Sometimes, I Make Myself Sick

Wren 2 Comments

Literally. As a result of six weeks of long days at work, late nights writing, trying to get back into the things I care about, and reorganizing my life in a way that works for me, I’ve finally hit the point where I’ve stressed and pushed my body to the point where it has decided I am sick. Well, I’m pretty sure I pushed myself past that point because usually all I need is a good night’s sleep to not feel sick and this time, I’m actually sick despite sleeping a ridiculous amount.

Usually, I’m pretty good at maintaining my level of stress so I don’t actually go this far. I recognize when I’m getting close to this point and I pull it back. I take a night or two off from writing or trying to keep up with my friends in the various games we play together. I go to bed early and I actually get seven or eight hours of sleep at night. But I haven’t done that consistently in the past six weeks and now I’m paying for it. My head is pounding and congested, my throat feels like it’s lined with sandpaper that grates against it every time I swallow, and I’m just miserably sick enough to make everything sound worse than it is because my combination of symptoms is difficult to relieve without opting for something that’s going to make me sleepy. As I’ve already slept more hours since last than I’ve slept in any two nights this week, I think I’d rather do some reading, play a game, or watch a TV show. I mean, my roommate’s cat is being super needy and I’d really love to just occupy the couch for a few hours of cat snuggling and anime watching. But that’s hard to enjoy when all your day-time medication does is clear your congestion a bit.

Anyway, I’ve had plenty of time to reflect on what lead me here between dreams about being a badass post-apocalyptic warrior using magic spears that can turn into magic axes or, when turned into on giant magic sword, can shoot giant pillars of holy fire at the evil scum I’m destroying so my people can be safe. If the swords, spears, and sword weren’t taken from fantasy games and books I’ve been reading, I’d seriously write that story. It’s a really good one. I still might, if I come up with a fun way to change it. Maybe that’ll be the next serial story once Coldheart and Iron is finished. It’d be fun to write since apparently I have a thing for apocalyptic stories turning up in my dreams.

Back to the topic at hand, though. My reflections have led me to believe I missed a lot of the warning signs I usually see. Because of the success I’ve been having lately, I’ve been feeling more fired up and ready to push toward my goals than ever. I’m only halfway through August and, thanks to a couple (mostly this one) reviews that got shared by the creators of the comics I reviewed, I’m only a couple of days away from having my best views month ever, despite the fact that my daily views have dropped into the single digits for the first time in over a month. In addition, the long hours at work have been paying off and I can finally see the light at the end of the debt-tunnel. I’m six days away from paying off my car loan and I’ve finally gotten my finances into order so I can guarantee a delightfully high minimum monthly payment. I’m working my way back into being socially active online after a mental health break that turned from two weeks into three months and I’ve been able to perform well in the video games I play with my friends thanks to a few things finally clicking for me.

I’ve had a lot of successes, lately, even if they’re really only small wins in the war for a big win, but they’ve been all I needed to keep relentlessly pushing forward. I’m pretty sure part of me recognized a fall was coming, though. This whole week I’ve been preoccupied with trying to figure out where all of my time is going since I feel like I’m not writing as much as I could be and I’m definitely not sleeping enough. I even bought a whole pile of notebooks so I can start journaling and tracking what I do/how I feel every day in an effort to find any habits I can improve. I think that’s going to pay dividends eventually, when I can look back through it and find out what stuff might be affecting my mood over the long-term. In the short-term, I’m hoping it’ll help with productivity because I’ll actually be writing out everything I want to get done, both at work and at home. Tangible to-do lists always seem to hold more sway in my mind than intangible ones on the computer screen.

I’m on day two of journaling and I’ve already had to move some to-dos around thanks to being sick. I don’t have the mental fortitude to write a poem right now and I obviously didn’t go to work so I can’t do any of my work tasks. They’ll carry over until Monday, though, and I’ll have a decent chunk of writing time this weekend, when I’m watching my youngest sister. Our parents are doing some traveling so us older kids are taking turns keeping the youngest one company. Thankfully, most of my siblings live around Chicago right now, so I won’t have to travel much to help. Just this one weekend.

Which is why I’m just gonna go back to bed now. I’m already tired again and I have a lot of driving to do over the next two days, so the more I rest now, the healthier I’ll be for the weekend. I hope you have a great day! Check back tomorrow for a return to our regularly scheduled programming!

World of Warcraft: WoW, There’s a Lot to Catch up on!

Wren Leave a comment

My roommate convinced me to start playing World of Warcraft several months ago. After a one-month subscription and about thirty levels of playing, I set it aside and never really planned to play again. Recently, as he was preparing for the Expansion that just came out, he discovered that a few of our friends also played and so used my main weakness against me. I’ve got up to four other people who will play with me, now, so there’s not reason for me to worry about letting my money go to waste. Seeing that he was correct and that the new expansion looked like fun, I decided to follow most of my friends from our other online games to WoW.

My initial reactions, this time around, were about the same as last time. The game seems pretty interesting, but it feels way more invested in giving older players something to do than in bringing new players to the game in a way that is easy to learn. If, like me, you wind up purchasing an expansion and using the level-up on a character so you can actually participate when the new content comes out, you better hope you can learn things quickly because you’re otherwise going to drown in the mechanics of target managements, cooldown abilities (powerful abilities that can only be used once every so often, as determined by the ability itself and possibly some of your stats), and casted abilities (can be instantaneous, but often require your character to spend time preparing to use the ability before it goes off), movement in combat, how everything works, and what the hell is going on while you’re trying to remember which button you bound your fireball spell to after you finally bought a mouse with extra buttons that you can barely reach because people apparently don’t believe that MMO players might have large hands. I’m definitely not still annoyed about that last one. Not at all.

That being said, once I was finished having my mind exploded by all the stuff I had to track, found a key-binding I could work with, and started getting to the point where I could watch the battle instead of staring at my abilities constantly, it was actually a lot of fun. The quests are a little hard to follow and there’s so much going on in the world at large that it feels almost pointless to really dig into any of them, so I am pretty much only playing as a social video game. Which is a lot like social drinking. You’d never have more than maybe a beer on your own (do a daily quest) but you’ve got no problem cracking open a few cold ones when you’re with your friends or attending an event (doing quest lines and raiding dungeons). For WoW, that’s what I’d call myself: a social gamer. I don’t think I’ll ever play it by myself and not just because I’m worried I’ll get addicted. I just have other stuff I’d rather do with personal time than play WoW since I can do that with social time.

As far as I can tell, the game is basically a giant grinding machine with little bits of story thrown in every year or so in order to confuse new players who just want to understand what’s going on in the world when their friends pull them into it. That being said, WoW has a wide range of lore for people to peruse. There are books, comics, promotional videos, in-game cinematics, the dialogue from the quests you do, and then history brought in from other games. Most of the big, named characters have long, complex backstories that add nuance to their actions that isn’t really something you can do in a game that doesn’t have the actual history that WoW does. Because we know who everyone is and how they’ve acted in the past, we can generally see how they’ll react to something going on in the current story. One of the most popular parts of the pre-release for a new WoW expansion is going on message boards and theorizing about the plot or who is going to do what based on whatever little tidbit has been recently released to the public. I don’t really have the patience for it, but I’m still pretty new to the world. I have literally done the same stuff about the Kingkiller Chronicles by Patrick Rothfuss (which are amazing books you should read), so I wouldn’t dream of judging or looking down on anyone who enjoys postulating theories for WoW. It just feels like so much more work to get caught up to speed because the Kingkiller Chronicles is two books and WoW is a bunch of games, books, comics, etc that need to be analyzed if I’m going to participate in dissecting nuance.

As far as my current experience? Well, I’ll admit I’m a little frustrated by the number of high-level Alliance players corpse-camping in the lower-level Horde area and the fact that apparently none of the powerful Horde NPCs will lift a finger to attack Alliance players that are camping out in our base. It was funny to get absolutely wrecked by two people–killed so quickly and effectively that I didn’t have the chance to do anything in response to their attacks–the first couple times, it has since gotten rather frustrating since I can’t kill them (or even effectively fight back) and they’re preventing me from completing quests. A bunch of Horde players showed up to clear them out at one point, but they apparently got bored and decided to leave the area to the Alliance players once again. So that, plus constantly getting spammed with invitations to join guilds, requests to party up with random strangers, and some dude trying to sell some dumb looking mount for three million gold,  means I’m pretty ready to just turn off all public chat and interaction with unknown players. I dislike the spam and I don’t want to make friends with random people who just want me for my DPS.

Thankfully, I’m getting better at the game. I’m not always so stunned by it, and I’m starting to remember to use my abilities in the correct order and at the correct times. The only mistakes I made today are a result of not looking at my keyboard instead of the fight like I used to. If I can mark the keys a bit or get a new keyboard (it’s about that time, since my mouse already died last week) that has some sort of tactile feedback for each key, I will be in really good shape. I didn’t see myself getting into this game as much as I have and I definitely struggled at first, but I feel like I’m finally starting to get a handle on it.

 

With much Gravitas, I Must Admit I Fell for Gravity Falls

Wren Leave a comment

Like so many of my favorite TV shows, I heard about Gravity Falls from a friend of mine I met in college. She’s an artist (you can find her on Twitter or visit her website) who does some amazing art, so I recommend you check out the stuff she uploads when she gets the time during her incredible busy weeks. We met through shared creative writing classes and it feels like she’s been after me to watch Gravity Falls since then. For whatever reason, and I honestly don’t have even a crappy one, I didn’t watch the show until recently, when I saw it recommended to me in an email from Amazon. Apparently, it just came out on Blu-ray.

The first thing I noticed as I started watching the show was the unbelievably high quality of the animation. In the theme song, there’s a sequence where one of the characters waves his arms around in fright and the smoothness of that action took me by surprise. I quickly realized it was a Disney cartoon and I felt much less surprised. As I continued to watch it, though, my mild surprise turned to awe as I took in the incredible amount of detail that went into each episode and the series as a whole. The background is full of little details and there’s so much you’ll miss if you don’t pay attention. There’s foreshadowing, secrets to unlock, and always something new or exciting to see if your eyes happen to drift away from the central action. And that’s just the animation! There’s even more of all of that in the writing.

From the beginning, I was taken aback by the show as it subverted my expectations. Almost every time I expected something to happen beyond the triumph of the protagonists in the end, I was pleasantly surprised as the story twisted in a new direction. As the show drew me in, pulling me into the show so completely I completely set aside my expectations, I marveled at the hidden depths of the show. On the surface, the show is about a pair of twins, Dipper and Mabel Pines, who were sent to spend the summer with their great-uncle (or “Grunkle”) Stan who runs a tourist trap called the “Mystery Shack” near the town of Gravity Falls, Oregon. Dipper finds a mysterious journal, written by an unknown author, containing the secrets behind all of the weird stuff happening in this quaint little town. Their first episode includes an encounter with gnomes, their first explorations of the forest around their Uncle’s shop/home, and sets the stage for the rest of the show as them trying to deal with some supernatural situation that Grunkle Stan seems to know nothing about.

Unfortunately for me, the rest of the show was only two seasons. Fortunately, the creator intended it to only last two seasons, so there’s no rush to finish the plot in time nor is there any unsatisfying moments where some villain escapes or something unlikely happens so they can stretch another season out of the story. Everything is incredibly well paced and the plot does an excellent job of doling out twists so there’s a constant, steady progression of their quest to resolve the issues arising from Dipper’s constant meddling in the supernatural. Even better, there’s a constant stream of puzzles for the viewer to solve and little ciphers hidden throughout the episodes for the careful observer to discover that add an extra layer of depth to the show as a whole. They’re a lot easier to solve once you’ve watched the whole show, but they’re worth attempting the first time through since they provide a little commentary about the show as the episodes pass. This, more than anything else, shows just how meticulously planned the show was. No one just drops a code into their story without a good reason to do so. It’s too much worth, otherwise.

Now, to be entirely fair to Dipper, he’s mostly messing around with the supernatural in order to learn about the stuff he sees happening around him. Dipper often serves as the engine to push the plot forward and, given his obsessive and curious nature, is probably the most appealing character to all of the mystery and conspiracy buffs who got pulled into this show by all of the hidden messages. He’s friendly but shy and often requires a push in order to voice his thoughts or take action when there’s a threat. Thankfully, he has his sister for that. Mabel is bright, colorful, cheerful, and almost always the reason Dipper acts. Whether it’s because she needs his help, she’s been giving him a hard time about something, or because she’s cheering him on, she brings out the best in Dipper. At the same time, she can also challenge Dipper because she’s much sillier than he is. She has a tendency to act without thinking ahead but draws people to her side with her charisma and friendliness. As a team, they’re nearly unstoppable. Mabel is my favorite, though. I honestly don’t know how anyone could prefer anyone else given her sunny nature, the way she loves everyone so openly, and how she sees the best in everyone she encounters. Though, if someone picked Dipper instead, I’d understand given how frequently he sacrifices for his sister’s happiness and the determination shows when it comes to solving problems or saving his sister from some problem she inadvertently created.

When the show starts, the Pine twins are twelve and it shows. They have childish crushes and approach the world with the sort of wide-eyed wonder that most children have. Some of the older characters–mostly Grunkle Stan–use it to dismiss their adventures as nothing but wild imaginings, but we get to see them grow not just in character but credibility as their childish, open-minded nature is often what saves the day. Even better, we get to see them grow individually, using each other as foils as they slowly shift from whiny and self involved to confident and empathetic. It’s the best game of leap-frog I’ve ever seen. And not only do they grow and change, but you can see the impact they have on the people around them. They soften the hard edges of their Grunkle Stan, help Soos the repairman grow in confidence and capability, they redeem bullies and give everyone the chance to show their true self rather than the one-dimensional caricature they appear to be at first.

Honestly, I can’t recommend this show enough. There’s plenty of great humor in it from the little jokes we all love to some clever breaking of the fourth wall that reflects the community that sprang up around this show as it originally aired. They ride that line that Disney practically invented, of having a mixture of humor so the show appeals to both children and adults, so there’s something for everyone to enjoy. If you’ve got the money, I suggest buying the DVDs or Blu-ray of Gravity Falls, or at least watch it online in any number of places like Hulu or through a digital purveyor like Amazon.

Oh, just in case that wasn’t enough to convince you to check it out, Nathan Fillion makes a few appearances and it’s just amazing when he does. Watch it now.

Coldheart and Iron: Part 24

Wren Leave a comment

READ FROM THE BEGINNING

Tiffany and I managed to catch up to the sleds after a couple of hours. Tiffany was all too happy to collapse on the sleds rather than try to walk through the pain of her missing hand, but I was anxious because we hadn’t seen anyone from Camille’s ambush group since I’d watched her vanish to the north. Depending on how far north she got before ditching the hand, it could be a while before we got word. The monsters would lock on to the hand they’d marked once the Wayfinders leading them away stopped shooting long enough for their heat signatures to vanish, but there was no telling what would happen after that.

Camille would probably do her best to thin their numbers some more, but there was no knowing if she’d lead them further north as she killed them, or if she’d just take down as many as she could before vanishing into the snow. She could be back in a day or a week. She could send the other Wayfinders back or keep them with her the entire time. There was no way to know until they started showing back up and I fretted over the problem until we found a cave we could shelter in for the night.

While Natalie led everyone else in setting up tents or barricades inside the cave in case we needed to defend ourselves, I set up the one table we’d brought it, sanitized it, and went to work on Tiffany’s arm. It took about an hour to get everything fixed properly and sewn up, but it was a simple procedure compared to the injuries I’d tried to fix several weeks ago. Thanks to the double dose I gave her, Tiffany drowsed through most of it. She was so out of it, I had to get someone else to help me move her into the tent she shared with two other trainees.

I left her in the care of her friends and, after cleaning up, went through the motions of settling in for the night. After the slow build of tension over the last few days and the attack today, I was exhausted. Instead of sleeping, though, I left Natalie and Lucas as they cleaned up from dinner and took the first shift at the cave entrance. I sat in my corner, bundled up in my thermal gear with an extra blanket just in case, watching the snowstorm build and then blow away piles of snow.

I wound up watching all night, waiting for the signs of an attack or for Camille’s group of Wayfinders to come through the door, laughing and congratulating each other on killing more monsters. By the time we were all packed up and ready to go, there was still no sign of them. I managed to keep focused all day, but Natalie and Lucas knew something was up. That night, they insisted on me resting after I’d checked in on Tiffany. I tried to argue, but I knew they were right.

After a proper night’s sleep, the next day was easier. I got us moving a bit faster and managed to find us a cave for the evening, instead of hiding out in the first dense patch of trees we found. As we left the following morning, the blizzard started to subside. By that evening, it had mostly cleared up. Thankfully, there was no sign of the monsters, but we were still waiting for Camille to make it back.

Six days after our hurried departure, the day Tiffany started cutting back on her painkillers, Camille and the four Wayfinders she’d brought with her showed up at our camp perimeter as we settled in for the evening. I barely paused to put on my thermal gear after I heard the sentry call out. By the time I was dressed and outside, Camille was practically to our tent. After moving aside to let her inside, I did a quick visual inspection of her companions. Thankfully, the only injury was Ben’s from a few days ago, and he’d already taken care of it, so I was able to get back into the tent just as Camille was sitting down to eat.

After I’d taken off my gear and cleaned up Camille’s, she’d turned around to face me. I could see the exhaustion clouding her eyes, but we both knew she needed to report first. Once I was ready, I nodded to her.

“After we left, things went about as expected. We drew them north for a full day, before the first few started to catch up. We mowed them down pretty quickly, so we kept going for another day before the rest of the group started to catch up. After that, we ditched the tag and made our way to the rendezvous point. Unfortunately, some of them managed to track us.”

“What?” Lucas leaned forward, almost throwing himself off the campstool he’d been sitting on as he ate. “There’s no way!”

Camille shrugged. “Half a day north of the bunker, the blizzard tapered out so they must have figured out how to follow footprints or we just left worse ones than usual. Whatever the cause, I can’t argue with the results. We hadn’t been heading toward the rendezvous for more than half a day before the first of them started catching up to us.”

“But they haven’t… It’s been over fifteen years since they appeared and they never-”

“Lucas.” Natalie grabbed his bowl before he could drop it. “Calm down and let Camille talk.” Lucas nodded and, after a few slow breaths, took his bowl back.

“Anyway. They tracked us so I used every trick I knew to lose them on the way to the rendezvous. Nothing worked. So we slowed down, went a little out of our way, and then picked up your trail once we knew you’d be passed. I had one of the others scout it for us, to make sure we were staying close but not so close that we might lead them to you guys. Today, after two days without contact, I decided we should be clear of whichever of them found our trail.”

“Did you notice anything else about them that might show a change in their behavior?” I took out a notebook and started writing down everything Camille had said. After I looked back up at her, she shook her head.

“No, nothing that stood out. They were vulnerable in all the usual places, none of them looked any different, and they all still fell for my traps so long as we hid our heat signatures, so I don’t know how to explain this unless someone got tagged.

“As far as I know, only Tiffany got tagged.” I made a couple more notes in my book. “You get some rest, Camille. I’ll go debrief your group quick and ask Tiffany if she has any ideas.”

“Yeah?” Camille leaned back. “How’s she doing? She seemed pretty alright with losing her right hand.”

“She’s been out of it until pretty much today, and she hasn’t really cleared up enough to be talking yet. I’ll need to see if she’s alright with cutting back a little further so we can have a conversation.”

“What a trooper. I haven’t seen anyone else handle it that well.” Camille pulled out her sleeping bag and plopped down on top of it. “Most of them try to hide it or deny that it’s going to be that bad.”

“Well, she’s left-handed so she’ll still be able to be a Wayfinder just fine.” Natalie moved over to Camille and draped one of our blankets over her. “She’ll need to relearn a few things, but a break in Chicago will get her all the time she needs to make up her mind.”

“I think her mind’s pretty made up.” Lucas chuckled as he moved to his own sleeping bag. “She mutters about showing those sons of bitches what a badass she is every time she falls asleep on the sled.”

“Well, she’ll still have time to change her mind or retrain herself once we get to Chicago.” I started putting my thermal gear back on. “Maybe she’ll change her mind once she sees what the retirement package is for someone who loses a limb while Wayfinding.”

“They usually do.” Camille yawned and pulled the blanket over her head.

“I’m glad you made it back safely, Camille.”

“Thanks, Marshall. I’m glad you’re all safe.”

After everyone was covered up, I quickly clambered out of the tent and did my rounds quickly. All of the Wayfinders that had gone with Camille needed to be woken up, but they reported the same things she did. After a few minutes of talking to each of them, I made my way to Tiffany’s tent and, after knocking, let myself in.

“Tiffany?”

“Yes, boss?” Tiffany was sitting up against a pile of backpacks covered in a blanket, trying her boots with one hand.

“You up for a quick chat? Clear enough?”

“Yeah.” Tiffany set her boots aside and picked up the little bottle of pills I gave her every morning. “I’ve only been taking half of what you’ve been giving me at night. I sleep on the sled so much that I mostly use the nights for a bit of exercise and one-hand practice.”

I arched my eyebrows. “One-hand practice?”

“Yeah.” Tiffany poked her boots and waved her right arm at the pile of backpacks behind her. “I’m still struggling with my shoes, but packing is easy. I think the shoes will be easier once I’ve healed up and can use my arm for more than waving.” Tiffany giggled. “Which super weirds people out, when I wave without a hand. It’s hilarious.”

I chuckled along with Tiffany but cleared my throat after a moment. “You sure you’re alright?”

“No, but I’m okay for now and at least I’m alive.”

“Good point.” I sat down across from her and glanced over at her sleeping tent mates. “Are we going to disturb them?”

“Nah, they sleep with earplugs now. We’re good.”

“Okay.” I cracked my knuckles absently and read over the notes I’d been taking. “Can you walk me through what happened when you got tagged? Lieutenant Camille reported seeing some odd behavior while trying to get back to us and I’m trying to figure out what’s been going on.”

“Well, it was pretty straight-forward, really. Almost disappointingly since I lost a hand over it.” Tiffany grabbed her arm near the stump and settled it into her lap. “Ben and I were leading a group of them toward where Lieutenant Camille was waiting, doing a few vital strikes to thin them out a bit. Things were going fine until they started to cluster around Ben a bit. He started shooting at them and I ran to help him out. Only he kept firing instead of doing bursts, so his gun probably lit up like the sun to them, so they started returning fire.

“I couldn’t tell you how he got out of that unscathed, but I caught up to him as he finally stopped firing. One of them, though, a scout, was a few paces away and lined up a tracer shot. Ben couldn’t see it, focused as he was, so I pulled him out of the way. As he fell, the scout fired and hit me in the hand with the tracer round.” Tiffany held up the stump where here hand used to be and smiled ruefully.

“The lieutenant must have seen this happening, because she started firing on the scout and all of the others right about then. After that, you know everything. She yelled at me to remove my glove, tie it off, and take my painkillers. A couple minutes later, you showed up and that’s the last bit I remember.”

“When did Ben get hit, then?”

“What?”

“You said Ben never got shot when they fired at him. When I showed up, though, he had a small wound on his upper left arm.” I gestured to my own arm, showing her where he’d been grazed. “Barely worth addressing beyond the tape to close the hole in his suit.”

“I must have missed that.” Tiffany shrugged. “I was a little busy getting shot to be paying attention to what was going on with him at that point.”

“Fair enough.” I made a couple notes and tried to ignore the icy claw scraping the bottom of my stomach. I checked her dressing quick, asked a few questions about how she was feeling and, left her tent after making sure she was going to be alright until the morning. All the while, I tried to explain away what had been happening as a string of coincidences. I tried to find any excuse I could but, before I knew it, I was outside Ben’s tent.

I went inside and smiled at him. “Sorry to be back again so soon, Ben, but I just wanted to double-check your injury before I went to sleep.”

“Oh.” Ben stood and grabbed his arm self-consciously. “I mean, it’s fine. It was barely a scrape then and it scabbed over before I got a chance to do anything with it.”

“Just to be safe. I’m the group’s medic, now.” I pulled out my medical bag and gestured to the stool near their cook stove. “Just a quick look and I’ll get out of your hair.”

“Really, Marshall, I’m fine.”

“Ben, do I need to make it an order?” I crossed my arms but kept my voice calm. “Sit. Down.”

Ben sighed and sat. He held out his arm and looked away as I rolled up his sleeve. When I got past the elbow, I saw a giant white pad of gauze, much larger than he’d need for the simple scrape he claimed he had. I pulled the grimy old tape off and, as I pulled the bandage away, caught sight of a greenish patch of skin with red lines emanating from what looked like a giant pimple.

“Ben.”

“It’s fine, Captain. I empty it every night. There’s no chance for the trace to take effect if I’m constantly draining it!” Ben looked at me, careful to shift so he couldn’t see his arm. “I figured it out. This way, I won’t need to lose my arm for such a little scrape.”

I sighed and closed my eyes. “Ben. Benjamin. This is the trace. The green, the red lines, the white head, all of it. Your blood is full of it and, if we check your other elbow, we’ll see your veins starting to show just as brightly red as these.”

“But I fixed it, Captain. It was just a tiny hit and I need my arm.”

“Pull down your sleeve, put on your thermal gear, and come with me.” I stood up and slung my bag over my shoulder.

“But I need to rest. I’ve been moving almost without stopping for six days.” Ben clasped his hands and fell to his knees. “Just let me sleep, I don’t need to lose my arm. I’ll be fine! I don’t feel sick at all.”

I nodded. “You’ve got one thing right, Ben. You won’t need to lose your arm.”

Ben smiled and sank down. “Oh, thank god. That’s so good to hear. I’ll just be a minute, Captain, and I’ll be right out.”

“Don’t make me come back.”

After he nodded, I left the tent and walked up to where one of the guards was stationed. “As soon as Ben and I leave camp, get Lieutenants Camille and Natalie up. Tell them we need to break camp immediately.”

“Sir?”

“Just do it. I’ll explain once we’re moving.”

“Yes, sir.”

I went back to the tent and waited. When Ben emerged, I grabbed his uninjured arm and pulled him toward the edge of camp, leading him deeper into the forest we’d picked as that night’s camping spot. “C’mon, Ben. We’ve got a little errand to run.”

“Oh, should I grab my gear?”

“No, I’ve got my gun so we should be fine.”

“Okay.” Ben smiled and followed me past the perimeter and into the forest. Occasionally, I’d glance over at him and see the faint red like coming from his face as he leaked radio waves from the trace that had been planted and given time to multiply in his bloodstream. Once we’d walked about an hour into the words, using the excuse of needing some plants to supplement our food stores to keep him focused and quiet, I turned to him.

“You’ve got the trace, Ben. It’s too far progressed to stop at this point. Even cutting your arm off wouldn’t fix it now.” I took a few steps back and leaned against a tree, putting my body so that he wouldn’t be able to see it when I thumbed the safety off.

“We’re close to Chicago, though. They can do something about it there. I’ve heard about treatments that kill the trace and then I won’t need to lose my arm at al.”

“That’s not how it works. Your group kept getting attacked because they were tracking you.” I pointed to him for emphasis. “Now, you can either keep walking on your own, to lead them away, or I’ll kill you quickly now so you don’t need to suffer when they catch up to you.”

“What?”

“You agreed to these terms when we hired you.”

“But, I mean, I can’t-”

“You lied to us and put all our lives in danger. You either choose now or I’ll choose for you.”

“I can’t-” Ben stepped forward and I raised my gun. “I’m- I’m not going to die out here, not for some little scrap.” Ben clenched his fists and took a few steps forward this time. “I refuse! I won’t accept this. You can’t abandon me out here. You can’t leave me to die so you can live. I don’t deserve to die like thi-”

I raised the gun and fired, three times in quick succession. Ben dropped where he was. I grabbed the shell casings from the snow, slung my rifle over my shoulder, and started sprinting back toward the camp. Fifteen minutes later, I explained the whole thing between gasps and we moved out. Everyone looked over their shoulders as we went, fleeing through the forest with the prospect of a monster attack looming over our shoulders.

When we finally stopped to rest, the sun was setting again and even the people riding the sleds were exhausted. We made camp that night, inside another forest, and did our best to put our close call out of our minds. We were still a few weeks away from Chicago and every one of us was thinking only of being able to rest. Despite my exhaustion, all I could think of was Ben’s face as he tried to make excuses and the determination Tiffany had shown when she’d had to sacrifice her hand.

Every time I thought of her, seated in the snow as she waited to have her hand taken off while Ben stood over her and pretended he was fine, I wanted to go back and shoot him again. I wouldn’t get the chance, though. There’d be nothing left by the time I got back there, even if I went right away. The monsters wouldn’t leave much lying around once they finally tracked him down.

Tabletop Highlight: Player Fatalism and How to Salvage the Game

Wren Leave a comment

I honestly don’t know if I can speak for everyone, but it often feels like every tabletop gamer I know has a story about a game where someone was constantly pessimistic and fatalistic. Someone, perhaps even them, spent an entire session, or even several sessions, throwing their hands up in the air every time something bad happened and complaining that they knew this was going to happen or that there’s no point to them trying any more if they’re just going to die.

This happened recently in one of my games. There’s a player, the one I often bring up as the person who does some dumb stuff or makes questionable decisions (he featured heavily in the “Up for Interpretation” post from three weeks ago) who has been engaging in this kind of behavior lately. To be entirely fair, his character has died as many times as the rest of the party put together and he seems to always come up short when I roll to determine who gets to be the target of whatever is about to happen. Even his rolls tend toward failure when he tries something. He missed a sneak attack that would have insta-killed the enemy spell caster because he rolled in the single digits on his attack. He failed a skill check to make it back to safety afterwards and would have been knocked unconscious if not for an ability of his special weapon that gave him temporary hit points. The poor guy has had it rough.

To be entirely, fair, though, he makes a lot of assumptions and does a lot of stuff without thinking it through. He died during that same fight because he hopped over a barricade to attack an enemy he could have just stabbed from where he was. I let him live because he apparently didn’t realize he could do that and it’s pretty clear he wouldn’t have done it if he could have avoided it seeing as he was so low on hit points. Though, to continue being fair, he also didn’t retreat from the battle or take a back seat once he was down to nothing but his last few hit points either. He’d already seen how much damage his enemies could do with one hit and yet he continued to try to front-line them.

A lot of that behavior and those unneccessary risk-taking could have been a result of his expectation that his current character won’t be much longer for this world. He’s already created a new character to replace him, prompted by my jokes about a TPK, which I’ve managed to avoid so far since the players know when to run. There was a close moment, though, because they messed up some earlier stuff and had to deal with the consequences. That was probably the first time they were pushed to their limits from a marathon of battles rather than a single tough monster. It was winnable, though. I was never going to put them in a situation where they feel powerless or like they are being punished. If they screw up enough to get themselves killed, it will mostly be swift and decisive. Otherwise, they’ll always have options and only poor decision-making or bad luck will get them all killed.

It can be hard to keep again running, especially a story-drive one, when one of the players just lets go as soon as there’s any tension. I can’t make the game feel dramatic if someone is just giving up as soon as things look bad. They start to get angry if it keeps happening and a lot of drama and tension in story-telling is uncertainty or challenge, so I wind up trying to keep them invested without sacrificing too much story. I don’t think this player’s attitude is affecting the other players very much, but I’m hoping it’s just the recent string of bad luck he’s had (which is really just his perception of events, he’s also had some really good luck since he’s only come close to dying or getting captured).

I’m going to talk to him (and will have, before this post goes up) about what’s been going on and workshop some ideas on how to get through it. This isn’t a problem unless it’s making the game less fun for the other players and the person displaying the fatalistic behavior refuses to change. Usually when this happens, as is happening with my player, there’s something causing it. Before you try to address the problem, you need to figure out what this underlying cause is. Once you know that, you need to verbally (and privately) address it with the player so they have the opportunity to change. Not everyone realizes they’re doing it. I’m not even sure if my player recognizes that he’s doing it.

For him, the source lies in some of his first exposure to D&D and a long string of bad decisions compounded by bad luck. His first DM was very adversarial. He tried to manipulate the players constantly, forced them to act a certain way, did his level best to kill them constantly, and gave all of the good magic items and experiences to his closest friends so that other players wound up with under-leveled and under-geared characters who just died all that much more frequently. He’s had a few more experiences between now and then (most of which I’ve seen), but one characteristic of his gaming has always been making decisions without considering the consequences and bad luck on rolls. From the silly little campaign I ran to test out a book world I’d developed to a “Shits and Giggles” campaign I ran to fill my weekends, to my current serious campaign where he seems to constantly get the short end of the stick. Sometimes, it’s because he accidentally stepped on the large stick he had and wound up breaking it, but I’m sure that doesn’t feel very fun to him.

Problems with characters and DMing I can fix. I have no problem helping my players create the best possible version of their character (though I usually insist they stick to a personality rather than just minmaxing) and I generally try to avoid getting adversarial in any context. Bad luck and poor decision-making… There’s not much more I can do beyond being forgiving when he’s legitimately making a mistake as a player versus when he’s doing something reckless or risky. It’s a fine line, but I wrote an entire blog post about how to tell the difference so I’m confident I can manage it.

I hope we can figure something out. I’d hate to think he’s not having fun. That’s all I really want, as a DM.

Visiting Grandma

Wren Leave a comment

Like any decent grandchild, I loved my grandmother. She made me cookies, I weeded her gardens, and then we’d sit around eating cookies and watching game shows. I liked to visit her as often as I could growing up, but it wasn’t always easy. Every time we crossed the river, the family got smaller.

We had often talked about bringing her over the river to stay permanently. The river was brutal, but it was fast. Like ripping off a bandage or chopping off a limb. You had to be quick if you wanted to survive.

The forest, though, was a nightmare. It wasn’t as lethal, but the amount of work it took to get through would probably be the death of her. She was a lovely, hardy old woman who would probably outlive her kids, but the march through the trees would have been too much for her.

At this point, I was the only one who made the effort to visit her. My parents weren’t as hardy as she was and they were getting up in years. My siblings had mostly settled down, refusing to travel beyond our little village for anything. They tried to pretend otherwise, but I knew they were afraid. I could see it in the way they clutched their doors and herded their children away when I visited.

I’d made the trip only once before, and that was with a hired escort. Today, I was going to do it alone, even if I was too broke to hire anyone. She hadn’t written in weeks and someone needed to check, the dangers be damned. I could do it. I knew that, if it was at all possible to do alone, I could make the trip over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house.

Saturday Morning Musing

Wren Leave a comment

You know what I’d love to do? I’d love to take a month off from work and all obligations so I could stock up on groceries and hide away in a cozy cabin on the side of a mountain somewhere. Set myself up with no obligations, no social media, and no schedule so I can just live for a month. Eat when I’m hungry, sleep when I’m tired, and just let my life drift into some kind of equilibrium. Rest up from the exhaustion of worrying about money, about my job, and all the anxieties of living in the modern world so I can figure out how much of my constant exhaustion is me wearing myself out with constantly working on stuff or not getting enough sleep and how much is from trying to cope in a world that seems to always be somewhat offset from my natural pace.

I’m currently promising myself that, once I’ve eliminated all of my debt, I’m going to take that vacation. It’s still a few years off, yet, but I feel like I’ve finally got a realistic grasp of how long it’ll take me. Back when I moved to Madison and had to deal with the prospect of paying back my student loans, I slapped a bunch of numbers together and figured I’d need about five years at my then salary to get everything paid off. That was untrue. I failed to account for taxes, the much higher cost of living in Madison, the fact that my minimum monthly loan payments would be mostly interest at first, and that I’d need a new car almost immediately on moving to Madison. Turns out that, even with about ten thousand dollars worth of raises over the three years I had that first job, I was just barely making ends meet (and spent a lot of time sliding into a decent a mount of credit card debt because I actually couldn’t afford to live at my initially salary once my car payments kicked in).

I’m in a better situation now, thanks to clearing up some of the debt, a much cheaper living situation, and the fact that I get paid for any overtime I work, now. I’m finally getting a good handle on my finances and get to enjoy the feeling of watching the numbers in my bank accounts go up until I dump it into a loan or something. Financial security feels nice, even if the forty-eight hour work weeks I need to do it leave me often at odds with my desire to rest more or try to get more writing done. An extra eight hours doesn’t sound like much until you’re cramming it into four days. I won’t deny I have it way better than people who need to work multiple jobs to make ends meet, but I wish we could all just do forty hours of work and not need to worry about money. That’d be really nice.

Ever since I left college, I’ve lived pretty much every day with the mantra of “pay off my loans and do whatever it is I have to do in order to maximize my long-term financial and personal health.” It’s a long mantra, but it’s important to stay focused on that specific goal. Being debt free isn’t going to be helpful at all if I’ve got stressed-induced health issues or I’m constantly sick from years of living in terrible situations and a horrible diet. I can’t spend my money frivolously, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t buy myself things to make me happy or that are perhaps a little more expensive. The whole point of having money beyond what I need to support the requirements of a (relatively) healthy life is to enrich my life. New foods, the occasional convenience, hobbies, and good causes. All of them are fair game because they’re usually things that inject some positivity into my life when I’m struggling. Which is usually when I’m making a decision that’s the right choice in the long-term but means being upset or suffering or being majorly put out right now.

It’s kind of interesting to know you’re making the right choice and still feel miserable. Whenever I fall into a pit of self-pity, this is usually my focus. Thankfully, it isn’t as often as it used to be. Still, though, it can be really easy to get focused on how my life is nothing but an endless string of decisions made to maximize my future potential for success or happiness or whatever in exchange for present-day discomfort or negative feelings. If I didn’t allow myself some hobbies and the occasional bit of short-term happiness, I’d probably struggle with it more. Nowadays, I actually make sure to spend my personal interests budget every month, usually on a new game or going to the movies. I used to tell myself I had to make one dumb but fun decision every month, but it usually wound up being something along the lines of staying up all night playing video games. Now I just stay up all night writing or watching the stars, often more frequently than once a month.

The original intent was to get myself to move outside of my comfort zone a little more, to do something relatively harmless that would encourage the kind of impulsive joy I used to occasionally indulge in when I was still a college student. Stuff like random all-nighters at the library with my friends, drinks before writing a paper, getting the gang together for an all-day D&D session,  going to a bar and flirting with a random stranger while we both watched the Lord of the Rings marathon that was on the TV. You know, normal stuff. It’s just a lot harder to swing once you’re out of college because the bars feel louder and you can’t always just stagger back to your room if you drink too much. The college libraries don’t really like being filled with non-students and you’re probably not going to run into anyone you know anyway. Walking into a random bar and flirting with a stranger still works, but you generally don’t get to do it until the bars are too noisy to hold a conversation and my conversation skills are 99% of my ability to flirt.

It’s kinda difficult to be impulsive and thrill-seeking when that mostly means buying a tube of cookie dough and eating it with a spoon. Life as an adult is weird, sometimes. Or maybe it’s just my life that’s weird.

My Mind is a Battlefield

Wren Leave a comment

My mind is a battlefield:
a land ravaged by war
where the once green fields
and luscious forests
are now gone,
replaced by blasted earth
and barren, burnt wastelands
full of sad, lost refugees
who shy from everyone they meet.

My mind is a world at war:
full of brutal savagery
and the most wondrous beauty
locked in some twisted dance
that never ends
while someone wanders
searching through the misery
to find the scrap of truth
that makes this travesty
worth it.

Maybe you can understand why
I do not like to dwell on things,
why I often seem vacant
and perhaps unmindful of
the people and things around me
or why I might not be listening
when you’re talking to me.
There’s a war going on and
I don’t have much energy to spare
because I’m the general
of both armies.

While you’re talking to me,
I’m trying to navigate through my mind,
watching out for landmine memories
and avoiding guerilla anxieties,
not to mention all the other soldiers
I have sent to sabotage me.
I usually never make it out.
I know all my own tricks
and there are too many landmines
to avoid them all,
especially when the guerrillas
are chasing you.

Yet I go in, the external me
who watches this all unfolding,
and hope to find
the sepia photograph
or inspiring tale of truth
that makes enduring
this constant, ceaseless war
a viable option.
The armies leave me be
but the guerrillas will not stop
planting landmines and
chasing me towards them,
despite the call of peace
and my humanitarian efforts
to stave off the nuclear winter
the generals consider simply for the sake
of concluding.

 

Octopath Traveler Was Pretty Alright, I Guess

Wren Leave a comment

So, I’m willing to admit that a certain amount of my “underwhelmed” reaction to this game is because it was hyped so much by friends and the few advertisements I saw. That being said, the game I was sold via recommendations and the advertisements does not, at all, feel like the game I actually bought. The game I was promised had tons of choices and all this variation and wonder and the game I got has fun battle mechanics and a rather stunted plot with little variety available to me. Because, if I’m being honest, the plot is kinda boring, even for a JRPG. Honestly, I’m still not even sure what the plot is beyond individual quest lines that have nothing tying them together.

Your character has a skill. They use the skill to complete a task in order to resolve a conflict that has interrupted their routine. They are prompted by some minor portion of their personality to pursue some greater task elsewhere. You move on to the next town. You repeat the whole saga for a new character. They join your party. You continue until you get to another portion of one character’s mission and then stuff happens that really doesn’t differ.

For how convoluted the skill crap is, in terms of actually completing the side quests, there really isn’t a whole lot of explanation. If you’re playing through this, I recommend ignoring the side quests until you’ve unlocked all of the characters so you understand what all the abilities are and can figure out how the shit you’re supposed to get fresh ingredients for some whiny-ass baker who can’t go talk to the shop keeper 50 pixels away from him. I mean, c’mon. Literally hiding them all behind these stupid skills that, for the most part, do nothing but force you to tap a bunch of buttons on every character who has the ability to talk? That’s super frustrating!

And don’t even get me started on how many unnecessary clicks there are in this game? Want to sell something you only have one of? First you have to select it, then you have to select the quantity, then you have to push up to say you want to sell it and then you have to tap the “A” button again to actually sell it. This mechanic is present EVERY TIME you have options, most of which mean nothing beyond choosing yes or no on selling something or saying if you’re reading to move on in the dumb little plot bits. Also, while I’m complaining, the writing is super cliché. There’s no real depth to the characters and they’re about as interesting as a cardboard cutout.

Now, all that being said, the game is still kind of fun. The battle mechanics are fun, the powers are interesting, and it’s got a rather smooth grind (in this case, grinding is the act of completing repetitive tasks in order to level up characters or gear in a game) without being entirely mindless. It’s basically a step up from Final Fantasy (auto-attack to grind and win), so about the same as Pokemon. You need to use the weaknesses of the enemies in order to gain an advantage over them, dealing more damage and preventing them from acting for a turn or two. Some enemies are weak to things you won’t have in your party, so it’s usually best to make sure you have a wide range of magic abilities and physical attacks so you can handle whatever comes your way. There’s a lot of grinding that happens early on, unfortunately, because all of the areas around the towns, the main areas you travel through as you pick up the characters, are really low-leveled. It quickly became pointless to fight those battles and it was frustrating to continuously have to run or to have to remember to equip a character’s special skill that lowered the chance of a random encounter (which I didn’t want in higher leveled areas because those areas were worth grinding in).

What makes the game the most fun for me is how easy it is to pick up and put down. There’s a bit of a long loading time when you start up the game, but that only happens whenever you fully exit the game. On a Switch, the only platform that supports it right now, that’s incredibly easy to avoid. I haven’t left the game in a week, despite only playing for half a dozen hours in that time. It’s a great unwinding game because it requires little input from me beyond actually pressing buttons and, if you get enough distance, the cardboard cut-out quality of the characters can actually be quite amusing. Hell, one of them seems like something straight out of a bad anime and I laughed my butt off as his super-serious and grandiose voice actor butchered his way through the lines. I don’t know if they just didn’t give the voice actors the context of their lines or what, but a lot of the emotive responses from this guy seemed a little out of place.

Aside from gameplay, the best feature is the beautiful pixel art of the game. It is a callback to old 16 bit games, but only in artistic style. The trees blow in the wind, the waves shift the water along the short, and there’s a level of detail to the environment that older games could only dream of. You move in two dimensions the entire game, but the backdrop and scrolling as you move around give an amazing approximation of three dimensions. The sound design is also impeccable. The music fits each scene perfectly and even the sort of off-key voice acting doesn’t negatively impact that.

Fun as it can be, I definitely understand that this kind of grindy game isn’t really everyone’s cup of tea. It’s barely my cup of tea. With a price point of sixty bucks, I wouldn’t really recommend it. If you can get it on sale for forty or less and want something to eat up some time, then I’d recommend it. There are plenty of hours in the game, they are just grindy hours with small steps in the plot that are so far apart that it seems like they just drop the stories between plot points (which they basically do).

Also, don’t let the demo fool you. Going through the initial arcs of the various characters gets old real fast. Just make a bunch of different profiles on your switch and play the demo once for every character. That way, you can experience most of the game without actually paying for it.

So, I heard You Like Goblins

Wren 3 Comments

If you enjoy Dungeons and Dragons comics but are not reading Goblins by Ellipsis Stephens, I honestly don’t really know what to say to you other than “you need to go read this amazing webcomic” repeatedly, until you actually go read it. I’m totally willing to make an attempt at figuring out how to explain why, but I what I really wanted was to give you the chance to bail out now so you can experience the entire saga without my interpretations, analysis, and commentary in the way of an unbiased first read-through. I suggest you go do that because people who enjoy stories and/or Dungeons and Dragons will find something to love.

The first thing you’ll see when you start the comic is a disclaimer explaining the art progression. This comic has been decades in the making, from initial conception and first pages to now it has slowly progressed through a complex and layered story with an end I can’t even fathom. Each page in the story is rife with potential and you’ve never sure when something is foreshadowing or just significant in the moment. As time passes and the story progresses, so much of what came before shows up again as a reference or as the comfortable repetition of a story slowly winding its way toward the climax. Where most stories are depicted as line graphs, straight upward movement through the beats of a story until it reaches its apogee, “THunt’s” Goblins is best thought of in three dimensions. while it shares the same upward climb of all good stories, the path is more circular. Each of the plots, the smaller stories taking place involving different characters, in the comic covers similar ground as they wind their way up a mountain, passing by each other as they go, sometimes without even realizing that their journey is overlapping with someone else’s. In the beginning, you’re not even sure they’re climbing the same mountain. Only by piecing together the various elements of the stories or finding the right bits of foreshadowing can you tell that they are. Or, you know, if you’ve already read it. Then it gets pretty clear.

As far the plot goes, it starts simply enough. There is a village of goblins preparing to be attacked by a party of adventurers. The Goblins are the initial focus and we get a peek into their daily lives that does more to humanize them, so to speak, than we get of the adventuring party when we meet them. While both groups are set up somewhat neutrally, the Goblins get the benefit of more jokes and more attention early on, so they wind up as the sympathetic party initially. It doesn’t hurt that they comic is named after them, either. When we see the adventurers finally get to the village who is ready and waiting for them, it becomes clear that the Goblins are just defending themselves. There’s even a moment where the survivors of the battle call it off because they realize just how horrible this fight is.

From there, as both groups deal with loss and the residual anger of their conflict, they go their separate ways and we begin to see the shape of the larger story being told. All we get is a series of paths unfolding in front of us and hints at the detail of the journey ahead of us. The story slowly builds a cast of characters with their own motivations, alliances, and beliefs about the world, sending them all in separate directions to grow and pursue their parts of the narrative. While the pace is rather slow for a story of this size, an unavoidable result of creating it in comic form, the actual beats of the story are incredibly well placed when you go through the archives. Stephens is an incredible storyteller and her comic is a testament to it.

In addition to her storytelling prowess, she’s also one of the most inventive world creators I’ve seen, given the amount of concrete detail and mechanics you can find in the parts of her world that don’t come from Dungeons and Dragons. She has mixed stuff brought straight from Dungeons and Dragons with stuff she’s adapted from various fantasy settings, and it all fits in seamlessly with what she’s created from scratch. The most impressive part of the story, in my eyes, is how smoothly she’s fitted every piece of her world together. There are no bumps, no cracks in the road that cause you stumble or doubt as you read. You can clearly see how the world works as a result of fourth wall humor and what we’d call “out of character” comments in a Dungeons and Dragons campaign. All of the characters seem to know they’re in a world that obeys a bunch of mechanics you can study and manipulate using numbers or simple declarations. While no one talks about the numerical results of their rolls like they do in some D&D comics and they don’t strictly adhere to the basic rules you’d find in a D&D book, you can easily tell that they’re still in what we’d call a game world. Still, it amazes me constantly how well that knowledge fits in with the world, even when they’re arguing about what skill they’d use to cross a river because they’re making different skill checks to get the same result (as a result of their different attribute scores).

Aside from the petty arguments about how they crossed a river and why someone has such a huge attack bonus despite being at a lower level,  they also cover a range of difficult topics. Stephens doesn’t shy away from the horrific when she details what some of the less-than-savory (and downright fucking awful, goddamn that was a sadistic bastard of a shitstick) characters, but she draws clear lines between what is good and what is evil that are much clearer to the reader than they seem to be to the people in story. At least, to some of them. One of the big themes of the story is the nature of Good and Evil. Like in our world, most of Stephens’ characters believe themselves to be the good guys. Unfortunately for us, they’re often not actually Good. It takes a long time for Stephens to give us her idea of what makes someone Good or Evil, but it’s worth the wait. We’ve been given enough time to see the true natures of tons of characters across the spectrum and we even get to see some characters change alignment. So, when she finally gives us the definition, we can see how all of the characters fit into it and we won’t have to struggle with how Good people can sometimes come into deadly and often angry conflict. In a truly great moment that’s relatively recent in the comic, Stephens also shows us the struggle to define Good and Evil in a way we can consistently rely on and how difficult it can be to actually live up to that definition without abandoning what we’d all call sensible precaution.

Honestly, I started the comic for fantasy battles and Goblin Adventurers, but I’ve stuck with it through the years because of the complex storytelling and the way it covers difficult issues. I don’t have a problem waiting however long it takes for this comic to finish because I know it’s going to be amazing. I hope you enjoy reading it and I hope you get as much out of it as I have. There’s so much it has to give, I can’t imagine anyone coming away from it without something to think about.