This morning I spotted a pair of magpies building a nest in a really tall tree just visible from our garden. It’ll be cool to sit outside and spy on them the coming weeks and months.
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Oh please do keep us updated on the little guys! It’s always so lovely when birds decide it’s safe to nestle up and get all cozy nearby- I miss when we had nesting crows in the boughs of our maple.
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Played through Dara’s route today and he’s such good slow burn hurt comfort 100k+ long fanfic full of lingering eye contact and you only get to see a kiss scene like at the 70k mark. He’s very sweet. A lot more awkward and shy than Rezan who is also shy but super forthcoming about his feelings and communicating.
Much more restricted by his station which makes sense given their different titles and his poor tragic sad little meowmeow backstory… Romancing the General was always going to be sadder than the Sorcerer though since his role inherently means he has to be away sometimes, much like the Hero and Xelef skipping off to do mercenary things.
Interestingly a lot of Rezan’s route is common in his romance path and other meowmeow’s- he remains a caring and supportive friend, which builds up a lot of your puppydog love-ish romance with him. So sweet.
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Just finished up doing some plain lined character design notes for our upcoming Butterfly Court campaign with the Goncharov Girlies, to supplement my character sheets for the both of them (I also made two little infographics based on Chalk and the Goodmen (think patron saint) practices because it’s relevant to Aurora/Rory and she’s from very far away so it makes sense people would be unfamiliar with the provincial folk religion.)
Spymaster Daddano (an Andrey Daddano in another AU, and not the Greatest Mafia Movie Ever Made) is her adoptive father since her parents recently died, and he’s hauled her back to the capital’s court to introduce her to society and see what the fuss with the change in monarchal power is all about.
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Lovely! Just seeing the characters and reading the notes on their clothing and appearance transports me to a nother world. Love the details like the bracelet, the waterproof leather boots (those sound very comfy), the cufflinks,…
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Thanks so much! A lot of the stuff pertaining to Rory is borrowed/adapted from a very good series by Frances Hardinge- the Fly By Night books. Magic doesn’t exist in that realm, but its a wonderful soft-historical fantasy adventure following a little girl who loves to read, start revolutions, break out of jails, dabble in spycraft and sedition, smuggle messages, and sleep in a heap of blankets with her pet homicidal goose Saracen.
A couple of old OCs have gotten smushed into the setting as well, (The Algid is one of my Fae characters, he’s the embodiment of the North and Winter) and I’m really excited for when the girlies kick off our session. I have character sheets for the both of them too, but I’ll save sharing those for when they’re properly filled out after session 0.
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I finally got new earbuds to replace the ones for which one channel had gone flaky a while ago and finally stopped lamenting that listening to podcasts on my phone wasn’t as good an experience as it was on my Sandisk Clip+ and did the obvious thing of digging out said Sandisk Clip+, and today I took a long walk listening to Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff and 99% Invisible. (Just when I was bordering on being all USB-C and able to ditch microUSB cables, now I have a miniUSB cable in my life again!)
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I don’t know where it comes from, but a lot of fantasy-writers seem to take an interest in good leather boots.
I’m immediately thinking of Aragorn’s strider boots, Richard Cypher’s woodsman boots,…
The best example that comes to my mind is Tenna from the story Runner of Pern by Anne McCaffrey (no dragons in this one). Tenna is a messenger who runs the mossy paths through the woods between cities and villages. She wears low boots of wher-leather softened with a special oil made to the family recipe.
Tenna is also quite the confident young woman. She socks an arrogant noble knight right on the chin after he cut her off with his horse on one of the dedicated runners’ paths. And so the story begins…
EDIT: I originally wrote “feisty young woman”, then edited it to “confident”. When I reread “feisty”, it sounded condescending, like I was talking about a toddler having an angry fit. Looking at some internet dictionaries though, they mostly say something neutral like “energetic and courageous (especially of a smaller person)”.
Does “feisty” have this belittling/condescending tone I read into it?)
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Went to a friends’ to eat and ended up staying to watch a movie. We watched Being John Malkovitch and
uh
hmm.
It’s kinda hard to describe what makes it so hilarious and weird without giving it away but if you like surrealist dark comedies it’s sure to provoke thought and/or discussion.
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Late night email shift, we’re like two days behind. The system breaks and goes out temporarily. When we come back, I’m answering the same emails from a month ago. I recognize my notes and the sequence of people. They’re all already answered but as we have no idea what to do, they’re like “uh, just…keep answering emails till we figure it out. voicemails have been left.”
Thus ensues 39 minutes of a deja-vu time loop experience.
[30 min left, copying all my notes and pasting them but not actually emailing the form because I know they already got it…yeah, whatever happened to that one claim they were so mad about oo can i change the future? Well. probably not in 20 minutes…]
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Yeah, I think you’re right. Doesn’t sound like someone you take seriously.
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Wahoo! PunyJam #3 is now in the judging period. My game is actually on display with 8 other games. 9 is good. 
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Today I learned I’m not supposed to rinse my dishes before putting them in the dishwasher. You’re supposed to scrape them only.
I always thought it was a “let the dishwasher do its job” thing or a “don’t waste extra water” thing, but this video explained that if the dishes are too clean and the soap doesn’t have dirt and grime to cling onto, the detergent will cling to the clean dishes and glassware and actually wear down the finish, causing hazing and scratches trying to clean non-dirty dishes.
I guess that’s true enough. I always thought I was helping by rinsing them mostly clean before dishwashing for good measure. Still if I have a majorly grungy pan I’m going to scrub that.
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Wrote about 2k words today!
Making some progress. Tomorrow is more dialogue. Tuesday is coding all the text. Almost there 
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I got Covid today. Which seems like a bad thing, and it is bad-- I feel like hammered poop.
The positive thing about it is that I can stop worrying about if and when I’ll get it.
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Oh no, Amanda! Lots of kitty hugs. Please get plenty of rest. I hope you feel better soon!
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The bad news is you can get it multiple times. 
Shut up Phil, stop being such a downer.
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I finally got it last December, and it’s no fun, but I was kind of glad to have it as a “trial” and happy that my body fought it off without major extended care besides fluids and naproxen sodium and cold medicine - hopefully boosted by previous vaccinations and general avoidance of public spaces.
I actually went in a store without a mask the other day. I got all the way in and realized I’d forgotten and I was like. Okay, goin’ in…I’ve had COVID recently, I should have a couple months of antibodies!! I felt very naked and I tried it again in another store and every like 10th person who had a mask made me realize I was that person I always scorned when I did wear a mask, so I’mma just cover my face probably from now on forever… 
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I was explaining something to my family using placeholder names, and got some strange looks. This is how I discovered that my mother’s mother’s parents were named Alice and Bob.
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