villagewitch | Member Posts

Worked up enough nerve to speak to another person out loud in Spanish today. It was only my Lyft driver, granted, and only to correct the GPS on where I was meant to be dropped off and then admit I speak only a little Spanish. But, hey! That's more than I spoke out loud yesterday! Or, uh, y'know. The rest of this year.

dustbunny105

I ended up not getting to the living room floors. Tbh, I was sort of procrastinating. Just was not feeling moving the furniture myself. Which I guess is pretty silly since I've done it before but Idk. My sleep is all out of whack again and I was so tired yesterday. Felt better today but was still more inclined to rest and read than anything. For as much as I'm looking forward to the results, I was just not vibing with the actual effort.

However! I did get the kitchen, dining area and the hallway. Did two coats, even. Aaand I inevitably noticed a spot I'd somehow missed while mopping up, which is now trapped under the wax. Whatever. Aside from that spot, it looks good. Makes for some good sliding too! Once I get everything back into place, I think I'll make a compromise with myself about the living room. I'll shove the couch and coffee table out of the room, mayyybe the niblings' toy and craft cubbies, and just go around everything else. Or maybe once I'm in the midst of it, I'll be more of a mind to move everything as planned.

dustbunny105

One of the writers from the IDW Transformers comics recently put out a book about the history of the fandom. His comics work is hit or miss for me-- increasingly miss as his run went along, tbh-- but I went ahead and ordered the book anyway. The topic is interesting, the title is a pun and obviously there's a big difference between a licensed comic and a non-fiction, so I figured I might as well. And, yeah, okay-- the fact that it was a limited run might've activated my fomo.

In any case, it's arrived! It's thicker than what I'd gathered from the photos, which has me even more excited for it. Not that I'll be reading it for a little bit yet. I still want to prioritize the unread books that were already clogging up my shelves and I've got this month's reading all sorted besides. Just the same, I keep catching myself sneaking peaks at it, lol.

This isn't the first non-fiction Transformers book but it is my first so far. I look forward to getting my grubby hands on all of them eventually! One more thing I should probably sort into a spreadsheet, lol.

dustbunny105

Gonna be weird not having my sister and the kids over at all tomorrow. Probably for the best I don't have them around as an excuse to procrastinate, though, lol.

I can't remember if I followed up on my plans to wax the floors last weekend but it didn't happen. I wasn't sure if my brother or my oldest niece would be coming over to get some stuff for me, I wanted to look into renting a floor cleaner, I let myself get distracted... Anyway, I swept and mopped and I'll be doing another pass again tomorrow before going ahead and getting it done. I'll start with the kitchen, dining area and hallway, I think, since I can get it all done in a more or less straight line backing into my room. After that cures, I'll hit the living room. I may do the bathrooms while I'm waiting on that, not sure yet.

Since I'll need to move all the furniture anyway, I'm thinking of rearranging the living room while I'm at it. In part, I admit, because I think it'd be funny if my mom came home to find everything moved without warning. Idk, though, we talked about moving things before but she might prefer to be here for it. I'll see how I feel about it in the morning, I guess.

dustbunny105

The humidity has been so stifling this week. I can still bear it enough to have my lunch outside but I've not been walking around after eating like I was for a bit. That does at least mean more time to read, I guess, but I was enjoying those walks. Looking at the growing plants, looking for lizards and bugs... I didn't even take time today to check on my little spider friends in the bushes next to my lunch spot.

dustbunny105

Man, time really got away from me tonight. I had a to-do list and everything. But then I realized I needed a few groceries and my brother was available to run me to the store. It didn't even take all that long but it was enough to derail the entire rest of my night.

But, I mean, hey. Got what I needed. Made the dinner I wanted. And I wasn't planning anything tonight that can't be done tomorrow. In fact, if I can make myself fall asleep early enough, I may even be able to do some of it in the morning. Can't be too upset, can I?

ripplestitch

More medical nonsense over the last few days BUT! I attended a game of the Star Trek Adventures RPG. The Game Mistress had never GMed before so her friend had gathered a bunch of his nerd friends (including my husband, but I got to tag along) to be a test audience.

it was fun! Had a great time technobabbling such things as: could we get past the transporter room bottleneck by simply storing evacuees in the pattern buffers until later? (That one did not stick to the drawing board—fucking with the transporter never goes well.) Could we isolate this virus in the computers by pulling out the infected isolinear chips and the way they seem to do on the show all the time with no ill effects? (She gave us that one even though technically the era we were playing had never mentioned isolinear chips.)

She got very flustered, bless her, but largely because she was running the pregen adventure and it’s very linear. Best laid plans, and all that.

I now have 2 systems I want to run as solo RPGs (and possibly as games with my nerd family? My brain fog feels a bit better since my last medication adjustment so perhaps??) It turns out I’ve actually had the solo rules for the Star Trek game for a few years so I dug those out to take a gander. And you know what else I found hidden in a dusty corner of the home server? Star Trek fanfiction I wrote when I was 14, which was very exciting/embarrassing. I must have carried it in every laptop I’ve owned since mumble mumble when it was written to eventually get backed up here all these years later.

In craft news I’m making my little flower motifs for my wheelchair blanket, and also picked up a knitted blanket that’s also modular so I can switch back and forth between little projects and not go mad.

I fell in love with the colourway of the Origami Blanket a few years ago but couldn’t confidently crochet at the time so I put a pin in it until later. I can crochet now but I’m already crocheting all those flowers and miss knitting a bit but cannot face another sock until autumn, so! Knit pinwheels it is!

Each designer has generously provided the patterns for free!

Origami Blanket, Kirsten Ballering
https://haakmaarraak.nl/free-crochet-pattern-origami-blanket

Pinwheel Blanket, Ksenia Naidyon
https://www.purlsoho.com/create/2025/09/13/pinwheel-blanket/

My birthday present to myself was a bag of Yarnsmith Create DK in my best approximation of that colour palette. That arrived yesterday, so now I have one complete Pinwheel block!

29 blocks to go. It didn’t really take that long? I could finish this in a couple of months, if I assume I make half a pinwheel a day. I won’t, because I’m like that. But in theory, yeah.

dustbunny105

The Transformers/Jem collab was officially revealed and... I'm so disappointed ToT

Most of the Collaborative line is made up of original characters based on iconic vehicles from the crossover property or at least transforming robot versions of the other property's characters. What does Jem get? Not a transforming Rockin Roadster, no. It gets funky-colored Blaster and a handful of cassettes. Literally reduced to a colorway.

Idk, I guess I'm glad they gave it Blaster instead of defaulting to Soundwave. And one of the cassettes is Rosanna, who I was hoping to see involved. All three cassettes (Rosanna, Glit and Sundor) in the set are from Transformers: Kiss Players, actually, and if you don't know what that is... I'll let you look into that on your own time, lol. Just don't do it at work. Suffice to say, I'm glad to see some characters get "rescued" from its depths and it's kinda cute that they're being released together as they were originally. This just isn't really how I would've like to see that happen.

All in all, I'm incredibly disappointed and I probably won't be making an attempt at an order. The Blaster isn't bad but he doesn't interest me. I would kinda like to have Rosanna, maybe Glit. Maybe even Sundor. But I don't really have a way I'd like to display them, so they'd be a waste of space. Maybe if there was any guarantee of getting Flip Sides and Howlback later, I could be bothered to come up with something. As it stands, meh.

dustbunny105

I've got some hot peppers pickling along with some onion and a few cloves of garlic. I got it going on a whim but now I'm looking forward to making hot sauce for the first time! It'll be a pretty small batch but I think that's fine to just try it out. If I like the results, I can always be more deliberate about it next time.

dustbunny105

I've been through a few paths in those Find Your Fate Jr Transformers books with the niblings. They're no great literature, as you probably didn't need me to tell you, but it's charming how straightforwardly nonsense they are. Also how they just kinda do their own thing, like referring to Seaspray as a destroyer (he's traditionally a hovercraft) and Sunstreaker as a race car (traditionally a Lamborghini Countach). Or bringing up sort of obscure characters as if tehy're established team members. Got a bit of an attitude too. Like, one of them outright goes, "Don't you feel just awful? You made a bad choice!" for an ending where you get Bumblebee tortured to death, lol. Which feels even meaner since they make you flip across two pages to get there, despite there being no further options to save him.

We've only looked at two books so far and not in their entirety. When I get a chance, I want to go through and see if I can pick out any specific author quirks in each. All of the books I have now were written by different people but some of the others have repeat writers, so that'll be neat to see when I've got them all.

dustbunny105

Didn't do the floors today because I realized too late that I don't have gloves I'm not scrubbing with this cleaner without them. It's not even really that harsh but it really irritated my skin last time for some reason. Maybe it's the fragrance, Idk. It's fine, though. I can get a pack of gloves from the dollar store tomorrow. In the meantime, I can make sure everything's ready to be moved. I'm so looking forward to sliding around the slick floors in my socks-- I mean, to having clean and shiny floors ;>_>

dustbunny105

Got another handful of the Transformers Find Your Fate Jr books. Including one that I already have a copy of, oops. That's what I get for not going ahead and making the spreadsheet, I guess. Anyway, I gave the spare to my niece (sister's oldest) and she's pretty happy about it, so I can't be too fussed. Just gotta pay more attention next time. In any case, I've got about half of them now. One I still need to get is weirdly expensive on ThriftBooks. I've seen a few lots on eBay and at least a couple of them include that one. I might stake out that search and get the other half-ish that way, then give any extra copies to my niece.

Another package that showed up today was of some Transformers comics I bought kind of on accident. I saw an unusually good price for a couple trades on Shop Goodwill and since they don't have a watchlist, I put in a bid with the expectation that someone would outbid me and I could see what they ended up going for. I then forgot about it until I received the email confirmed I'd won the auction. Yay for me...? I'm not sure what I'm gonna do with these, tbh. They're in the middle of the run, so not easy to just hand off to someone. I don't want to turn around and immediately list them on eBay. Buuut I also don't actually want them, lol. Ah, well, at least they won't take up much space while I decide.

Last fun thing I got today was something I completely forgot was coming. I preordered the first volume of The Delinquent and the Transfer Student, apparently. I remember wanting it, I remember finding the listing on Bookshop.org, I do not at all remember placing the order. But I guess I did, since I've got it now! Can't honestly say I'm upset about it. I was actually just thinking again of this manga the other day. I only learned about it after it was cancelled but I heard that it wraps up decently. I guess I'll find out! Well, eventually. The other two volumes come out in English later this year. I wouldn't normally think of ordering, never mind preordering, more parts of a series I haven't even properly started yet but I've seen enough of this title to know that I want the whole story (or as much of it was published, anyway) and it is only three books long. I can stand to show support for more yuri manga licenses for that low of a commitment.

dustbunny105

Between the weather settling down and the new allergy medicine I picked up on my last grocery trip, my sinuses are doing pretty alright now. I maintain that they're more trouble than they're worth but if they must exist as part of my face, at least we've come to an understanding.

dustbunny105

Wip Wednesday! I got prompted "scratch" last week and I meant to do something new for it but didn't take the time. I got a few hits off of it from my wips folder, though. I'm worried some of these might be repeats but at least there's a good few, so fingers crossed I'm showing off something I haven't before:

( Read more... )

dustbunny105

My oldest niece may be coming over this weekend so I can foist some of my books and craft supplies onto her. She's learning crochet, apparently, so I'm hoping she'll be interested in the yarns I don't want anymore. Either way, a purge will help me a lot in doing final touch-ups on my room. Well, not quite final. There's still the matter of resetting the toy collection, which won't be happening until I get a couple new wall shelves and at least a few poster frames. But, y'know, apart from that.

Oh, speaking of books. Guess what I found out? So, I backed a Kickstarter for a Unico reboot comic some years back. Put the volume on my shelf and kinda forgot about it until last year. Finally read it and enjoyed it but realized it was the first part of a series. Which was certainly stated in the Kickstarter but I either didn't notice or forgot. Anyway, I went ahead and bought the next volume... Or, at least, I thought I did. Something that bugged me immediately was that the covers didn't match. That wasn't the reason I didn't read it right away but it has irritated me every time I've looked at them together, so maybe it was the reason I didn't think much of the rather obvious number one on it. Inasmuch as I did notice, I just thought, y'know, obviously this is Vol 1 because the Kickstarter book was Vol 0, right? Like, it was a pilot or proof of concept kind of thing? Yeeeah, no, as you've probably already determined, it was not. What I bought was actually a second copy of the volume I already had. The covers don't match because the first one was a Kickstarter exclusive. So, uh. At least I've got one with a cover that'll match the rest of the books when I get them, eh?

ripplestitch

UK Games Expo was enjoyable but exhausting. On top of my inevitable fatigue I unmasked to eat and drink (could have gone outside but it was too, too hot and my companions weren’t sure they could handle the heat and frankly, on the amount of meds I take that fuck my heat tolerance neither was I) and couldn’t find my hand sanitiser so may have picked up some kind of con crud one way or another because I feel a little iffy. It does seem to be mild but blegh.

I picked up a gift for a friend and some solo rpg zines and also! The physical starter set for the Pendragon RPG which I’ve been curious about for ages. I have a free pdf of the starter set (or part of it?) but found it very difficult to work with in that format.

The Beef and I played the intro tutorial game and I think I could possibly run a couple of sessions for him using the adventure in the box and the abbreviated rules. I have an interest in Arthuriana but my study is quite shallow so I’m glad his point of reference is half remembered films like Excalibur haha. I think he should pick up the vibe okay, though.

My real interest is the possibility of playing it Solo, however, as I’ve seen it done and have been inspired. As usual though I find myself tending away from the source material and I’m pondering how well I could reskin it to be an episodic game of adventures of a faery knight in the setting I’ve developed for my game of Apothecaria. I think the Faeries I created for that (pulling from various inspirations but particularly from the weirdness of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning and their rigid cycle of reenacting old fae legends that feel very Arthurian, over and over.

To share my context via the series of messages I sent a friend when they very kindly played sounding board for me:

In Apothecaria I decided that the faerie lore = the realm of Faerie has been in trouble for some time. Fae are getting sick and because they are supposed to live so long their natural fertility rate is pretty low. They have been having a population crisis. Hence nipping over to the mortal realm and kidnapping or charming humans away—they can interbreed, magic breeds true (with caveats) and humans do it Fast.

Eventually though a bunch of fae leave to try to make it in the mortal realm (in fictional not!Briton) and immediately run afoul of the natives who are Not happy with the sudden dramatic increase in fairy bullshit! Abducting people, fucking with them for the lols, hunting them down, all that jazz.

Human magic users are not as powerful as faeries. But there are a lot of them. And while fighting between fae courts is heavily codified because if they kill each other too much… they have these structured almost feudal court systems and a strict code of conduct almost like the ideals of chivalry (perhaps less benign) but the high fae knights are captured and ransomed, not killed. Cruel and unusual behaviour has strict rules about how it can be applied, etc. Debts and vows are binding. Those who break the rules certainly exist—nobody can exploit a loophole like a Faery—and coups and large scale invasions are semi regular (every hundred years, or so?) but they were unprepared for human armies.

The humans have their own sense of honour on the battlefield and off, but they are not the same. They’re spell sniping knights left and right! Their blades are made of an alloy containing deadly iron and they do not hesitate to use them with lethal force! That’s not how this works! Though very easily manipulated alone or in small groups, it turns out humans are terrifying in their own way en masse. But they do honour surrender.

So the Archfae agree to what will be known as The Truce. They can keep the land they currently inhabit, but no more abductions. No charming all the children from a village away to be eaten by hags or enslaved to make Faery shoes or made into pages to serve the wine that looks horribly like blood and fear catching the eye of a bored noble. No torturing artists by making them salve away at their canvases until they die feverishly clutching their painbrushes. Yes, fine, the mortals who are too daft to take precautions and listen to the tales are fair game. Seductions are also not the same as abductions. But we’re watching you, and we Will End You.

…Can the human sorcerers do that? Well. No. Even aside from the fae being formidable and continuing their reign of terror on the general populace while war rages, they are a bit like a fungus. You could wipe them out, but their magic has infiltrated the land and it will create more of them through means other than birth over time. They cannot be killed in any way that matters. Better to pin them down now with a binding while they still don’t really understand what lying is.

By the time Ivy is born a few centuries later, more and more iron and steel is in the cities. It’s more common for urban dwellers to not even know another person who has seen a fae of any kind, let alone seen one themselves. The new generation of sorcerers are getting complacent and not paying attention. In another couple of generations the Witches may be the last bastion keeping the fae in check.

The fae are watching these developments with interest.

Ivy happens to live on the outskirts a magical wood ruled by Duchess of the Glimmerwood, a vassal of the Spring Queen, who is pro-status quo. I think my game is going to take place not long after the Truce, and follow a Fae knight of the Spring Court who is struggling with the difficulties of their new restrictions while still doing his job (being heroic™ in the name of his beloved Spring Queen, protecting the Spring Court from various dangers, policing the local fae rabble who are not the ones who actually signed that contract about not terrorising humans, and doing his duty regarding furthering his bloodline).

I think it’ll be interesting to work with the honor and glory system and the I’m hoping this will help it translate relatively well to existing adventure modules where they do a lot of monster hunting and I think it’ll fit the vibe of the mechanics, with a bit of tweaking. It’ll also be useful to refine this lore (and plug in plot holes) as it was somewhat hastily thrown together via offhand comments by Ivy’s familiar Nutkin as I played the early games of Apothecaria and kept rolling interactions with what I decided were with fae (before I realised that they turn up canonically in a later expansion).

Recently there have been a trend of depicting the fae as big scary alpha males and I don’t love it, so I specifically set out to make them the losers in this scenario and my protagonist is probably going to be something of a himbo.

I’m excited, but I’ve got a lot of studying and possibly purchasing of rulebooks and scouring of subreddits to do first. I’ve been looking at the implementation of solo games using this system and fell in love with this playthrough of the system and setting as intended, featuring a squire who is a girl in disguise! https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/pendragon-gpc-mythic-annales-milites-de-sarisburiensis.560128/

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New Solo Game? 👀

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