Bright End of Nowhere

Look, I don't know what's going on either, but I promised Trout I'd actually remember to post to DW because that's hilarious.

Hi, I'm writing fic again these days. It's...I don't even know man.

title: the sun don’t shine underground
fandom: Avatar: the Last Airbender
series: salt and ashes
summary: In one universe, Ozai looked at his newborn son and saw disappointment. In another, he saw a way to rival his brother. In both, he looked at his daughter and saw a weapon. The question would be who was the wielder.

Azula was never anyone’s idea of a hero.

i. there’s a tiger in your cage (now go to sleep)
ii. and how i feel is like a child in a foreign place (far too alone)
iii. you only get one side of true (gone and clipped my wings)
iv. my native tongue is blasphemy (so that's the one i'll write)
v. the prison and the shackles colonize you brick by brick (leading by example)
vi. let the fire spread (try and move like you're meant to)

I seem to be writing fic again? For a fandom that I haven't touched in like...12+ years? (Avatar the Last Airbender, if you must know)

Guys, 2020 is weird.

The recent Tumblr (and my subsequent technical assessments of pillowfort.io) nonsense reminded me that this exists.

Hello!

Since I last posted, I
1. successfully defended a Master's thesis
2. graduated with a Masters.
3. dealt with family nonsense.
4. got hired by a company
5. started running a tabletop
6. got laid off by a company
7. started tinkering with Maker-like projects (desktop 3D printing and CNC and electronics)
8. started learning Javascript
9. accepted a new job (as of...15 minutes ago)

When I lay it all out like that, I can't tell if I've been really busy or not at all.

I should probably mention over here for those of you who aren't on the Tumblrz that I have been sucked into writing fic again. A lot of it. Which is a problem when I'm supposed to be writing my Master's thesis, but here we are.

It's mostly Supergirl these days, but I'll try to remember to crosspost a notification here when I post on AO3 if people care.

I don't know how to start this. This isn't how I thought this week would go. This isn't how I wanted it to go. I'm like a lot of people right now.

I don't know how to start this, but I'll try.

Hi.

It's been awhile, hasn't it? I'm more active over on Tumblr these days, but...I think I needed to come back here. I'm sorry it's been so long.

So this week happened. That election happened. The atmosphere around here, up in the deep-blue parts of deep-blue Massachusetts, I can only describe it as "oppressive". Everything seems muted. The statements from the university are the same ones they send out when someone dies. It's surreal.

I can't really say too much. I keep flitting back and forth between despair and white-hot rage.

I'm already losing things. I knew Wednesday that I'm going to have to quit my PhD after getting the Masters in the spring. No funding, funding uncertainty, and the stark knowledge that I need to be able to afford to drag my parents and brother out here, where it's safer, in case the worst happens. I can't do that while in school.

I don't know what I'm going to do. It's still a gaping wound to know that I woke up one day with options and a future, and when I woke up the next those were gone. Every time I think I might be able to talk about it, put some distance between it, I just end up feeling raw all over again.

It's so cold and painful to know that the people who share blood with you don't actually give a shit about you, and that they're fine with throwing your dreams and future and safety in the trash. I don't know if I'll ever be able to talk to them again. I might have stopped caring.

I'll pick myself up again. I'm going to be too angry, too spiteful to stay down.

Just to prove I'm not dead yet, and that this summer is going amazingly stress-free, here's some Fun With Boxes:

( Read more... )

Hi. Still alive. Life got eaten by a lot of things. (LARP season. Work. Holidays. Work.)

I don't know why I don't post here as much anymore. I do still read almost everything. I just don't have much to say. Well, unless I started only using this space for venting exclusively, but I don't know if anyone wants to read that.

(I'm doing the "give me things to talk about" meme, with a few caveats. Feel free to leave me prompts. Leave more than one, if you want.)

auguris gave: "Summarize your perfect RPG. (Console or tabletop. Hell, both if you're up for it.)"

I'm going to tackle tabletop for now, because the tabletop system I'm writing has eaten my brain entirely.

As some of you might know, I'm in the process of writing a tabletop system and setting (and it's apparently grown a LARP setting) called Salt, Silk, and Steel. The impetus for this had a lot to do with a general state of dissatisfaction with tabletop RPGs.

First off: setting. I am fucking sick of Western European-inspired fantasy settings. I'm even more sick of them when they try to add other cultures in some bid for "inclusiveness" and come out looking like Imperialist caricatures, draped in the worst bits of Orientalism and "exotic" fetishization. (DnD Oriental Adventures, I am side-eying you so. hard.) The last woods-LARP I was in I left in disgust over having my complaints about a rather problematic take on my mother's culture ignored by the all-white staff. Let's not even get into rants about fantasy novels, as I have some rather unkind things to say about a rather popular and beloved YA fantasy author's portrayals.

So what I want is a setting that kicks the Western-Euro-centric setting of most fantasy systems to the curb and explores anything else. (In 3S, it just might be canonical that the Western Europe analogue is the least-interesting part of the world. I AM THAT BITTER.)

Second, and this is probably the most important: mechanics-roleplay integration. I want a game where both are equally important and necessary. In a lot of DnD, for example, the non-combat skills feel a bit tacked on (this has been lessened in later editions, but it's still somewhat there in 4E). And then you have games like FATE, where it's all roleplay and the mechanics are very lightweight. There needs to be a balance between "crunch" and "fluff". Something where someone who is a very good roleplayer can socially manipulate his way to his goals without necessarily needing to roll for it all the time, but at the same time, the mechanics junkie who isn't quite as good at talking to people off-the-cuff still feels like she can match him head-on if she puts enough points into the correct skills and the dice favor her.

That sort of balance is incredibly hard to even think about hitting. Hell, it might be impossible. But I'd love to see it happen.

Third: customization. Something where two PCs might look to have similar stats, but play very, very differently. Where it's pretty hard to find the One True Optimization, and a system that rewards unorthodox combinations and lateral thinking. Also hell to design, but we're on "perfect RPG" so why not.

Finally: A system where a single combat is tactically interesting and doesn't take 3 hours. :)

(I'm doing the "give me things to talk about" meme, with a few caveats. Feel free to leave me prompts.)

So synecdochic gave me: "Now that i know you are involved in the Mystery Hunt: what got you interested, and what are some of your favorite Hunt stories?"

Which is fitting, because Hunt ended a week ago (not counting wrap-up). (I think Zoz was still answering puzzle call-ins yesterday. Because he's Zoz.)

( Cut because this really got away from me )

The last few days have been a bit crazy. Work was expecting me to do the impossible, which was made moreso by the fact I'm on a lot of meds to get rid of a terrible lingering cough. But I think I got my PI on my side, so things will be less crazy.

I also came within 26 hours of missing a deadline for a grad school application because I misplaced the sheet of paper with all the dates on them. But I didn't, and that's what matters.

On Thursday, I came home to an email from one of the schools I applied to telling me that they'd like to offer me a flight-and-expenses paid trip to their department open house in March. I'm not accepted into the program yet, so the invite is a little baffling, but I'm taking it as a good sign.

And then I've probably slept about 18 hours in the last 4 days. Because, see, it was the annual MIT Mystery Hunt. Last year, I was on team with the name [the entire text of Atlas Shrugged] (we, uh, discovered there was no character limit on the team name submission box. Someone suggested we take advantage of this), and won the 2013 Hunt. Our reward was writing the next one.

I don't really write puzzles, but I've been testsolving some of them for the past year. And in an attack of guilt for not doing more during writing (due to attacks of real life), I signed myself up to be available for whatever during runtime. So I spent the last four days running around campus doing NPC and organizer interactions for various teams. And since this hunt had the theme Alice in Wonderland, that meant I threw dignity to the wind and allowed myself to be crammed into costumes to play the stoner Caterpillar, the Tweedles, voice the Jabberwock, and very nearly was stuffed into a dress to play the Queen of Hearts (I couldn't fit the costume. So a guy much skinner than me was the Queen of Hearts in drag). I also almost had to be the Cheshire Cat, but the boss realized I'd been limping at that point (before even I had) and asked if I really wanted to try running around for the next 4 straight hours after 20 hours awake at that point. (The people on the team are some fantastic human beings, for a lot of reasons.)

(The writing team and hunt name was [Alice Shrugged] for what should be fairly obvious reasons at this point.)

So this is what I've been up to for the past year. And now can cross that off my list of obligations.