Fandom Island and Town

Graham had Triumph with him today at the shop! Mostly because, after he got out of doing radio and his stomach gave a little grumbling protest about all the food he'd promised it, he realized that there was no way he was going to be able to carry all that food by himself!

....well, actually, yes, he knew he could just put it all in his cloak, because if you had a cloak of holding and didn't use it to transport copious amounts of food, then what were you even doing with your life, but he did remember that food was always better with friends, anyway, so why not share it with his best friend?

So they trotted in and Graham gave Triumph a breakfast sandwich to tide him over while he took care of his initial tasks for the day, and then it was time to camp out in front of the counter with their smorgasbord spread out in front of them. Of course, he had a little fish for Saffron, even though she didn't seem interested at all, and they made sure to leave lots of crumbs for Little Bot, too!

"You know what, Triumph?" he said, with a mouth full of food and licking a little sauce off his thumb. "When we're done with breakfast, I think I'm gonna see what games I can find about food, but you have to promise me, no matter how good it looks, you can't try and eat any of them, okay?"

Triumph gave a little protesting squeak.

"Oh-kaayyyy?" Graham prompted again.

But this time, Triumph harrumphed and threw up his snout defiantly.

He could guarantee nothing!!

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Graham was very busy at work that day!

Not with, like, actual work; that was pretty light, actually, save for a little clean-up and organization and maybe the occasional customer, but, instead, most of his day was being spent at the counter, hunched over a notebook and scribbling away inside of with a flurry of inspiration. Occasionally, he'd stop and have to cross some things out or, after reading through the whole page, give it a look of disgust and tear it out and throw the offending page away before starting again, but he was hot with idea for his character in his Dice & DANGER! class, and he couldn't let that spark fade before he managed to get it all out of him.

And then he started to wonder if there was some sort of cohesion that could be going on here. Could he combine a story for his Creative Writing class with his character from Dice & DANGER! class???

He didn't know if he'd be able to get away with it, but he was eager to find out! And eager to ride this burst of creativity as far as he could before he suffered major burnout by the end of the day.

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Graham was feeling pretty proud of himself; his Reindeer wasn't really all that great. He was pretty fluent in Deer, but it was a common misconception that both languages were fairly similar ad that if you knew one, you could muddle your way decently through the other. But he'd managed to work it out enough to convince the tiny reindeer floating around the shop to play a nice holiday themed card came with him so he could test it out and recommend it people if they came in looking for some last minute gifts.

Unfortunately, the only recommendation he was really getting out of it was to not play card games with tiny floating reindeer, they did not have the attention span for it, and you knew it was bad when a critique like that was coming from Graham 'Ooh Shiny What Was That?' Cracker.

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Inspired by the music that was playing from his phone that had also been playing at the radio station that Graham, despite not knowing the words and definitely making up some of his own, was singing under his breath on his way to work, he scoured the shelves sort of looking for games that involved a theme of bells to feature today and to maybe give a try.

This one seemed a great idea in concept, and he thought the magnetic wand was very cool (and would absolutely later become a prop for playing Wizard around the store later), but in practice? It was very difficult to get Saffron on board with the logistics and rules of the game, when she pretty much just wanted to bat the little bells around and, oh, they were definitely losing some of those by the end of the day, weren't they?

But, hey, you know what? She was actually (kind of!) playing with him, for a change, so he was taking it as a win!

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As he went about various cleaning and tidying tasks about the store, Graham kept uncovering jelly beans that had somehow gotten everywhere since his jelly bean party last week (he'd tasted a few of them, actually, to make sure, and they were definitely stale). It was a little surprising that Little Bot had somehow managed to miss them, but he thought up a good secondary solution that he knew was practically fool-proof. So he put up a "Be Back in 15 Minutes!" sign on the door very briefly, so he could run back to the dorms, and come tearing back to the shop mounted atop of Triumph, who set about rooting out the scattered jelly beans much like a pig might root out some truffles.

"Ooooh, truffles!" Graham said, and then got lost daydreaming a little bit on which he would like better, truffle jelly beans, or truffle jelly beans??

He should see about finding some of each so he could compare!

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Graham, admittedly, did not know much about all of this King of the Bracelets stuff, but, oh boy, when he found out...

...it was going to be a very fun and exciting time for him, but, in the meanwhile, he did discover this and thought that would be an excellent place to start, and it was a good thing he sort of just poked at it making up his own rules about how to play because if he was actually playing in earnest with other people, he would probably cry and never want to hear anything about Bracelets ever again.

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There should really be a ban on food related notes for his Friday radio, because Graham came into his shift at the Emporium a little late that day, having swung by J,GoB and had a very difficult time between choosing what he'd like to have for his very healthy, very good, not at all too sugary, how dare you?, breakfast. Of course there would be pie, but what kind? Fruit tarts sounded good, too, but made his cheeks just flare up and burn that morning, so he settled on some danishes, instead, and he did think about turnovers, and it was a good time for apples, and so he got some of those, too, and when he got to the shop, he just took a moment to spread out his pastries over the counter and look over them happily for a moment before starting to dig in.

Little Bot was close at hand to get all the crumbs, and there was plenty for him to tuck into his pockets to save for later, too!

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Look, just because he was working here, Graham didn't seem to think that should exclude him from donating money to chase bouncy dice around the store, even if that did mean he was kind of in charge of timing himself for the challenge, but that was fine!

And, true, he could probably get away with just chasing bouncy dice around the store without donating five dollars each time or, heck, even without the time limit, but that seemed to be antithetical to the whole concept.

Honestly, at this point, he might as well just have Steph donate today's paycheck, because he enjoyed this way too much, and if it turned out to be a pretty quiet day, there was literally nothing that would distract him enough to realize he should maybe stop after a while or take a break...

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Graham knew it was probably a losing battle, but he came into the store that day determined to finally break through whatever it was between himself and Saffron by engaging her in some fun card games. He tried a few of them...euchre, rummy, Tanalore Hold 'Em, old maid. He thought he almost managed to get her interested in the building of some houses of cards, but it turns out that she just wanted to knock them down as soon as he got them constructed, and he was pretty sure Go Fish was going to be a big hit, all things considered, but he was pretty sure that the fact that it involved no actual fish was a big mark against him in that regard.

"In my defense," he appealed to her as she went to go ignore him in favor of grooming her paws, "it's literally called Go Fish, not We Already Have Fish At Home."

So it looks like it was just solitaire for Graham today after all.

Or, you know, he could actually do some work, too.

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What had started as a completely innocent perusal of some miniatures in the search for maybe ones that could be used for his game and maybe some cool ideas for set-pieces and monsters had turned out into Graham building a very elaborate 'castle' scene out of all things that were nearby on the counter and enacting a very dramatic siege of said castle by a collection of miniatures, containers of dice, all of which eventually lead to a sudden attack from a store cat who did not appreciate being involved in any of Graham's shenanigans, which worked out perfectly, because she ended up destroying everything in sight as she raged for a moment before scampering off.

"Mmm, you're right," said Graham, in the voice of one of his dice-soldiers, to another one, as they surveyed the damage of the Kingdom of the Countertop Plateau. "Our current watery defenses of Castle Cardboard against Saffron the Great of the Felinesphere were insufficient! ....we're gonna need a bigger moat!"

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There was a small part of Graham that wondered if he shouldn't let his radio broadcasts influence his eating habits so much, but, as he came in to work at the store today and settled behind the counter with an absolutely ridiculous helping of strawberry shortcake with mountains of whipped cream for breakfast...he couldn't see why anyone wouldn't let their radio broadcasts influence their eating habits when it lead to such delicious, delicious inspiration.

There was a lot of it, too, and so he offered to share some with Little Bot and Saffron, the former of which only seemed interested in the crumbs that managed to make it onto the floor in Graham's excitement to dig in and the latter of which he'd actually managed to entice over for a little bit with the promise of some of that whipped cream, which looked adorable when accidentally dolloped on her nose.

"See?" he said. "I'm not so bad, right?"

Just for that, Graham, Saffron was going to take a little bit more cream and then ignore you extra hard for the rest of the day now.

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Considering that Steph herself was the one really organizing this whole Pride celebration thing this weekend, Graham sure hoped she wouldn't mind if he'd brought some of his work from home into his regular work so that he could have a little more time to try and finish. The little rainbow overlay he was trying to sew together for his cloak was taking a bit longer than he'd anticipating, and since Fridays were usually pretty quiet except for his usual visitors and the game when he was done with his shift, he figured it wouldn't hurt to bring his sewing in and work on it at the counter.

Of course, he did not take into account that if you had a bit of material that you were trying to work on in the presence of a cat, that cat will sit right in the middle of it and make progress just a bit difficult.

"Now you choose to acknowledge that I exist, huh?" asked Graham, with a frown and a sigh, but, honestly? For Saffron actually spending some time with him, even if it was just to sit on his sewing? He'll still take it as a win!

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Graham had, in fact, managed to score himself some rainbow cheesecake on his way from the radio station to the Magpie Emporium, and he was very impressed with all the decorating that Steph had done, and so now, he was spending most of his time between taking nibbles of said cheese cake and hunched over some minatures, where he was sewing up little capes and cloaks in all the various different colors and flags to start putting on all the miniatures.

Maybe he should be doing something like stocking or cleaning or other work related things, buuuuuuuuut.....this...kiiiiind of counted, right? Look at how cunning they all looked in their new cloaks and capes!

"Oooh," said Graham, clearly struck by inspiration and to no one but himself, really, "maybe I should make them rainbow hats, too!"

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Graham had had so much fun with Boop last week that he figured it wouldn't hurt to maybe check out a few other games around the shop and see how he liked those, as well! It was tricky, though, really, when you didn't really have anyone to play with and there were just so many. Where do you even begin? But he had to admit that a game about gardens, of all things, caught his eye, just because it seemed so different as a game concept.

Of course, he couldn't really play it by himself, but he looked over the rules and found that it was much different than what he thought it was going to be, and just decided it would be more fun to just pretend that all he had to do was arrange all the garden cards in an appealing fashion, and that was it, that was the whole game.

The counter was absolutely covered in garden cards now, but Graham was proud of his imaginary garden, with so many gazebos and fountains, and he was then taking some of the miniatures and marching them through this collaborated landscape, having lovely little strolls, which, of course, eventually lead into them having conversations and garden parties and now he was definitely just playing pretend instead of, you know, working or something.

But the drama and intrigue! It was all very tense and salacious, trust him!

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This first week of the summer session had been great, and Graham was very eager to get to the shop for his shift that day so that he could tell Little Bot and Saffron allllll about it!

Whether or not either of them cared about his excited ramblings again this week was probably up for debate, but he wasn't about to let something like disinterest ever stop him from telling a story!

And he made sure to work while he talked, too, so he was multitasking, although the storytelling definitely took over and he wound up just having to redo most of the work, because he definitely ended up putting things on the wrong shelves and, in a few instances, just making more work for himself. But it was fiiiiine.

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A thrilling and exciting excursion to the onsen had been planned, and, even though it took a little bit of doing (and a few useful Internet videos!), Graham had convinced the staff at the onsen that Triumph had just as much a right as both himself and Belle to partake in the relaxing hot springs...more, even! Because look at how cute!

Once they got in, Triumph wasted no time in prancing up to the edge and then pausing, taking extreme caution before slipping in and finding a good spot, and Graham, chuckling, grinned over at Belle.

"Well," he said, "I was going to say ladies first, but apparently, chivalry is dead."

Still, he ducked his head and gestured with an arm and offered, "Ladies second?"

[[ Graham's there, clearly, with the trusty mount and the gently modded bookworm, but the onsen is open for all your onsen needs! ]]

Obviously, the gaming session for that evening was canceled due to prom, although you better believe Graham was already thinking about tucking a few extra dice and manuals in his cloak, just in case a spontaneous bout of DnD might occur on the dance floor.

As a matter of fact, he was spending most of his shift mapping out a potential prom-related one-shot for expressly that purpose. He was pretty sure all of his friends would be more interested in the dancing and everything, but you never knew! And it was important for any good game master and future knight to be prepared for anything.

....he had to admit, this one-shot was pretty good, too, so now he was going to be worried that he'd be disappointed if it didn't happen, but...all it took was thinking about doing some dancing himself (well, not by himself, clearly, but with certain other people!) to reassure him that he'd probably be pretty otherwise engaged tonight, too!

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[[ and flying OCD free this week! ]]

Graham was a little bit late for work that day, due to clothing reasons. He wanted to head back to his room to see if his cloak and cap had been somehow magically transferred over there when he turned into a bandicoot in the first place, and was very relieved to find out that they had, indeed. He would have felt terrible if his mother needed to make him a whole new cloak and cap! But everything was back to normal, and he figured, since he was already at the dorms, he'd bring Triumph along with him to the store, since he didn't get to spend as much quality time with him while bandicooted, and this was a good way to make up for it.

And, surprising no one, especially after hearing about it from Summer during their broadcast, he was thrilled to check out the gelatinous cube plush, and he and Triumph spent a good deal of time between customers camped out in front of the counter with it, speculating on what would make for other good things to put in there.

A conversation that was mostly centered around just one, simple, innocent question: "What kind of jelly bean do you think a gelatinous cube would like the most?"

You'd be surprised, how many different branches of philosophical ponderings a question like that could inspire! And it was especially nice when Graham did, in fact, have a bag of jelly beans that had been waiting for him in his cloak all week, pretty much!

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Graham had not been privy to all the various other positions in which the plushies in the shop had been doing battle that week, but they had, in fact, moved yet again, their struggle as epic and evident as ever, but Graham himself, alas, did not have much time to appreciate it, as he (with a jaunty new green feather added to his cap) was making good on his promise of a little jellybean pow-wow with Leroy from his broadcast earlier.

"So, anyway," he was telling Leroy, dutifully separating out some of the rum jellybeans for the squirrel and some popcorn flavored ones for him and some motor oil flavored ones for Little Bot and some tuna flavored ones for Saffron to ignore, "she's a redhead," a knowing look and maybe even a bit of a wink, "her name is Amber, and she's one of my best squirrelfriends from back home, I think you'll really like her, I hear she even has some connections to the Royal Family of Avalon, but she likes to keep that a little on the downlow because she doesn't really like to put on airs. Now, obviously, I can't really suggest you guys be penpals, because squirrels in my world don't know how to write, but...Llewdor is lovely this time of year, and when is the last time you've had a vacation, anyway?"

Leroy opened his mouth to say something, but Graham cut him off with a little bit of a chuckle. "School trips," he said, giving him another knowing look, "don't count! You guys work really hard on those things! I think maybe a real vacation could do you some good. Maybe get out there, see different parts of the multiverse, meet some new people. Meet some new squirrels...."

Leroy didn't really look convinced yet, but that was fine. Graham had plenty of jellybeans.

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