~This is the Truth About It~

(also still working on writing. Winter's Curse is being slowly chipped at. Next update on AO3 will be either Metal Heart or Dear World. The next chapter of metal heart is currently 16k and unfinished, gods help me.)

Some of what's come up over the last week or so:

Medicare for low-income retired people having 600$ deductibles and the "doughnut hole" where they just randomly stop paying for things late in the year are honestly just evil. Don't let anyone tell you it's some kind of measure to prevent abuse of medication; the "abusable" stuff is all CHEAP. The things where people have to choose between eating and buying their meds are things like insulin, inhalers and asthma medications, blood thinners, and antiseizure medication.

When some news anchor or scare story makes a big deal out of people picking up their painkillers but NOT THEIR INSULIN, it's because the painkiller was ten bucks and the insulin was anywhere from 90 to 400.

The other racket? 99% of the time when someone tells you brand is "the real version" and generics aren't, they're blowing smoke up your ass. I've handled things where a generic has overstock of the brand, in a generic bottle, but the pills have the brand imprint. The other fun one is that sometimes the generic is made by the same manufacturer. We have someone who insists on brand for one of their meds; it's something like 300 times as expensive (lucky for them their insurance covers it). It's made by the same manufacturer, comes in an almost identical bottle, and the only way to tell the tablets apart is that the imprints are different numbers.

IN LESS GROUCHY PHARMACY BIRD NEWS, holy shit is the customer base where I am now worlds better than anywhere else I've worked. There's a giant jar of homemade peanut brittle a regular patient brought us, and over Christmas we had more baked goods than we could eat, with a couple outliers like the one that made hickory and mesquite smoked salt for everyone.

Also we're like, ten miles from the border and some of our patient base are Mexican immigrants and immigrant families. For a dose of reality on the propoganda, this includes:

One old couple that periodically brings us homemade tortillas.

A couple families where the younger members regularly come along with a grandparent who doesn't speak English to translate and help. One such family goes to the same church as one of the other techs.

Oh, and cookies and baked goods.



LESS SERIOUSLY:

House on Hook Street wrapped up. The dumb gay monsterboy trio-ship is setting out from the city of Korvosa with their often exasperated halfling oracle Team Mom and one of the street kids Rhys, the Dhampyr investigator, basically adopted, who we're going to teach to be an adventurer while we go on the pilgrimages half the party agreed to while dealing with a couple of the deities involved.

I wasn't in the game from the beginning, we were running every other week, and it's surreal that it's over; I ended up about as attached to Elias and the entire fumbling mess of a party as I did to characters from games that started at first level and went into high levels. I jumped in on what was kind of the homeward stretch, and the entire thing ran from level 6-9.

The DM's going to be running the Tyrant's Grasp path when it drops, and we've already been setting up a party for it; at some later date he's made some noises about maybe running Hell's Rebels, and having the Hook Street group show up as friendly NPC's/"when the actual party started on it hits level 9 they'll be backups and alternates you can switch between", though that'll *probably* be a ways off. (One of us is also going to be picking up the kid they were adopting as a PC.)

As for the Tyrant's Grasp group, we're definitely not ending up with another unplanned "within five minutes of my character being introduced the 'well we know they knew each other' background has clarified into 'they're friendly exes'". (That's a story where I'd almost struggle to tell it, since part of the "AND THEN WE HAD A TRIO POLYSHIP" started before I joined, and it deserves its own post.) We are doing another "PLANNING SHARED BACKGROUND" -

So the new group is getting a half-elven Arcanist and her (technically half sibling) Aasimar Cleric older sister who will possibly literally torch your ass if you hurt her baby sister. I'm already looking forward to be a repository of embarassing stories and "I CHANGED YOUR DIAPERS."

In the meantime, thanks to over half of the games being play-by-post where there isn't really a set schedule, I need to do a new version of the "every active character" picture that's going to be a chaotic mess.

There's a local group running out of a games store that just opened running 5e that's a wonderful group with a great DM. I think my Tortle diviner-wizard "too curious for own good" is becoming one of the party leaders, which is a little terrifying, and hilarious considering that I joined via a chain of events a hair shy of "I SEE YOUR PARTY IS MISSING A WIZARD. MIGHT I JOIN YOU ON YOUR NOBLE QUEST?"

Thanks to the game being "people jump in/out as they can and you usually don't see all the group at the table at once", there's now an in character running razz from the NPC's about "HOW IS IT THAT EVERY TIME I SEE YOU PEOPLE THERE'S SOMEONE ELSE NEW?! WHERE DID YOU EVEN FIND A BUGBEAR?!"; hilariously, said bugbear apparently broke teh NPC's into "....I'M NOT ASKING ANYMORE" enough that, when my parents joined, Mom's tiefling paladin of Bahamut got looked at sideways more for "HOW? WHERE? WHY?" than for being a tiefling.

(For the record, she had plenty of reason to be there, having been requested to go with us by a priest of the Raven Queen on good terms with the group.)

Yes, my parents joined. Dad's the reason I picked up tabletop and has been playing since it was tiny paperback pamphlets spun off from miniature wargames. Mom's never quite picked it up before, but is doing pretty well, and got her first Dramatic Paladin Holy Smite Session-Boss kill on her first session, which I'm still kind of misty-eyed over.





Today's writing progress tally is 663 words for the next Metal Heart update, of Haxus being a murder gremlin terrorizing the camp.

I mean, it's not a huge surprise or spoiler, Lance even had the genre-savvy callout about being in a "bad slasher flick" now. No excerpts for now because I'm on my way to bed and tired, but there will be some with tomorrow's work on whatever I pick up after work!

Actually posted last night but I was falling asleep so I didn't put anything up here or on pillowfort for it -

I'm Blacking Out As I Transform
Shiro's Blackout "Chapter" for Truce is up!

"He still wasn't about to let a little thing like dying and ascending to a different plane of existence that didn't function under any of the basic laws of reality, sensory input, and basic interaction he was used to stop him." - Best Summary of Shiro I Have.

Which somehow defied any expectation of angst and turned into mostly weird existential bits, "HOW DOES THIS STATE OF EXISTENCE WORK", and existential comedy with the Black Lion being more blatantly eldritch than usual.

For the record, while I have a special attachment to the mythos thanks to Campus Crusade for Cthulhu, I will drag Lovecraft's xenophobic racist ass to Hell and back. I do write the lions as a bit on the "eldritch alien" side, but there's one thing that gets left out a lot of the time when things get compared that way.

Angels were always saying "fear not" because they were basically inscrutable eldritch alien beings.

Also Bob poked his head in. I didn't ask for Bob, Bob just happened.

Holidays and work were still busy and honestly I kinda ended up doing some recharge time and dealing with getting things back in order - between work being more hectic than usual and holidays I hadn't been doing as much cleaning as I'd like, so the apartment was a bit of a mess, needed to get space back to usable states for cooking etc., and just needed time to let my brain dribble out my ears.

Diablo III on the Switch and Blue Mage on FFXIV both were great for that, as well as a bit of time on World of Warcraft. I think I actually much prefer D3 on the console, especially since the Switch version allows offline play and actually pausing the game; it's still D3 so there's ... honestly not a great deal to it besides messing with abilities and pretty backdrops to smash monsters and zone out, but it's a good braindribble and recharge game. I am enjoying Blue Mage for what it is, which is a ridiculous mess intended entirely for doing stupid shit and not much else.

Work is still going well, hectic period and all, and our pharmacists probably saved someone's life from a dumbass doctor who was prescribing high dose opioids to someone who'd never taken any before, without any kind of titration or observation or anything. The pharmacists refused to fill it and were pretty blunt with the family member looking after the patient that yes, they did want to help and post-serious-surgery is miserable but this dosing for someone who'd never had opioids would be lethal and they went to get a more sane script from their regular doctor.


That one actually started with a quiet "...holy shit what the hell" from one of the other techs who was typing and them flagging everyone over for "Is this as stupid as it looks? Can you check the PNP for their history?"

(The PNP is an online archive that only the pharmacists can access that basically shows the history of controlled substance prescriptions even if it wasn't filled at that pharmacy; in this case it and a couple calls to the hospital about what the patient had been given while there were a godsend for confirming that fentanyl patches along with standard immediate/extended release pills were a horrible idea.)

I'm gonna have a second post tonight for writing progress because I am getting back to that, and when I have time tomorrow I'm gonna throw up a D&D/Pathfinder post. I walked into the local games store last week on Saturday after being told that was D&D day to see if there was a group with an opening, and was immediately waved over and handed a character sheet to fill out. I've also got the ongoing online games.

A decent batch of sour cream cookies with a recipe given to me by Ryxl, groceries, and being gloop before the holidays.

Somehow rattling around in "I'm not sure what to work on" ends up landing on Old Gen Dumb Teenagers pretty often, which in this case was sorting out what I'm doing *right now* with it and getting some setup/worldbuilding together, plus outline notes for later bits with Trigel Being A Menace And A Ninja Gremlin.

She's Pidge's predecessor. You know she had to be a terror when she wasn't having photogenic hero moments.



On the worldbuilding note, what I've been using for this for the Dalterion is a diet something like a bigger version of hummingbirds and lories - fruit, nectars, some other greens/veggies, and some light protein. Of what I've got worked out, she's actually got the most annoyingly restricted range of "Edible" of any of them.

For what it's worth for comparison headcanon worldbuilding:

GALRA: Obligate carnivores, I know this's come up before in other fic.

RYGNIRATHI: Garbage dumb omnivores, can live on damn near anything.

NALQUOD: Carnivore, albiet amphibious and normally mostly "seafood"

ALTEA: Close to human enough to overlap comfortably, but skewed a bit more toward plant based.

The politics Alfor's been trying to ignore in that series are basically that area of space being in a mess of conflicts and alliances that could turn into their equivalent of World War I if something shoves it the wrong way.



PROGRESS: 1228 words on old gen Dumb Alien Teenagers/Noobs



(And a short bit from what I'd managed today!)



A good half of the non-Galra passengers and traffic were Dalterion. All she had to do to go unnoticed was dress down and make sure to mind which ID she used at customs and that the backstory and 'reason for visit' matched it.

She was a tourist, an arts student on vacation seeking 'inspiration' from Galran architecture and artwork.

It was the kind of cover story that was almost a vacation. After all, it would be suspicious if she disappeared too quickly after arrival; she had every reason to just circle the capitol, setting up a room to stay at and meandering to eat out and sightsee for a bit. Finding something edible took some effort - Galra were carnivores, after all, and while she could handle some meat, what they preferred was much too rich for her tastes - but some exploration found a trade market with fruit, shellfish, jars of juice and nectars, and some promising looking grilled insectoids that she didn't recognize.

It was easily a more relaxing mission than half of her others had been. She had to go out in an enviro-suit and pretend to be unable to breathe the same atmosphere in Altean space, because trying to pretend to be an expatriate would still draw too much attention and scrutiny, anything of interest around Nalquodan territory was underwater, and she'd been through four gunfights and six brawls that had nothing to do with her in pirate and scavenger territory.

Until she actually got into the palace complex to snoop around, the worst she had to worry about here was how much she could get away with spending before the High Commander frowned at her about their budgets.

So I didn't get it posted yesterday, but I did finish the first chapter for Strange Ways/Truce's continuation!

Posted here! It's centered around Hole In The Sky, so it shouldn't be much of a surprise that a lot of it's Allura-PoV.

AS FOR TODAY: Sick is officially gone, work is less hectic than last week, and things are going pretty smooth for the holidays! I also realized I hadn't finished/posted the second chapter on Dumb Alien Teenagers, aka Dear World I'm Pleased To Meet You, so I got the last chunk of Trigel's shenanigans and her involvement in Politics done and posted the whole thing.

This is where it becomes much more obviously a continuation from Pray That There's Intelligent Life Somewhere Up In Space, since Coran's a little more involved and there's a couple more obvious callbacks.

Also it is horrendously funny going between the PoV of the Alteans who are terrified of Trigel, and Gyrgan.

Whose reactions sum up as "WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS YOU DEMENTED GREMLIN?!"

The new chapter is here!

(Yes, Trigel did know the significance of what she did to Alfor and Coran this chapter.)

DAILY PROGRESS: 1503 words on Dear World I'm Pleased To Meet You + Sketch and partial flat color for a D&D character portrait

Sick is better, it is now my weekend, and I managed to go an hour past when I try to be in bed because I got going well on something and am hoping it still reads well after sleeping on it since I wrote most of it after taking my sertraline. Not that it throws me that far off anymore, but "Tired and a little out of it" is definitely a thing.

DAILY PROGRESS: 2478 words on Strange Ways Ch. 1. At this point yes, I am basically going on momentum to see if I can get the first chapter posted as my current Goal.

Right now it isn't entirely in Allura's PoV; there's Coran in a couple places and Keith in a couple, and Axca briefly, but most of it's Allura.

She continues to be the one where I know what's going on enough to try to plan, but when I sit down to actually write or sort out details of events, she just. Decides to do something different from the original plan.

At least this time she isn't making plans to walk off with an entire small Galra civilian/research outpost.

And anything on this project with her PoV, one-shot or parts of the continuation, is going to be entertaining because Keith is no longer the upper end of the range for "sensitivity/awareness/tendency to poke the relay", and it's just. Normal for her. The kind of thing where I'm sure she academically understands the humans don't get it as Loud as she does/integrated into existing senses and abilities, but doesn't quite grasp how different it is for her compared to them.

I also love, after 200k in Keith's PoV with how Keith sees everyone else and Keith's self-image, getting to skip over to other PoV's for things like "how the others see Keith/everyone else".


PROGRESS EXCERPT BELOW THE CUT
( It hurts the young to live in the open - with so much love to give but too little to spare )

Still fighting off the Crud. Or in the recovery from the crud. The "I DO NOT WELCOME SLIME INTO MY HEART. I BANISH THEE FOUL SLIME. BEGONE. DAMNIT BEGONE" stage.

But, writing remains apparently a damn good way to comfortably dribble-relax!

Also the fun part of writing Allura-PoV is getting to have actual DIALOGUE for the mice, even if nobody else in the scene understands them. Sometimes ESPECIALLY if nobody else in the scene understands them. Why doesn't more of this fandom do more with her/them.

PROGRESS FOR THE NIGHT: 1976 words on Strange Ways Ch. 1




SNIPPET OF TODAY'S WORK

( Have I judged a book by how it's bound, Am I lost or am I found - and are you with me now )

Welp, I am officially back to "the thing I do to destress when it's been a lousy day and I'm dead stressed and not feeling well" being either writing or art-sketching, which is honestly a good thing.

Guess whose pharmacy was so busy that I was greeted on clocking in with frazzled "I hope you brought your rollerskates" from a co-worker, closed, and then got to find out there was a nail in their tire!

Now if I can just keep this sort of thing up, I can get back to my old update "schedules" of tossing things up once or twice a week, and maybe push past where I'd gotten a little stuck on Winter's Curse.

Or just skip the scene I'm stuck on for now and write the rest of it, then fill that in later. That's always a valid tactic. >__>

TODAY'S PROGRESS: 1,309 words on Strange Ways/the "Sequel" for Truce.