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May 20, 2023Liked by Max Gladstone

Lovely to do my tiny bit to contribute to the glory of this fortnight! One minor note - the story of the Roman Triumph is not that a crone sat on the chariot but an enslaved man, whose job it was to hold the laurel wreath floating above the head of the triumphing general while whispering in his ear. It's a reminder, the Romans thought, of how very fragile elite status was, and that, even while impersonating a god (the triumphing general was literally painted like a statue), at the end of the day he'd be just another guy who might wind up enslaved to someone else. Or, in this case...that someday there will be a new NYT Bestseller, I suppose! But Not Today.

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Thanks for the correction! It makes a lot of sense that it would be a slave--I don't know where I picked up my version.

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I was so happy for you and Amal when I read about the saga of BDW and The Tweet. I hadn’t realized y’all had made it to the NYT bestseller list though, so now I’m doubly happy! Congrats, and I hope you’ll get a lot of mileage out of this story as family lore. “You may not remember, but when you were little the family was on a vacation…”

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I imagine I'll be telling some version of this story for a long time! Just don't want it to become stale with the retelling.

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Wow, reading this was a lot of fun.

And then, at the send, seeing you mention Apocalypse Keys ... that's so awesome, that convergence of two minds I am in total awe of, like you and Rae ... huh. I was in an early playtest of this game, before Evil Hat picked it up, and I ran an early version of it that was about Eurovision, of all things.

I don't know how to do the Craft Sequence in it, but for sheer scope, it seems about right?

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Eurovision Apocalypse Keys! ... Actually, I can kind of see it.

As with any PBTA-derived game the challenge would be to find the right playbooks... but the core systems in AK align well.

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Wow... congrats Max. And of course, this comes to mind immediately: https://youtu.be/kx_G2a2hL6U

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Hysterical scene!

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Love it! Though, weirdly, I've never seen that movie. I should get on it!

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