Kneep the Magpie

By Bay Posted Friday Mar 17, 2023

Filed under: Epilogue 12 comments

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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12 thoughts on “Kneep the Magpie

  1. Olivier FAURE says:

    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.

    Too late, I’ve already started writing the fanfiction.

    1. Sleeping Dragon says:

      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.

  2. MrGuy says:

    I don’t remember what possessed me to draw a match-wielding bird, but it worked out.

    Only you can create forest fires.

  3. sheer_falacy says:

    I love the fire effect on the bird art, it’s very pretty.

  4. Viorel Apopei says:

    Fever dreams are the worst. I actually unironically prefer nightmares because those don’t make me go “What the fuck was THAT about ?”

  5. Philadelphus says:

    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.)

  6. Dreadjaws says:

    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.

  7. MrGuy says:

    The campaign was about adventurers finding themselves turned into woodland animals and having to solve a mystery around it.

    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

  8. hewhosaysfish says:

    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.

    Isn’t this just a thing that happens in The Sims? Perfectly normal.

  9. Sleeping Dragon says:

    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).

  10. Ofermod says:

    “Yinz” is a word I haven’t heard since the last time I spoke to someone from Pittsburgh.

  11. evileeyore says:

    These lyrics also go well to the tune of Every Morning by Sugar Ray.

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