schneefink

My mom is currently doing a no-smartphone-challenge with her students, and I decided to do the light version and set myself a goal of 1.5 hours of smartphone time per day (normal phone calls don't count.) I did well the first few days but then failed the last three, and right now I'm realizing the limit means I can't use my phone to listen to streams while doing the dishes. Boo.

Other effects: I read books on my e-book-reader on my commute instead of fics on my phone. And I really wish my radio wasn't broken but it hasn't reached the necessary annoyance level yet to get it fixed.

I'm not behind on my study plan for my next exam yet! (The upcoming exam is mostly VAT so both important and relevant and hard.) We'll see how long it lasts, but I'm in week 3 and that's pretty good especially for my standards. And that's despite me being sick one weekend and having a bad cold the next.

I told myself I'd combine it with finally starting the Hades 2 1.0 playthrough I've been planning for months, and for the first two weeks I actually managed to stick to my "one run per study session" rule but, uh, not anymore. Ahem. Good news, still having a lot of fun playing Hades 2. And thanks to playing over 130 hours in Early Access I'm so much better than when I started my first playthrough.
(I started now because the plan was DD would start the week after and then we can talk about it, but she had a schedule change and still hasn't started so that didn't work out either ^^)

But since I started playing Hades 2 I mostly stopped playing Vampire Survivors - not completely, I have done a few more runs to get some of the very last unlocks/secrets, but mostly. So have the remaining notes for now, directly continuing from last time.

( More Vampire Survivors: more bats, still no vampires. )


I should stop procrastinating and do the dishes.

I did it, I got to the credits and unlocked the Queen :D

( Notes, spoilers everywhere )

I definitely want to continue playing and discover more, at least for a bit (until DD finally has time to play Hades 2, most likely, because we decided to start an 1.0 playthrough at roughly the same time.) But I'm glad I got to this point now because that'll make it much easier to take a break.

I finished books 1-7 of Dungeon Crawler Carl in two weeks, and more importantly I managed to drag both my gf and DD into it too - I think that's one of my strengths :) I had a great time.
( spoilers )

Slight downside, DD and I haven't started our Hades 2 1.0 playthroughs yet, since we planned to start at the same time and she just got to book 6 of DCC ^^ Hopefully soon though.

Instead I played a few runs of Vampire Survivors again. Good for occasional short play sessions that don't require much brainpower (though it is easy to forget to look at the time...) I don't unlock something every run but almost, which feels very cool and like I'm getting somewhere even though I have no idea what to do/where to go for actual game "progression." I might look it up at some point, idk.

(I also considered exploring the new Minecraft updates - I want to find a happy ghast! And ride a nautilus!, among other things - but I lost one set of good armor/tools in the End and another in the Nether a few months ago, and both are very possible to retrieve but I haven't found the motivation yet to either get one of them or make myself new gear. Possibly keepInventory would have been a good idea after all.)

Speaking of games, specifically board games: in early January with L and two of her friends we played Wingspan, which was a lot of fun, and then we tried out Earth, which we also enjoyed a lot. That one we tried first in single player, and then we decided to try the version where you play in teams but quickly switched back because it gets a lot more tactical quickly. The third long game the three of them played was Forest Shuffle - I detect a theme ^^
We also played a quick game of Pandemic. And this reminds me that L and I didn't get a chance to play Hanabi yet, hopefully soon.

It's also been ages since I gave an update on my group's TTRPG games and our current Stars Without Number campaign! We got to level six, which means I can now do "normal" teleports without Committing Effort and it feels fantastic. And I got some other cool abilities too, like imprinting on a party member to teleport back to their side even when they are out of sight.
( Recent adventures )

I think this is the last year I do fandomtrees because like last time I didn't make as many gifts as I wanted and feel bad...

But I did write a post-canon Silksong drabble I'm quite proud of:
Silk Snare for knave_of_swords
post-canon Lace(&Hornet) drabble
Summary: Much Silk was needed to see her sustained.
Notes: One of my favorite fannish drabbles I've written, I think it works very well.


I got pretty icons under my tree: some Hornet icons by gimmighoulcoins and some Grian icons by sarajayechan :D Lovely.

And I also got two other Silksong gifts recently:
Sunlight Dyed by CrushingOnGogh
stained glass art
Summary: Hornet from Silksong, depicted in stained glass
So pretty! The lights and the colors and the shapes!

reprieve by strifetxt
1k, Hornet & Shakra gen
Summary: Hornet, a conversation, and a musing.
Aaah the Hornet feelings <3

Happy New Year!

By New Year's both L and I had recovered from being sick for Christmas; I was only a little sick but L got it pretty bad. We spent it with friends, LK and MSZ, with good food and games, and the only downside was that we didn't see many fireworks.

We finally tried out the Minecraft: Builders & Biomes board game LK and MSZ gifted me for my birthday two years ago, somehow we had not gotten around to it before. It was fun! Definitely something I can imagine playing again.
Some with Minecraft: Explorers, a cooperative card game that I enjoyed so much I am planning to buy it for myself, too. We played it twice and won once (but it was a very close loss.)
I would love to play more board & card games this year. I have two cooperative board games that I haven't played in years, "Lord of the Rings" and "Village Attacks," hopefully there'll be some time for that, and I also just bought "Hanabi," which I've only played online so far.

Then on the first day of the new year L and I didn't do much, very relaxed, that was nice. I worked on the 2nd, but only for half a day. And now I'm both working on my 2025 recap, trying to catch up on reading & commenting (so many fic updates at the end of the year & exchange reveals!), and hopefully write something for fandomtrees. (I forgot to link my own tree, here, requesting Silksong, Hermitcraft, and Vampires SMP.)

Of the many pre-Christmas stressful things this year, an unexpected one is ficinabox. And I didn't even participate this year! But I usually try to read and comment widely before creator reveals and this year the timing was not great for me.

I did find many fanworks to enjoy and loved many of them, and here are some of my favorites. Several of them can be enjoyed fandom-blind.

This Ao3 Author's Curse Has Got Hands by antimony_medusa
Dream SMP, 5.6k, Phil & Techno, urban fantasy AU, A/N format
Summary: Fanfic author Technoblade has been pre-writing and is excited to start posting his whumptober longfic, his trusty beta Philza at his side. Unfortunately for his posting schedule, the Ao3 author's curse hits him hard, fast, and with an intensity never before seen. Really it's starting to seem like he's cursed.
Does this mean that he gives up posting his fic?
Nah nah nah nah nah he's got this handled. Don't even worry about it. Chapters will be posted come hell, high water, hospital visit, house invasions, eviction, mob action, emergency road trip, or kidnapping. Technoblade never dies, and he never misses an update.
Why I love it: A story told entirely in author's notes: the format works fantastic, the character voice is impeccable, and most importantly it's hilarious.
Canon knowledge required: Definitely not (tested on my gf.)

( More FIAB fics: 3x Hermitcraft, 1x original, 1x All For The Game, 1.5x Nirvana in Fire, 1x Nirvana in Fire 2 )

I played very little Silksong in the past 1-2 weeks and did pretty much everything I wanted to in my first playthrough (before the DLCs come out) so now is a good time to post the "epilogue" notes.

( Things I did after the true ending )

( Some more thoughts )

( LPs I watched )

I already know what I want to play next: Hades 2, of course. (But probably not this year, I have a huge backlog of books etc.)

I'm sick (uuugh), but it's November 30th and I don't want to fail my monthly rec challenge now. So you get four Hermitcraft recs without a larger theme. 1 art & 3 fic (1 space AU & 2 admin power games, one of them a Life series crossover.)
I don't think canon knowledge is required for any of them: definitely not the first two, and I think the important parts of the other two become clear very quickly.

in too deep by modest_starr
digital art, Geminitay
Summary: additional tags: Imminent Character Death, she is literally drowning, Hallucinations, Eye strain, highly saturated colors, Hermitcraft Season 10, Anthropologist Geminitay, Sea Monsters
Why I like it: The tags say "hallucinations" but I also really like the idea of scientist Gem looking too deep. Very cool colors.

Why is everyone sucking Farlands' dick over their new ship??? by Kaesa
6k, SF AU, implied Scar/Grian, social media outsider PoV with in-universe RPF
Summary: Hey, uh, what's with everyone losing their minds over Farlands' Good Times? I thought we all agreed Farlands was evil incarnate? Last big colony mission they launched, even half the people at Brave Voyages were like "wow so sick of Farlands' bullshit, hope Farlands explodes," but this thing has been around for less than a year and people HERE are like, writing romantic poetry about it? Can someone explain? Obviously I too am fascinated by whether they're using tuned mass dampers or something else to keep the gravity steady, and the reflex rewiring they have to do to the pilots to get something that big through hyperspace is wild, but uh. This is not that.
A forum thread from the future.
Why I love it: Reccing part 2 here so I have a good reason to rec the series when it's done; I also recommend part 1 but I like this one even better. Scar is a Pilot, which means he controls a spaceship with his brain, and Grian is his doctor. Very cool worldbuilding and very funny.

feeling a gold hand unfolding on me by springbeetle
3.3k, Grian & Xisuma, non-sexual kink (body modification, admin powers)
Summary: It was daylight, not that you could tell from the enclosed room Xisuma had teleported Grian into. A bright, fantastic Hermitcraft day, his friends bustling about the server engaged in activities, cheerfully oblivious to what Xisuma and Grian were about to do in this room together. To what Xisuma was about to do to Grian.
Most Hermits weren’t big on tradition, when you got down to it. They’d been around too long, seen enough of the universe to have set preferences about their bodies, or they had their own plans for each season. Scar and Cub had recently finished with their predatory ConVex business, for instance, and Cleo kept her zombieness– zombitude? Zombiehood?-- firmly under her own control, and the less said about Joe’s usual brand of shenanigans, the better.
So it had been unusual, having a new player such as Grian bring the concept up in the roundabout fashion he had, side-eyeing Xisuma like he wasn’t sure whether Xisuma would just snatch him up one day, like he was checking off a box on some haphazard to-do list-- like he’d smacked himself on the helmet and gone oh, silly me, that’s right! I forgot to modify Grian to my personal preferences last month!
Why I like it: Wonderful take on admin Xisuma taking care of his player even with an unusual request. I like how Xisuma needs the encouragement and reassurances to keep going but he does enjoy getting into his evil role when he feels comfortable and he is good at it, too. And Grian is very good at prodding him just enough and having to admit he doesn't not want this, delicious.

a weave that can be unpicked by strifetxt
3.4k, Scar&/Grian, Third Life
Summary: Grian's eyes widen. “Wait, did you think I’d made a plug-in to force players into turning hostile?”
Scar blinks. “Didn’t you?”
“Wh— No, of course not!”
“Oh.” Scar deflates, but then, just as quickly, perks back up. “Could you though?”
Or: Scar has some ideas to make Third Life more fun. Grian has some concerns.
Why I like it: Excellent recursive fic of the above, and another case of a player prodding an admin into using their powers on them. I love the intimacy of the admin power used on a willing subject.

I found out I have iron-deficiency anemia (again.) Looking at the list of possible symptoms explains a lot about my last few weeks: I thought it was stress at first and then started to get concerned after the exam. Mostly it's reassuring because it's treatable with simple iron tablets, but a little frustrating too because it'll take a while and I would like to be cured immediately, thank you, I'm getting really sick of being so tired and struggling to focus.
And I'm feeling a bit extra whiny today because I got vaccinated and my arm hurts.

The MCSR Midoffs s2 have started and are live right now: the first match was already absolute cinema, so many plot twists in one match. I watched the first two and I definitely want to watch Cub play later, but I took a break to play more Silksong (and other stuff.) I'm practicing the final boss rn a few attempts at a time, very cool fight.

Tomorrow season 11 of Hermitcraft starts! I'm excited. Can't wait to find out what new gimmick they've come up with, who bases with who (fingers crossed for a few neighbors I'm hoping for - mostly Buttercups tbh), all their plans...
(come to think of it, didn't Joe want to post more s10 videos at some point? ^^)
Side effect, this is not going to help my "too many things and never enough time" problem at all.

I finally managed to read a book that's been on my to-read list for a long time: Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir.
( Thoughts with spoilers )
Another book in the category of "if I hadn't had high expectations because I saw so many recs I wouldn't have felt disappointed." I still enjoyed it overall.

I read three books in the past week and a half, and all three of them non-SFF. It's been a while since that happened! And probably will be a while after that: the next couple of books on my reading list are all SFF again.

Conclave, by Robert Harris: It's always tricky to read a book after watching the movie made based on it, but in this case it felt like both a good book to the movie, and that the movie was a good adaption of the book. It was very difficult not to see the characters from the movie while reading, even the main character who was the only one who got a different name in the movie. The book had a few details the movie couldn't fit and otherwise some minor changes, and I think if I felt more fannish about it comparing them would be very interesting but I'm not quite invested enough.

Into Thin Air, by Jon Krakauer: A gripping personal account of a Mount Everest expedition that ended in disaster.
Reading this was a bit strange because I kept getting a feeling of déja vu, but I can't recall reading similar books. I think I was probably remembering a couple of documentaries I watched as a kid (several of them featuring Reinhold Messner, probably - for some reason for some time I thought he was "just" the best Austrian (actually South Tyrolean/Italian) climber and didn't realize he had so much global fame.) Very little in the book I found actually surprising, though some of the details were even harsher than I'd expected, like how difficult it even is to eat that high up.
Funnily enough I kept thinking about the post-main-story snippet for the Superstition series that recalls how Jacks almost broke up with Luc because Luc decided he had to climb Mount Everest after retiring from the NHL, something Jacks considered extremely risky and irresponsible. And with good reason!
The book did a good job showing how a couple of not-so-egregious-on-their-own mistakes that under ideal conditions would have barely mattered added together under not-ideal conditions led to disaster. One of the most interesting parts of the book for me was the interplay between "on the mountain" and "the outside world." Reading a little more about the reception of the book afterwards, it's shocking how the survivors have seemingly had to justify their actions for the next years and decades and how fixated other people who weren't there and had little if any personal connections became on who was to blame.

Slow Horses, by Mike Herron: I actually don't remember where I got this recommendation - I might have just seen it in the "new books" category from the library? It's been a while since I read a spy thriller and I was in the mood for one for some reason.
It took me a while to get into this, and at first I was not even sure I would continue because I dislike "everyone is miserable and nobody likes each other" settings. But fortunately it gave me enough hope it would get better (and eventually did get slightly better) until the exciting spy and action parts kicked in, and those were indeed fun. I put a hold on the next part of the series just in case.