One of my favorite techniques for wasting time, resources, and my enemies in Breath of the Wild is attaching things to Octo Ballons. If you get the right number of balloons for your object, you can cause it to float at about chest height, which puts it in the perfect position to blown wherever you like using a Korok Leaf. Since you’re not striking anything with the leaf, a single leaf can last you through a number of battles. Unfortunately, the balloons will pop after a short time, so you have to be precise, quick, and dilligent. Otherwise your carefully arranged maze of traps you’re going to blow onto the unsuspecting Bokoblins will fall at the wrong time and ruin the whole effect. After all, it’s only impressive if YOU set off the series of explosions that causes fire or shock or ice to rain upon your enemies.
Continue readingMonth: March 2022
I’m Tired and Sad, So Let’s Talk About The Legend of Zelda: Episode 11
At one point into my first play-through of Breath of the Wild, probably at 1 or 2am on a night I had to be up early for work since that was pretty much the entire month following the release of the game, I discovered that I could hold items I’d been collecting in my hands. For whateve reason, it never occurred to me that this could serve any purpose other than to cook things over a fire. I’d, of course, discovered that you could interact with objects in the world before you picked them up, but it had never occurred to me that it might be useful to put them back into the world once I’d put them in my pockets.
Continue readingReasonable Expectations For Life Management
As a single person living alone in a moderately sized two-bedroom apartment, I frequently feel like I don’t have enough time for everything I need and want to do. Back when I was working from home, I could do a lot of small household chores and personal management labor in the breaks I now fill with walking around my office, browsing the internet, writing, and various minor entertainments. I think that was the only time in my life I managed to keep up with laundry, apartment cleaning, work, and hobbies. I had fewer demands on my time, sure, since I wasn’t blogging, writing, and trying to maintain three dungeons and dragons campaigns, but I felt like I was actually on top of things for once.
Continue readingDusk Reflected In Windows
The final moments of my work day follow a similar routine. I empty bottles, sort pens and notepads, turn off my fan, unplug my lights, settle my sweatshirt and jacket into place, steady a mask on my face, sling a bag over my shoulder, and perform three quick keyboard shortcuts on my computer. As I linger for a moment, still uncertain after years of practice that I have performed the proper functions, I feel the familiar weight of my bag, now light for the empty bottles and lunch containers, slip from where I had slung it to its familiar position. It will stay there, despite my best efforts, as I move down halls and through doors to leave my workplace behind in favor of the outside world, my car, and whatever my evening has in store.
Continue readingWhat Makes A Story A Gaming Campaign Or A Book
I wish I had the time and energy for more weekly Dungeons and Dragons games. Specifically, the time and energy to run them. At present, I’d like to get myself to one weekly game (that, you know, actually plays weekly) and two every-other-week games that alternate so I can run two games a week but have more time to prepare the two that alternate. If I didn’t have to spend time working a full-time job, I could probably run a game every day. Do prep in the morning, run in the afternoon, and have evenings to myself. I’ve thought about trying to get into the “Game Master as a day job” gig, but I’ve decided that for now, I want to keep this as just a hobby. Still, if I had more time and energy, I’d love to add another game or two into rotation.
Continue readingStory Dictation Or Discovery In Video Games
I’ve been playing a lot of Super Nintendo games recently. Most of which I played previously, but some for the first time thanks to them being freely available as a result of my Nintendo Online subscription. I may have started playing them because Earthbound was recently on it, but I’ve played more than just the one game. While many of them are nostalgia plays or simple, mindless enjoyment I don’t have anything interesting or useful to say about, I’ve been thinking about the approach to storytelling the games developers took in this early, limited medium.
Continue readingI’m Sorta Okay At Destiny 2, And That’s Alright
There’s no better reminder of how “a step above average” you are at a video game than seeing the performance of a high-skill group of players who have practiced their coordination and communication. I used to get this through watching the professional Overwatch league, back in the days when I watched and played that game before I chose to uninstall all my Blizzard games for reasons of moral concern (which has only gotten worse over the years since). Now, I get it by watching my friend and his fellow members of what our (I kept writing “his/my friend’s clan” even though I’m a part of it because I’m still only dipping my toes back into Destiny 2, but I changed it all in editing because I’m trying to push myself to become a more active member of the group) clan calls Team 1 as they prepared for the latest raid and now practice for future guided raids.
Continue readingAdditional Thoughts, Caveats, And The Problems of Satire On The Internet
Today, I’m writing the rare sequel to a blog post. I wrote yesterday about my willingness to commit to the bit so long as it was a generally positive or neutral thing, and as I’ve reflected on that piece and thought about life in the internet age, I’ve realized there’s another important caveat beyond my “don’t use my powers for evil or negativity” caveat from yesterday. The other important rule of my bit commitment, so integral that I completely forgot about it until I saw someone break it on Twitter today, is “never commit to a bit on the internet.”
Continue readingI Only Use My Willingness to Commit To The Bit For Good
Sometimes, I like to spend way too much time on something. In years past, I was not as skilled at directing this time and attention toward something constructive and positive. I’d spend hours scrolling through social media, trying to get my spoons perfectly clean (OCD’s a bitch), or getting everything perfect on a theaterical set I was building (instead of getting it good enough for something that was going to stay up for three weeks and then get tossed in a dumpster). Now, I’m a little better at directing my time. I direct this level of focus towards putting puzzles together, deep-cleaning my apartment, and various personal projects. Which isn’t to say that I can channel my compulsions into something useful, but that maybe I’ve gotten better at handling my mental health in a way that leads toward more positive coping mechanism than obsessing over whether or not my most-used utensil is bacteria free and not going to kill me by introducing rat posion/foreign bacteria/????DANGER???? into my system.
After a brief, jovial conversation at work, during which I politely asked a coworker to fuck off after he criticised my slap-dash wiring methods, I was asked by another coworker what was the most complicated and time-consuming way I’d told someone to fuck off. He was referencing my tendency to commit to elaborate bits and my willingness to spend a lot of time doing something right the first time, but I couldn’t think of any examples. Most of the time, I just tell people to fuck off directly. Ever since that conversation, I’ve been trying to think of any example of a time I spent a lot of time on something like that and I’ve drawn a blank.
Clearly, I don’t mind spending a lot of time on things other people don’t consider important or worth it. I spent hours turning in a paper because it was my degree capstone and I liked my professor a lot. In addition to the standard format copy I submitted just to cover all my bases, I took a cue from a discussion we’d had in in class the week prior and the peculiar way I’d written the title of this 20-page paper. I printed the whole thing out on several long pieces of paper, used my theatrical prop-building skills to turn them all into a properly parchment-looking sheet, and “nailed” (pieces of duct tape with the word “nail” written on them) the result to my professor’s office door the day the paper was due. It was not a cheap trick to pull for a broke college student, given that the only paper that would work for my purposes was some of the heavy-duty art-student paper I had to get specially printed at the print shop on campus.
I did a similar thing to ask a woman out, once. Wrote a short story based on some things we had discussed and some stuff we were learning about in a class we were both taking, and eventually delivered a hand-distressed “ancient myth” I’d discovered. It was fun, took way too long, and was 100% worth it. The relationship didn’t develop much further in that direction, but I enjoyed my time spent in the crafting. I’ve also spent hours wrapping presents in ways that disguised not only what the present was, but what part of the strange result was actually the present (if you twist a shirt tightly enough and then wrap the result in plastic wrap, it actually becomes a rather firm object you can use as the haft of an axe you’ve made out of tape, cardboard, and way too much wrapping paper). I’ve made various weapons, done one of the largely annoying but still fun “box in a box in a box in a box in a box….” style wraps, and even took the time to elaborately write out a certificate as a present, the first letter of each work spelling out where the recipient could actually find their gift.
The through-line of all of this is that I am willing to spend a lot of time doing things I find interesting, that I enjoy, or that I think other people will enjoy. My love of repititive and exacting tasks means I can zone out and never get bored doing something like that, so there’s generally very little reason for me not to do that kind of thing. But I’ve never spent more than a couple minutes on something that might upset someone. I’ve spent time crafting letters to establish boundaries and working out how to express myself in a situation that is emotionally frought, but I’ve never spent more than a couple minutes on something meant as an elaborate form of “fuck off.” I just don’t have the time or the energy for that kind of negativity. I was going to say “bullshit” instead of “negativity,” but I have plenty of time and energy for largely uninteresting stuff others might consider bullshit.
One of the upsides of my childhood is that I quickly learned that being mean to people isn’t worth my time. The more time you spend on telling someone you hate them, the happier they are. Bullies, trolls, and abusers are always happy to see you spend your time on them, regardless of the reason. There’s an old saying that the best revenge is a life well-lived, and while I like the sentiment, I’m not sure I entirely agree. Some people need to be punched, some people need to be told off, and some people need to be chewed out, but I’m not going to spend any more time than I feel is absolutely necessary for my own health and satisfaction (or the health or satisfaction of someone I’m supporting) on someone I don’t care about. Generally speaking, they’re not worth it.
I hope this doesn’t come off as smugly superior. I just think it’s worth thinking about that if you want to spend hours planning an elaborate revenge prank or whatever, it might be a better use of your time to just punch them in the face and move on with your life as best you can. Or just tell them to get fucked and walk away. Or offer to show up as a call-in guest to a small multi-person therapy session to tell them they fucking suck and can go fuck themselves before promptly hanging up. Lots of ways to just do it and be done, you know? Spend your time and energy one something better, life filing your taxes or picking gum out of carpet. At least you’ll have accomplished something lasting when those are tasks are done.
Open-World Situation Building In Dungeons & Dragons
After nearly two months, I got to run my Sunday night Dungeons and Dragons campaign again. After side-sessions, many missed sessions, and a whole lot of tumult in everyone’s life, we were able to gather again and return to the dark fantasy and mild horror stylings of the world I’d spent over a year slowly developing. I had fun, my players had fun, there was a lot of lucky rolls, the player characters survived a lot of nasty damage, there were some clutch reactions and actions, and only one player character died in a boss battle they were absolutely unprepared for! That’s the danger of open-world scenarios, you know. You can accidentally wander into the desecrated temple to the not-evil gods right as a priest of what is essentially malicious entropy completes a ritual that temporarily grants him a huge deal of power in a side-realm. All without any of the information that contextualizes any of that so even when you do win, you’re not sure if it matters or not, or even how to do anything as a result.
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