Fandom Island and Town

The parade route was fairly short this year, since Steph actually had no desire to enable anyone with getting heat stroke: just from the causeway along Apocalypse Avenue, then up Chimera Court onto Loon Drive before looping down Minotaur Avenue and into the park.

Steph had spent a lot of time over the past year acquiring and replicating as many vintage Pride protest signs from around the world -- around the multiverse, even -- as she possibly could, and the parade route was outlined with them along with the sparkliest rainbow streamers she could find.

Which were very sparkly indeed, and you might need sunglasses. Actually sunglasses were a good idea in any case, and along with the requisite water and sunscreen there were even free pairs of rainbow-framed sunglasses to be had at the parade starting point if you didn't have any of your own. (Courtesy of one of Steph's store vendors, though there wasn't any kind of brand logo on the sunglasses themselves.)

Little Bot and the Magpie Emporium gremlins acted as grand marshals this year, only last year's shoebox float had been upgraded to a fancy 3D printed setup complete with safety rails and light strings. Behind them was the queer board games group from the store, then Steph with kitty!Vi riding on her shoulder, and after that everyone else who wanted to join in the parade.

And just like last year, the picnic area in the park was still decorated from yesterday, set up with refreshments and the new and even more meticulously curated queer music playlist cranked up on a giant Bluetooth speaker.

[OOC: Shut up it isn't quite noon here yet. Please hold for OCD. Go forth and be gay! Or pan. Or... you get it.]

With two days to go until Pride, Steph had about five dozen small tasks to juggle. Nothing too serious -- just the long, long list of seemingly trivial items that needed to get done in order to make sure things went off without a hitch -- but it did have her in a bit of a hectic state, constantly on the phone while she rang up customers and checked table reservations.

And, of course, made sure Saffron had her salmon treat. Not that Saffron had been feeling terribly charitable toward her ever since the HVAC maintenance person had found multiple stashes of kitty toys hidden away in the ducts.

This was all going to keep her busy until the usual lunchtime slowdown. It was a good kind of busy, though.

[OOC: Open!]

As far as Steph was concerned, it wasn't so much putting up a Pride display of queer games and games by queer creators as it was giving the existing LGBTQ games section the spotlight for the month. Still, it was (obviously) her focus right now, along with prepping for Free RPG Day next Saturday.

This morning, she was adding a new game to the display; she'd ordered it weeks ago, actually, but it'd been held up in shipping. Something about accidentally getting routed through a dimension that ran at 0.25x speed, according to the sheepish delivery person.

She kept humming, for some reason.

[OOC: As have I, ever since I saw this one at my FLGS. Open!]

It wasn't every week that a fairly high-profile brand new TTRPG system officially released, and Steph had been pretty busy the last couple of days fielding inquiries and taking table reservations for groups looking to check it out, not to mention distributing all the preorders she'd been holding.

Also she was putting up a special display of loose d12s, since those happened to be central to the system. It was kind of nice to see them getting love from people who weren't playing barbarians for once.

[OOC: Open! Subject to SP as always. I am sad I can't pick up my preordered copy until this weekend, wah.]

There were -- so far anyway -- no emergency repairs to be done in the store this week, for which Steph was extremely grateful; she had orders to make, and the gremlins practicing their zombie noises again was as much unsettling noise as she was willing to deal with in here.

Though speaking of unsettling, she was currently wrestling with the question of how many Mr. Potato Head beholder minis to order.

She decided the sacks of russet potatoes slowly multiplying in the corner near her office door were in no way a suggestion about that, because no.

Ooooh, there's an idea for dinner though.

[OOC: Open!]

Steph was not immune to certain Tumblr memes, and she did love a good history nerd joke from time to time.

Which explained today's display theme.

Sure, it was two days early, but why waste the opportunity when she thought of it?

[OOC: Open!]

Impending break trip notwithstanding, Steph was hardly slacking on the job today -- she really couldn't, when a bunch of backordered items had come in today. She had her hands full putting together orders and calling or emailing people to come in and pick them up, or packaging the ones that were getting shipped out (with Little Bot's help).

Still, she managed to scrape together some time here and there to prep for the meta Call of Cthulhu one-shot she was planning on running at some point while they were there. Why? Because it would be funny, that's why.

[OOC: Open! For some undetermined value of availability.]

"Still up there, huh, Saffron?" Steph asked the lump of fur hunkering atop the shelves as a miniature plush owlbear went flying off of them. "Well, your dish is full, so whenever you decide to stop yelling about it, enjoy, okay?"

She honestly wasn't sure if Saffron was still mad about the vet or had just decided that this was going to be her new thing, but... well, she was just going to start pricing closed display cases for the mini collection in between gluing tiny snapped-off resin extremities and polearms back in place.

But she also had another tab open to HeroForge and was designing a bunch of new minis to go get printed over at Stark Industries sometime soon. Why? Because it was fun, that was why.

[OOC: Open!]

You know, Steph was used to ordering food and getting way more than she'd asked for around here. Having the same thing happen to an order of miniature paints from an off-island supplier? That was new.

"Half of these are just going to go dry before they even make it to the shelf," she said out loud to a sympathetic Little Bot, one hand beneath her beanie and dug into her hair as she stared at the entire pallet's worth of tiny paint pots. "Unless someone wants to paint something really big but torture themself in the process?"

Which, hey, it could happen.

SPECIAL ON PAINTS: Buy one, get three free!

She didn't put "While supplies last" on there, because she didn't want the universe taking that as a challenge.

[OOC: IDK. Open.]

Steph, in a move that she'd been considering for a while but had still managed to make come off as kind of impulsive, had started off the year with a trip to Ink 'n' Holes yesterday and was moving a little bit gingerly today as a result.

Naturally there would be a whole load of new stock coming in first thing in the morning that all needed to be taken into the storage room and inventoried. Because of course she would have a bunch of sharp-cornered boxes to wrangle exactly when she had to be careful to avoid accidentally bumping into said sharp corners, and honestly? She should've taken that into account when she booked the appointment, so oops.

The gremlins had apparently thrown their own New Year's party in here, judging from the amount of glitter and confetti that Little Bot was busy cleaning up, but since there was no damage to any of the merchandise Steph wasn't going to get on their case about it.

[OOC: Open! SP will definitely be a thing.]

Steph's day had started off on the weird side when breakfast was somewhat derailed by the lack of any functional knives in her kitchen whatsoever, but there was really nothing about pancakes, eggs, and bacon that absolutely required the use of a knife. (Which was good, because attempting to butter pancakes with a candy cane could have gone to flavor combination places she didn't think she wanted to go to.)

It just kept being weird when she discovered that the candy cane thing extended to every single blade on every single miniature figurine in the store. Yeah, every tiny resin wielder of bladed weaponry was now brandishing a tiny candy cane instead.

And this is where I just nod and say "Yep, makes sense," because this is literally a normal-ass seasonal thing around here.

The sign on the counter today read Please don't lick the minis. Thanks! Because this was her life.

...she was fine with that, actually.

[OOC: Open!]

About half the tables in the gaming area seemed to still have pillow forts around them, and honestly? Steph was going to leave them that way, since she'd had several people tell her that it was a huge help in managing the sound level for their groups when things got lively on a busy day.

There was still a pillow fort around her desk in the office too, and that one was for sure staying right where it was.

She was busy unpacking a new expansion for a game that was one of the more popular ones out of the store's library while Saffron napped atop a large d20 pillow next to the mimic chest.

And craving hash browns again. Damn it.

[OOC: Open!]

The store was, no surprise, all decked out in Halloween decorations, with a special display of black, orange, and purple dice up near the counter and the spookiest painted minis in the store's collection arranged around the edges of the counter. A mimic chest that's much bigger than the one in the link full of candy was up front next to the cardboard beholder standee (yes, she'd triple checked to make sure the mimic chest was really just a chest), and Saffron was... absolutely resisting any and all efforts Steph made to put a displacer beast costume on her.

There were also, thanks to a random shipment that had come in that Steph had definitely not ordered but the supplier wouldn't take it back, free dice sets for trick-or-treaters.

Steph had a carefully curated Halloween playlist going as she worked on a new adventure module for one of her groups of players, a fiendish expression of concentration on her face as she scribbled away in her notebook. Halloween was fun and all, but god, she wasn't going to be upset about October being over.

[OOC: Open!]

Steph had been awake since far earlier than she would've preferred, but under the circumstances -- namely being vigorously and repeatedly pounced on by a wildly purring pink kitten -- it really couldn't be helped.

"You know, Vi, I'm starting to wonder if you're doing this on purpose on some level, just to help me get through the shittiest month," she said as she bent down to scoop up the kitten who was determined to scale her leg and very vocally indignant about being thwarted. "Which would honestly be pretty fucking sweet of you. Claws notwithstanding."

She was in for a busy few days of having to keep Saffron from absconding with kitten!Vi, and it was a little bit unsettling that she considered this a bit of a routine by now.

[OOC: Open, though I may be even more sporadic than usual. Kitten!Vi modded with permission.]

Steph had Plans for a new campaign at the store, as the stack of sketches and notes beside her laptop might suggest, as well as the way she'd occasionally make a noise and grab for a notebook, then start furiously scribbling in it.

Also the way her laptop was open up at the counter, where she appeared to be designing a disturbing number of custom minis. Because hey, if she could avail herself of the makerspace over at Stark Industries, why not?

The regulars who were signed up for this campaign should probably worry. Then again, if they'd played with her for even a couple of sessions at all, they should know that by now.

[OOC: Open!]

Steph had a new game to add to the cat games display section today, one that had her arranging some of the sci-fi minis into a tiny tableau to go with it.

At least until Saffron went and knocked them over, which seemed inevitable, but anyway.

And then, if you'd excuse her, she'd just be watching Chappell Roan's VMAs performance a bunch of times while also posting social media rants about how people needed to understand that the VMAs weren't where you went to get the really good musical performances, okay. What? She could have musical standards while also appreciating the girl-with-big-sword aesthetics.

[OOC: As always, IDEK. Open!]

When Steph opened the front door this morning, she got hit in the face by an inexplicable stack of flying index cards; she couldn't say for sure, but from the way Little Bot shrilled and went for his trusty dented Cypher rulebook one of the gremlins was most likely the culprit. Anyway, she decided to take it as a suggestion for the theme of the day.

Thus the display of card-based games, mostly involving cute animals or fantastic entities.

[OOC: Look, it's a miracle, I remembered to post. Open! I might even manage a thread. Gasp.]

Today just felt like a day for theming the game spotlight display around cute animals, or at least that was what Steph decided after picking one such game at random out of the new shipment.

The plushie displacer beasts clearly felt that description included them, as they seemed to be inching closer and closer to the display, and really. Who was Steph to tell them otherwise? They had bitey plush tentacles, for crying out loud.

[OOC: I swear I'll remember what day it is someday. I hope. Open!]

The rainbow in the sky over the island for Pride was tradition, any and all weather logic be damned, and it seemed to be especially -- almost defiantly -- bright this year.

And the festival's organizer wouldn't have it any other way.

The park was all decked out in rainbows, glitter, and miniature Pride flags of different varieties. The bounce house and ballpit slide were back again to serve as the centerpiece this year, as were the assortment of rides and very queer-themed carnival games.

The stage with its NPC bands and open-mic sessions was set up next to the picnic area, where an assortment of highly moddable foods had been provided by whichever restaurants Steph had strong-armed into prevailed upon to contribute. Tables and booths were set up on the other side of the picnic area for any vendors or local businesses that wanted to take part, but don't worry, no one was going to try and get you to sign up for a credit card or anything like that. Steph would have personally beaten anyone who tried that over the head with their own clipboard.

Happy Pride, Fandom! Have at it.

[OOC: After I put up the OCD, that is. Threads are up! Go wild.]

Look, of course there were dice (bouncy and click-clack-y!) and dice trays in various Pride flag palettes in the store, and of course the display minis were already arranged in a tiny parade formation. Of course there was a huge flag on display in the front window, and freshly made posters advertising the upcoming Fandom Pride weekend. But Steph had also put up all the posters and parade signs she'd ever collected from Portland and Seattle Pride and an informational display, plus a big plaque of a QR code that linked to a useful page of queer history resources.

(Yes, at the bottom of the plaque it said "scan the QueeR code to learn more!" Of course it did.)

And there was, like she'd always had by the Record Traders register back in Haven Springs, a dish full of buttons labeled Take One! A good chunk of them were geek themed, naturally; others were just simple flag stripes, or had pithy and sometimes cheesy quotes. A number were handmade, even, with slogans scrawled in black Sharpie, and those were... a little on the in-your-face side. Most of those had been in Steph's collection for years, made by Chloe in their Arcadia Bay days, and people tended to be a little uncertain about taking those.

If some of them looked like they'd been painted by gremlins that was because there were several gremlins seated next to a box of blank buttons in the mini-painting area, carefully maneuvering a paintbrush as a group. Hey, if they wanted to contribute what was Steph going to do, stop them?

Nah. She was trying to come up with a t-shirt design for the festival, and 'gremlin-bitten' really wasn't the style she was going for.

[OOC: Open!]

Between Vi and Little Bot, any trace of miniature armies rampaging through the store had been pretty well wiped away... as long as you didn't look closely at the counters about an inch and a half off the floor to see the tiny nicks and sword gashes left behind from their epic clashes.

Which... you know, kind of lent the store a very uniquely Fandom kind of character, so those could stay.

One less thing for Steph to worry about as she went into a single-minded, not at all self-distracting flurry of activity to finish getting the new game room set up.

[OOC: Open! SP as always for the sake of my single remaining brain cell.]