The Cracked Mug v 2.0

[erikavonkaiser]

I need to work on plotting/notes for House Hierophant and it's a struggle

Notes is eternally something I have trouble focusing on and finishing. I don't always think it's necessary to do, and I no longer force myself to try and keep meticulous ones, but in this case I need to flesh out the last couple of chapters and make sure my through-lines stay clean. So that's what I'm going to work on this week, and genuinely push myself to finish because when I try to write the words are there but I'm not sure what order they go in and I'm not a fan of "just write and see where the plot takes you!" on the whole, especially in the last third of a project.

It's also gloomy and rainy and gross, and I am acutely aware that I don't have a day off until Monday, and and and,,,

[erikavonkaiser]

Unfortunately this was my brainspace for most of yesterday, so I didn't get much done even though work was slow and I had all the time in the world. Thoughts just did not wanna, think, so today we're trying again and hopefully things will go a little better.

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Anyways, I am gonna attempt to do a better brain today. We'll see how it goes!

[erikavonkaiser]

Yesterday was a lot better!

Today has equally been acceptable so far and I got a lot done this morning. See, I've got today and tomorrow left in the worst stretch of Hell Week, then Monday off, then I work two more days before I have three days off and back to a normal schedule after that. I'm anticipating being pretty dead on Monday, so I tried to set future Erika up for success by getting groceries and doing a bunch of chores. I even did laundry, which I almost never do on work days.

I also took Baby Dog to the vet first thing this AM and she was diagnosed with Old. Which I already knew, but she's been limping and I wanted to see what was going on. Seems to be some arthritis pain flared up by overexerting, so she's got two weeks worth of meds and doctor's orders to take it easy. She has had NO chill lately, so taking it easy will be hard, but I'll make sure I spend a lot of one-on-one time with her doing games or puzzles. Otherwise, clean bill of health, which I'm grateful for.

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Okay, gonna try to survive the rest of this work shift so I can do it again tomorrow and finally have a day of peace after that.

[erikavonkaiser]

Made it to Monday! As predicted I am very tired, but I only have one lone errand to run later and otherwise can alternate between video games, working on notes, and being as much of a slug as possible. This evening I have a D&D thing, and then hopefully Sophie will stream some more Mass Effect.

Right now I'm going to be warm in front of my space heater while I play some video games, and do that for a bit + eat a food before I even consider getting up to do things.

[erikavonkaiser]

My brain is in ninety different places, probably because I only had one day off work and it is difficult to manage the average adult human life without two consecutive days off from capitalism.

So! List!

Today:
laundry (gonna wash bedding)
run to corner store to get a few grocery things I still need
exercise
survive work

Tomorrow:
last minute cleaning before Sophie arrives
errand to run in the morning
exercise if I have time after errand
survive work

Okay, now that I've typed it out that seems more manageable than my brain was fretting over. I have a few more miscellaneous tasks to take care of, but those are the big ticket items. Here I goooooo

[erikavonkaiser]

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[knightofcups]

Agree with your last post. It is really upsetting.

[erikavonkaiser]

SOPHIE ARRIVES TOMORROW

[erikavonkaiser]

You know you're in your thirties when you pick your girlfriend up from the train station and less than three hours later you're both taking a nap about it

[erikavonkaiser]

Sophie visit concluded! I'll go into more detail tomorrow probably (had a wonderful time!) but tonight I wanted to talk a bit about Elden Ring!

@mek, who is a delightful living human gremlin that may or may not be the fruiting body of a pea flower, was kind enough to send me a copy! It's 100% a game I never would've bought myself but was still very interested in playing. A few notes:

1) Sophie and I worked in tandem to make my Tarnished and we had literally just the day before talked at length about the type of characters we usually make -- I often make male-presenting himbos/dandies/Large Sadmen, and she often makes female-presenting herbos/femme fatales/We Support Women's Wrongs. When we worked together to make a character, we didn't realize until we were almost done that with our powers combined, we end up with a non-binary thembo

tl;dr we made a non-binary silver-haired warrior named Gild!

1.5) ngl Elden Ring has probably one of the best character creation systems I've ever used! It had lots of options without being painfully overwhelming like Bethesda sliders tend to be, so you can kinda blaze through on some presets or get really granular with how you want things to look. It also gave you options for things like wrinkles that didn't automatically look cartoonishly bad. Sophie and I were both delighted that our thembo had noticeable back wrinkles that weren't meant to look visually gross!

2) game pretty

3) I do think I'm still going to struggle with progression in some ways. For instance, I hit my first boss that I had to get through, was defeated three times, and then went "eh" and switched to playing Stardew Valley. I deeply lack the thing that makes people enjoy the challenge of fighting a boss like that multiple times (it's the same reason I ultimately bounced off Hades and will not play Hades 2; I really wanted to love that game but it made me more grumpy than joyful so I set it aside) and I am not sure how to ... not lack that! It's the reason I've always avoided Soulslike games. I'm not very good at them, and I end up feeling punished for not being very good at them.

All that being said, I do have friends who can help me beat bosses (I think there's a co-op feature?) and I know Greggo would definitely help, since I used to have him help me with CODE VEIN. I also could grind and make my weapons stronger and stuff, which I'm not completely adverse to doing. So I've not given up, but it may be slowgoing because once I give it a few tries I start to lose interest. I'm not sure why I do that with this style of game (+roguelikes) in particular, because I've grinded out and beaten high end content in other games (Destiny, Doom, speedruns in Resident Evil). More mobility in those other games, maybe? I dunno!

4) mek how do I go fast is it dexterity will that make me fast boy I don't wanna swing slow I wanna be FAST

5) the lore/worldbuilding is so much not my jam but in a way I love???? like it's that very edgelord grimdark type of high fantasy that has teeth and bile and it's so far outside what I would ever write or normally engage with that I'm like yes tell me more about this spider that grafts people's arms to it

I think that's all I've got so far! I'm honestly eager to play more, even if it means I may have to ping Greggo with the "Gondor calls for aid" .gif so he can use the "and Rohan will answer" .gif in response