The Corpse Brigadier

Dear Creator Letter: Phoenix Down Exchange 2026

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 13:30:58 GMT

Candy Hearts Letter for CorpseBrigadier on Ao3

Dear Creator,

Thanks so much for taking the time to make something for me, and kudos on your great taste in the finest of Final Fantasies. I've listed a variety of prompts below that tend to elaborate on angsty/messy/offbeat ships I'd love to see for the installments in question. However, I'm a firm proponent of optional details being optional, so if your heart is set on a concept that isn't quite in alignment with some of the prompts/ideas here, feel free to follow your muse. I'm a big fan of the unconventional, experimental, and weird in fanworks, and I am always happy to be introduced to something new or offbeat. Whatever direction you opt to take, I'm very excited about whatever you choose to create and looking forward to seeing what you come up with.

[NOTE: This letter will be functionally complete at the time it is made public, but it may be tweaked to adjust details/add requests through the end of sign-ups. It will not be altered save to correct grammar/spelling after the end of sign-ups.]

General (DNWs, Likes, Opt-Ins) | Final Fantasy VI | Final Fantasy VIII | Final Fantasy Tactics

General (DNWs, Likes, Opt-Ins, Etc...)

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Final Fantasy VI

[Requesting FIC]

I have a deep and profound nostalgia for the final Final Fantasy before Final Fantasy VII (and all the changes it wrought), and I think it remains one of the strongest installments in the series. I love how well it combines hard-hitting character drama with the complete absurdity of RPGs in general, and I love its sweeping, poignant explorations of human relationships in equal measure to its willingness to embrace that sometimes those relationships are offset by a talking purple octopus.
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Final Fantasy VIII

[Requesting FIC]

I was not as much a fan of this game when it first came out as I should have been, because I was a dweeby teenager who liked Final Fantasy and I could not yet appreciate having a Final Fantasy about dweeby teenagers who would probably like Final Fantasy. I love how goofy, experimental, dreamlike, and weird this game is, and I love how many gorgeous and fun little details are hidden throughout the game if you poke around. I love that its a psychoanalyst's wet dream of intermixed mother/witch/lover/sister figures, chock full of lunar imagery and wrapped up in all sorts of angst about memories and the irretrievable past. I love that I am always allowed to play Triple Triad no matter the degree of crisis. For the one ship I've selected, I'd be very interested in looking into all the ways the game is simultaneously very poignant and very goofy and wrapped up in people who are trying very hard to be cool while being massively vulnerable and dorky.

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Final Fantasy Tactics

[Requesting FIC or ART]

This game has been my major fandom for a few years now. I love how immensely unrepentantly bleak it is, how it's full of Church-flavored horror, and how it is just filled to the brim with unhappy families. I'm entirely here for political backstabbing and endless misery 24/7 in this sad little world of grid-based warfare. I love pretty much everything within it, and I would frankly be happy to receive almost anything for this fandom. In particular, I'm interested in the dynamics between characters who occupy similar narrative niches but never have the opportunity to meet in game.

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Captain, it's Wednesday.

Thu, 15 Jan 2026 23:06:48 GMT

What a year, huh?

( Vague gestures towards politics and world events + Annoyance at how personally rotten the past three days have been )

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Sure was a year, huh?

Fri, 02 Jan 2026 01:22:10 GMT

Welp. I made it through 2025, and it was--within the narrow scope of my personal life and outside of the realm of the present political moment--a pretty good year.

( What I did during it )

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Food Crimes by Food Criminals (Me)

Wed, 29 Oct 2025 20:17:59 GMT

The past few weeks have been pretty great. I made it through Yuletide signups, saw a Dracula ballet live (the dancer for Dracula thoroughly understood his assignment as did the costume designer who assumed his chest was the most visible thing about him when he wasn't wearing a cape), read some books, watched some cinema, got my gooseberries settled, and made a number of very cute and/or dumb costumes. The real highlight though was my personal celebration of my favorite nefarious goatboy's birthday (I love celebrating fictional character's birthdays as an excuse to party without having the actual expectations/obligations of real holiday). I used it as an occasion to explore new and fun frontiers of veganism and to terrify my friends and loved ones with a festive goat-themed dish. :]

( Very gnarly looking vegan goat head under cut )

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Yultide Letter 2025

Sun, 19 Oct 2025 22:17:30 GMT

Yuletide Letter for CorpseBrigadier on Ao3

Dear Author,

Hello, author! Let me open by offering my thanks and enthusiasm that you've opted to write for one of these microscopic fandoms that have captured my imagination this year. This exchange has long been one of my favorite ways of interfacing with fandom, and I'm very psyched to see your creation for one of these canons so full of medievalesque violence and angst. I've done my best to offer some info as to what I find compelling about each one and to throw out some prompts and ideas, but please known that if my thoughts on these works aren't quite calling to you, I'm a firm believer in optional details being optional, and I would love to see what compels you as an author about the canons/characters!

Note: I am open to treats on ao3 and should have them activated.

[NOTE: This letter will be functionally complete at the time it is made public, but it may be tweaked through the end of sign-ups.]

General (DNWs, Likes, Opt-Ins) | Flesh + Blood | She is Conann | The Wizard's Shadow | Mini-Challenge Specific Prompts

General (DNWs, Likes, Opt-Ins, Etc...)

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Flesh + Blood

The Canon: This hornt-as-hell, shlocky, excessively edgy medieval film is a mess of trauma bonding, romantic mandrake harvesting, over the top violence, and grossly inaccurate portrayals of how the bubonic plague works, and it apparently inspired Berserk which then went on to inspire virtually everything else. I love it because its unrelentingly brutal and full of gloriously toxic and twisted dynamics between the three major characters. I also love it because it speaks deeply to my id and I think that more films should have Rutger Hauer groping somebody's fiancee in front of them while they are chained up in a spiked dog collar.

Where to Find It (and Canon Review Resources): This film is free to view (with ads) on Tubi.
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She is Conann

The Canon: I first saw this film a year or so back and was completely haunted by it. I love both of its grotesquely uncomfortable cannibalism scenes. I love the conceit of murdering your old self to bring in the reign of a new self. I love how artsy and hot and indulgent it feels. I love the surreal weirdness of the whole narrative, which never explains the time hopping nature of Conann's later incarnations and never apologizes for it.

Where to Find It (and Canon Review Resources): It's available for free (with ads) on Roku.

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The Wizard's Shadow

The Canon: This was my absolute favorite novel at around age twelve, and I revisited it recently to discover that twelve-year old me had great taste. There's so much to love about this canon: fraught sibling relationships, cool takes on magic, a harrowingly violent opening chapter, an enchanted snakebaby gunning for the throne. I really love all the tropes Dexter is dealing in in this novel and I love how this piece ended up as a standalone entry in her world with the promise of Crocken and Miall enjoying future adventures never explored in a sequel.

Where to Find It: The book is available on OpenLibrary for loan if you have an account.

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Extra Challenges

Art Prompts (for the Wrapping Paper Challenge)

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IF Prompts

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Marathon = Run, Social Media = Quit

Sun, 12 Oct 2025 23:30:02 GMT

So, I ran a marathon and ditched reddit and bluesky the first week of October (my account on the latter remains undeleted, but I anticipate axing it next month unless I have a sudden change of heart). I am officially through every New Year's resolution I had for 2025 and finally taking some time to savor Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles, which is delivering pretty much what I wanted the majority of the time (tolerable to good voice acting for most characters, additional clarifications and lore I can be a huge losernerd about, and the ability to undo movement command... GOD!). My opinions may sour as I push onward and more added text emerges, but I'm a stalwart soul who does their best to ignore creators revisions/redactions/twitter posts/etc... to works already presented as complete.

In light of the socmed abandonment, I'm also trying to think through how I wish to proceed with having an Internet presence, and it may be that I become--as I was for much of the first decade of my Internet-using life--more a lurker than a poster, although I do dearly love my personal sites and will try to keep up with them. I hope, as I always hope, to post more here, but I'm realizing that in a lot of ways I'm a sort of antsy person who really leaned into the mechanics of likes/hearts/kudos and the quippy, brief statements post 2010s social media trades in to get over the awkwardity of more sustained social interactions, and it may be hard to find my footing. It's alright, however it pans out. I have a pretty rich and active social life in a lot of dimensions now, and my gradual detachment from and eventual cessation of most social media has--as far as I can tell--been nothing but a positive. I'm not sure precisely what I want to be doing in this space in the future, but I'm pretty sure that Dreamwidth isn't really going to have the effects on my life that more contemporary sites do. I'll figure it out in time.

In other news, I'm watching a lot of horror films in light of the season (Andrzej Żuławski's Possession stands out in particular as deeply memorable and uncomfortable), I'm rocking out at ignoring anti-choice protestors tell me about how deeply I feed the evil within me at my escorting gig, and I'm making a lot of fun/dumb food and sewing Halloween costumes. I'm hopeful it'll be a pretty nice autumn going forward.

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September

Fri, 19 Sep 2025 18:29:18 GMT

I'm always taking long breaks from posting here, and this time it's because most of September has just been running and amping up for local elections season. I'm pretty happy about it though. I've made it past the peak of my training program and--having made it to 20 miles--I'm pretty sure that I'm going to pull off 26 in a few weeks. I also volunteered at two local political candidates forums this month, and I was delighted to make municipal politicians squirm as I asked them to name a single native plant and single noxious weed as legally defined.

Other than that, I got my shots for the season, I've been chipping away at a zine fic, and I'm still doing a ton of baking/cooking. I'm planning on quitting my remaining socmed when The Ivalice Chronicles come out and then just winnowing things down to DW and personal sites. In general, withing the scope of my own life, things are pretty nice.

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Updates

Wed, 13 Aug 2025 21:48:42 GMT

I continue to exist. I deleted my tumblr at long last and may yet escape bluesky and re-escape reddit (I'm down to social media use being limited to three days a week). The past seven and a half months have been very full, with the highlights being that I am now a regular abortion clinic escort, I got my amateur radio license, and I'm training for a marathon. I've also taken up linocut, written a few fics, made a few cakes, seen the local salamanders migrate, successfully brewed and intoxicated myself on dandelion wine, semi-accidentally gone vegan, obtained a 3D printer, participated in a few parades and marches, experimented with natural dying, joined the local group that pulls invasive weeds in the park, and joined a few book clubs.

Also. Final Fantasy Tactics is apparently getting a remaster or something, and I feel about as one would expect.

(It unfortunately comes out 5 days before the previously mentioned marathon tho. X_X)

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What a Year, Huh?

Wed, 01 Jan 2025 03:21:01 GMT

I went through my phone and my diary today to try to figure out what 2024 was like for me, and... I honestly did a lot and had a pretty cool time of things before the final few months saw fit to kick me in the teeth. I felt a little down that I didn't find as much time for writing as I did in previous years, but actually looking things over, I've definitely been flexing a lot creative muscles elsewhere. It certainly wasn't the year I wanted in all respects, but it was a full and memorable one.

So anyway, in 2024 I...
( ... )

I don't know quite what to hope for from 2025. There's a lot of things that make me anxious. Still, I feel like I can make it through a lot, and that's pretty reassuring.

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Elections and Organs

Sat, 16 Nov 2024 05:44:21 GMT

I'm writing from the hospital today after having spent the past three weeks either running around to a number of delightful and very busy Halloween celebrations, watching and reacting to the recent US election, or prepping for this week, in which I got to have my left kidney removed. I've been coping fairly well on all fronts, I think.

( Political/surgery talk under the cut )

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Generally Chill, But Busy

Mon, 21 Oct 2024 15:06:24 GMT

I had a pretty tiring few weeks in which very little immediate actually happened.

My spouse left for their annual autumn ~~vacation~~ Internet forum meet up, during which I routinely experience some manner of medical event (this time it was just a mild cold), and my schedule has been somewhat out of whack ever since. I got some news (good!) on the fourteenth that I'll eventually talk more about outside of f-lock, and I've been running around scheduling stuff around it. I've gotten in the habit of making shokupan weekly, and I'm enjoying a life of eating highly aesthetic Ghibliesque breakfasts most mornings.

Also actually managed to scrape myself together sufficiently to sign up for Yuletide again this year, and I am psyched.

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Weekend Update Update

Tue, 08 Oct 2024 03:41:48 GMT

The weekend turned out... pretty phenomenal. I ran a slow, plodding half marathon. I went apple picking. I saw some friends I hadn't actually had a prolonged occasion to hang out with since before the beginning of the pandemic.

Unfortunately had to once again return to the job today (which I remain unlaid off from and not yet able to quit), but I made up for it with a rousing evening of watching city council members fight (Tonight's hot topic: Does voting "abstain" and not "yay" or "nay" after you've participated in the conversation leading up to the agenda item being voted upon threaten the integrity of the vote?) and then finally enjoying the fine art of sitting around not doing very much.

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Weekend Update

Sat, 05 Oct 2024 03:43:41 GMT

Work continues to be a bear, but it's calmed down just a touch, and my co-workers are all a lovely and supportive group of people (I still absolutely need to find the time to job hunt more aggressively). I'm very exhausted now that Friday has rolled around, but the month has been pretty fantastic thus far.

( Nicer happenings and more food pics under the cut. )

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Autumn

Wed, 02 Oct 2024 16:00:51 GMT

It's been a reasonably pleasant year, all things considered. After the complete overwhelm of 2023 (Get a doctorate! Get a job!), it's been nice to coast for a bit. While I've had a reasonably busy time of things in 2024, there's not been the same sense of everything being suddenly and dramatically changing, which has been nice.

( Other sundry updates... )

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Am I back? Who knows?

Tue, 01 Oct 2024 14:13:09 GMT

I made an attempt at a permanent social media hiatus this year. This was after finding that quitting Twitter/Reddit, dropping off the face of tumblr, and unfollowing everyone from my Facebook social feed so I could simply use the platform to buy local furniture and check municipal announcements left me a generally calmer, happier individual.

And well... I'm still a happier, calmer individual--despite some major stressors cropping up at work over the past few months, but I also have realized that I probably need to break up with one of my current online social circles I was still in touch with via Discord. Nothing melodramatic, but I've realized that social media and online posting for a bit may be a bit less toxic and more easily curated than this crowd, and I'm going to try to seek enrichment through other venues for a while.

So here I am again.

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Happy Birthday, Final Fantasy Tactics.

Fri, 21 Jun 2024 02:04:26 GMT

I've apparently obsessed with this 27 year old game for 6 whole years now. I baked it a cake. :]

( Flimsy excuse to experiment with isomalt below the cut )

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Escaping Utah, Making Cocktails

Wed, 19 Jun 2024 01:18:28 GMT

Witness another attempt to actually get back to posting here on the regular.

( Dolorous Recent Travels and Also Booze )

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What a Year... (also a cake)

Thu, 28 Dec 2023 01:10:41 GMT

It's been an absolutely crazy year for me, and now that I'm finally out of parties to attend and holiday-related tasks to undertake, I have another moment to reflect and say "Gee. I made it."

This is my first December in a long long time that isn't shaped by the vicissitudes of the academic calendar. It's the first time I hit the end of the year and do not have to face any final projects/grading/reports as to why my dissertation still isn't done/etc... There's actually been time to chill out without the roller coaster of end-of-semester crunch, and it's lovely. I finish my hours at my job and there's no giant pile of work that remains for me to finish on my own time. When I pick up a book, I no longer have to consider whether it will help with one of my chapters. I can direct my mental energies to reasonably intense tasks without thinking "Oh jeez, I need to be spending this effort chipping away in the academic prose mines." It's great. Beautiful. The sort of normal working adulthood life I've longed for.

January of this year seems like it could have been a decade ago. I got the doctorate, got a publication, got a job, and did a lot of miscellaneous fun stuff in the meantime. I feel that I genuinely just lived a lot throughout all of 2023, and I have a feeling that this is going to be something of a turning point in how I view the rest of my life.

As for some of that miscellany, one of the aforementioned parties was a potluck where I offered the host their choice of theme for the dessert I wanted to bake. They chose "Pikmin."

If you didn't catch this grotesquerie on tumblr, please appreciate some pictures below of the terrible thing I produced (an Empress Bulblax pinata cake stuffed with candy larvae):

( Read more... )

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Still Alive, Not Terribly Interesting

Mon, 23 Oct 2023 16:28:47 GMT

I have not been posting for months on account of landing a job (not a terribly exciting one, but still vastly better paying than gradstudenthood), which has required a lot of schedule tinkering. I've been forced against my better judgement and inclinations to become a morning person, which is somewhat at odds with much of my prior adult life. I've become reasonably good at working out in the morning and going to bed at a sensible hour. I've yet to become reasonably good at engaging consistently in all my prior hobbies. (Most of my various writing projects have stalled, and I couldn't muster the wherewithal to prep for either a ___-tober or Yuletide).

I managed to do/see a lot of one off stuff locally in the lead up to said job. I saw one of my favorite musicians live, caught a very nice series of festivals around town, and gawked at a lot of melodramatic local politics. One of the things I've definitely managed to accomplish this year has been getting more engaged with the ins and outs of government at the municipal level--which I would be proud of were my motivations not so clearly mixed up with my love of watching a petty slapfight. As I sink deeper into the abyss of middle-aged squareness, I've become a regular city council audience member, eager to watch first hand as people twenty years my elder fight with one another for ten minutes over approving the previous meeting's minutes.

All things considered, I'm pretty content with my current mode of existing, although part of that is just being able to just exist without having to constantly push towards the next doctoral milestone/job hunt lead/etc... 2023 has been incredibly intense for me, and I'm glad to finally be in the midst of something that looks to be a boring patch.

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Family, Orangutans, Plant Touching

Sun, 06 Aug 2023 01:52:59 GMT

I've had a great day chilling at my local zoo and dining out with relatives. My parents are in town and we managed to hit things at a time when many of the animals were actually active and not huddled up in a corner (there was a baby orangutan who harassed one of his elders into giving him leaves and then swung upside-down with them). My aunt and uncle, who happen to live nearby but whom I never see unless my dad is visiting, made a very nice dinner with an excess of brownies at the end. I've been undertaking a lot of exhausting entertaining for most of the week really (we've apparently walked seven miles in the past two days...), and this was probably the best day I've had of the visit thus far--although we're apparently hitting up a fancy cheese place tomorrow, which may tip the balance.

( picture of the aforementioned orangutan )

It's been a pretty crazy time. I'm trucking along with some more fic (ranging from the somewhat dark side of PG-13 to the extreme end of reprehensible) though, and I have finished painting pretty much everything on my to paint list even beyond my terrible cabinets. I'm chilling presently and watching this masterful educational programming.

Also: fairly proud of myself fandomwise today, even if fandom has not been on my mind all that much in the midst of everything else. I encountered somebody with very very bad mean-spirited opinions, and I forced myself to go outside and literally touch a plant instead of directly explaining that they were wrong.

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Ice Cream, Cabinets, Blood Again

Fri, 28 Jul 2023 05:22:31 GMT

My life is a mess of deep cleaning, finally catching up with irl friends/relations, and reading this fascinating book on childhood in the middle ages (may or may not result in more Orinus fic someday). I got a chance to make my favorite weird ice cream (pictured below with cake, coffee, and very aesthetic dishes), my cabinets are finally done, and I sent out some handwritten fic to people who requested it following this tumblr post re: what we should all do following the ao3 DDoS attacks. (People who want an FFT double drabble and are willing to trust me with a physical address may still inquire)

( Desserts! )

Also became one of those few lucky people to win a gift card from blood giving. My suffering paid off. :]

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Finishing Gigs and Other Things

Sun, 16 Jul 2023 04:23:53 GMT

I finished my editing gig and got paid (with a pretty substantial bonus from the pleased client)! In the meantime, I've been managing to catch up on the various books and projects I never seem to finish. I finally got to the end of Zadie Smith's White Teeth (which I found very satisfying/good even if I wasn't particularly happy with one character's plotline and his eventual fate). I'm almost done with my cabinets, and the basil in my tiny and pathetic garden is coming along.

I'm also finally making good on my resolution to start donating blood more regularly, and I was very proud of myself for following through despite having to get double-pricked for hemoglobin tests, having (cw: needles) the phlebotomist muck up my vein such that somebody else had to come and jangle the needle around for several minutes, and nearly passing out. The drive in question at the very least had better than average snacks, and I got to make off with some dark chocolate snack bars. Not great overall, but I'm having a pretty nice weekend collapsing onto sofas dramatically while demanding my spouse tend to affairs my weak constitution prevents me from handling.

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Fanworks: Affections (1,000 words)

Tue, 11 Jul 2023 11:53:13 GMT

Ao3 may be down, but this will not stop me from providing piping hot Mustadio/Worker 8 content.

Part of my series of 1,000 word rarepair fics and definitely G-rated. Not terribly romantic, but Worker 8 tries.

Mirrored on my website and tumblr.

( Mustadio moved smoothly through the tavern... )

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Fandom Meme

Sun, 09 Jul 2023 22:03:34 GMT

Taking this meme from kradeelav because I have long been wanting a nice LJ style meme in my life.

1. How long have you been in fandom? 2. Which fandoms are you in now? 3. Do you create transformative works (fic, fan art, podfic, etc.)? 4. What was your first fandom? 5. How often has fic made you cry? 6. Rec a fic that you love! 7. Who's your ult OTP? 8. Share a pic that would convince someone to fall for your current fandom! 9. Have you ever met a fandom friend IRL? 10. What's the last fandom merch or craft you got? 11. Rare pairs, big ships, or gen? 12. Are you multi-fandom or mono-fannish? 13. When did you last travel for a con, concert, fanmeet, or cupsleeve event? 14. How did you get into your current fandom? 15. What's your favorite trope? 16. What are 3 tags that will make you click no matter what? 17. Fav fest you've prompted/read/written for? 18. Share an upcoming fest you're excited about! 19. What's your favorite episode, song, moment, etc. from your current fandom? 20. Tag three fandom friends!

( Slight Warning: FFT-typical pixelated blood image for one question )

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Dr. Me (for real now)

Sat, 20 May 2023 16:14:34 GMT

I did it. Yesterday, I unlocked a new drop down option on forms where you have to give a prefix before your name. I stood for an hour and a half in terrible, hot, partially velvet robes and was given a piece of paper that entitles me to practice book medicine.

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