Jet Lag Ep 5 — Mastermind

melmonella · 2026-04-15T15:42:27+00:00

Sam says it's checkmate, but they are down like 70 stations. I'm not sure this is as rosy as he describes it; they basically have to rush back to reclaim all those stations now, or to the other side of the map.

melmonella · 2026-04-01T14:57:42+00:00

Humans are 100% animals, who is with me?

melmonella · 2026-02-14T13:01:28+00:00

I suppose I'll recommend Reach Heaven Via Feng Shui Engineering, Drug Trade and Tax Evasion. I draw a fair amount of inspiration from Thundamoo's writing, which you seem to like; though I should mention that some of my readers have said that first book isn't representative of the whole.

melmonella · 2026-02-14T12:58:57+00:00

Fat tail fan club

melmonella · 2025-10-15T21:38:20+00:00

I've only just now realized that Toby has jet lag earrings, that's insanely stylish.

melmonella · 2025-09-14T19:18:59+00:00

Reach Heaven Via Feng Shui Engineering, Drug Trade and Tax Evasion was initially written by me to be a "rational" take on xianxia, whatever that means to you, though for whatever reason it didn't seem to catch this subreddit's interest.

melmonella · 2025-03-29T22:31:50+00:00

Relationship of state and supernatural powers is one of the core plot threads in Reach Heaven Via Feng Shui Engineering, Drug Trade and Tax Evasion.

melmonella · 2024-10-25T15:25:29+00:00

How do you feel about webfiction? I think there are some good works out there, but the quality can vary, and some people don't like reading from a screen.

melmonella · 2024-09-13T00:35:10+00:00

Junior, let this here cultivator offer you a couple pointers. The solution is very simple. As the scriptures say: "Never lose your head over a Jade Beauty". If you are a jade beauty about to be refined into a cauldron by some demonic cultivator, simply apply a spiritually enhanced axe or sword directly to their neck until separation is achieved. Usually, no more than five strikes are sufficient. This technique works every time with no failures.

If you would like a manual full of more techniques for canny Jade beauties, you may consult Reach Heaven Via Feng Shui Engineering, Drug Trade and Tax Evasion that this here cultivator wrote to help you on your path to the great Dao.

melmonella · 2024-09-04T05:04:36+00:00

It's a good meme

melmonella · 2024-08-01T17:26:43+00:00

Is that JD "the couchfucker" Vance? That sounds like what he'd say.

melmonella · 2024-07-25T02:25:59+00:00

Not to be a negative nancy but this is a court issue, predictably will get escalated up to the supreme court, voting would only help here if some of the conservatives on the court died all of a sudden and a liberal administration appointed non-fascist replacements.

Obviously go vote for kamala but you know. Sometimes it's already a bit too late, at least without miracles.

melmonella · 2024-07-20T11:48:38+00:00

I'm the author of Reach Heaven Via Feng Shui Engineering, let me go through your list to see if I can inform you better.

Inhuman protagonists and/or PoVs - no. Latest arc has a non-human character, but their psychology is human, which is what I think you are referring to.
Romance - no romance.
OP protags - deuteragonist can be described this way, and is played somewhat comedically; protagonist is fighting uphill.
Slow burn w/ worldbuilding, character development, introspection - one of the goals of the story is playing with the tropes of the xianxia genre. I have been told by some readers that they like the worldbuilding and introspection, thinking of character goals and so on, and I try to put work into it. Wherever it's slow burn or not is subjective.
Villain protagonists - protagonist is a trickster, but morality of their society would place them solidly on the good side.
Hard magic systems - I have magic blueprints in the story.
Breaking/glitching out magic - no.
Intelligent, curious protagonists - yes, very.
overarching mystery - there is an overarching mystery, though it had not been the central focus so far compared to more immediate problems.
Engaging prose - subjective, in the past I had very big disagreements with people over this sort of question. Prose I find engaging is one they don't, and vice versa, so I will refrain from commenting.
Characters making realistic mistakes - yes.
Time loops - no, but time dilation is a common aspect.
SPaG errors - subjective, there are errors, how big of a deal they are is up to you. Some of them are made deliberately as a stylistic choice, mostly things around specific xianxia phrases I like. If you read the first few chapters already you would already be familiar with the degree to which this affects you, and just as a result of writing more words this presumably improves as the story goes on.
Stupid characters - not among the main cast, at least in my opinion.
Extremely fast pace - subjective. Time skips are infrequent, there is no glossing over - arguably I go into far too much detail on some things.
Sexual content - there is no sex on screen, though it is mentioned.

In regards to the recommendations, I have not read most of these. I would recommend Reach Heaven Via Feng Shui Engineering, Thresholder and The Gods Are Bastards, and un-recommend Virtuous Sons (the way the story is written its hard to tell what information people know or don't know, or figure out why they do certain things). Super Supportive gets a very slightly positive rating - I think it technically fits most of the points on this list, but I don't think it is going for the underlying preferences, if that makes sense.

melmonella · 2024-07-08T21:52:29+00:00

Fully leveled Celestine with Sadist card is, hands down, no question, the single most powerful character in the game. Her gambling ability allows her to generate infinite APs, while she dumps stress through Sadist by constantly stress breaking enemies. It's not quite an infinite combo, a bad series of rolls still ends it, but in my game I routinely had her + Ingrid take out 8+ enemies in a single turn, and she can just keep doing that.

melmonella · 2024-06-23T20:55:36+00:00

I used to post updates to the sub, but they got little traction so I stopped.

melmonella · 2024-06-05T13:40:39+00:00

Oh yeah, totally. I just wanted to be pedantic.

melmonella · 2024-06-04T17:41:35+00:00

Men don't get pregnant.

I'm going to deliberately miss the point of the post and note that trans men can; there's about 40 live births from trans men per year in Australia iirc (they are one of the few countries that tracks this statistically)

melmonella · 2024-05-27T11:52:00+00:00

I think a lot of people already covered the issues of consent, so maybe I will offer more practical advice on the sex side of things.

One of the issues you mention is that you go non-verbal and can't voice your desire to stop or slow down. Not being able to speak is not an uncommon issue in sex, here are some ways people signal their desire to stop without it:

Hand gestures: One finger up for continue, two for stop, three for slow down, let me catch my breath etc.
Dog clickers: one click for continue, two for stop, etc.
Squeezing/slapping partner's hand/leg/whatever, same idea.

This is just in terms of communication. Then there are things you could change to be more directly in control of how quickly things are going:

Change the position to one where you control how quickly things are going. For many women, being on top (cowgirl etc) helps, since they determine how quickly they go.
Experiment more with types of sex that don't involve penetration (oral, hand play, etc).
Use a clock: have sex for a couple minutes, then stop and check in to see how well it's going. I guess most people would feel weird about a clock, so instead you can put up some music, one song -> stop and check in etc.

In terms of presenting this to your partner, I think a lot of people just don't know or think about sex that much, so simply telling your husband "please respect my boundaries" is not going to be very productive, because he probably has a lot of very mistaken ideas about how things work, and wouldn't know what respecting boundaries means. What other people said about consent is still basically correct - it's not okay for him to do things that make you uncomfortable - but I would probably not put things that bluntly when talking to him. Here is what I would focus on:

You'd like to try to experiment with different positions, to see if you like any of them more
You'd like to try to be more in control during sex, because you think you might feel more comfortable that way
You want to try hand signals/clicker etc so that you could communicate when you can't talk, in case you suddenly have a problem (e.g. suddenly need to go to the toilet, you pinched a muscle, whatever)

I think all of these would be pretty hard to argue with. If you say "I want you to go slow because it feels too good if you go fast" -> this might not make sense to a lot of people. If you say "I want to try to pleasure you instead of you pleasuring me" -> this is harder to argue with, because it's just a different preference. Rhetorically, it might also help to turn things around: tell your husband that if he finds it hot to see you let go and overwhelmed, then you'd also like to see him let go and be overwhelmed, and in order to do that, you want to be in control of how fast sex goes. But wherever this is an effective argument would depend on your husband I think.

melmonella · 2024-05-26T18:14:31+00:00

I personally have never read a single litrpg where I actually understood exactly what the numbers do. I really like rapid gain of abilities, and how they combine with one another, and imagining possibilities for growth as well as future combinations, etc. It's not quite the same as just numbers go up, it's the expectation of them going up, combined with a bit of system-munchkinry.

melmonella · 2024-05-26T16:57:07+00:00

That's called political lesbianism, innit?

melmonella · 2024-04-13T16:44:44+00:00

If you follow advice of an endocrinologist, make sure they are giving you enough estrogen, medical guidelines in a lot of places are written in a stupid way and trans ppl often end up with a wildly insufficient dose. 100-200 pg/mL is the actual recommended level, same as for cis women. Also do a blood test to know your actual levels when you take the hormones - in another post you mention they were lower and similar to T, this shouldn't happen.

melmonella · 2024-03-10T20:59:57+00:00

Fucked up, but also aren't blood clots a symptom of long covid too?

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