kbyanyname

@kbyanyname@awaymessage.club

I'm mostly interchangeable.

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LeviKornelsen, to random
@LeviKornelsen@dice.camp avatar

So here's a story:

The guy who wrote the Quest RPG didn't play RPGs hardly at all - like, a couple sessions of D&D, and read over the rulebooks a bit.

What he DID do was listen to podcasts about play and games, and listen to streaming play, and wrote a game built on what he heard there, which is so far as I can see extremely well engineered for streaming performances.

He was then shit on, in Twitter, extremely heavily, for not being connected, for having a good job (yes, really), and (1/2)

kbyanyname,

@LeviKornelsen It's absolutely wild, especially since it's one of the best systems I've ever played. I use it with all kinds of groups, but it's so accessible for new players.

kbyanyname, to books

Beginning Endless Forms: The Secret World of Wasps by Seirian Sumner and dang, this book comes out swinging on bees

kbyanyname,

Omg they’re so upset about how people perceive wasps that they did an internet poll. I want to be friends with this person just to hear them find any opportunity in a conversation to dunk on bees. Also, “We used the power of the internet” is such cursed phrasing

kbyanyname,

I am pleased to report that after about 20 pages of how wasps evolved to be so cool, we are back to dunking on bees. Wasps were building hives before it was cool

kbyanyname,

“Ants? I think you mean ‘wingless wasps’… Hahaha, can you imagine an ant trying to fly with those wings?! Talk about dumb! Now wasps on the other hand could not possibly be cooler. Definitely cooler than ants. Pft!”

kbyanyname,

This follows a section detailing how all of the traits we know ants for is based on something leftover from wasps. Not since a Marvel movie has someone been this excited to talk about how ants owe everything to wasps

kbyanyname,

Any other researcher would say something like “a wasp prioritized pollen as a food source” but Sumner is over here, fist pounding the table “no, a really cool wasp just forgot how to hunt and became a NON-UNIQUE bee.” The bee disdain in this book is incredible

kbyanyname,

“You heard her, boys, give ‘em the ol’ Mother’s Stiletto”
This is the second mention of stings as like the weapons of medieval assassins. Does Sumner think Assassin’s Creed is real? Honest question

kbyanyname,

Incredible, a reference to a work that has an infamously well-known “Sting” but the callout is not actually about that. You could follow this with “It can leave someone sending an SOS, hoping that someone gets their message in a bottle.” Remarkable work

kbyanyname,

I’m trying to avoid putting up CWs for these read-along threads, so I’m skipping a lot of these sections on how wasps specifically figured out chemistry to immobilize prey for larvae. Sumner is not overstating that it seems like science fiction, this is cool as heck. And that’s without even calling out the “toxic-fart eggs.” But also she gets in a dig at how bad bees are at staying clean, even worse than beetles, geez

kbyanyname,

I adore this section where Sumner imagines bringing together famous wasp researchers from the last 200 years so she can update them on what we’ve learned from their theories. It’s so fun that she puts so much drama into it

kbyanyname,

A Wasp Hound, as I have discovered, is not a Metal Gear character. Apparently a device that uses wasps to track things like explosives using the wasp’s excellent sense of smell really exists and if you aren’t phobic of them you should check it out. Personally, I think it’s a great idea, if only so we don’t need to make more dogs into cops

kbyanyname,

Do you hate spiders? Then guess what, you now love wasps. Sorry, I don’t make the rules

kbyanyname,

Hey, has your scientist mother ever enlisted your help in tracking down a wasp’s nest and then absolutely dragged you about how badly you did later in her book?

Maybe we would have, if the four-year-old hadn’t got distracted by an enormous bag of potato crisps, or the 14-year-old hadn’t instead decided to practise artistic shots of his bike on his new camera, or the 12-year-old hadn’t found herself testing out her newly mastered ‘aerial’ cartwheels across the heathland. There is only so far that one’s family will go in humouring a mother with crazy wasp fetishes. The threshold for tolerance is strictly determined by how long the snacks last. We slunk off home, without a single wasp.

kbyanyname,

The way this is phrased makes me think of a tiny Belle wasp singing to the countryside about how she wants adventure in the great wide somewhere. I wonder where this potential upward mobility leaves this wasp political-theory-wise. If honeybees are socialist, what are these wasps?

kbyanyname,

I need you to know that I just spent 10 pages trying hard to follow an argument hypothesizing why altruism evolved within wasp societies, only to have the end of the section fold the same argument back on itself to disprove it. Scientists are unknowable

kbyanyname,

I know Sumner means this as an insult but I think it’s hilarious that honeybees are face-blind

kbyanyname,

For all I’ve said about Sumner’s difficulty in straightforward writing, this section on how wasps fight for queen hood has been electric. Wasp royalty is apparently often in flux, this honestly makes them seem more capitalist than anything

kbyanyname,

We’re back to scientist fanfic, as Sumner imagines a dinner with Aristotle, primarily to disabuse him of his ideas about how bees are cooler than wasps.

kbyanyname,

Like, I just do not know what to do with this! Sumner’s footnote here explains that she isn’t a historian, so we should give some latitude for artistic license. I feel like we could get to the science without the dinner visit! But it’s at least compelling. I just don’t know what it’s compelling me to do

kbyanyname,

I imagine that most entomologists have a similar line to this at the start of many of their introductions at parties. I adore that even here, Sumner gets in a slight at honeybees, “Don’t assume wasps do this thing just because bees do”

kbyanyname,

So when you’re completing a block puzzle left in the middle of the woods with no instruction by Koroks, you’re performing stigmergy, like a wasp might do with its fellows’ nest. It turns out that bugs just really are great at block puzzles?

kbyanyname,

Hey, do you like paper? Congrats, you love wasps now

kbyanyname,

We are like 20 pages past Aristotle’s fanfic introduction in this chapter and friends it is still going on

kbyanyname,

@stoppableforce Aristotle apparently frigging loved honeybees and thought wasps were kind of a mistake. The author imagines a (20-odd page) dinner with him where she wines him, dines him and explains how he is wrong

kbyanyname,

@aetataureate @stoppableforce This honestly makes more sense than anything else so far

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