everything is Hands of the Emperor forever kthxbye

[kaberett]

• dinner: takeaway pizza eaten at the allotment with freshly-picked rocket
• a very large snail wound up poking its head out of the spout of one of my watering cans, and seemed to be rather put out that its shell was too big for it to actually get out that way
• I really don't want to stop my squash going on adventures but I also do really sort of have to, alas
• found a workaround for can't-paste-anything-into-WhatsApp Web-in-Firefox (and thereby also confirmation that I wasn't imagining it!) (this is important because one of my primary uses of WhatsApp Web is sharing my Wordle and Antiwordle of the day...)
• did some more playing with ink mixing, and established that the 4:1 Cyan:Brown I first thought of is nigh well indistinguishable from the 4:1:1 Cyan:Mossy Green:Blue I tried last week
• word of the day: birble. (the miscellaneous chatterings of birbs, obviously)

Comments

[jjhunter]

Are you reading HoTE for the first time right now, or is that just general mood of the moment?

(Nine Worlds is providing to be one of those fandoms for me where I get unreasonably excited to have more friends to talk about it with, or just have it as part of our shared common references. Also, another friend wrote an absolute spectacular short prequel fic series for HoTE that I am overjoyed to rec to anyone who affirms they're interested in such.)

That snail's experience is such a snail mood.

'Birble' evoked a gurgle of delight in me. <3

[kaberett]

Reading for the first time! Fic v v v welcome :-)

[jjhunter]

Enjoy! Cannot wait to hear more about what you think of it once you're done. <3 <3 <3

I highly recommended alfgifu's prequel fic series Embers, which covers the period immediately before Kip got assigned as the Emperor's secretary and had that remarkable succession of assignments that didn't work out. It's Kip getting an intense, increasingly dangerous crash course in politics while refusing to give up or compromise his ethics, and you get to see how he grows in the process.

(Kip in HoTE is a terrifically unreliable narrator when it comes to just - not thinking about certain things, or habitually minimizing them even in his own thoughts; the younger Kip in Embers isn't that practiced or that traumatized yet.)

[hilarita]

<3 on HotE :-)

[madgastronomer]

That snail appeared in my dreams. I find this Very Amusing.

[kaberett]

HEE. I am delighted - thank you so much for telling me!

[madgastronomer]

It was just managing to get out of the spout, and was looking grumpy. I may have given it a snack, I forget. :D