kiya

Link from wcg: BP internal memos reveal corporate culture of whitewashing impending disastrous equipment failure.

From nancylebov:

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

So there is the question of what I can do with myself in a life necessarily baby-delimited and full of sudden urgent interruptions (a situation that has made it very hard for me to write at any length, because I can't get my train of thought to settle).

The answer to this appears to be "play web-based roleplaying games so that I don't go mad from inability-to-write".

calpatine, who I knew of through oneironaut, owns a game hosting server which houses roleplaying gamer drugs. These are fine fine things, these games, especially for someone living a highly interrupted life - I can do a rapid flurry of posts with people who are active at the moment when I have the time, and if I vanish for several days it doesn't matter much because other people often go days (or weeks) between replies depending on the vagaries of their realities.

And the people are, for the most part, fantastic. The theme for Seiryuu games appears to be something along the lines of "Ridiculous concepts that take themselves Very Seriously for the entertainment of the players". (Someone not me commented that they were enjoying one of these games more than other not-serious roleplays because of the internal consistency and stuff while still being totally ludicrous. Win.)

I am currently on two of these games. (Well, technically I'm on three but Earth to Heaven Replies is not quite open yet and I would be on four but I haven't finished writing up mine to start building it. On ETHR I play, in theory, the Archangel of the Sephirot of Mercy and a very, very confused bisexual multiracial switchy half-Lilim with some more adjectives and a major case of Not Minority Enough.)


Silvermoon is ... Silvermoon is approximately every pulp novel and comic book hashed together and glued into a semi-coherent whole with crack. In theory it is a PGSM game (set during everyone's previous incarnations); in practice one probably would never notice ever unless someone told one. The space opera pulp empire has made contact with the fantasy pulp empire and there is tentative communication between the two, in between all of the epic whackjob plots involving murderous robots getting systems crashes out of analysing lolcats or pretentious vampyres making breakfast deliveries of muffins and getting interrupted by long-lost cross-dressing members of the ruling family.

In case that doesn't provide sufficient understanding of the game, my approved characters are: the superspy from the planet of the friendly compulsively honest people with eidetic memories, a security specialist from the planet of 4chan who had an unfortunate runin with SCIENCE! and now moonlights as a lynx, a sexually frustrated submissive woman from the planet of militant reverse Gor currently employed as a minion of the multiheaded hydra that is the Imperial Palace, a wererabbit street preacher apothecary who wishes everyone to understand about the coming of the Usagi, a perky weather-witch from the pirate nation (which is a flotilla centered around a giant turtle and held together with ossified in-jokes), a scandalous werebat duelist working the border guard with a paranoid werewolf partner, an undead monstrosity who probably won't kill you immediately unless you're a pastry chef (if I cannot have pie nobody shall have pie), the brewmaster of faerie, a middle-aged perfume-making widowed housewife in search of a replacement husband or three, a very polite robot dog assigned as bodyguard to the Lunar Chief of Staff (who is, roughly, Rahm Emmanuel's reputation personified), and an opium den owner who also runs Ninja Warrior competitions.

Concepts not yet written up include an alto who was pushed over the edge by yet another musical in which the twee weedy soprano gets the A plot and the alto died pathetically and thus became a crime lord, a fisherman from the planet of 4chan who moonlights as a hip-hop sea chanty remix artist and performer (and thus hangs with the princess-heir, who moonlights as a DJ), and an airship captain.

Got the idea now? ;)


The other one is Bind On Pickup, which I seem to have accidentally named, which is a Warcraft RPG. It has only existed for a week, so I only have ... four of me. Heh.

Those four would be a blue dragon with epic PTSD and a secret fondness for high/blood elves that only aggravates it, my actual main toon from Hellscream server (currently Gone Fishing), an unhatched dragon egg (seriously), and an extreme sports enthusiast gnome who is on a first-name basis with every spirit healer in Azeroth.

Yeah.


So. Games! If you're inclined, come play!

Silvermoon is here.
Bind on Pickup is here.

About Speak!

My sis worked on this project. The asskickage is mighty. I inform teh intarwebs: go forth!

Link from nex0s.

"Barack Obama: Kind American Stranger"

Holy. Fucking. Shit.

Little Light analyses Huckabee's speech at the RNC.

And lets us know that street medics are getting arrested too.

From heleninwales and marykaykare:

Nom De Plume LOLcat

The Imbolc issue of Rending the Veil has gone live. I have a wee article in it, which arawen shouldn't read until later, but the rest of y'all can if you like. ;)

I went to add Against Depression to my book wishlist on annafdd's recommendation, and had one of those 'you recently looked at this! x-percentage of the people who looked at that bought it, y% bought that, z% bought the other thing!'

This, clocking in at 17%: Uranium Ore

That (at '10% buy this alternative'): The Complete Guide to Capital Markets by Alex Kuznetsov

The other thing ('17% buy this alternative'): Futurama - Bender's Big Score


Mmm, spurious connection goodness!