First: a follow-up. I wrote yesterday about struggling to obtain an item in Skyward Sword that I need for gear upgrades. During that evening’s video game time, I played Skyward Sword again and killed three enemies that dropped this item and every single one dropped it. Three in a row, right there, staring at me. And completely inaccessible. No way to get them, even a little bit. 100% impossible. Absolutely devastating.
Continue readingAuthor: Wren
Link’s Bug Hunting Bananza
I’ve been replaying the Legend of Zelda: Skyward sword during my evening game time lately and I’m remembering how painful so many parts of the game were. While the HD remake fixed a lot of these problems (like allowing you to zip through most dialogue and cutting WAY down on the amount of times your sword states the obvious to you while you’re just trying to run around the new area you got to), one of my personal pet peeves remains. Collecting weird shit to upgrade your stuff.
Continue readingPost-D&D Glow
There’s nothing quite like that post-D&D Session high. It’s like exhaustion, a headache, and a stomach bug all rolled into one. Basically a hangover. So incredibly unpleasant, but a sign of great times now over.
I don’t really drink much these days, so maybe that’s me romanticizing my early to mid twenties than a reflection of how I feel about hangovers, so maybe don’t drink to excess.
Continue readingWhen Life Gives You Lemondayds.
As part of the general sleep problems I’ve been having (a result of stress and the horribly thin walls/ceilings of my current apartment), I’ve begun taking melatonin every evening. It never did much for me previously, but I also used to be able to get to sleep without much problem. I rarely slept well, but I could still lose consciousness in a normal amount of time.
Continue readingAging Unreservedly
As I approach 30, I’ve been thinking about all the ways people use the phrase “aging gracefully.” If it’s a person who is conventionally attractive, people usually mean that they’ve managed to somehow stay attractive, either through genetics or through a careful regimine of healthy activities and diet. If they’re not conventionally attractive or some kind of celebrity, people usually mean that they’re not fighting the process or trying to hold on to their passing youth.
As someone whose youth absolutely sucked and who has put a lot of effort into reclaiming any parts of it I want to appreciate, I’m not really sure where I’m going to fall on this spectrum. I have no desire to return to the life I lived as a child but I also have no concept of what youthfulness means outside of this context. At the same time, I still enjoy a lot of things people associate with youth, like Pokémon, cartoons, and the word “butt.” Partly because I didn’t get to enjoy simple pleasures as a kid and partly because fun stuff is fun and I’ve learned to never take myself too seriously.
If you can’t laugh at the word “butt” when it’s used in a non-offensive, humorous way, then I guess I’m sorry? It must suck to be that humorless.
Continue readingThis Time, I’m Going to Enjoy Myself
I’ve been reflecting lately on the role of discipline in achieving goals.
As most people in moderate income blocks whose work was impacted by the pandemic can attest, life’s been difficult lately. Despite my entire past (or maybe because of it, now that I’m confronting it in therapy), the past year and a bit has been one of the most difficult periods in my life. Constant stress, anxiety, loneliness, and the pandemic itself has left me with little energy or even desire to create. Even my old constant of working on projects to fill my time until I don’t have the energy to even think about what is bothering me failed eventually.
Continue readingEverlasting
To launch the 2021 version of my blog and mark the start of daily updates (more on that tomorrow), have the poem that ends with the text from the title page of my blog that was inspired by my camping trip where I took the picture used as the backdrop of the title page.
Continue readingMaking a Monster
Creating a good D&D 5e homebrewed monster is a matter of balance. Like all things within the bounded-accuracy system of fifth edition, most of the specific numbers for attacks, armor class, and attributes are unnecessary. What you need to know is how to land within certain likelihoods for damage input and output, understand how to balance the action economy of fifth edition, how the difficulty of a fight is set, and the purpose of legendary/lair actions. While this seems like a lot to keep in mind, most of it falls under a series of general rules that make it easy to adjust a fight as it happens so you wind up with what you, the Game Master, expected.
Continue readingAn Important Announcement
It’s been nearly a month since I posted and I’ve got no idea how long it’ll be before I post again. Trying to create during these days is a tricky subject for me. I’m trying to manage my stress and health in a productive manner, but that’s a moving target as this past week has clearly illustrated to me. I mean, I visited a friend (we’re both self-isolating alone and have no risky contact with the outside, so we didn’t put each other or anyone else in danger of spreading COVID-19) in Sturgeon Bay, had a nice relaxing week away from all my stress and troubles, but then the protests started over the murder of a black man at the hands of a cop and not only could I not escape it, I don’t want to look away from this.
Continue readingAiming for Even Keel as I Sail These Troubled Waters
One of the interesting (ahahahahahahahaha.. haha… ha…) parts of recovering from trauma is the way you can quickly slip between old modes of thought and new ones. It happened to me just the other day (the day before this went up) in the middle of a conversation with a friend who was checking up on me. I was increasingly dour as she tried to be supportive, sinking down ever faster as she tried to drag me back to the neutral mind frame I’ve been trying to cultivate lately.