T w e n t y S i d e d
Alright here’s the deal, I have the flu, or a cold, or possibly some sort of monster mixture of both. I’ve slept 30 of my last 48 hours, eaten nothing but hot dog buns, and frankly, had some very weird fever induced dreams.
Now, I…think I’m feeling better. No fever, currently, and my face is only sort of threatening my existence. I feel well enough in fact, that I sat down to write a Sims Overthinking post, however…is that a good idea? I really like that series and I don’t want to wake up in three days only to realize I wrote into canon that Kelly had her baby and it’s a alien vampire from outer space, or whatever else this version of me might think sounds normal.
Again, I’m pretty sure I’m lucid, but messing with a story I’m loving writing is not how I want to test that theory. So, instead, we’re gonna get some D&D content.
I have a whole folder of things I’ve made for D&D campaigns that I either intend to publish, or am keeping for a rainy today. Today is a rainy day.
I had a campaign going a while ago that required me to write a song written by a famous bird. The campaign was about adventurers finding themselves turned into woodland animals and having to solve a mystery around it. They would run into other small rodents that were adventurers like them, turned into creatures, but they would also meet animals that had never been people. The birds were always birds, and they had a complex culture mostly built around being bards. Hence, song written by a bird. Incidentally, the song can be sung to the tune of Wellerman, although that was an accident.
Yinz
By Kneep the Magpie
——
A tiny bird, we’ll call him Yinz
He needed buttons, needed pins
Needed shiny ‘bo-o-bbins’
Things to call his own
He found a pebble
Found a seal
These things to Yinz had great appeal
But the wax was muted so
Yinz, Yinz, we call him Yinz
Needed buttons, needed pins
Needed shiny ‘bo-o-bbins’
Things to make a home
He took the wax seal to his friend
Said ‘give me sticks and give me bread’
Tossed the seal with little care
But his friend told him no
Yinz, Yinz, we call him Yinz
Needed buttons, needed pins
Needed shiny ‘bo-o-bbins’
To build himself a throne
Yinz was cross, was quite put out
Took his wax back to his town
He stashed it away in a hole in the grout
The place that he called home
Yinz, Yinz, we call him Yinz
Needed buttons, needed pins
Needed shiny ‘bo-o-bbins’
To make a place his own
Yinz found a penny, found a rock
He found a magic ring could talk
But none of them where good enough
His jerk friend told him ‘go’
Yinz, Yinz, we call him Yinz
Needed buttons, needed pins
Needed shiny ‘bo-o-bbins’
Currency his own
Yinz looked his friend both up and down
At the collection he’d turned down
He thought for a moment, thought for a hop
He gathered things to go
Yinz, Yinz, we call him Yinz
Needed buttons, needed pins
Needed shiny ‘bo-o-bbins’
His friend did not condone
On his way out he grabbed a nail
He hid a pin beneath his tail
His picky friends collection tipped
But Yinz he did go home
Yinz, Yinz, we call him Yinz
Needed buttons, needed pins
Needed shiny ‘bo-o-bbins’
To build himself a home
Yinz took the things and on his way
He saw a man rest in the hay
Upon his chest, there they were
The buttons, Yinz saw shone
Yinz, Yinz, we call him Yinz
Needed buttons, needed pins
Needed shiny ‘bo-o-bbins’
To move from cobblestone
Well Yinz swooped down, he bit the stitch
That held the buttons to the bitch
Yinz’s plan would not delay
Nor would it postpone
Yinz, Yinz, we call him Yinz
Needed buttons, needed pins
Needed shiny ‘bo-o-bbins’
To make himself a home
With the buttons in his beak
The man not stirring in his sleep
Yinz had won the shortest war
He took his winnings home
Yinz, Yinz, we call him Yinz
Needed buttons, needed pins
Needed shiny ‘bo-o-bbins’
He needed things that shone
He set his collection down in the grout
He tilted head, he looked around
For suddenly, someway somehow
Yinz had made a home
Yinz, Yinz, we call him Yinz
Needed buttons, needed pins
Needed shiny ‘bo-o-bbins’
The grout was a fine home
With shiny things that lined the hole
The things he found, the things he stole
Yinz had found that he didn’t mind
The grimey cob-ble-stone
I am well aware that our friend up in the header image is not a magpie, but it was art I happened to have that seemed tangentially related. I don’t remember what possessed me to draw a match-wielding bird, but it worked out. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I need a nap.
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Too late, I’ve already started writing the fanfiction.
So I remember in at least one of the Sims games a character who stargazed could get kidnapped by aliens, they’d be returned although sometimes pregnant* so technically there is a canon possibility of an alien baby. I just don’t remember if this was the iteration of the game that had vampires as well because if so it could totally be made into a vampire later in life…
*Which is pretty terrifying and awful if you think about it but I guess not in the Sims universe and was actually a desirable outcome for many players because of possible mpreg**
**Don’t google mpreg.
Only you can create forest fires.
I love the fire effect on the bird art, it’s very pretty.
Fever dreams are the worst. I actually unironically prefer nightmares because those don’t make me go “What the fuck was THAT about ?”
In Australia, the most dreaded bird is not the emu (which the government lost the Emu War to), but the humble magpie, a lovely and mellifluous bird which I had not a single negative interaction with in the four years I lived there but which is apparently the terror of bikers across the continent due to swooping them during mating season. (Note that it’s a totally different species than the Eurasian magpie, and doesn’t share its pilfering tendencies; the Australian magpie, in contrast, especially the juveniles, love to play by doing things like rolling around in the grass with friends or hanging upside down and swinging from laundry hung up to dry.)
That’s a gorgeous bird drawing in the header, but my nearly complete lack of knowledge about birds from outside my country means I would have never known it wasn’t a magpie.
Edit: doing some googling (and google translating), it turns out the only magpies I know are Heckle and Jeckle from that very old cartoon. Further googling shows they don’t really look much like actual magpies.
Cute song too. I probably would have failed that task. I can barely rhyme, let alone write a whole song.
Ok, now I am extremely intrigued about this campaign and it’s central mystery.
I’m assuming it’s more rich and subtle than, say, this: https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2012/04/20/a-matter-of-scale
Isn’t this just a thing that happens in The Sims? Perfectly normal.
Get well and don’t worry too much about content. Though I will second interest in more of this story (and tabletop anecdotes in particular).
“Yinz” is a word I haven’t heard since the last time I spoke to someone from Pittsburgh.
These lyrics also go well to the tune of Every Morning by Sugar Ray.