silvercat17

 So far the following people are interested via Twitter & Dreamwidth: 
I'm on Pacific Time, and any time next week is good, except for Monday (tomorrow) evening

Becoming Familiar - You and your fellow players will portray crows trying to cheer up a sad witch. However, since you are crows, your methods for a) discovering what’s upsetting the witch and b) helping her with her problems are seriously limited. In fact, you run a constant risk of misinterpreting her human feelings, and nearly all of your methods of help are considered criminal by human standards.

Capybara Capers - A super elite team of capybaras has been assembled to steal the mythical Awesome Lemon once and for all. But each of you have your own motives... and there may very well be a traitor in your midst. Can you afford to trust one another?

Cementville - you're wizards in a small midwestern town trying to make things better.

Crash Pandas - You're a bunch of raccoons, all trying to drive the same car, looking to make their names in the dangerous world of LA street racing.

Every Day's A Battle - The war is over. You and a few companions are heavy-conversion combat cyborgs built for the previous war, ill-suited for the new peace. The military has removed your weapons, leaving just your mix of mechanical & fleshy body parts, and pointed you to a job placement service. That service, in turn, has found you positions in basic office and clerical work. Every day is still a battle, just not the kind you were built and trained for.

Giving Up the Ghost - This is a rules-light wacky game about ancient evil overlords trying to hide in their old age among fellow old people in a retirement village. However they all quickly become bored and form a Mystery Club to solve old people crimes. Things tend to go a bit off the rails quickly as failure is unacceptable and they tend to fall back into their old ways to get things done, and necromancy has pretty noticeable side effects!

Kintsugi - Play as a Robot, Mutant, or a Magical Golem; someone who can't die and quickly learns new skills or abilities. Simple but elegant rules allow you to create your characters as you play, building them up one failure at a time.

Liturgy of the Dragon - you're kobolds. The dragons you worship are gone. What does your church do now?

Trashkin - Play a half-possum, a goatgirl, a raccoon-man or a ratboy and plunge headfirst into a grotty world full of low-calibre adventure for fun and no profit.

Wizards - Wield ULTIMATE POWER in WIZARDS. A simple game that needs only 2 to 5 victims, a d6, possibly a hat, and a healthy disregard for the rules of nature.

Mirrored from Shenanigans - Curiously Lydean.

Echidnas are named after a Greek monster that was half women and half snake, and gave birth to most of the other monsters. That seems a bit unfair, considering how cute they are. There are four species of echidna and they’re related to the one species of platypus. Platypuses will fuck you up.

Lots of links, sorry no pictures this time. Feeling too lazy.

Fossil Words of Yore in the Offing “we may wait with bated breath for something in the offing, but it’s unlikely that anything else in our experience is ever bated, or that we’ve made any other use of the noun offing.” (From the MacMillan Dictionary Blog)

Princess Princess “Sadie and Amira are two very different princesses who decide to take their fairy tale into their own hands!” Short finished comic (44 pages) Lovely bits: Sadie is fat and can’t sing. Amara is a WOC and has awesome hair. The unicorn is not too bright. Not so lovely: they treat a guy like dirt for being a bit sexist and the villain uses fat-shaming and ableist language.

1-Up Mushroom Pizza Rolls “When you need energy to make it through the mushroom kingdom on you way to rescue Princess Peach (again), level up your game with these 1-Up Mushroom Pizza Rolls.” (from Kitchen Overlord)

Look Straight Ahead “Jeremy Knowles is a 17-year-old outcast who dreams of being a great artist. But when he suffers a severe mental breakdown brought on by bullying and other pressures at school, his future is called into question.” TW: depiction of schizophrenia based on the creator’s experience. Complete.

Beyond the Binary: Master Post “twenty four questions about gender, sex, sexuality, genderqueer issues, trans issues, stuff, things, the kitchen sink etc. answered by an amazing panel. Some of it’s 101 – some of it 201 – some questions that we get asked all the time, and some that many won’t have considered before.” (from A Gentleman and a Scholar)

Let’s Be Real: Balancing Life’s Roles “We say that ‘real men don’t eat quiche’ or ‘real women have curves,’ and it lets us draw arbitrary boundaries around broad identities in order to make them more exclusive, more secure.” (from Balancing Jane)

The Problem When Sexism Just Sounds So Darn Friendly… CN: discussion of benevolent sexism and history of research about sexism. The comments aren’t too bad, but there’s gender essentialism, sexism, and call outs of ‘reverse sexism’ there. Of course.

16 Words That Are Much Older Than They Seem (from Mental Floss)

Psychopathic criminals have empathy switch “Placed in a brain scanner, psychopathic criminals watched videos of one person hurting another and were asked to empathise with the individual in pain. Only when asked to imagine how the pain receiver felt did the area of the brain related to pain light up.” TW: the other links of the page are probably triggering (from BBC News)

What is an ontological metaphor? “metaphor in which an abstraction, such as an activity, emotion, or idea, is represented as something concrete, such as an object, substance, container, or person.” (Glossary of Linguistics terms) (Saving for when I get back to conlanging)

English words with Chinese characteristics “Chinese netizens are making up new English words based on very Chinese cultural phenomenon, making the foreign language a unique part of China’s online popular culture” (from Offbeat China)

Willard Suitcase Project – Jon Crispin is photographing the contents suitcases left behind by patients of the Willard Asylum. It’s very non-judgemental and each suitcase acts as a time capsule.

Pokemayan – Pokemon redesigned by a Mexico-based artist (from Monarobot)

SNESbox.com – play NES and SNES games in your browser.

Social justice link roundup (from Pharyngula Wiki)

Mirrored from Shenanigans - Curiously Lydean.

Prints & Photographs, Tissandier Collection – hundreds of old prints, including lots and lots of hot air balloons. Good for steampunk stuff. (from the Library of Congress)

The Magazine Rack – free digitized magazines that are out of copyright. Omni, Galaxy, Heavy Metal, lots others. Available in PDF, epub, mobi, djvu, some more. Preview it before you download – if they did OCR it’s terrible, but scans are good. (from Archive.org)

My Robot Nation – design a robot and get it 3-D printed. It costs to get it printed, but it’s fun just to play with it.

Stagecoach Mary Fields – incrediably badass black woman. (link CN: violence, gun violence, historical racism). Apparently she’s going to get a movie soon, which will be awesome. (from BlackCowboys.com)

From gay marriage to cougar wives, the Victorians have much to teach us (CN: ableist language) (From Guardian.co.uk)

Pattern Cooler – where I got my background. You can customize the colors and size of thousands of seamless patterns. PNGs are free, other options cost.

What Good Writers Still Get Wrong about Blind People, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. A talk delivered at Readercon in 2010. (from Kestrell.dreamwidth.com)

How not to be a privileged ass: A lazy person’s guide (from Stealing Commas)

Giving the gift of worlds – “Non-fiction opens up the world we live in, teaching us more about our surroundings. Fiction opens countless others. It lets you climb inside the head of somebody else and see the universe through their eyes for a while. If the character in question resembles you, it can make you feel less isolated. If they don’t, you gain understanding and empathy for people whose experiences of life are entirely different from your own.” She’s looking for recommendations for ebooks with minority or women protagonists. (from Tea-Fuelled Musings)

(Sorry, I don’t have the energy to deal with selecting, resizing, and linking pictures. Look here for pretties.)