Natalie P (is not a vampire) 🦇

YouTube video by The Dog Detailer Milo is up for adoption with Decators Place Malamute rescue in Missouri #alaskanmalamute #malamute

Look at the tongue on this dog.

Alright, that's it, go about your Saturday.

This Friday the 13th, I'd like to take you all back exactly one year ago today, where I off-handedly wrote a little thing while discussing magic with Cas, and ended up making folks softly weep. 💜

It reads like a greetings card with delusions of grandeur. I can see why she's flattered, even if it's hollow, because someone actually taking time out to say nice things is rare.

I'm not sad that it made my friend feel good. I'm sad she can't see the person who sent it didn't actually write it.

An old friend I've not spoken to in ages on FB reposted "the most beautiful message I've ever received" and... it's clearly AI.

They're so welled up with emotion that a friend would say something so wonderful about them, but in reality that friend clearly did fuck all and had a machine do it.

your job

Just watched a 16 & 17 year olds doing more advanced tricks with bigger air than a load of more experienced riders in this snowboard halfpipe qualifying.

People falling back on "they're only exceptional because they've devoted their entire lives!!!" when I bring this up for ttrpgs need to eat shit.

Macklemore and Tay Zonday being at college together is like a hidden key to the MySpace era internet.

It puts my "having to do my work commute while future One Direction star Zayn Malik was regularly an annoying tween on the bus" celebrity grievance to shame.

I genuinely didn't know what to put. "Other Natalie" makes it seem as if we're destined to fight to the death, Highlander style, but in the form of a trivia quiz about Oldhammer.

Canadian Natalie, whom I was responding to, articulates it all very well:

Raymond Briggs once pointed out that Jim is, explicitly, the same Jim from Gentleman Jim, so you're not off track.

No, you see, you need to roll the dice in the face of this.

So help me I will get on the 11:01 train (changing at Picadilly) and throw my shoe at you before lunch.

Hammer it home that it's not simply two elderly English people with a misplaced faith in government competency and a blithe jingoistic hope.

It's any grandparent who survives and their hope, faith and spirit count for nothing, absolutely NOTHING in the face of nuclear annihilation.

With the news that the Threads remake will be about hope in the face of nuclear horror, I propose a project to make a fully localised version of When The Wind Blows for every country.

Each nation's favourite grandad & grandma actors, each reference updated for greatest cultural impact per country.

We need to fuck people up with When The Wind Blows again.

Raff inadvertently making an "I should be running Outgunned" post.

Not one but two boxes of Tunnocks Tea Cakes! Well, that would raise anyone's spirits. 💜

Long hospital stays are the worst, even if they're life saving, so I'm glad you've got a little treat or two to help get you through.

Also I typed this all out on a phone and my thumbs hurt.

I wrote a bit more than I expected, so you can read it too, I guess?

It's not great, most of the core details were written out over a decade ago and I'm going from memory rather than digging out that notebook.

Two years since The Decimation, tens of thousands more have died, many of starvation.

The Twenty Houses are down to nine, and two of those openly fight against the Crown.

The King cracks down on freedoms more each day. His vast capital is full of ghosts. He sees enemies everywhere.

Common folk began to flee the city. When news reached the Standing Army, unpaid for a month, they revolted, returning to their villages and families.

Disenfranchised noble daughters began to meet with and fund Standing Army officers and provide them with magic.

Outright revolt had begun.

They watched in horror as each prisoner was shackled to a rock and pushed from the wall. Grandparents. Children. Struggling in the freezing waters, before the weight dragged them into the deep.

The nobility treated it like a party, until the riot began in earnest.

Obviously this wasn't the case, and so the Royal Guard swept through the slums and Workers Quarter, taking every tenth person, be they young, old, man woman or child.

Over 2000 prisoners were lined along the massive square harbor walls. Thousands of citizens crowded the adjoining market square.

...well organised resistance.

The King was incensed. A personal insult. HIS ship, HIS food, HIS city.

He mobilised his well paid, well fed, utterly loyal Royal Guard. He became convinced that there were ten ringleaders, "Ten Bravos" who had banded together to insult him, demanding their surrender.

One winter's morning, a large ship bearing the name of the King's favourite great uncle came into port, packed with preserved fish, fruit, nuts and more, all bound for the royal larders.

It was intercepted on the docks, the food distributed among the starving people by a burgeoning....

This left the Frontier Guard and Standing Army gutted of magical talent, equipment, funding and personnel. People asked to face wildtouched beasts with nothing more than spears and leather jerkins.

Then, the harvest failed. The country had too little food, the capital had too many people.

Then came the Royal Edict Against Sorcery, stipulating that only the sons of nobility could henceforth receive training in magic, and focuses may only be owned by the Crown and Houses.

Simultaneously, the Houses moved to increase their own household guard, unwilling to spend without direct benefit.

The vast wealth of the country was all in the hands of the Crown and the Houses, and the New King was proving to be even worse than his father and grandfather.

Huge building and beautification projects hoovered up the people and money, overcrowding the capital and emptying whole villages.

...the events precipitating the civil war in Avoryn, also known as The Decimation or The Mad King's Rage.

As a country, Avoryn was undergoing upheaval as it rapidly moved from a rural society to supporting the ever growing, ever industrialising capital city.

Internal migration was causing crises.