SMEE's Random Banter #97 of gender bending and closet bursting

[Serpentine]

Vampire/tabletop players? Maladjusted in the usual nerdy ways.

Woo, go me. Anyway, vampires crazy? Noooo don't be silly, those Malks are just a myth told by the clocks dripping down my computer screen burning giraffes licking keleidoscope eyes with lettuce leaves penguin butter.

Don't the ants crawling into your eyes annoy you?
Why yes, this is the sort of character I'm playing

[Kneenibble]

That was the most dangerously insane thing I've read all day, Serpentine, and I've been leafing through Rimbaud.

...do you have any left?

[Serpentine]

Any what left? My right?

>leans forward<
>flicks something invisible off of Knee's shoulder<

[Kneenibble]

Hey! My leprachaun!

[Raiser Blade]

So I just found out a few days ago that my english teacher has been playing D&D for 20 years.

I was pretty suprised.

[Serpentine]

Your leprachaun smelled of cheese.

Heh. I am kinda enjoying this, though I've only been to one game. My character has surrealist hallucinations. A Toreador has attached himself to her. He likes Surrealism I'm looking forward to someone doing that thing where you mess with their head and see what they see...

"You see the RTA sign. It bids you good evening. The knob dissolves in your hand, and the door opens. The clock dribbles down the wall."

[rubakhin]

That was the most dangerously insane thing I've read all day, Serpentine, and I've been leafing through Rimbaud.

Funny, funny. You have French, right? If you don't, what translation are you using? I hate all translations of Rimbaud equally. I don't even like Vladimir Nabokov's translations to the Russian. When I was shut up in a mental institution with nothing better to do (may I point out here that they let me keep Rimbaud, but they withheld Johnathon Livingston Seagull because of "inappropriate content") I decided that I really had to translate the damn oeuvre myself instead of sit around sulking at the way everyone else was botching it up - but I did a few key poems, part of A Season in Hell, and then sort of forgot about it. Might've also done The Deserts of Love, but I don't know what I did with it.

Ah, Rimbaud's special to me ... you know, my IRL surname is actually Rimbaud, I changed it a year or so ago, just after my eighteenth birthday. Rubakhin's just a vaguely similar-sounding nom de guerre.

[Kneenibble]

Well, I have anglophone Canadian French, which is pretty useless. No, I'm reading in translation, a Penguin edition, done by Jeremy Harding and John Sturrock - those names are meaningless to me though.

I like Season in Hell, but looking to the French original - actually in all the poems in here - even with my scraping comprehension - it does look like the juicy flavour doesn't quite make it across.

I guess translating in a mental institution is as good a place to do it for the guy as any... Do you still have your translation? Was it into English? If so, may I see it please?

You know, from what I've read of you, it seems unusual that you would change to a French surname, unless your Russian one was that badly mangled in the melting pot.

[rubakhin]

Well, you could do worse, as translations go. At least it's not that horrible Fowlie.

It was actually a lovely place to translate - I was always up at four or five in the morning, long before anyone else, and I used to take my work and go out into the main area, where there was a huge window looking out over the skyline. I'd translate as the sun came up. I've never seen sunrises like that anywhere else on Earth.

I'll have to rummage and see if I have the translations still, I'm 85% positive that I do. Maybe I'll stick them up in Arts & Crafts later.

My surname before Rimbaud wasn't a very good one (in fact it wasn't even Russian). *muse* I've always liked my mother's maiden name - Baranek - it's Polish. Means "little lamb", apparently.

[Kneenibble]

Ah. The sage's hour, between the witching hour and dawn, stability and peace straddled by two varieties of material madness.
What part of the world was it in?

I suggest a barter. If you give me your translation, I will translate a text of your choice out of Latin. Or, I will serve you a tea that will turn your hair as gold as the sun.

[Serpentine]

Mmm... Bleach tea

[Haruki-kun]

So I just found out a few days ago that my english teacher has been playing D&D for 20 years.

I was pretty suprised.

One of my friends' teachers was into Animé. I was pretty surprised when I heard it. I was even more surprised when I heard they were getting suggestions from them. (They were two teachers, a couple.)

[FoE]

This isn't my cat and I don't know this lady, but I thought this picture was too funny not to post:

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_2809392.html?menu=

[Midnight Son]

For a long time, I had never been stung. Then, I was stung two days in a row. What are the chances I wonder...

100%...apparently.

[Amotis]

Mmm... Bleach tea

Careful, Serp. That's a slippery slope. Not all Malks are bat**** insane. I don't want you to turn into every Malk I've ever seen in every larp ever.

[Serpentine]

Hehee. That's funny, cuz I wasn't trying then I was just making fun of tea that can turn your hair yellow...

I hope I'm not turning into Just Another Malk. How does this sound? Lillian Reeves was Embraced in 1969, probably by her professor, just before she was to graduate with a science degree. Suddenly becoming a vampire kinda interrupted her studies. Sometime later, when she was attempting another degree, she fell in with a Gangrel fellow. At some point, he jokingly lamented that being Embraced meant that he couldn't donate his body to science. She took him seriously, took pity on him, and did it for him. Staking, experimentation, disection and Diablary followed (mostly I just needed an excuse to have the blood potency for Malk >.>). She was quickly hunted down by the rest of the vampire community and knocked into a torpor... just before she was to graduate. Over the years she manages to basically complete another 3 or 4 science degrees, without getting the degree itself. She's rather knowledgable in the field of science (for obvious reasons). I haven't decided yet how much of modern scientific ethics she's taken on-board, but I'm kinda thinking it'd be more interesting to say very little. In this case, she would believe that anything that furthers scientific knowledge is fine, but pain, harm and death that does not is pointless, wasteful and needlessly cruel. She is not a sadistic, murderous person, but she would have few compunctions about performing experiments on animals, mortals or vampires. She has a great interest in evolution, and in the taxonomy and natural place of vampires in particular. She is first and foremost a scientist (or would be, if she could get her damn degree...). She is a researcher and investigator, skilled in gathering information, from people or from their locked desks. And, of course, she has surreal hallucinations (could get interesting if I throw in some Giger...).
So what do you think? Too generic? Honestly, I've gone out of my way to make her nice and simple. I've got too much other stuff to do and think about to spend too much time figuring out the nuances of her character and history (hasn't really stopped me expanding her more than I expected, though ). One of the main reasons I made her Malkovian is because I'm not a very quick thinker, and I know there'll be plenty of times where I won't be able to think of anything to say. This way, if I get stuck, I can just smile and watch something float by, and noone will think it odd.

[Amotis]

Is it larp or tt?

The way I see easy roleplaying is that you can come up with great backstory and all this stuff for the st to work with (sub plots and hooks and all that), but if you don't have fun playing the character, if you're not comfortable and intimate with it then it's too artificial or forced and becomes not fun. At least in my experience. So whatever comes naturally, is my pov. Generic is fine, so are stereotypes. The phrase "make it your own" doesn't always mean compete originality.

The only caution I have to say is what kind of game is it? Cam or Sabbat? Because if it's Cam and you have Diablerie in your past....ooooh that's bad stuff. And people can find out pretty damn easily.

[Serpentine]

LARP, Cam, and yeeeaaah... I dunno. I've gotta ask about that. My friend who's been playing it for ages has Diablerie in her own history, but it also included a nasty ritual to stop it coming up in her aura. She didn't seem to think it'd be any problem to have it in my history, though... Seems as though Armidale is a relatively easy-going domain, though. What I don't quite get, though, is apparently you can use Obfuscate to get "VAMPIRE" out of your aura, but not "DIABLIERIST". Those black lines are a bit of a giveaway, don't you think? Anyway, making her a science student was part of my being lazy. I'm already half-science student, so it's something I won't have to think about too much or have trouble getting into.

Fun fact: The Wiki for the Armidale Cam is simply "Vampire". It's cam-wiki.org/Vampire. Yay us?

[Quincunx]

Well, you have the OOC reason to have the hallucinations, and anything which keeps people communicating in a Vampire LARP is to be treasured. I worry slightly that it seems to be thrown in without triggers, to be accessed 'at will' instead of stomping on your otherwise sane mind. As always, the Not-so-Stupid Guide to Playing a Malkavian should be your guide, especially the bit about the 'filter' standing between you and normalcy. In this case, it's a complete yet sporadic filter. In other Malkavians' cases (including mine), it's a semi-permeable yet permanent filter. As for Obfuscate, you can paint over your aura, but those black streaks are like the streaks of light and darkness behind a twin-slit experiment: nothingness. You can't paint without a canvas to paint upon.

[Serpentine]

I was worried that I'd overdone the crazy in my first (and only ) game, but my more experienced friends disagreed. I do intend to tone it down somewhat, though, and I think I can attribute any excess crazy in that one game to her being in a new, unfamiliar place with new, unfamiliar people around. I'm kinda thinking that her normal world will include relatively mild hallucinations - rather soft clocks, the occasional ant wandering here and there, things talking that shouldn't, etc - but the normal triggers will make her do rather more in the way of flip out - I'm thinking maybe Cubism, Giger, the more disturbing parts of Dali, the scarier parts of Bosch, etc. Does that allay your worry? I can see what you mean about Obfuscate and Diablerie. It does pretty much render null and void one handy use of it, though...

[Haruki-kun]

My computer mouse just broke.

A few of you might be getting Déja Vus right about now. Why? Because I posed this once already about a month ago. Why am I posting it again? Because it just happened again.

In the past 4 months, I've gone through 3 mice. THREE!!!! What is it with me and computer mice?

Can't even use Inkscape right with this stupid touchpad. <.<

Spoiler

Show

.......OK, that won't work.

[CurlyKitGirl]

I can use my touchpad in Inkscape. The one time I used it.

[Dragonrider]

Hey Curly, I'm curious - what does your avatar's banner say? (if you don't mind me asking!)

[CurlyKitGirl]

Bath's a clever toad.
The upper one is either 'woman' or 'girl'; the lower says 'warrior'.
His work ges better and better.

EDIT: And how's that link I told you about?

[dish]

The upper one is either 'woman' or 'girl'; the lower says 'warrior'..

Umm... the bottom one is definitely 'woman' or 'female' - there's no doubting that.

My mainland Chinese husband doesn't recognise the upper character. (Ok, he only glanced at it, but his response was, "that isn't Chinese.") He says that warrior should be: 战. (This is in simplified characters as used by the mainland Chinese.)

Edit: Should have mentioned that I, too, think that your avatars, and therefore Bath's skills are fantastic.

[The Rose Dragon]

I think it's supposed to be Japanese, judging by the armor.

[dish]

Ah, good point ... but Chinese people can usually read Japanese characters since kanji originated in China. They have been simplified since though, so maybe that's why he didn't recognise it.

[Dragonrider]

Bath's a clever toad.
The upper one is either 'woman' or 'girl'; the lower says 'warrior'.
His work ges better and better.

Bath is, indeed, a clever toad.

EDIT: And how's that link I told you about?

Fantastic! I haven't had a huge amount of time to look at it, but I've played around with some of the prehistory stuff as well as the 'great vowel shift' (randomly skipping around, yes, I know, I'm a bad girl). Someday I'm going to go through and read ALL OF IT. Cause it's freakin' awesome.

[CurlyKitGirl]

@dish: It may be the other way around. He said one ws one and one was th'other. Sorry.

@Drider: I need to read more of that. I'm loving the Old English section myself.

[Dragonrider]

@dish: It may be the other way around. He said one ws one and one was th'other. Sorry.

@Drider: I need to read more of that. I'm loving the Old English section myself.

I'm thinkin' maybe I'll save that for last. But I don't know if I can hold off...that's an awesome period.