schneefink | Recent Entries

Time 2020-10-15 01:05:21

Web Name: schneefink | Recent Entries

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Things I have been consuming:Taskmaster, a UK comedy panel show. I first heard about it when sabinelagrande started writing RPF about it, and only later found out that it's actually hilarious. I usually have a big problem with second-hand-embarrassment so I was initially hesitant, but it was never a problem here. The tasks are so random and fun, the casts are hilarious, and it's just overall very cheerful. I started watching random tasks, and now I'm watching from the beginning. I'm in the middle of series 3 and enjoy it a lot.Dice Disasters, an actual play D&D podcast that DD recommended to me. The premise is that five people from our world - four young adults and a kid - wake up in a fantasy world with magic. It took a while for me to get into: the plot moves quite slowly, though I did always like the game and cast and characters a lot. And then episode 22 had a few character scenes that I really loved(for example), and I've just finished episode 23 (in which exciting things happen) and I love it a lot. DD promises that it only gets better, so I'm trying to catch up in time for Yuletide sign-ups. I will also definitely ramble more about my feelings for all of the characters later but I'll stop procrastinating for now. (I also baked things! I've definitely made much worse procrastination choices.)I could borrow this from a friend so soon because he said he wants to reread the entire series first, which is doubly convenient for me because it means I can later ask him about the people/events from prior books I only vaguely remember. (Though the wiki tells me some of them are from short stories, which makes it harder.)I enjoyed this book, though in general I think it would have been better if this one and "Peace Talks" hadn't been split up.(Spoilers)So apparently my body thought that I should get the most out of my dental check-up appointment? Literally two and a half hours before the appointment I had lunch and suddenly a tooth hurt and was loose, and then the doctor said it broke apart and took half of it out. Did not expect that, but if it had to happen at least the timing was ideal! Apparently it's not even that uncommon? I have another appointment next week to discuss what to do next (an artificial crown, possibly), but in the meantime I keep touching the half-empty space with my tongue and it feels very odd.I looked forward to this, and the only disappointment was that the version with the gorgeous cover is not yet available as a paperback in the right size for my bookshelf. I loved the worldbuilding, the characters, the villains, and the tropes – canon soulbonds! Forced betrayals (and their aftermath)! Delicious.(Major spoilers)(The longer I think about it, the more things come to mind that I was slightly less happy with – but that's normal, and mainly things that I wouldn't even mention if the entire book wasn't so great that such details stand out.)I'm thinking of nominating this for Yuletide. I'm not sure yet if I want to request it, but I think I'd like to offer it, and maybe between now and sign-ups more people will get a chance to read the book.The Magicians, The Magician King, The Magician's Land – Lev GrossmannI wonder how I would have enjoyed these if I hadn't watched the show first. (Spoilers for books and show)Peace Talks – Dresden Files #16, Jim ButcherIt's been six years since "Skin Game" and in the meantime I've lost some of my enthusiasm for the series, and thus I was surprised just how much I enjoyed returning to this world. (Spoilers)Redemption's Blade – Adrian Tchaikovsky"What happens after the BBEG and his Evil Legions are defeated?" is an interesting premise, and this book did some interesting things with it. (Spoilers)I enjoyed this but didn't love it. Overall it reminded me a lot of "Spiderlight" by the same author.Middlegame – Seanan McGuireThis was fascinating. I found it interesting from the start, but it took me quite a while to emotionally connect to the main characters, which made the book very slow in the beginning but then I really enjoyed it. (Spoilers)There is barely any fic, but I really enjoyed this collection of short post-canon stories: Cuckoo Nest, by NevillesGran. Driftwood – Marie BrennanAnother book by an author I remember enjoying on a Worldcon panel. Very nice short stories, connected very well, fun worlds-building. I do like stories about immortals, though the outsider PoV meant that getting an arc was difficult. (The author did her best.)"Raybearer" is getting its own post because it's late.I recently found out that listening to a podcast and doing a puzzle is a great combination, but I'm out of puzzles (and I don't want to take the one I just solved apart just yet), so instead today I tried drawing while listening, and that worked quite well too. I haven't really drawn in, huh, years (I just doodle I lot of shapes) but it was fun. (#74-76)(#77)(#78)#79WHAT. WAS THAT. *high-pitched noises of too many feelings* (James said we weren't ready and he was right.)I also finally got my Boganalia bandana recently, it's very pretty and I love it. And then there's the Kickstarter currently running, Skyjacks: The Album! I'm so looking forward to this, the music is so beautiful, and there'll be a beautiful lyric book, and the chords to most songs. There's also a fan lyrics contest for Call of the Sky; I haven't written song lyrics since I was about fourteen but now I'm tempted.I last read a Toby Daye book in 2015, but I recently saw some people talk about the newest one on Tumblr and decided to catch up on the series. I enjoy it a lot, they're a good read and I like the characters (even though I sometimes have to remind myself not to look too closely at the plot.)(Once Broken Faith)(The Brightest Fell)(Night and Silence)(The Unkindest Tide)(A Killing Frost)I really like the format of having short novellas from different people's PoVs after each first-person novel, it's a great opportunity to add character and worldbuilding details and depth. (Anyway, this is what I have been reading the past week or so, instead of doing uni stuff *sighs*)Pretty sure it's a rule that the most stressful times at work and uni always have to coincide. Fun. I'm massively behind on everything, online (comments and reviews etc) and offline, but it'll work out somehow.I visited my grandparents & extended family for a few days, it was nice and we had luck with the weather and went hiking, and the timing was additionally lucky because with the rise in COVID-19 numbers right now I'm not sure I'd go. We also had our first indoor choir practice again, following recommended safety guidelines: a big room, all chairs 2m apart and you have to wear a mask when you're not sitting down, and every 20 minutes there's a break with the windows open. I really enjoyed singing again, but at the same time I'm not sure if it's worth it. Choir singing has never been a high-risk hobby before.I'm working more hours than usual, i.e. more than I'd like, but in general work has been less stressful than I feared, also because we got another deadline extension but also because I'm managing to be more relaxed about things: if I don't manage to make all of my deadlines, that's bad but also not only my fault because we just have too much to do, and of course I'm struggling to finish my list if I constantly get extra work assigned. Right now uni is also very important (so I should be doing more for that…) Still, it's difficult to leave earlier when I know how many extra hours my colleagues are putting in. Fortunately they're understanding (though every once in a while I worry if that's just to my face.)Today had a weird moment when our cleaning lady asked me if I have a boyfriend (there's only two people in our office not in a relationship and the other is recently divorced, which comes with the side effect that some of my colleagues like to read my "love horoscope" to me), then if I ever had one, and then asked me if I'm a virgin. I was so baffled that it took me a moment to figure out how to mostly politely tell her that it's none of her business. Aand now I'm just procrastinating again.New TMA episode this week! I'm excited. The break went over faster than I thought, but I still have time to do the TMA vid recs post I planned. (Most of them are on YouTube and called "animatics," but *shrugs*) There are many great ones, but these are my favorites of the ones I've found.Spoilers until the end of season 4 for all of them.The Riddle by Yan ASong: "The Riddle" by Terry Mann, from The Scarlet PimpernelSummary/theme: For we all are caught in the middle of one long treacherous riddle…Why I love it: A beautiful ballroom dance of suspicion and cautious trust and betrayal.jon loves martin but he won't say he's in love by BlossombunSong: I Won't Say I'm in Love - Susan Egan (from Disney's Hercules)Summary/theme: *points at title*Why I love it: The facial expressions and body language are so wonderfully expressive :DVillains by ArazmisSong: Villains Pt 1 by Emma BlackerySummary/theme: "Welcome to the show." A tragedy.Why I love it: Fantastic tragic horror atmosphere.show yourself by BlossombunSong: Show Yourself, Frozen 2Summary/theme: Fantasy/archaeology AU, "jon goes on a wacky adventure in a spooky cave"Why I love it: It starts a bit slow but builds up and has a great (spoiler) ending.Are You Out There? by imperfectcircleSong: Are You Out There? by Dar WilliamsSummary/theme: A lo-fi Jon/Martin fanvidWhy I love it: I can't remember seeing a fanvid done like this before, with arranged paper drawings stop motion animation, but I love it, it makes for some great effects, and overall this is just lovely.touch tone telephone by corpuscentauriSong: Touch-Tone Telephone by Lemon DemonSummary/theme: "Michael"Why I love it: This is really captivating and a great Michael vid.More TMA vid recs welcome :)Yesterday the DM of our current D&D campaign didn't have time, so I suggested that we try out Microscope, a game I recently discovered after darchildre recommended it. Microscope is a TTRPG without dice where you build an epic history in a non-linear fashion, and it's completely different from any other TTRPG I'd played before. We had so much fun! I'm definitely planning to play it again.(Our story was about Fantasy Australia's fight for independence.)Among the nice things about Microscope is that you're constantly surprised by the things the other players come up with, and because you only play a handful of scenes many of them are very intense and you basically can get a "highlight" version of events/lives/etc. I wish we'd had more time to explore! We probably won't continue this particular story, but I'm sure the next one will be fun too. One player is already talking about using Microscope for worldbuilding for his D&D campaigns, which I'm sure will work very well. You can also play it with two people, so I'm definitely planning to play with DD. We could create original stories, or even AU fanfic: I got the idea from this Star Wars example, and I could also see it work extremely well for The Silmarillion, for example. Maybe even for sources spanning only one or two decades. So many possibilities!I didn't get anything productive done that I wanted to do today - not the important uni stuff and not even running, I haven't been in three weeks now and only the past two weekends it was because I had a cold - but I left over a dozen fic comments, which is the easiest way to trick my brain into thinking that since they probably cheered people up I've at least accomplished something. That often happens on weekends, unfortunately at some point I need to do the annoying important things as well. Bäh.10 of 22 chapters written of my TMA #WaitForMeRPG time travel fic! Already the longest story I've written in two years. I knew that writing for daily prompts would be difficult, but I didn't sufficiently anticipate how much more difficult time travel would make everything. Time travel, especially time traveling multiple times (is there a better term for that?) is hard to keep track of even when plotting everything out in advance! I have some plot ideas that I might not get to do, depending on how the prompts develop – maybe I'll just have to do a rewrite at the end, if I'll still have the energy by then. I'm very curious what else might happen, there were already a few developments I normally would never have thought of but actually quite like.The game is almost halfway done and I made the story a lot more complicated in the last two chapters, so the second half will be fun and challenging. Writing a chapter every day is stressful, but it did succeed in helping me tell myself to stop trying to get it perfect and just write something. I'm even quite happy with some parts of it. (things I'm less happy with)The timing is not ideal for this game: work is very busy at the moment, and I have a lot to do for uni as well. But it's doable, and I'll be very proud when it's finished.I wouldn't think twice about getting an email from my bachelor's thesis advisor telling me that the disposition (for which I had no guidelines apart from "should include disposition, structure, and literature") was meant to be, or even that she simply preferred it to be, 5-7 pages long rather than 2 and much more detailed than what I handed in. (Even though my advisor refused to discuss the topic in advance because "in her experience results are better if the students become familiar with the topic on their own and come up with their own approach", and so if I had gone into that much detail I would have been frustrated to now be told to leave certain chapters out entirely. And the topic and most of the relevant legal field were completely new to me when I got it and I only had one month.)But getting an email that says "I have never received a disposition this short" and "most students add a lot more detail which makes it easier for us to give feedback" – what am I meant to do with that? Sorry you suck at giving sufficiently detailed instructions? Sorry you didn't realize that a 15 minute video conference did not convey the same amount of information about what's expected than the usual prep meetings do? The actual feedback she gave was fine, but I found the tone of her entire message infuriating. I'm now trying to vent to enough people about this so that when I reply I'll be nice and polite and thankful instead of trying to justify myself. Grr.(Possibly I am overreacting a bit?; whatever.)Day 4 and I very much enjoy playing #WaitForMeRPG so far. Writing a chapter a day is a lot, especially since it's supposed to be one story, and I want it to be good, and I keep thinking of more things to add and then the chapters become longer, and it takes a lot more time than I originally thought. And figuring out a time travel plot that makes sense when I don't know what jumps will come when is difficult. For now it's fine, but for three weeks – eventually I need to start doing work for uni again, too…The best part is playing together with DD, because almost as much as I enjoy writing my own story I enjoy helping her brainstorm hers. Skyjacks #72(Travis processes the fact that other people are also capable of lying.)Skyjacks #73I was making so many excited high-pitched noises while listening to this episode that DD said she would try to catch up as soon as possible ^^ (Time to toast the Axel)I've recently become more interested in trying out different RPGs, so I decided to support Wait For Me on Kickstarter, a 22-day journaling game about time travel and connection where you travel through your own timeline. That sounded too introspective for my taste, but then I got the idea of playing it as fanfic and that sounded like a lot of fun. I decided on Gerard Keay, and I convinced DD to play as Lan Wangji. We got the first prompt today!Wait For Me, by Gerard KeayFandom: The Magnus ArchivesChapters: 1/22Additional tags: Repeated time travel, canon-divergence (probably)Summary: (cut for TMA #111 spoilers)I have no idea where this is going, but I look forward to finding out! Playing parallel with DD makes it even more fun, since it already looks like her fic (Wait For Me by Lan Zhan) and mine will be very different. I intend to post daily, fingers crossed I can keep it up.(If the game sounds interesting you can still join now, or buy it later.)Finally catching up on TMA episode reviews! I might be procrastinating on uni work again, ahem.(173: Night Night)(174: The Great Beast)(175: Epoch)(176: Blood Ties)The six week hiatus – three weeks, now – is not too long and it does give extra time for theories and stories etc., or for me to catch up on these, or hopefully finally make the rec posts I keep thinking about, fingers crossed. Plus, we get some fun little extras: (Live Show)(What the Ghost? – The Devil's Dance)( Fluff episode #3: In the Public Eye)You may have been wondering what this "Skyjacks" thing is that I've been having so many feelings about recently. I finally got around to writing a primer! I've never done that before so that was exciting, and I even managed to mostly use words instead of just exclamation marks.Soundtrack: Call of the SkyJoin the crew of the sky pirate ship Uhuru on their adventures! A teenage mage, a changeling, a mysterious swordfighter and a necromancer try to hide the fact that the captain is a zombie while they fight a megacorporation and eldritch sea monsters and visit festivals.Campaign: Skyjacks is a hilarious, exciting and dramatic TTRPG actual play podcast with fantastic characters and wonderful music.(The game)(The story and characters)(The fandom)You can find the podcast here on the website, or on other podcast distributing sites. (If you support the show on Patreon you get access to some bonus worldbuilding/background episodes.)Let me know if there's anything else you want to know! I'm very happy to keep talking about my favorite sky pirates :) And I would love to have more people to talk about them with.11 1213141516171819202122232425262728293031

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