Discord and harmony

Just over eighteen months ago, a young woman died in hospital in Katowice in Poland. She was no stranger to that hospital, having been admitted many times during her short life. I don't know her exact age, but she was certainly only in her early twenties. Her death, while tragic, was not unexpected; she was chronically ill, and only two years earlier had suffered a major stroke which very nearly killed her at the time. Yet, regardless of the state of her body, she had a brilliant mind. She had won the Polish School Olympics (a nationwide academic competition) several times, and in - if I recall correctly - three different subject areas. She had battled determinedly with the university system to be allowed to study for her first degree, since due to her condition she needed to do most of the work remotely; and when they finally gave in and let her do it, she graduated with such flying colours that there were several universities competing for her to go on to a master's degree and eventually a PhD. And she was in the middle of her master's when she died.

That was my very dear friend Magdalena Dreinert. We were working on a fantasy novel together (which, I'm ashamed to say, I've been unable to face so much as looking at since her death); she was so perceptive that I always knew I could create a character and then send her the MS to write the next section, and she would get that character absolutely right. (And her English vocabulary put a lot of native speakers to shame. On one occasion I used the word "fewmets", and when I sent her that chunk, she was, to my great amusement, utterly delighted. "Oh," she exclaimed, "wow! You know the word 'fewmets'!" You might have been forgiven for wondering which one of us was the native speaker.) We also did a lot of roleplaying online; she was the person who introduced me to Shadowrun, and not only introduced me but took a great deal of time to ensure that I had my character exactly the way I wanted. And it wasn't just me. She did that for everyone. She was immensely kind, prodigiously imaginative, and a huge amount of fun to be with, albeit virtually; it was easy to forget just how ill she was.

While we did sometimes communicate via e-mail, most of the time we chatted on Discord; and after her death I couldn't face that any more, to the point where I deleted my account. I didn't think I would ever go back. But the SCA, rather ironically, uses it quite heavily, and so in the end I made a new account using my SCA name and e-mail so I could get on the local server. And then I joined a couple of higher-level SCA servers. And then... I thought, well, I'm here now, so why don't I go and have a look for some of my other interests?

I started with early music, and, to my amazement and horror, found out that there was no server at all covering that. Fine. I created one. (I sent invitations to both Porthos and d'Artagnan, because it seemed only reasonable, even though I knew d'Artagnan probably had no idea what Discord even was; and, sure enough, he didn't. I said, fine, no worries, but do pass the link to your friends!) And then I went looking for crafts. Aha. There was quite a lot there.

And that's how I ended up on the Sewing and Crafts Discord server pictured above. It is so busy that if I tried to keep up with all of it I'd be doing nothing else; but it's always interesting to dip into it from time to time. I had a few sewing-related conversations, and then, after a while, I decided to ask if anyone was interested in netting.

I got a few replies. "Do you mean knitting?" asked one person. I managed to say "no, netting; you know, making nets" quite politely - after all, I reflected, I hadn't been on the server long enough for anyone to realise I don't make spelling mistakes - but I was quite annoyed, and I had to remind myself that this annoyance wasn't just with that person. It's general annoyance. If you do netting, you will get this. People will mix it up. Even one of the other food bank volunteers, who's quite bright, pointed to one of my string bags the other week and told someone I had "knitted" it, and I had to intervene and say very patiently, "no, not knitted, netted - it's a very different technique". But most people were a lot more positive. There was one person who'd tried it briefly in the past and then forgotten how to do it, and wanted to re-learn; there were a few others who wanted to learn from scratch; and, most excitingly, there were one or two who were also interested in filet! I do, however, seem to be the only person among 8773 members of this server who can already net, and can do it well enough to teach others. So I appear to have become the default go-to netting and filet person, and I'm starting to get DMs about it. This is excellent. I am always delighted to teach these crafts.

So, with all that going on, I wasn't too disappointed when the lady who wanted to learn netting a couple of weeks ago failed to show up after food bank. (I waited for her a few minutes, and at any rate the time wasn't wasted; I cast on the next baby hat.) I hope she does reconsider and arrange something firmer in the future, but in the meantime at least I am not short of people to teach; and there are people in the SCA who are interested too (as well as some other accomplished netters, though not in our shire - my "twin" is very keen on netting but hasn't much experience yet).

And, finally, I thought... you know, I'm a bit fed up with not being able to play D&D locally. I think I'll make a server for that too. There's nobody on it but me at the moment, but I've invited a few people, so we'll see. It's called The Little World, and it's primarily dedicated to version 3.5; however, I have a friend who specialises in running short, sweet, single-session, very off-beat version 5 campaigns, and I've told him he's more than welcome to come and do that on my server.

Magda would have approved.