Scales and Tales

My last prompt was from edenfalling: There are many snakes in the world; why a krait in particular?

The short version of this is: Sometime in 2012 I unexpectedly needed a new username, but wanted to keep the same general style (the last one was a venomous snake, too), so I compiled a shortlist of good candidates and eventually picked this one.

It had a number of points in its favour:
* short
* no non-alphanumeric characters
* there are not only multiple species of snake called a krait, there are multiple species in multiple genera! Which opens up more options for icons
* I really really love blue animals, and some krait species are blue
* Rikki-tikki-tavi is a sentimental fave for me, and a krait is featured in it

All told, it's served me well! It's been my name for almost 9 years now - its 'anniversary' is next month - and I hope to keep it for many more. ♥

ride_4ever prompted me with: tea or coffee?

I only drink tea, but I enjoy coffee as a flavour, generally in desserts. Tiramisu might be my ultimate favourite dessert, though there's some stiff competition!

Coffee seems to go especially well in ice creams, too. I mentioned my ice-cream-making hobby in one comment on the tea post; one of the best ice creams I've ever made (though I can't take credit for it - I used a recipe) was a tiramisu ice cream! It uses real marscapone cheese. My contribution was the addition of ladyfingers soaked in a mix of coffee and Kahlua, which I folded in to the finished ice cream for a more tiramisu-like experience. It was incredible!

There's some marscapone in the fridge, so another batch is in my future! After I make the amaretto-peach ice cream currently in progress, anyway. :D


...This turned into an ice cream post. Sorry, ride_4ever!

A prompt from flowersforgraves: How did you get into tea?

I have talked a bit about this in a post last year, but essentially: I've always drunk tea in some form or another, but it became a staple of my life when I was in college the first time. Tea was caffeinated, inexpensive, easily made in a dorm room with just a hot pot to heat water (I used a Pyrex 2-cup measuring cup as a teapot!) and as a bonus had a range of strengths and flavours to prevent boredom.

( Continued below the cut. )

Once again, Dreamwidth December didn't work out for me, so I'm doing Journaling January! :D


It's simple: if there's something you want me to talk about, comment with that subject (and optionally a date) and I will make a post about it in January! Topics can be fannish or nonfannish, and both new topics and repeats are welcome.


List of prompts:
6th - flowersforgraves, how did you get into tea?
10th - tropicsbear, favourite supernatural creature and why
12th - ride_4ever, tea or coffee
15th - gloss, preferred book genre, optionally with faves
17th - edenfalling, why a krait in particular?

The prompt from hamsterwoman was "Dragon Cave!"

Dragon Cave, DragonCave, DC or DragCave are all the same thing: dragcave.net, an online sprite-collecting/digital-pet game where you collect, trade, and raise dragons of many breeds. Your dragons are displayed on a "scroll" to let you keep track.

I started playing in, uh, Feb 25, 2009, wow. o.O My intention was to play just long enough to accrue a handful of dragons to put in my signature to decorate my posts on a forum I frequented. As a bonus, I could use them to decorate LJ posts, too. Instead, I fell captive and now I'm the mod of dragoncavers, meaning I run a community just so I can decorate it with dragons!

The most interesting thing about DC, I think, is that there's no set way to play. Some people just want one of every breed, from common to rare. Some people set a "scroll goal," such as having 5 of each kind. Breeding is completely optional, but can be done in many different ways, and some players end up producing lineages with special meaning or a visual pattern. Others prefer dragons without a lineage and focus on collecting those. Some players have fun with the naming feature, such as creating funny names or using an entire text within a lineage. [Note: those two aren't mine!] There are people who do roleplay, with a dedicated forum board for that or freeform via chat.

New breeds are released regularly, and there are also a number of tricky options you can mess around with: some breeds will produce hybrids when crossbred, or the color of the offspring can be manipulated. You can turn your dragons into zombies by killing them and successfully reviving them, or into "neglected dragons" which have a different sprite! There are unbreedable types that must be caught in the Cave or summoned by the actions of a dragon you own. There are eggs which will hatch into different dragons depending on the time of day or the phase of the moon. Some breeds are common and some are rare; there are players who do their best to figure out the ratio system and alter it, by mass-breeding certain types and estimating the offspring ratios!

Special new breeds are released on three holidays each year, with those breeds only able to produce their own kind of egg for a week at that holiday. Holidays usually bring fun mini-games ranging from an "Easter Egg Hunt" all over the site to an RPG adventure, but it's all optional and doesn't affect your game if you're not interested.

Basically, it's a wide-open sandbox and you can do your own thing. While looking at cute dragon pictures. :D

I'm a tea drinker.

That encompasses the basics, but there's so much involved with that simple statement that it can't possibly all fit in a DW entry, so I'll pick a few subcategories to discuss. You're welcome to ask about others in comments.

( Tea talk below the cut: Types and flavours, history, paraphernalia (with recs), and rambling! )

Hopefully that wasn't too much Tea Discussion for the non-tea-drinkers who read this journal. :D I apologise for this entry's late appearance, too - I posted an initial draft under lock, and forgot to unlock it after editing! *facepalming*