Factotum

Fragrantica: perfume enthusiast site that has a long list of scents. v helpful when you’re writing your guilty pleasure abo fics

Just One Cookbook: recipe site that centers on Japanese cuisine. Lots of different recipes to browse, plenty of inspiration so you’re not just “ramen and sushi” 

This comparing heights page: gives you a visual on height differences between characters

A page on the colors of bruises+healing stages: well just that. there you go. describe your bruises properly

McCormick Science Institute: yes this is a real thing. the site shows off research on spices and gives the history on them. be historically accurate or just indulge in mindless fascination. boost your restaurant au with it

Canine Body Language

Cocktail Flow: a site with a variety of cocktails that’s pretty easy to navigate and offers photos of the drinks. You can sort by themes, strengths, type and base. My only real annoyance with this site is that the drinks are sometimes sorted into ~masculine~ and ~feminine~ but ehhhh. It’s great otherwise.

Types of High Heels: A page describing twenty five different types of high heels. It gives a description and pictures. Shake it up from just “stilettos and kitten heels”

Random Job Generator: Exactly as it says. The site offer more generators like characters, plots, or town names.

Glossary of Hosiery Terms: Figure out what is what on a pair of stockings.

Men’s Dress Shoe Guide: A quick guide describing the eight most common types of men’s dress shoes. Pics included.

William Tell Overture- Rossini (Most famous part at 8:45, but why not listen to the whole thing?)

Also Sprach Zarathustra- Strauss

Eine Kleine Nachtmusik- Mozart

Symphony 94, Mvt. 2 “Surprise Symphony”- Haydn 

Toccata and Fugue in d Minor-Bach

Nocturne Op. 9 No. 2- Chopin

Rondo alla Turca- Mozart

Sinfonie de Fanfares: Rondeau- Jean-Joseph Mouret

The Four Seasons: Spring- Vivaldi (I just linked to the whole thing because it’s great)

Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring- Bach

O Fortuna (from Carmina Burana)- Carl Orff

Funeral March- Chopin

Orpheus in the Underworld: Infernal Galop (A.K.A. Can Can)- Offenbach

Pomp and Circumstance (You probably graduated to this)- Elgar

Gayane: Sabre Dance- Aram Khachaturian

A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Wedding March- Mendelssohn

Carmen: Les Toreadors- Bizet

The Ride of the Valkyries- Wagner

Für Elise- Beethoven

Dance of the Hours- Ponchielli

Rigotello: La Donna e Mobile- Verdi

Night on Bald Mountain- Mussorgsky

Romeo and Juliet: Love Theme- Tchaikovsky

Entry of the Gladiators- Julius Fucik

Lakmé: Flower Duet- Delibes

Peer Gynt: In the Hall of the Mountain King- Greig

Rodeo: Hoedown- Copland

Peer Gynt: Morning Mood- Greig

New World Symphony Mov. [2][4]- Dvorak

Ave Maria (You knew this, but did you know that it was by Schubert?)

Canon in D- Pachelbel

Flight of the Bumblebee - Rimsky-Korsakov

Finale to the 1812 Overture - Tchaikovsky

Der Holle Rache kocht in meiner herzen (aka the Queen of the Night aria) - Mozart

Libiamo ne’ lieti calici - Verdi

Largo al factotum - Rossini

Overture to The Barber of Seville - Rossini

The Blue Danube Waltz - Strauss

Moonlight Sonata (mvmt. 1) - Beethoven

Symphony No. 5 - Beethoven

Giant insects are a staple of fantasy gaming (and with five Bestiaries to draw from, Pathfinder’s giant bugs are even nastier than most). Naturally, that means you need some equally giant insectivores.  The goliath frog and frog father are Large and Huge options with which to terrify your low-level parties (especially any halfling and gnome PCs).

Stat-wise, these are pretty utilitarian amphibians—you’re picking them for their size and CR, not flashy abilities—but it’s still worth diving into their stat blocks and descriptions to mine for interesting encounter setups and tactics.  Goliath frogs have an excellent Climb skill, so having them attack from the trees is a nice way to surprise a party carefully skirting around the edge of the local swamp.  And the long reach (30 ft.) of frog fathers’ tongues makes a pair of the Huge beasts a potentially lethal encounter for a bridge or ford scenario.

Fed up with an infestation of kikimoras, a village purchases a magical bell meant to drive the beak-nosed fey away.  Once installed at the top of the steeple, the bell’s peal will send any fey within earshot scurrying away—but to work it must be blessed by a bishop and installed on a high holy day…so some adventurers have been hired to make sure the ceremony goes off without a hitch.  The kikimoras are naturally determined to foil this plan, doing everything from recruiting gremlins to sabotage the tower to attempting to kidnap the bishop.  In a desperate last-ditch effort, the kikimoras ride goliath frogs into town on the day of the blessing, hoping enough townsfolk are gobbled up that the survivors will never be so impertinent again.

“Frog father” is a name with mysterious, almost mythic overtones.  While most frog fathers are dumb beasts who munch on giant insects and cattle, rumors persist of certain elder frog fathers awakened to a modicum of intelligence and even crude magical powers.  Said intelligence does nothing to curb these frog fathers’ base appetites, however.  They squat in their swamps like corpulent green lords, croaking demands for food and slurping up any supplicants who come within 30 feet.

Where the Plane of Air brushes the Plane of Wood, clumps of trees the size of towns roll like giant tumbleweeds through the air. Blessed with enough biomass to have their own mini-atmospheres, these tumbleworlds are humid enough that animals and vermin of all kinds can flourish despite not having any firm soil beneath them. Plane of Air denizens and visitors alike seek out these tumbleworlds for rare fruits, orchids, medicinal herbs, but they must beware the goliath frogs that are happy to snap up large birds and even sylphs without hesitation.

—Pathfinder Bestiary 5 117

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

This quote has been bouncing around in my head this week.

This feels like a mission statement for how I want to think about the lasting effects of improv on my audience and my scene partners.

When we’re in the moment, we are indeed poets and geniuses and playwrights. But the work we do and the things we say in and of themselves don’t matter. I care much more about whether I bring the audience joy, or make them laugh, or make them care about the characters. I care about the people I’m onstage with having a good time, being challenged in a good way, feeling like they can trust me and that they can do anything at all and be safe. I care about how my scene partners play with me, if they respect me and honour my choices, whether they follow fun with me or push back and play for themselves.