alyssa @alyssa@cat.family
🧚♀️
Joined May 2022
i'm amused that by far the best received rec i've posted so far has been the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary. i thought that one was relatively idiosyncratic. who knew fandom would be so interested in ancient mesopotamian vocabulary...
i have decided i will simply accept when i forget to post a # Dec Rec
tonight for #DecRecs I will recommend the freely-available Press Start tutorial scenario for Fabula Ultima.
Fabula Ultima is an Italian #TTRPG inspired by JRPGs (as the name may suggest); it's based on the core rules of Ryuutama with the addition of a neat turn-based JRPG-style combat system, plus a variety of neat little bits.
Press Start is an excellent introduction to the system and the vibe of Fabula Ultima. Unlike a lot of starter scenarios, it makes a considered effort to introduce the rules of the game piece-by-piece. The characters (pregenerated PCs, villains, and other NPCs alike) are interesting and the fights and other scenes were quite fun when I played it.
It's also pretty suitable to just picking it up and playing it right off. The friend who ran it when we played had I think not looked at it at all before we started and it still went great. Give it a try if you'd like!
@Lady … is this article aimed at an audience that has been hibernating for the last several decades
forgot to actually post my #DecRecs last night so here it is!
Did you know that you can download the entirety of the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary for free online? I mean, okay, probably like me you don't have a lot of really good reasons to look up the meanings of Akkadian words. Most of us are not out here trying to read cuneiform tablets in their original language.
But if you want, say, character names for a fantasy setting (it might also be useful for historical stuff set in ancient Mesopotamia but for names there you should probably look into sources specifically about names then), then consider Akkadian! The language is likely unfamiliar to your players/readers/whatever regardless of their cultural background, so it will help to make your setting feel unfamiliar; names like "Nablu" or "Paharu" probably won't have prior connotations, which isn't always an advantage but can be useful; as with any use of a consistent naming language, the use of it will allow you to hint at connections and relations even to an audience which is unaware of the meanings of the elements.
Also it's just neat to randomly page through and read about a long-dead language.
@Lady feel like it would inevitably end up with you having to provide (almost) all the content so cool in terms of artifact but possibly drool in terms of labor demands on you.
apologies to any stranger who sees this post and is like “how is this even tangentially related to HonoTsubasa fanfic?”. it’s not. it was tangentially related to something else.
tangentially relatedly, what is the deal with CWing “meat” anyway? why is the cw used? whom is it intended to help and in what way? from whom did the practice originate and by whom is it propagated and sustained? were the early rationales and intended beneficiaries the same as they are now?
apparently not just the only use of the #HonoTsuba tag visible to this instance but the only use of the #LoveLive tag as well
Today for #DecRecs I suggest this very charming #HonoTsuba (from #LoveLive) doujin. Honoka how could you!!! (I mean, also relatable, but oh no.)
(Ichihi also put out a couple more follow-up books too, which are also available in translation there)
The Partial Historians is a podcast i've been enjoying about ancient roman history, from two female historians of ancient Rome. I've mostly been listening to their "From the founding of the city" series of episodes, which is essentially going thru (mostly) year-by-year and discussing that year in roman history. It's probably on track to finish sometime this century, maybe. I've enjoyed it, the tone is fun, the historians are not hesitant to have very reasonable opinions about things such as that patricians are terrible and roman conceptions of virtue were bad. Also there are major players with names like Spurius Furius. Plus sometimes there are episodes on things like Aram Khachaturian's ballet about Spartacus (not part of the "From the founding of the city" series).
belated #DecRecs for yesterday:
Tale of Maj'Eyal is a roguelike game that more heavily emphasizes the combat side of things and has pretty adjustable difficulty (allowing you to both make things directly harder/easier and/or just play with 1/some/infinite lives). The randomization is a bit low (individual zone layouts, the locations of a few zones, most enemies and loot, but not much on the larger scale), but it's got a variety of classes that play pretty differently (and extensive customization within each class in terms of which abilities you choose to spend your points on) and are p fun (among the initially-unlocked classes, alchemist is a really fun one imo). I might suggest checking out the wiki and/or forums for some spoilers (particularly on things like which zones to do when) after possibly a few deaths.
It's free, although there are paid expansions that add some neat stuff (new classes, new zones, an entire campaign from the perspective of an antagonist faction from the original campaign).
@Satsuma oooo have you watched the new sequel series?
you know how sometimes we have a shark and nowhere to store it? well, a very tall chef has the same problem.
a feature film #DecRecs
Strange Magic is a computer-animated jukebox musical fantasy romance film starring among others Alan Cumming as some kind of insect creature and Evan Rachel Wood as a rather fighty fairy princess with great fashion. It was a flop with critics and witch audiences, who all have bad taste apparently.
there is a charming little imp, very fun songs, a swordflirtation, and an amusingly ineffective fungus-based surveillance network. A very tall chef is into shark storage.
oh no i need to come up with another thing to rec huh (i do not actually need to but yk)
queermisic media
BBC sherlock hates gay people so much :/
and for my actually-for-today #DecRecs , I offer... another TV anime.
Shōjo☆Kageki Revue Starlight is a TV anime (and an anime film) set in an all-girls musical theatre training school, directed by Tomohiro Furukawa, who came up under and has collaborated extensively with Kunihiko Ikuhara. Like Ikuni's work, it makes extensive use of surreal, highly stylized elements, although it's more transparent than Ikuni's stuff. Also like much of Ikuni's stuff it's very lesbian.
It is very good although I really need to get around to actually finishing it. For a bit more background on Ikuhara, Furukawa, and the Takarazuka Revue (which the show is in part a critique of), I additionally recommend the (spoiler-free) post tumblr person canmom wrote up in advance of showing some people the TV anime.
also there's a giraffe that understands things.
Having forgotten to post any #DecRecs yesterday I will endeavor to post two today. My first is a TV anime:
Mawaru Penguindrum is a 24-episode anime created by Ikuni (Kunihiko Ikuhara, also known for Revolutionary Girl Utena, Yuri Kuma Arashi, and Sarazanmai, as well as his work as series director on half of Sailor Moon). I cannot offer a cogent analysis of its thematic and symbolic content, as it frankly went over my head. It tells a surreal and compelling story centering around two brothers and their terminally ill sister, and a penguin hat of mysterious origin and mysterious powers. It concerns fate and family and familial guilt and other things I did not pick up on or do not remember.
🧚♀️
Joined May 2022
