I'm not sure I would really survive the cringe factor from watching many actual Hallmark/Netflix or similar holiday movies, they are interesting to have on in the background while you're doing Christmas related things, but as a ridiculous artefact of pop culture and as something I will happily watch other people review and make fun of, I'm totally here for.
And they're so damn formulaic that this generator is both pitch perfect and a ton of fun to play with (especially the text part). These are just some of my favourites (I made entirely too many)... Mia, Grace, Rebecca and Valentina... and their unnamed but hunky love interests. Well, except Embracing Christmas... that dude is totally either hot young Santa or Santa's hot young son. So, you know, Claus.
I also only broke the cardinal "the couple must be dressed contrastingly in red and green" once. But she's also wearing both green and red, so that counts.
Moving on...
This week was... the week before the week before Christmas. Which I realise is self evident, but also an accurate description.
Monday I finally printed Ma's calendar. But Wednesday was when things really kicked off... starting with a morning trip to Officeworks to drop off the calendar for binding and whatnot. Then Wednesday night we finished up the DnD game from last week... only four of the six people who started playing it bothered to show up. Which was fine, except that our cleric wasn't there and we were fighting literally ALL the zombies.
Grrr.
Everyone survived and it was fine... and I liked the way the adventure turned out... one of the more interesting moral decisions. Which in fairness, while these adventures haven't always been superb, they have had some interesting moral choices. Which I like.
Anyway... on Thursday I went to pick up the finished calendar. And we can just insert my usual rant about Officeworks and their printing/binding section at this time of year. They had enough staff this year, that wasn't the problem. What they still didn't have was a good system for organising those staff so that people who were just picking up items or dropping off jobs to pick up later didn't have to stand in the line forever. By forever, I mean somewhere less then 15-20 minutes... maybe... I wasn't really paying attention, but it felt like a long time. And longer than it needed to be.
And no screw ups with the finished product this year, which was nice. Also, no printer fuck ups on my end when I was printing it out, honestly, so that's cause for limited celebration.
From there I went up the hill to see Tink for my... fourth/fifth(?) haircut this year. Which is definitely a thing when generally I have about 12. But it has given me a chance to grow out my hair in ways I wouldn't have done otherwise, and I'm pretty pleased with the general result.
Thursday night I made Rocky Road, since we're not doing other goodies, and that was a production. I used my giant/deep non stick cooking tray, and dumped what was basically two whole batches worth into one. It came out pretty damn nice honestly. And when I sliced it up later I ended up with big square pieces.
Then Friday I had my chiro appointment... which also meant public transport... both of which meant wearing a mask (because that's what they asked for at the chiro). I also stopped into Greenlight Comics for the first time (I think) since the middle of March. I only spent as long in there as it took to find and pay for the latest DnD book (my Christmas present from Ma), before heading out again.
And then it was Friday night DnD. I had made dried apple and cinnamon bread... the apple always swells up way more than I think it should/is going to and I needed to put in about four times the cinnamon. But otherwise it was good.
Friday night however is a story. Not a fall down, go boom story like last week... but definitely a story.
I've mentioned before that there is actual scientific research out there that says that your brain can't tell the difference between real actual emotions and "graph paper emotions" to steal a concept, if not a term, from Critical Role. Things that happen at a role play game table. At least in the moment. So when you feel something, you feel it.
In our Friday night game, my character, Nightingale, has been in love with one of the other characters for probably a couple of months in-game, but almost a year real time I think. And while the DM knows and Fluffy, the third player, knows, I never told mentioned it to the player in question. It wasn't like it was a kind of game where we're going to get deep in the romance weeds, so there wasn't any point. I also wondered how long I could play her as someone in love with his character and him not be aware.
Because as far as my girl was concerned, it was unrequited love. For a whole host of reasons, but, you know, an interesting dynamic to play.
But we found the MacGuffin of the campaign this week. Well, we found it last week, but we needed to jump through a bunch of hoops to get our hands on it. And the MacGuffin *spoilers* turns the character who takes it into an angel, meaning they'll all powerful and ass-kicky for the final fight, but when the game is over, they go off to do angel things.
I mean, hello, welcome to DnD, we have cookies, you can dump your coat on the bed.
We knew what the MacGuffin did (in broad strokes anyway), we knew that his character was being moved in the direction of the sword by his deity, I knew the player probably wanted to take it (it's a pretty cool story arc, honestly... and he already had to give up one major item earlier in the game). But it wasn't our only option. I also knew that him taking it was something my character didn't want. She wanted to be selfish, she wanted him to stay, to return with her when all of this is over and maybe... I dunno, build a life together. Or at least have a shot at it.
After a very long and very tense combat... and I mean very long... normally we'd wrap up by midnight, especially if we had a good stopping point (which we did), but the DM just pushed on through. Which I was happy about, although it seemed weird. But there are moments that happen just the way that they are supposed to, and this was one of those.
We fought the bad guys, the narrative "cut scene" happened on cue (which I suspected it might, what with, you know, understanding how stories work... both as a character and as a player), and we find ourselves standing there with the MacGuffin. And a decision has to be made.
Fluffy makes his case for why he could take the MacGuffin and I sat silently,arms crossed. My girl doesn't sit silently all that often, so clearly something was up.
I don't remember all the details or some of the timing, but he said her name and I told him that he didn't need to take it, but that I'd support whatever his choice was. And he reached out and cupped the side of her face (and given that he's 7 foot something and she's 5 foot nothing, basically he palmed her head like a little basketball. She then laid her tiny hand on the back of his giant mitt.
And she told him she loved him. I didn't mean her to, it just came out... and I'd played that moment through in my head more than a few times, and honestly, every single thought and plan left my brain. I thought he hadn't heard me, but he had, and told her he loved her back (squee!), but by this point he was getting glassy eyed and I was DEFINITELY glassy eyed... and I knew... I knew.
I knew he was going to leave her.
And while still cupping her face, he reached out and took the sword. Cue the heavenly choir and the big fluffy angel wings. And we were all in tears. We called it a game there, because, honestly, it was past 1am anyway, and none of us could have kept going. Because after the adrenaline rush comes the crash, and we all ended up shaking and cold. You know, shock.
Over a make pretend graph paper game. The best fucking game.
It was also so weird that one of their cats reacted to the mood in the room during the emotional drama. Clearly they were picking up what we were putting down (or, you know, it was after 1am and we were "in their space"), but it was super weird.
And afterwards, once we stopped the game there was much real people hugging and saying "fuck" and "oh no" and other such things, but also a definite sense of excitement. Both for what had just happened, and how good it was, but also for what is to come. It's tragic as fuck, but it's a great story arc, for both of our characters. For all of our characters really.
It also means I've made some choices about her future path, which is exciting all on it's own, because it's not a path I saw coming, and I love story-based character decisions. And now we get to kick butt with an angel. So that's a thing that's definitely happening.
For the record, it was just after 2am when I got home. Definitely our latest session to date.
And then I was up about four and a half hours later and headed out to the supermarket on my own, since Ma was getting her hair did.
Shop, shop, shop... home, home, home... unpack, unpack, unpack.
Basically I decided that I'm having pizza all week. I mean, home-made pizza, which I do a very good job at if I do say so myself, but I honestly couldn't be bothered coming up with other options in the lead up to Christmas. Because it's four days, one of which I traditionally have pizza on anyway, one of which I'll be out at DnD, one of which I will have been out all day playing board games and eating ham hearts. And then there's Monday.
So I got home by about 8:30, Ma arrived just after 10, and we didn't do much of anything, because, as previously stated, weekend before Christmas. So she hung out until noon, and then headed home.
There we go.
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