wolffyluna

I have recently got very into Vampires SMP. It is a linked series of Minecraft Let's Plays of several players all playing a modded version of minecraft. (The 'SMP' in the name stands for 'survival multiplayer' which translates to 'on a multiplayer server where you can die and have to gather resources.) The modifications: vampires exist and have access to powers that the 'human' players do not have, including the ability to turn humans, and there is a capture the flag like mechanic about claiming beacons for the vampire or human teams.

But what makes this most interesting are that all of the players are roleplaying, and that the game very quickly becomes a social deception and deduction game-- one made even More So, because at the beginning, most of the characters do not believe vampires are real.

Now, roleplay combining with social deduction is fun enough, but there is another reason that Vampires SMP has got it's claws into me so much: the way point of view works. Because each player creates and edits their own videos, and these videos are all in first person. If the player did not see it, the camera and the viewers don't know about it. (Only adding to this is the fact that players will often edit conversations they have, so two videos of the same conversation can be slightly different.) This leads to people doing soliloquies to their audience. To people having conversations where from one point of view you know they are a vampire, and from the other you have no idea that they are lying. It leads to, in one case, someone giving a dramatic speech thinking it worked because the other characters only went "so, they were lying, right?" after they left.

But even better, is the way that, at least for me, you end up seeing things through that character's eyes and ~agreeing with them? Which makes it interesting to then watch those same scenes from other people's perspectives. Is this person reckless and jumping the gun, or full of reasonable paranoia and intense emotion. Is this person in a revolving door of loyalty, or do they keep getting driven away from people.

It's fun!

I made some things for it!

pistachios (1545 words) by WolffyLuna
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Goblin Emperor Series - Katherine Addison
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Csevet Aisava & Deret Beshelar
Characters: Csevet Aisava, Deret Beshelar
Additional Tags: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Aftermath of trauma, Set After Winternight, Csevet-centric, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Referenced violence, Referenced Death, Missing Scene
Summary:

After the attempted assassination, Csevet cannot sleep. He meets Beshelar in the kitchens of the Alcethmeret.

The Promise (1222 words) by WolffyLuna
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Oathsworn (Actual Play Podcast)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Dorado the Adamant & Nabain Palisade
Characters: Dorado the Adamant, Nabain Palisade
Additional Tags: and the absence of Serikali, Post canon, Missing Scene, Dialogue Heavy, Major Spoilers
Summary:

“Did you ever speak to Serikali?” Dorado asked.

“Not as often as I would have liked.” The broken promise settled over his shoulders like a yoke. But even under that weight, he still could carry curiosity. Dorado was direct: if she changed topic, there had to be a reason.

silver peonies (2460 words) by WolffyLuna
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 苍兰诀 | Love Between Fairy and Devil (TV)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Dongfang Qingcang/Xiao Lanhua
Characters: Dongfang Qingcang, Xiao Lanhua (Love Between Fairy and Devil)
Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Fluff with feelings, Trans Female Character, Makeover, dongfang qingcang is bad at feelings
Summary:

Lanhua cocked her head. “Do you want to be human again?”

“No. It’s—” The feeling scurried away from the light of scrutiny. “I want to be a different person. But not too different.” She threw out a random suggestion. “Like myself, but a woman.”

Xiao Lanhua lit up, eyes sparkling.

Qingcang recognised that expression from experience. She waved a hand again. “It was just an example.”

Thread of Duty: (aka the Cavalry General and Embroidery Mage arranged marriage romance.) Finished, except for cover, formatting, and acknowledgements. I mean, I could edit it again? But also, I can move forward. ...even if that would require working out what to do with it. (Insert combined rant about both Amazon and itch.io.)

Survival Showdown: (aka VR streamers in not-a-death-game.) I thiiiiiink it's had it's second draft? But I'd need to check. So the first step is 'reconstruct where I was up to with it, and go forward from there.' Also, then work out what I'm going to do with it. (See above rant.)

Sapphic Steppe Atrocities: (which needs a more descriptive name.) I have got an editorial letter back, and need to go do some chunky edits to the thing. The next step is to go and do research on the Central Asian Steppe (short chain of logic gets me here) and research on [deep sigh] early modern Japan and World War 1, even though I don't want to do either (a longer chain of logic gets me here.)

Emperor/Favourite: partway through outlining.

Hi. How are your days going? Yesterday, I experienced an hour long surprise hike feat. 31C and humidity + having to psychologically manipulate some cows.

*So. Picture this. Before work, we realise that two of us need to to Mining Town in the morning, while two of us need to go into the office (which is in the middle of a cattle station). But we only have one work car.

... one of my coworkers does have a personal car, which he is willing to let us borrow.

So. The coworker who owns the personal car + another guy drive into town... with the work car. Me and my other coworker take the personal car. It's an old rattley thing with no clearance, but it is technically a four wheel drive, so it should be fine on the dirt station tracks? Right?

We turn off the highway, and start driving down the tracks. Within 5 minutes, we mysteriously lose power steering. A minute later, the check engine light comes on. During that minute as we try and work out what was going on, my coworker goes "FUCK LOOK AT THE ENGINE TEMPERATURE GAUGE." We stop and get out.

Belt? On the ground. A worrying mix of radiator fluid and oil? Also on the ground. Bonnet? Gently smoking.

We are currently in the middle of a dirt track, in the middle of nowhere. The weather can best be described as "the inside of Satan's swampy butt cheeks." It's going to take a couple hours for our coworkers to get to Mining Town and back. We have no phone reception. We have limited water and no air condititioning.

But we have some water, and our office has A/C and a phone, and it is, technically, walking distance.

So we spend an hour wading 7km through the more humid parts of the Devil.

But we are on a cattle station. There are cows. Now, these cows are appropriately afraid of cars: they'll get out of the way but they won't panic. They are inappropriately afraid of people on foot: we are talking full on galloping away from us PANIC, the earth shaking under their hooves.

Now. Flight is fine. We're going to have a problem if any of them choose fight.

My goal: get the cows to run away from us while we were still as far from them as possible... without freaking them out so much some decided to run in the wrong direction. With their horns down.

Now, I don't know much about cows, but I do know about horses. And horses and cows are basically the same [citation needed.] How would I manipulate a horse to get them to run far, far away?

I stood up very, very straight. I picked a cow in the herd to stare at dead in the eyes. And I thought thoughts like "mmmm, steak tartare," and "you know, it's always been a dream of mine to rip a still beating heart out of a rib cage as I watch the life leave my victim's eyes, but I've just never had a chance to."

Which worked way better than it should have? So we reached the office, without dying of a heat stroke, cow, or coworker avenging his car.

Before I forget: If I am incommunicado, or something odd happens to my account on December 10th, do not worry! I will be alive (...inshallah?), just potentially fighting Australia's incoming under-16 social media ban.

I've been trying to cut back on my Youtube Shorts habit. Mostly because it's a time suck and, like, I have plenty of relaxing time sucks that are more consistently enjoyable than shorts? (Sometimes the algorithm smiles upon me, sometimes it has no taste, but 'me, choosing what podcasts to download' usually has taste.)

But I now have a new reason to stop using it. Because for some reason it decided I really wanted to see a livestream of graphic! most likely real! violence!

And look. It's one thing for a time suck to be inconsistently enjoyable. It's rather another to be inconsistently enjoyable and randomly serving me graphic violence that gets instantly seared into the back of my eyeballs. It's a real 'you only need one fleck of shit in an ice cream sundae to mean you should stop going to that ice cream store.'

Relatedly: do people have recommendations for vegetarian and vegan recipe bloggers and youtubers? Bonus points if they mostly make things that were originally intended to be vegetarian/vegan, instead of making variants of usually meat containing dishes.

Some of you may remember the fact that months ago I got my bike stolen from my apartment's garage. I have not replaced it, because unfortunately I have been trapped in a cycle of indecision by The Dilemma.

You see, I could replace it with either another manual bike, or I could get an electric bike.

Advantages of a manual bike: I know I can use them, they are cheaper.

Disadvantages: ...I am surrounded by Fuck Off Hills, and there are some routes I would go by bike regularly if it were not for those hills.

Advantages of an ebike: presumably could get up those Fuck Off Hills?

Disadvantages: ...I don't actually know for sure that they could? Also, I would not keep this one in the garage (see: what happened to the last one, that didn't even have an expensive battery in it), so I need to know if I could lift the thing up the stairs to my apartment.

So, to make this decision, I need to know whether it can get up hills, and if I can Even Lift It Bro.

Of course, because this is a nested dilemma, there are two ways to do this.

My city has some of those app share electric bikes. They are expensive but less so than option 2. I couldn't take one up my apartment stairs, but I could experimentally lift it? Also, there's a bit of a 'scooters, scooters everywhere, but not a bike to drink' situation which might make finding one. tricky.My local ebike store also rents them. I could try the type of bike I'd like to buy, and even lift it up stairs! Store it in a convenient place instead of having to search for it! But of course, there is a catch. Even the special 'we are letting you rent this for a shorter time than usual because we think you might buy it' rate is... about 1/10th the cost of buying a new ebike.

Do people have any advice for escaping this dilemma?

( animal drawings under the cut )

Disabled Tyrant's Beloved Pet Fish vol. 1 by Xue Shan Fei Hu

Li Yu falls asleep reading a web novel, and wakes up in the body of a carp getting prepared to be soup. He quickly finds out that he has a system that wants him to be the pet of the web novel's tyrannical protagonist and improve his personality. ...while he is a pet fish.

This took a little while to get it's legs, but once it got it's legs, it was really quite funny. It knows how to milk the humour of problem solving as a fish, conversations between two mute protagonists, the identity shenanigans you can only get with shape shifting, and locked room ~~mysteries~~ fishteries.

I am planning to read the rest of the volumes once I work through the other first volume danmei I bought.

The Powers and the Thrones by Dan Jones

A broad overview of Medieval Europe, written for a lay audience.

I have mixed feelings about this one. On the hand holding the good things about it, it is as far as I can tell accurate, and goes into detail about events that other overviews of Medieval Europe I've read don't (how exactly the Western Roman Empire fell, what the hell the German Peasant's War was.) It's quite readable too!

The problem is. [deep breath.] Jones keeps self consciously drawing analogies to modern things. And sometimes this is clunky but fine, like when he says chansons de gestes were like superhero movies (ie really common and popular.) But sometimes the analogies hurt my soul. Such as 'Martin Luther went #viral' and 'a particular failed arranged marriage was like the two state solution.' (The latter hurt me the worst, because it gave me the worst mental image.)

So. Yeah. Mixed feelings.