I started watching https://www.twitch.tv/bardandbarbarian one night when, among the Twitch recommendations, I saw that an Episode 1 of Dread Rising, a zombie apocalypse game, had started. I figured that it would be easy to dive in, and I could drop it if it wasn't interesting.
Well, I've been watching every week; the finale is [June 16, two days from this writing]. I love this ill-assorted trashfire of a party, playing their roles with conviction no matter how much conflict that creates with the other characters. Some are genre-savvy while others are decidedly not. Some are trying to save loved ones (including a Honda), while others are ready to just destroy anything that gets in their way. It's been very amusing.
Two weeks ago, I wrote bredliks for each character, during the stream:
Quin Strong: My name is Quinn, I have a gun; Shut up soldier, and let me run!
Maxwell Gray: Barbara my love, we need to move; and I to you, my love will prove.
Clyde Myst: Jetta my queen, our love is true! Don't walk away! Oh, boo hoo hoo.
Daniel Smith: My genre lore will save the day; survival by zombie cosplay!
Last Tuesday, I wrote a limerick as the show started:
Finally leaving the hospital; key to surviving the zombiefall.
This party of four Could live one day more,
Though they work as a group not at all.
Having become a fan of that, I have added another show on that channel, "Call of Cthulhu: Iron Dust & Blood." It's cosmic horror set in the Wild West. For this one, I jumped into the middle of the campaign.
Last Thursday, at the beginning of the CoCIDB episode, naive young Maybelle Monroe slipped an anonymous sonnet under the hotel door of Dallas Rex Mason. He read just enough to realize what it was, and stopped reading.
I decided to take the challenge and write the sonnet that Maybelle might have written. Given that it was supposed to be by a teenager, I did not polish away the word repetitions, etc.; this is pretty much how it came into my head. I take some pride in the rhymes in the first and third lines in the middle quatrain, and I am particularly fond of the dreadful fourth line in that stanza.
Love in the Dead of Winter: An anonymous letter
"Spending all winter in this tiny town
Has made me think much on how I feel.
But it's hard to pin those feelings down;
How much is imagined, and how much real?
"You surely are a fine gentleman;
Courteous, capable, kind.
But maybe I'm too sentimental when
my heart could all be in my mind.
"Is it just that I'm scared and need a broad shoulder,
Or can I trust the warmth in my heart?
You, sir, would help if you'd be a bit bolder;
if you'd only step up and play your part!
This poem right here is all I can dare;
please let me know whether you, too, care!"
I finished it before the stream ended and posted it in the chat after they finished the action and were wrapping up. Diana, who plays Maybelle, was kind enough to read it on stream, in character!
https://clips.twitch.tv/ElatedEnchantingWoodpeckerPrimeMe-Sya8AYfwSypkNqCC
