One of the least plausible aspects of fantasy as a genre is that sorcerers NEVER seem to get bogged down in creating a new spell then spend the next three or four months muttering "I hate this, it's rubbish" under their breath.
@cstross Or for the “magic as code” aspect going through an old spell and complaining about how badly written it is then realizing they wrote it a decade earlier.
@MacBalance @cstross "When I cast this spell, I discovered that Belphegor is no longer Lord of Eternal Pain, and that I now need to call on Astaroth for that. But the invocation for Astaroth seems to be totally different. Can I still use these black candles, or do I have to throw them away and lay in a stock of hemlock?"
"When I summoned Belphegor I wanted a loud shouty demon, not a 1970s Polish jet-propelled biplane cropduster, dammit!"
"Not my fault, guv, it's just a namespace collision!"
@darkling @MacBalance NB: In case you thought I was pulling it out of my arse, here's the PZL M-15 Belphegor in all its incredibly slow, screechy, beauty: