showed up camo’ed and ‘hidden’ and ‘disguised’, but being rich useless prats were terrible at it. The Assassin’s Guild isn’t about turning rich useless prats into useful assassins, it’s about taking money from rich snobs and turning them into still useless rich snobs who are mostly harmless to anyone they actually try to kill. Because most of them upon graduating will immediately head out to tour the Disk and either die while out “adventuring” (read glamping), or while leading rabble at war, or might survive to retire and run the family estate.
The real Assassins are all taken from the lower class and properly trained. Vetinari was one of the exceedingly rare rich kids who actually paid attention and learned, and learned more than the useless professors (who were rich prats who ‘retired’ into teaching) ever knew.
Cube is *married*? When was *that* mentioned?
Very early on, in Critical Missives #2.