kiya

In my ongoing services regarding keeping track of things so madgastronomer doesn't have to (as much):

( The revised list... )

Also, I gave up and trimmed down my screenshot of the Heroforge mini I made for Danny so I have a catboy bard icon. That is him, that is my catboy. Ish. There wasn't a way of doing his coat properly in the system so I made do.

Anyway this post is mostly for madgastronomer for assistance in tracking loose threads and the amusement of our crew. Beginning with a copy of the relevant bits of the last one.

( The Current Threads )

jenett and I talk gaming. Relevant: some number of years ago, we played several games that included Changeling: the Dreaming as a component.


Me: I am entertained by how much more actively benevolent Isobel is than the boys, but of course that's why Briseis wants her in her pocket.
Jenett: Well, yes. And Isobel, still at "I don't think of myself as actively benevolent!"
Me: Isobel actively wants to find people to help! Thomas will help people he notices but will fart around with the guitar and tinker by preference, left to his own devices. Danny will actively help people, but occasionally vindictively.
Jenett: Danny is a Boggan [1] with his own definitions of helping.
( Cutting the rest of this )

My in-person gaming group actually met in person for a D&D one-shot in which I generated a character who is a whole-ass seventh level single-class character (I never do this, because D&D drives me bonkers with the constraints of its class system). I mean, they're an arcane trickster, so rogue with minor magic, but...

I built Izar on Heroforge, so that's what they look like.

Izar is a retired adventurer who basically went "screw this, I'm quitting to become an accountant" and then wound up investigating these horrible murders in the town where they settled and, well, the "I speak six languages and can therefore read your notes, and talk to this person who doesn't have the local language, just the trade pidgin" thing went well for a bit, but then the monsters attacked and 'I will one-shot the monster that other party members need to hit several times to take down' became the order of the day. Because when the sneak attack works, it works Thoroughly.

(Best dramatic moment for me: paladin retreating down the hallway attacked by demonic-looking batlike things, winds up next to the door in the room where Izar is; Izar steps around the bear that was the third party member and just amiably stabs over the paladin's shoulder to one-shot one of the little nasties. Given they did not appear to have a sword when they went in there this was maybe a little surprising.)

And of course this being D&D we did not have to worry about the whole question of "how to get a cave bear out of a small second-story room" because the space is arbitrarily defined as allowing him to leave, unlike when Danny was stuck in a third-floor apartment because he accidentally an entire bear. ;)

(Catboy bard is actually being reasonably chill at the moment, hence the lack of rambly posts about him, but but is he having a week.)

But on that note, loose ends(  are being cut. )

In non-gaming news I disapprove of conjunctivitis.

Due to the critical serotonin shortage I missed a couple of things on my 'to try to hit this deadline' list last week, and was having another fit of "What even are words and how do I make them" from which I have once again been rescued by Danny the catboy bard, who added to the previously noted backstory content (which had settled in at about ten thousand words of little vignettes) another near-three thousand words of vignettes and then, when I thought I was done with that already, getting "Let It Go" on random shuffle while picking up Youngest yesterday led to another 3300-some words of a completely different vignette-based backstory about brotherly love between family misfits, Disney soundtracks, and scrapbooking set against a backdrop of Cyndi Lauper.

I think I have managed to mine out all the backstory this boy is producing, I am running low on places to put it (though I suspect I shall at some point come up with some more "this weird thing happened when I was working the Renaissance Faire" bits, but those aren't remotely loadbearing, just hypothetically amusing), and maybe I will be able to tackle the next CFS now.

Of course I also have a bajillion little snippets of things to maybe happen Sometime if the opportunity presents.
( notes on that for my memory and the amusement of others (particularly MG) )

I told my brain I could write this post if I got my editing done last night and then I was too tired after I had my editing done to do it so I am writing this post now.

Things that profoundly entertain me about the party as established in the Deliria game: the party's reactions to discovering that they are in a magic-works world full of the Good Neighbors.

Thomas: This is kind of a lot and I am not sure about it.
Isobel: I will appropriately sort through and organize all the weird things that are going on so I understand them properly and know how to help.
Danny: WHEEEEEE I AM IN. (Except for faerie court events, those give me Class Anxiety.)

( Rambling about character evolution and development )

... tonight we had our every-other-weekish Deliria game.

( Cutting because only people who want to read burble about RPGs should be subjected to it. )

It's not that things don't happen (everything happens so much) it's that I am too worn out by things happening to comment upon the happenage. Mature wisdom also apparently resembles not posting to DW.

The last of my 2020 submissions extant has come home with its rejection note, so now we are on to the grand new world composed entirely of 2021 rejections. (This is the joke; the actuality is that 2021 has also brought me now two holds, one of which I vaguely know when I'll hear back on because it's for a CFS that's still open, for which they are making no final decisions until they have seen their entire pile.)

I am probably not having a depressive episode anymore but I am existentially exhausted nonetheless, which is not assisted by having a vague and near-perpetual case of mild to moderate nausea. (Also I am nearly out of Pepto tablets.)

I am making mild progress on another story in Rory's universe, which does not involve Rory at all (but I do know where the narrator is adjacent to bits of Rory's plotline, because that is the sort of thing I like to know). It writes well except when it just bloody well doesn't, and such is life.

The younger children are in a deeply recalcitrant phase and ER in particular seems to think that all consequences are a grand lark up until she realizes that no, she does not like what is happening and what happened to her fun game? I am looking forward to her maturing out of this.

In other excitements, my toilet, which had been erratic, and then repaired some time ago, went back to erratic and then to 'would not stop running'. It was determined that the problem was not the flappy thing (as had been the previous issue) but something in the refill loop which, when artan attempted to fiddle with it, merely got more vigorous about wanting to blow water forever. It has been shut off at the valve and I need to figure out how to buy a toilet which is simultaneously 'this should be trivial it's a fucking toilet' and 'OMG how is this so complicated?!'

I may have gotten distracted by Turkish lamps instead.

Also having the least-used toilet in the house broken is hilariously complicated so I guess I'm glad it wasn't one of the other ones, but also it does not play nicely with 'vague sense of nausea all the time'.

On the absolute up side I got to play Danny tonight and it was a session about 80% driven by Danny wanting things and going and doing them and he is a very happy feral bard who now possesses a magical fiddle, a book about fairy contract law, and a plan to trade favors for a book on truth in bardic magic. He is well pleased with his world and we have had a fine time.

ETA: oh also the US Army has failed in its most recent attempt to kill my brother; his covid test came back negative. I need to figure out who to scream at.