Grab a paintbrush and follow me (508 words) by Estirose
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 剑兰女探社 | Excellent Women
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Yang Moli/Yao Zhidi (Excellent Women)
Characters: Yang Moli (Excellent Women)
Summary:

Yang Moli after the events of episode 32.

(Slight deviations from canon)

Episode 32 is the most current episode; it looks like the drama will have a season 2 (which is already filmed). Also, part of the last scene irritated me so I made minor alterations to it, otherwise Moli would be in emotionally worse condition than she is in canon.

I really don't expect either of these fics to get many hits; they might be a F/F couple but they're an obscure F/F couple on an equally obscure Chinese Web Drama. I'll definitely be asking for this fandom for Yuletide just so I might not be the only writer for it.

So the demo for the 2nd Fatal Frame 2 remake (basically, there was the original, then the Wii remake, and now this one) came out and it works just fine on the Steam Deck.

The community has discovered that a great deal of the outside areas are available (but obviously all the buildings are locked). I haven't poked around because I'm more interested in the gameplay. Said gameplay is pretty much chapter 1 of the game - wandering around the first house and encountering a ghost twice.

Needless to say, now that I know it works on the Steam Deck, I've purchased the deluxe version of the remake for download and playing next week.

There's a new handholding mechanic that I love very much - I've always felt bad that Mayu, the sister, is always left limping behind you, and it makes so much sense to hold hands with her. (The healing mechanic does not hurt.)

Other things:
* There are minor changes to things - Sae is missing her dialogue outside the Osaka house, the newspaper article about Masumi is found in the Osaka house instead of the trail to the village, Miyako's ghost heads in a different direction than in earlier games, the flashlight is found in a different location, etc.
* Save points have item shops, like Fatal Frame 4. (Another concept that was a thing in Fatal Frame 4 also makes a return, but not in the demo - however, you can see it if you go into photo mode.)
* You now have willpower, which depletes when a ghost attacks you, and health. If your willpower goes to 0, then ghosts start draining your health.
* Miyako, who is essentially the tutorial ghost for this game and normally a fairly easy ghost, whipped my behind. I didn't die, but I came really really close. (I replayed both of her battles in this chapter.) She charges at you a lot, and if you're not used to it - especially early on in the fight - she will take a chunk out of you. Part of the issue is that you need to aim the camera in her face, and sometimes her face is a bit hard to find. Yay upgraded graphics?

Fic for the Chinese Web Drama "Excellent Women"; I'll post it on AO3 when it comes back up. Yang Moli POV.
( I'm still working my way through this drama, but I had to write fic for this f/f pairing. Later episodes might invalidate this fic, but so far there's no back info on how these two got to know one another. )

I've been watching the Chinese web drama "Excellent Women" on IQIYI, because Lin Fan is in it. Did not expect a possibly lesbian or bi character to essentially be hitting on Lin Fan's character.

I posted on Tumblr with two sets of screenshots: https://www.tumblr.com/estirose/809851002507395072/i-love-this-exchange-from-the-chinese-web-drama?source=share

We'll see if she hits on anyone else, but so far it's only Lin Fan's character. (As of this writing, only episodes 1-6 are available to me of a 24-32 episode webdrama (I forgot I had IQIYI VIP, which gave me access to the entire run as it played out) - short episodes, at least, only about 15 minutes long plus credits.)

(Also, I guess the female cast sung the opening theme? And Lin Fan rapped!)

( Small spoilers for episode 32 )

I had to dig around a bit, but apparently I heard about this game around March of 2016; I bought it on GOG for its full price on March 30th of 2016. At that point, 1.0.6 had been released about 10 days before (and 1.0.7 would be released a week later). Version 1.0 was released on February 26, 2016, so I was about a month late to the party.

Now it's 10 years old, with a retrospective video and the Symphony of Seasons concert showing up on Youtube later today. I've written a bunch of mods for it. Not fancy mods by any stretch, but mods!

Please enjoy this picture from early on when I was playing my first game and romancing Maru (and even somewhat matching the male suits!)

I picked up both of these from DriveThruRPG. I have yet to play either of them, I'm just looking at their systems.

Cozy MMUGS is $5 USD and Idlewater is Pay-What-You-Want (default $2 USD). They're both variants on the same idea of a life of farming, mining, foraging, and other things you'd expect from their video game equivalents. They're what are considered "solo journaling TTRPGs" (though the author says the journaling is optional), where you write out what you did each day. If you've never heard of journaling RPGs, it's where you have a slightly guided adventure with the dice working more or less as your gamemaster/guide, and you're expected to log/journal in a story format what you did each day as your character.

Of the two, Idlewater is definitely the simpler of the two systems. It's vaguely d20 System based, though it doesn't use the OGL because it doesn't need to. You roll for six stats which very much resemble D&D ones but have different names (for the most part); you also have one skill related to each stat. It comes with its own setting (which is actually based off a related RPG) which seems to be magic-based even though there is no magic in the game, and includes an entire town full of locals. You do the same things that you'd expect in a farming-type cozy video game, such as farming, mining, dungeon delving, blacksmithing, hunting, and selling - oh, and of course, relationships. You are limited by a stamina type system where you have a limit as to how much you can do each day. There's also a weather system, and if you're really unlucky, there will be some days where you feed your animals and then go back to bed.

(This is likely the earlier of the two works and could have used a couple more editing passthroughs; for example, the setting has 12 30-day months split into 4 seasons, but the villagers have the typical "Summer 4" type birthdays; for some reason, the more Constitution stat equivalent you have, the easier it is for you to get hit... and so on. Also, the PDF contains several pages of descriptions about the various ancestries in the setting, some of which supposedly have magic, but there is no magic use in this game....)

Cozy MMUGS is kind of a more detailed version of Idlewater. It uses the author's own dice system (instead of Idlewater's vague d20 System), has a generic setting, and no set village - though you could easily lift Idlewater's characters for it sans that game's setting info regarding their ancestries (or including their ancestries, if you want). It has similar 6 stats (with the same 3-18 number spread as Idlewater), but has more skills, and an xp system so you can go up in level and increase your skills. It also has magic and a related MP system, but no concrete magic powers - very much write your own.

ETA: So there are 3 possible types of rolls: the Oracle Check, which is a simple yes/no question, the rare stat last resort stat check, which is a pretty standard roll at or below stat check, and the regular skill check. The regular skill check goes something like this: roll 2 d12s, and then a die according to how many skill points you have (you can have 0-3) in the related skill. The higher your skill, the bigger your die. If you match or beat at least one of the d12s, you have a success; if you match or are higher than both, it's a great success. If you have a modifier based on the related stat, you add or subtract it from your skill roll before comparing.

Personally, I'd blend the two. Use Cozy MMUGS' system, but include Idlewater's alchemy and plants, along with its calendar system. I'd import Idlewater's village full of folks, use Idlewater's calendar (and set the villagers' birthdays to be spread throughout those months).

( My notes on how I'd merge Idlewater's stuff with Cozy MMUGS )