Who’s critiquing your notes? And it’s their fault if they can’t value “mystical and arcane” properly. I wish my notes looked that cool. Mine are like
can’t have him say WER’ENT GOING (is it the shelves?)
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Are they all from the same source? I’m getting a Sanskrit vibe from some of them (Kasap → (Maha)kasyapa…), Persian from others (Bashti → Vashti) but Kiang and Zagin seem different…
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Is all good 
Lmk if you need some help!!
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Good thought! The protagonist names (Zagin, Kiang) do indeed come from a different language than the crew names, which is why the protagonist is mangling the crew names a bit—they don’t know that other language.
The crew ones are actually Akkadian (specifically Old Babylonian). Akkadian names tend to be entire sentences, usually with a divine name somewhere in there, which was thought to bring that god’s favor to the child—you also see this in Egyptian names and older Hebrew names, like mine (dan-i-ʔel = El is my judge). These can sometimes get fairly long and unwieldy, like Ishtar-ummi-enishtim “Ishtar acts as mother to the weak” or Nabu-kudurri-utzzur “may Nabu protect my firstborn”; the usual way to deal with this in conversation is to take the first couple syllables and add -i or -iya to the end (shortening that to Ishiya and Nabi).
The protagonist, not speaking Akkadian, has just taken the first word of each one and assumed it acts like a first name: they literally mean “token”, “silver”, “hears”, “my happiness”, “champion”, and “bring justice”, since they were originally part of sentences like Udan-Ishtar “Ishtar, bring justice for me” or Ishme-Dagan “Dagan hears me”.
The protagonist names, meanwhile, are Sumerian: Zagin means “lapis lazuli” and Kiang means “beloved”. Conveniently, most Sumerian names are gender-neutral, which is nice when I don’t want to specify the protagonist’s gender. Just in case some Sumerian scholar decides to play it.
I fully realize I put way too much thought into minor details that nobody will actually notice, but I think it’s important to have the names sound foreign in a consistent way without being hard for English-speakers to pronounce. For some reason, starting a name with “Q” seems to feel more foreign-but-pronounceable than starting a name with “Ts”, and so on. They also all start and end with different letters, which always helps me keep names straight.
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Oh, cool, I love these kinds of details - even though I obviously don’t have nearly the expertise to understand what’s going on, as a lay reader it is possible to pick up on stuff like some of the names sounding different from the others, so I think the effort does wind up paying off.
(I also have one of those “invoke god’s favor” names, now that I think of it, and go by a nickname that works much like how you describe the Akkadian practice, so that’s kind of cool!)
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I was looking through my game-writing notes, and here’s a gem:
Why it not that? Can’t be like other. Implement.
That’s a free-standing comment, and I can’t figure out what I was supposed to implement here. I suspect wine was involved when I wrote this.
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I got to test a friend’s updated custom code, under the bet that if I could break it (finding a bug that was not a coded error message) I could ask a question about their new project…
… It took me 5 tries, but I broke it… 
Yay for secret knowledge
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Ooh, writing notes are a lot of fun! Most of my coding comments are being deeply confused as to why something breaks something else if you poke at it, so wrap it up with caution tape and leave it well enough alone, but writing stuff is always a mixed bag:
Michael’s eyes are dripping onto the table.
Centipedes keep crawling out of the drain.
Sustaining?
Death facts about air plane crashes
Choosing to do nothing is still a choice, after all.
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LET’S GOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
ANTAGONIST AI DEVELOPMENT SPEEDRUUUUNNNNNNNNNN!!!
Okay, but actually, though: Phase One of testing for my SpringThing game is done!
All that remains is Phase Two, which will probably happen in about 10 days!
Oof, only 10 days…
This will probably be fine. I’ve done more crunch than this before.
Wish me luck!
(I WILL NEED IT.)
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My son went to the toy store and bought a “Perplexus” maze ball with his birthday money. That thing is one of the greatest pieces of challenge-teetering-on-the-edge-of-frustration genius I have ever seen.
It’s become our family’s (grandparents included) toy, trying to beat each other to the 100-mark. It’s been a week now. My son got to 99 (!) while the rest of us are stuck somewhere below 50.
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Ohhhh…now I really want one too, lol.
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Welcome to the other side! 
#FckCvd
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Had a super busy weekend - on Saturday, attended a march for trans rights in Boston followed by a date where we went to this adorable craft place and decorated a mirror with decoden cream and a bunch of little baubles, bought some very early birthday/Christmas gifts for family (I like to be way ahead), and grabbed lunch. This morning my tattoo appointment got cancelled, so we spent the entire day cleaning and reorganizing our apartment. We made it through two rooms, but they look amazing. Feeling very accomplished.
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Background
In this topic, https://intfiction.org/t/informal-poll-use-of-hints/55856/17, back on 09-May-2022, I wrote:
I did it! I finished So Far!
After almost 17 years, I finally got out of Caught in Metal. Breakthrough: I discovered I could break the ceramic square to create a light source. After that, it was a relatively quick trip to the end.
What an amazing feeling. For the ensuing 15 minutes, I felt like I could do pretty much anything I set my mind to. 
Then I thought, hmm, 17 years, maybe I shouldn’t be celebrating this. Not when there are probably players who solved the puzzle in 17 minutes. 
Oh well, I’ll take my successes where I can get 'em.
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Manon said something really lovely today, and it’s stuck with me.
The Goncharov Girlies is the silly little nickname for our TTRPG group- and they’ve been a bright spot in my week. I always look forward to playing around our table. We initially started playing after some pestering on my part about ‘hey, if it would be fun or something we’re all individually interested in, how about we play as a group together then?’ with regards to one of the TTRPG submissions to the Goncharov gamejam that Autumn ran.
I’ve often been in the position of being the person who starts things. Someone has to, right? The one to organize shared calendars, set up campaigns, make supplemental materials, reach out with advice or recommendations for new hobbies or just useful information that I wish someone had told me about, that sort of thing. It’s embarrassing, sometimes- to put yourself into the position (and to be the recipient) of potential ridicule, and exhausting, as an introvert with a severe need for leadtime and recovery after the fact. But it’s worth it, to make the people that I care about happy- and to have fun, too, since I do enjoy getting into silly bo billy kitty shenanigans. Unfortunately, it hasn’t always been reciprocal. I’ve had a bad run of things sometimes.
So I’m that much more thankful that I’ve had an excellent experience with the gals. It feels like the energy and effort is mutual, that everyone is as eager to have fun and play as I am- I don’t feel like the irritating try hard or the cheerleader for a lost cause. I’ve had the pleasure of being amazed by their improvisation skills and to meet their characters, and we have a blast cobbling together plots in a ‘yes, and?’ way. It’s great!
It’s so refreshing to have the space for ‘girl talk’ and to chat about stuff outside of our campaign, too- it’s really warmed my heart when we have moments of like ‘oh you too???’ for favourite childhood snacks with some of the similar cultural backgrounds in the mix. It’s a fun, supportive, girly space in the best possible way: the sort of light hearted friendship that makes me nostalgic. Like, you know how in chick lit novels there’s a girl bestfriend who’s cheering her bestie on and is genuinely happy for her at the end of the book? It’s kind of like that. (Anyone who knows me knows that I love chick lit.) Women supporting and uplifting women.
Today Manon mentioned in an aside that I had her hubby’s thanks too, since he thinks that she’s looked happier since we started playing as a group. I was thrilled. Absolutely delighted that she’s been having as good of an experience as I have- but also deeply touched, to be able to be a part of bringing that sort of joy to someone else’s life. I’m still thinking about it. Just perfectly lovely.
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June 8th is the day Mask of the Rose is releasing, June 10th is a celebration (with cake!) and June 11th is Autumn’s Goncharov talk! That week is gonna kick ass. Delightful to have something to look forward to.
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Had coffee 
for the first time in a while today. Woke the senses right up. 
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