schneefink

I wrote my accounting/financial reporting exam yesterday, I'm so glad that's done. I'm cautiously optimistic but I'll find out in 6-8 weeks.

That means now I have time for all the things I wanted to do, especially fannish things! ...I thought and immediately felt overwhelmed because there's so much. In addition to playing more Silksong (and after that, Hades 2) there's books I want to read and things I want to watch, and fic I want to read and posts and fanworks I want to comment on and things I want to post and people I want to chat with and fic I want to write, and that's not even mentioning all the chores I've been putting off and RL social things. At least it's a better kind of stress ^^

Hermitcraft season 10 just ended, and it was beautiful. The previous season ending I'd watched was season 9 and it ended with two people, Joe and Scar, each alone on the server, and then it was over; but season 10 ended with over a dozen hermits on the server together playing games and having fun and doing one last group hug while the bells counted down, and it was sad, yes, but also joyous. They built this together, they had a great time with their friends, and they're going to build more things together and have more good times together :) This really was the season they all became even closer.

Season 10 was the first season I watched live from the beginning, and it was great. So many fun stories, and events, and games, and great builds, and wonderful moments.
Some favorites, incomplete and in no particular order:
- the whole permit storyline, with Cub taking over as permit manager from Grian and then the No Poe being hunted down and exiled and Cleo riding back over the nether roof and more Taskmaster
- Ghastketball! And Hungry Hermits, and Ravager Rush, and Metro Mayhem, and the Labyrinth, so many cool games this season.
- The two big charity events with so many hermits meeting up IRL, once at the Gamers for Giving LAN party and once in the actual Mojang studio offices
- Mumbo getting really into building and also fans
- Fight club - I wish it hadn't petered out but what we got was still great
- Grian's quest for a mending book with the underwater chapel, and then Scar fishing one right in front of him
- The mystery of the ore snatcher - I wonder when we'll find out who the main ore snatcher was (since Grian already confessed to 'helping out' to throw Doc off the track)
- Tall Claims Court and Doc being sentenced to skyblock
- Cleo doing sculk experiments and concluding that the sculk is in love with Cub
- the Neighborhood was also fun, and I'll just ignore the two people who left (I'm really glad that that was handled so professionally and didn't blow up into huge drama on this side of the fandom)
- and so much more.

There's several s10 episodes yet to come, and in the meantime I look forward to the world download and the Hermitcraft panel at Twitchcon and then of course the next season, whenever it starts (my guess is mid to late November.)

- I did a thing at work today that I was scared of. I was hoping it would be the kind of thing that is only scary in my head, and that was only partially the case, but it's mostly done now (I hope) and that means I'm mostly done with the most important things I need to do before the end of September deadlines, which means I'll finally have more time to study for my exam in early October, fingers crossed. I'll be so relieved when that's over, and I'll finally have more time again for other people and hobbies. It's so mean that I have so little time for Silksong rn and I won't be able to play Hades 2 1.0 when it comes out, boo.

- Last week we went on a company outing to play "topgolf," which is basically golf played from a balcony with a different scoring system etc. I'd never played golf before, I don't particularly feel the need to do it again but it was fun to try out. I did have a sore arm the day after which, I know I have noodle arms but somehow I'm still sometimes surprised when I get reminded of it.

- Years ago I got a voucher for a spa as a birthday present and then never used it because I couldn't decide what for, and then recently I decided to treat myself and try something out so I got a pedicure for the first time. It was nice! And now I have glittery teal toenails and that makes me happy when I see them.

A month ago I started taking a city rental bike for part of my way home once, sometimes twice a week, just the part that has a very nice cycle path along the river. It's barely twenty minutes, but it's something, which is better than nothing, especially since I'm not currently doing any other regular sports.
It's tricky to find something: I have to be careful because of my wrists and because of my knees (uugh), it has to be something I can motivate myself for, and currently I don't have much time either. Maybe eventually I'll join L for bouldering more often, idk.

Hades II full release is in two weeks! I was/am so excited for the game to come out but the timing is really unfortunate >.< Not only am I pretty sure I'll still be in the middle of Silksong, but it's also two weeks before an important exam so a really bad time. Ideally I'll wait until after my exam but it's going to be very difficult to avoid spoilers... Fingers crossed.

Silksong is finally out! "Fortunately" I didn't make it home by 4pm on Thursday meaning I only had to wait a little over an hour of frequent refreshing until I could finally buy the game xD

It's so much fun! Very reminiscent of Hollow Knight in a good way: atmosphere, gameplay, level design... And very hard. But (most of) the fights are fun to figure out, and the successes feel great. Tbh the main reason why I wish it didn't take me so long is because I'm already really looking forward to watching others play, but I also don't want any spoilers.

( Minor gameplay spoilers )

My actual playthrough, the first almost ten hours, with plenty of spoilers:
(Benchmark, I have three achievements for defeating bosses so far and explored a bit further into the ~next region; and I strongly suspect the first three bosses will probably be the same for most people.)
( My actual playthrough, with spoilers )

Yesterday I played until 2am, today hopefully not quite as long. Tomorrow I'm at a friend's birthday party, and I might think the timing more unfortunate if I didn't suspect my wrists will be glad for the break... But I have no other plans for Sunday except play, looking forward to it. (Well, that and watch a few of the MCSR Playoffs finale matches when I need a break, we'll see.)

I'm a big fan of the Murderbot books, so I was looking forward to the show, especially after I started hearing that it was good. The plan was to watch it all at once with L, since season one isn't very long. It took a while to find the time, but it became more urgent when I had a meeting scheduled with a client who I talked about the books with last year and who'd asked me how I liked the series on our first phone call this year ^^
L and I started watching together, but L didn't like it very much so I watched the second half on my own. And after watching the show I reread all of the books, and then I read a lot of fic.

I enjoyed it! I didn't like the very first scene because that wasn't how I'd imagined it somehow (in hindsight, not sure why I had such an immediate averse reaction to that scene in particular); but that somehow helped me immediately separate show-verse from book-verse and then I could accept all the other changes more easily (well. most of them) and overall I had a good time.
I'm very glad I waited to watch until the first season was done, considering how short the episodes were, with very effective cliffhangers too.

( TV show spoilers )

I really enjoyed rereading the books afterwards, too. ( Spoilers up to System Collapse )

The same client - my client, and that word sounds different even in that approximate context now ^^ - recommended I read Project Hail Mary next so that is next on the list - after a bunch more MB fic, most likely, because I'm enjoying those a lot.

I mostly went to the cinema to watch Superman today because I wanted to feel like I did anything, but I did have a good time.
I'm so out of ~practice watching superhero movies, I kept getting distracted by logic. But other than that I did enjoy the superhero parts, and the Superman parts. (The romance I was neutral on.)
This is another movie where the villain had a good point somewhere in there originally but left "reasonable" behind several thousand miles ago. Yes having extremely powerful metahumans/aliens that can interfere in any conflict they like apparently without any oversight is very concerning (no matter how "human" they feel) but, uh. Excellent job making this Luthor both very evil and very scary.
(I didn't like Krypto. As a "character" he was fun but I really dislike badly trained exuberant dogs and one with superpowers is so much worse.)

A few weeks ago I organized a movie night with friends to watch Kpop Demon Hunters because I'd heard so much about it and that was a great decision. Here I didn't get distracted by logic once ^^ It was just a fun time. And the songs are very catchy, too. I've already sung one at karaoke (This is what it sounds like) and tried two of them in Beat Saber (Golden was very difficult, Soda Pop on easy was indeed easy.)
I only took a brief look at fandom/fanfic but I'm not feeling that fannish about it. (I was surprised that the common assumption seems to be

spoilers

that Rumi's mother had a secret love affair with a demon - I think it might even be word of god canon - while my first thought was that she was probably raped. Fandom is also very hard on Celine, which on the one hand I understand but she was also in a super shitty position.)

battleshipex had author reveals. I wrote six works for team Grape: 4x Hermitcraft and 2x Hades II (under an extra spoiler cut jic. I can hardly wait for the full release of the game.) The Hermitcraft works are all rather short, mostly written rather quickly to target specific tags we needed right then, while the two Hades II fics are longer.

Overall I'm quite happy with what I wrote! Significantly more than last year for Battleship, too. By the end I was quite stressed and tired (it certainly didn't help that it was shortly after MCYT Battleship. Next year MCYT Battleship will be earlier, fortunately.)

Thieves' Bonds, Hermitcraft
1k, Grian & Cub (/Scar), fantasy AU heist
Summary: Grian and Cub are forced to work together to steal a dragon's hoard.
Notes: Inspired by the tags "dragons," "heist," and "soulbonds." Pre-Convexian in my head. It was more beautiful in my head but still, not bad.

Reckless Charge, Hermitcraft
0.5k, Tango/Etho, SF AU
Summary: Tango crashes his spaceship into Etho's greenhouse.
Notes: For the tags "spaceship," "genius," "meet-cute," and "battlesheep." I really like how this one came out.

pesky bird, dreaming, Hermitcraft
0.3k, Grian, inspired by this is about a stuffed bird
Summary: Some days it squeezed the toy over and over.
Pesky bird. Pesky bird. Pesky bird.
Notes: Like last year, a "birdification" tag hit featuring Grian. Short ficlet set after one of my favorite Hermitcraft fics, I think it came out well.

moving in, Hermitcraft
0.6k, Scar/Cub/Grian, sugar baby/fantasy AU
Summary: Scar and Cub share a mental connection. Grian doesn't mind.
Notes: Written very quickly to finish off "sugar baby AU," "mental link," and "moving in together." Silly fluff.

Hades II spoilers (barely any, mostly character appearances, but still)

A Concoction of a Certain Potency, Hades II
2.2k, Melinoe/Medea, pre-canon, dubcon, explicit
Summary: Melinoë is wearing a very short dress. Medea decides to teach her a lesson in self-control.
Notes: It is a very short dress! I really wanted to write Hades II for magic/sorcery/necromancy/mentor-mentee dynamic et al, and then somehow I got inspired and wrote my first smut fic in almost ten years. Obviously I'm a novice, but overall I like this, and I really like the scenario.

What Would Change This Time, Hades II
3.2k, Melinoe & al, time travel
Summary: „Well. Far be it from me to save you from making your own foolish mistakes," Hecate said finally.
After her ritual to travel back in time didn't take her far enough to prevent Chronos' conquest, Melinoë continues the fight.
Notes: I originally was inspired by some tags on the first board ("time travel," obviously, but also "katabasis", "secret identity" etc.), but I didn't finish this fic until the third one because I got a bit stuck after the first chapter. Writing time travel for an unfinished canon is tricky. But then I got the idea to have her meet

spoiler

Patroclus

and I loved that so much that I had to finish writing it.

I've decided not to do ficinabox this year, which on the one hand is sad because the different formats etc. are very cool, but the main creation period is in the busiest time of the year for me (work and studying) and it would be very unwise.

Maybe I'll try to reach my very vague goal of writing at least one fic for every season of the Life series this year: I'm missing Last Life, Wild Life, and Past Life (and Real and Simple Life.) Definitely doable. Or some rare Hermitcraft pairings I would like to see more of. I'll see what inspires me, no pressure.

Getting some battleshipex recs out before the anon phase ends soon.

I got two great gifts:

Next Time by alice_not_alice, Hermitcraft
0.6k, Etho & Decked Out 2
Summary: Prickles made it to the new season. Someone else didn’t.
The worldbuilding in this is fantastic, and I also love Etho here. Rusty <3

The Dead Hills by Anonymous, Hermitcraft
0.9k, Joe Hills/ZombieCleo, fantasy AU
Summary: Prince Joe of the Hills travels to meet his new spouse, Cleo the Zombie Queen
Great Joe voice, very him, and a very fun scenario.

And I have only read a small fraction of the other works in the collection, but under the cut are recs for some I especially enjoyed.
11 fics: Life Series, Dungeon Meshi, Naruto, Murderbot Diaries, Cthulhu/Taskmaster, Star Trek, Pirates of the Caribbean, Hermitcraft, Nirvana in Fire, Dream SMP
5 artpieces: original work, Murderbot Diaries, Spirit, Pokémon, Temeraire

( 15 fanworks )

We've now played four half-day sessions of our "Stars Without Number" campaign and I'm having a lot of fun.

Our party owns and operates a mining ship, and our first two sessions featured quite a bit of asteroid mining, and also a rescue mission and exploration. Then the space pirates attacked! Not us directly but the space station we are currently based at, so we helped fight them off. And then our latest session was mostly shopping & intel gathering & planning: it sounds like there's an entire fleet of pirates, likely from outside the system, and they've sabotaged and possibly taken over several stations/planets/routes. We'll find out more next time!, which sadly won't be until September because of vacations.

I really like my character. I'm a teleporter! (Talk about wish fulfillment.) Partial psychic/partial expert, because I thought being a full psychic would be overwhelming and I was mostly interested in one discipline anyway. Being able to teleport is so cool. I can teleport 1000 kilometres already and take three people with me.
I'm also really happy with my role in the party. In our main campaign I'm the youngest cat in a group of older and more headstrong cats, which I found difficult sometimes. This time I decided to play a character with more authority, and I've enjoyed it a lot. While all of our party members own the ship together and have equal say, on the bridge I'm the captain; and more importantly, I'm the one keeping track of our money and inventory. (Idk why our GM was surprised that I made a budget and business plan after the first session ^^ )
Our DM told us to prepare back-up characters in case we die, and I did, but I really hope I survive. I even ordered a nice mini figure for her :) As a party I think we've good odds of survival: we have a medic, a biopsionic (=healer), and I can teleport us out in emergencies. Fingers crossed.

I also really enjoy the system, both the setting and mechanically. Playing in a sci-fi world is a welcome contrast after around three years playing in a fantasy world as cats. And playing someone with supernatural abilities feels especially cool after three years as a non-magical archer.
One thing I didn't expect to enjoy this much is leveling up. In our previous system we earn adventure points and we can spend those on improving abilities/skills/etc., but it's more gradual, which tbh makes more sense in-universe. Buuut, leveling up just feels cool. Especially when I can pick new abilities.
What I like less is how ship combat works. So far it's been a little tedious as it seems like half the party always has very little to do; but I suspect that's also because our combat options as a mining ship are limited. We'll see how it goes. We just upgraded our weapons because of the pirates.

Once again our GM has underestimated how long it'll take us to get through his plot so we'll have to see how far we get/what happens when our fifth cat comes back from her year abroad. But until then I really look forward to our next adventures.