I have continued to put a ridiculous number of hours into Baldur’s Gate 3. I don’t think I’ve ever played a game this intensely and consistently. I mean, I typically don’t play games that require a great deal of focus and personal investment on work nights, since I know they tend to make me ignore the passage of time, but I’ve not only started doing that, I’ve been doing it consistently enough to go from staying up until the wee hours of the morning to stopping at a reasonable time. Turns out two straight weeks of obscenely little sleep thanks to a combination of Baldur’s Gate 3 and stress will shake me out of my worst sleep habits. I’ve managed to stop playing between eleven and twelve at night for four nights in a row as of writing this, and only once squeaked in under that deadline solely due to the game crashing as I started “one more thing”ing myself into what might have wound up being the wee hours. Still! I’m counting this as a win, if only because I’m still enjoying myself and am now clear-headed during my work days (even if I’m still recovering from a severe sleep deficit and struggling to stay away right after I eat lunch). Baldur’s Gate 3 really has a lot going for it and I really don’t have much of anything negative to say about my play experience in the one hundred played hours I’ve accrued on my save file.
Continue readingMonth: September 2023
I Feel So Relieved Already
Just one week later, not even seven full days getting my mole removed, and I’m already wondering what I was worried about. Sure, I’m still in the active wound-care stage of things, but I’m notably less self-conscious of the bandage stuck to my face than I ever was of my mole, and that’s even with the bandage feeling way more noticeable than the mole ever was. It just bothers me so much less. Honestly, the only gripe I’ve got about this whole process is how I have to shave every single day. I learned the hard way that more than a day’s worth of facial hair growth makes the bandages fall off much more quickly. Most of the other gripes I’ve had (such as how bad the wound looked) either faded away in the first few days or I’ve learned how to counter them. For instance, I might still be unable to bite into large things (like an apple), but I’ve gone back to drinking as usual and gotten the hang of eating various more easily bitten foods without making a mess or accidentally putting pressure on my wound. It has all become fairly routine at this point and while I’m definitely eager to get to the point where I don’t have something stuck to my face twenty-four hours a day, I’m honestly just happy to not have the mole anymore.
Continue readingTaking a Birthday Break To Rest Up
This is the weekend after my birthday and, complex feelings about the day itself aside, I am absolutely going to use that as an excuse to rest. We’ve got a holiday in the US (Labor Day, which feels more and more important with every passing year) and I’m just taking some time off. I’m just going to have a quiet, guilt-free day of relaxation and video games on Monday, since I’ve got Baldur’s Gate 3 to finish and then Armored Core 6 or Sea of Stars to play. Plus all the other games I’ve started and left unfinished because something else came along (I’m looking at you, Cassette Beasts). And a new playthrough of Chained Echoes, inspired by the blog post that went up yesterday. I’ve got a lot of fun games to play, books to read, puzzles to do, and I’m just gonna set everything aside for now so I can just enjoy my three-day-weekend. It’ll be a couple months before I get another work holiday and it’s not like I’ve got much vacation time left after how much I was out in the first half of the year, so I’m doing what I can to maximize my relaxation right now.
There will be another Chapter of Infrared Isolation next week (I was almost finished writing the chapter when I wrote this post, so it should be done and edited and I’ll even be partway through the next chapter by the time this post goes up) and my normal blog posts will resume on the 5th of September. Have a great weekend!
The Purpose of Themes and Subgenre Tropes in Chained Echoes
This post will contain spoilers for the game Chained Echoes beginning in paragraph five (the very first sentence of the paragraph is a themaic spoiler and they only get more specific from there).
The older I get, the more I’m aware that everything is about something. Intentionally, unintentionally, and sometimes widely varying based on who is interpreting it. Sure, I learned this truth a long time ago, but it only ever seems to get more and more true as time goes on. I mean, I studied English Literature, always enjoyed reading comprehension tests or assignments in grade school, and though it took me a while to really grasp this idea in high school, I have been leaning into it ever since. This is not a new idea to me or even most people (I hope, though the state of the world makes me question how many people are capable of grasping nuance). I compleely set aside the idea that we aren’t constantly, and frequently unintentionally, showing whatever is on our minds through what we created the time I realized that the story I was writing in high school was about me and the horrible family life I had. Once I saw that, I couldn’t unsee it. Even when I redid the story in my last year of college and tried to be more intentional about what the story was about, I still found myself uncovered interpretations and metaphors I hadn’t intentionally written into it. This is why I tend to rewrite rather than revise these days, since it helps me figure out if the underlying issue is actually a part of the story or just something that was weighing heavily on my mind while I was writing. I don’t mind this stuff showing up in my writing, though, since I’m a firm believer in needing to write things out so I can learn what I’m thinking, but I generally try to be aware of it.
Continue reading