Some changes over at the CafePress end of things

[dianeduane]

For those who might be interested, we're in the middle of restructuring the Young Wizards CafePress store. Things are getting moved around, old designs are getting spruced up or dumped, and a lot of new designs are being installed to take advantage of the much wider range of products available since the store opened up in '03.

Just added: a couple of T-shirts that appear in Wizard's Holiday and Wizards at War -- Roshaun's "Fermilab" T-shirt and Sker'ret's "Will Do Magic For Food" shirt. Also, there's an entire section devoted to various sorts of Wizard's Oath material, which people have repeatedly been asking for.

(Also: CafePress is just now rolling out its API. As soon as I can figure out how, I'll install an RSS-fed box on OOA so those interested in such things can see what's new in the store without blog posts being required.)

Comments

[dduane.livejournal.com]

(heh heh)

But it's strange how these things develop. I can't think how many times, over at the discussion forums, we've had message topics with titles like "Will DD publish the Manual?..." and "Have you taken the Oath?" ...and leaving aside the issue of the basic division between Reality^TM and fantasy, I hate to come right out and dash anybody's hopes of Something Happening. Yet at the same time, you have to warn them that things might not... And as soon as I started thinking about how to say that, the legalese THIS IS NOT AN OFFERING appeared, as it were, in burning letters in the air: a sort of "MENE MENE TEKEL DON'T-GET-YOUR-HOPES-UP."

(resigned look) It's a sobering thing, sometimes, to have created something that so many people wish was true. Not least of all me.

[azurelunatic]

(And I had most of a reply, but then other things distracted me, and Firefox crashed, so...)

And it's truly amazing that you have created this thing that so many people wish was true, and so many of them are so generally sane about it.

Even if it were true, though, there probably wouldn't be wizards declaring themselves on open forums. First, that pesky "this is fantasy" thing. Second, it would be so very tactless to effectively waltz in and say "I'm a wizard and you're not!" That would of course give rise to recriminations, backstabbing, and the discomfiting knowledge that no matter how much one had wanted to become a wizard while muttering the Oath on the sly, there was just some lacking element in there.

And third ... imagine the complications of being an out-of-the-wizardly-closet wizard in a world not used to wizards! I have this mental image of a spam-box filled to overflowing with trivial or absurd requests from people who thought that wizarding was Just Like Magic, when in fact they could solve their own problems if they thought about it and put some effort into it.

And the explanations! It's quite bad enough being of non-standard religion in an overly curious and woefully under-educated workplace. I'm not sure I could manage the sorts of explanations a publicly known wizard would have to be able to give. (I gave up on the "She eats babies!" battle, and have started to respond, "Yeah, jelly babies," which requires an explanation of Dr. Who, but at least gets the topic off religion and onto the far more intriguing field of scary gummy candies that people have encountered. The gummy hamburger is my personal favorite.)

Wizards are far, far safer under cover on Earth, I should think.

[janeway216.livejournal.com]

Heh. After reading the Feline Wizardry novels, I have become convinced that my cat is a wizard, because otherwise I have to come up with rational explanations for the things that cat gets up to. Much easier to cock an eye at her and say, "Been on errantry again, cat?" and leave it at that.

;-)

[azurelunatic]

Very wise decision. It probably would have saved a lot of questions to my kitten the time she decided to carry the local kid's yarn-and-bead necklace around. We probably would not have laughed so much if only she'd told us it was a spell component...

[sithjawa.livejournal.com]

I definitely read the Oath very quietly under my breath when no one was looking as a kid. It never dashed my hopes when nothing happened, because, after all, who was to say that nothing happened? Maybe the person I helped across the street the next day was the first step to saving the world. I had a firm belief that the Universe paid attention, even if I didn't quite "get" its answer.

On occasion I still read it out loud, to remind myself why I did it then. Because, you know, as a kid, you believe (or at least, I believed) that you're ready and eager to save the world, if someone would just let you stay up late enough to do it.