random Thursday is random
Owing to the extremely happy-making fact that Friday is a public holiday for deserving South Africans, the part of Random Friday will today be played by Thursday. Excelsior!
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Students give me stuff. Frequently strife, but not always. On Tuesday the sweet child for whom I wrote an Official Letter (is it unnecessarily anachronistic that writing those always makes me obscurely want ribbon and sealing wax and an Official Seal?) gave me a giant bar of chocolate. Earlier this year a student gave me a flower in a pot, and right now, with Cape Town's flirty dalliance with Spring, it's busy flowering like a mad orange thing. Every time I walk into my office I feel as though it's giving me a slightly manic one-hand wave, and a goofy grin.
- The latest XKCD caused me unholy glee which is not entirely unrelated to my Historically Dreadful Taste In Boyfriends (a categorisation which I hasten to add excludes any of the exes on my Friends list. By definition). I think life would be a lot better with an Official Blacklist. I'm just saying.
- Unicorn Pegasus Kitten. You don't need me to say anything other than the delirious concept of a Unicorn Pegasus Kitten itself, but there is also resulting Scalzi/Wheaton fanfic, some of it from Big Names, much of it pleasingly silly. I am desolated that they excluded slash. (Actually, not really. Geek slash is not a genre behind which I can, so to speak, get). I have to say, there are a couple of really excellent stories in there - Stephen Toulouse's one-act play is, in particular, genius, as is Scalzi's own "interview". Also, yes, I donated. Lawful Good, remember?
- Echo Bazaar. I've been playing this madly for several months now, and am very, very hooked. It's at the stage where my primary character has so many items which pump various stats that each card-play requires a lengthy pause while I swap them around to maximise my skills. And, yes, I have a secondary character. Docinatrix is playing the Persuasive/Watchful track as a Lawful Good character, which means my Austere and Steadfast are high, my connections with Constables, the Church and the Great Game are stratospheric, and I'm continually betraying revolutionaries and turning down come-ons from devils with marked disdain. LadyJessamyn, on the other hand, is on the Persuasive/Watchful track as a ravening hedonist and Chaotic Neutral, which means she's hanging with the criminal classes, dallying with devils and generally kicking up her heels with a fine disregard for authority. Both characters are highly connected to the Rubbery Men, though. I love the Rubbery Men. They have very little game significance, but they're adorably mournful.
Notable events: Docinatrix just attended her first hanging! Also, she is facing the end of the Cheesemonger story, a brilliant set of action choices which I've been thinking about for three days without being able to decide which is the appropriate response. At the higher levels the narrative aspects of this game become seriously chewy.
