I’ve been playing this Dungeons and Dragons character, currently known as “Lewis” to the rest of the party, for about two years now. He hasn’t really changed much since I first came up with the character concept at his core, but the themes I want to explore with him have shifted over time, as I’ve reflected on the similarities between myself and this character I’ve made. Initially, I wanted to explore what it looked like to be in a relationship that was not toxic to the people involved in it, but to the people who encounter those involved in it. I was planning to play it out through a modified Warlock and Patron relationship, which the Dungeon Master seemed to be on board with, but that idea lost its luster over time and has faded to the background. There will still be elements of it, I’m sure, throughout the rest of the campaign (or however long this character survives), but now I’m more interested in a theme that has had more relevance in my daily life, that I sort of incidentally worked into the character: how long can you pretend to be something before you become it?
Continue readingMonth: April 2023
Link Might be Naked and Afraid, But I’m Having A Great Time
I am now a week into streaming myself playing Breath of the Wild in a mode I’m calling “Naked and Afraid: Hats Only Master Mode.” I’ve streamed every day since Sunday the 9th, except for last Thursday, and I’ve done about twenty-two and a half hours of streaming in that time. I’ve run into a bunch of technical issues (all of which I now have quick solutions for, thankfully), found a few ways to streamline my recording and editing process (since I’m hoping to put all of my deaths into a compilation video once I’ve finished the challenge), and learned a bunch about Nightbot (though not nearly enough to get all of my commands working the way I’d like). Honestly, I’m having a great time. I love a new project and this is something I can REALLY sink my teeth into. After all, it’s based around one of my favorite things!
Continue readingAll Aboard the Hype Train for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
Once again, I an interrupting my planned schedule so that I can write about The Legend of Zelda. This time, though, instead of writing about streaming Breath of the Wild on Twitch in the month remaining before Tears of the Kingdom comes out, I’m writing about Tears of the Kingdom itself. After all, a new trailer just dropped. Speaking of which, if you’re planning to avoid spoilers or any information at all about Tears of the Kingdom before it is in your hands, you should absolutely leave now because this whole post is just going to be one long, enthusiastic gush about the trailer and everything I know about the game (which isn’t much, sure, but I’ve picked up a lot of stuff from the existing trailers and I’ve got literally no other outlet for this enthusiasm these days). You have been warned.
Continue readingAnother Trip Down Memory Lane With a Pair of Superstars
In the little chunks of time I had between work, trip preparations, and rest, I started playing Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga from the Game Boy Advance collection I got with the expansion pass to my Nintendo Online account. That has long been one of my favorite Game Boy Advance titles and I was excited to play it again since my GBA hasn’t worked properly for a few years now and my DS, which I used to play GBA games with a backlight, broke a couple summers ago (and my attempts at fixing it fell by the wayside when I couldn’t find a decent 3D printable shell design to use). Having it on the Switch means it is easy to play in fits and starts, and its nature as a somewhat straight-forward RPG means I won’t have any trouble coming back to the game if I wind up not playing it for weeks or months at a time. Plus, I first played this when I was right on the cusp of reclaiming gaming for myself, without interference from my parents or brother, so there’s a decent bit of nostalgia to the game, even if I’ve played it fairly frequently over the years thanks to the slow roll-out of titles in the same general series.
Continue readingReflections on Vacation and Growth
After spending almost two weeks away from work, traveling around the US, flying to Spain, traveling around Spain (and Barcelona in particular), I finally understand why people use multiple social media accounts. Most of my pictures don’t really make sense for Facebook or Twitter, with their more connection-based platforms, so I might finally put some stuff up on the instagram account I’ve had for who knows how many years. I’ve got some nice nature and architecture pictures, along with pictures of my friends and I, so I’ll probably post those there. I’ve got enough pictures I want to post that I can probably put up a decent selection on all three of those platforms, plus Cohost (which is basically me shouting into a void still) and here, which is more of a text experience than a picture one so far as I’m concerned. I’ve still got to figure out how I want to use and balance all of these accounts, but I think I have some ideas after my friends suggested things. Who knows, though. Social media is kind of actively decaying these days, so it’s mostly just a way to share and collect the photos I took on my first cross-Atlantic international trip.
Continue readingFinding The Silver In All of Last Month’s Grey
The past few weeks have been a study in living with anxiety for me. After my coping mechanisms were overwhelmed during an incredibly stressful week, the nearness of my recent trip prevented me from taking the time I needed to recover. As I’m learning, though, it prevented me from taking the time I thought I needed to recover. This isn’t to say that I somehow did better because I was so busy, or even that I managed just fine. I think time to properly rest would have benefited me, of course, since I felt a deep, aching weariness by the time I had to drive across half the country for a flight and that drive, the flight, and settling in to my trip just added their own spins to my exhaustion. But I managed just fine and I don’t think it was even as self-destructive as I thought it might be. As it turns out, since I was so focused on doing something new and had to take care of or at least confront a bunch of personal issues I’d been putting off, I’m probably better off for being put in this position.
Continue readingFinally Following Through on my Naked and Afraid Breath of the Wild Challenge
Over the weekend, I finally started on a project that I’ve talked about doing for about five or six years now. I began a play-through of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild where I will allow myself to wear nothing but hats (aside from a few plot-centric moments that require me to wear more clothes such as entering the Gerudo city and certain quests that require me to wear specific things) and rely heavily on environmental fire as a weapon, all while playing the game on Master Mode. I’ve already finished most of the stuff on the plateau and am ready to move into the wider world. I’ve also already died half a dozen times, mostly due to my own hubris and forgetting to focus on any bokoblin with a bow since most of them will be able to instantly kill me. I’ve found myself frequently frustrated by how quickly a fight ends once I make a mistake, but that’s part of the reason I’m calling this whole personal challenge mode the “Naked and Afraid Run.” The kicker for all of this is that I’m streaming it on my relatively unused Twitch channel so that everyone can come watch/heckle me as I play. All in good fun, of course.
Continue readingPost Vacation Check-In
Well, I had a great time. There’ll be more coming about all that (especially once I’ve had time to sort through pictures and decide what is going where when it comes to social media and my blog here), but I wanted to interrupted my previously planned posting order to do a few updates about my schedule. I’ll get those out of the way quick so I can talk about something more fun/contemplative for the rest of the post.
Continue readingGetting Too Detached From The Clock
There is only one room in my home in which a clock is visible. In fact, you have to actually enter the room to see the time. You can’t see it unless you’ve gone out of your way to peer into the room or pause as you’re walking past it to look at the only clock visible from the hallway. This room is the kitchen and it has three clocks because my oven, my microwave, and my coffeemaker are all fundamentally attached to time in a way that I no longer am. It is a privilege, to be sure, to largely not need to run my life by the steady ticking of the second hand or the silent but swift change of a digital clock, and I appreciate the many factors of my life that make it possible. My largely malleable sleep schedule (I need a few days to change now, sure, but I can get used to any repeated pattern), my lack of a specific schedule at work (my boss only cares that I do my work, not when, so long as I keep it reasonable and don’t miss meetings), and a pretty accurate sense of the passage of time (I can usually tell how much time has passed within a few minutes over one or two hours and within ten to fifteen if it has been more than two hours). As a result, I’ve gone from marking the passage of my day via the steady counting of hours and instead mark it by events.
Continue readingGetting Back Into New Stuff (Book Edition)
I meant to go from Podcasts into streaming stuff, but my trip and a late-night reading incident changed my plans. As I was preparing for my trip, I wound up buying a bunch of e-books. I’d wanted to bring some stuff to read, but I absolutely did not want to bring any physical books since my bags were already jam-packed with things I couldn’t do without. I also didn’t want to re-buy any books I already own (since, like podcasts, I’ve been collecting more and more of them without actually reading anything new). My initial plan was to pick up a bunch of comics that I could read on my phone in my downtime, since it’s fairly easy to zoom in on comics when I’m using my phone and I’m already used to reading them as I scroll around a page on my phone thanks to years of reading webcomics. As I was packing, though, I remembered I have a tablet that I bought years ago as a means of having D&D Beyond at my fingertips during Dungeons and Dragons sessions and that I was bringing that anyway, for a thing I’m doing with the group. So, instead of buying a bunch of comics, I queried around for some new books to buy, bought them, and set up my tablet with an e-book app. Thanks to that, I was able to read as much as I wanted during my vacation (which turned out to be not that much since I read all the comics during the flight out/recovery time and then only had a few more occasions where I wasn’t doing something more engaging than reading).
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