The Cracked Mug v 2.0

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erikavonkaiser
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Re: The Cracked Mug v 2.0

Unread post by erikavonkaiser »

Been on the struggle bus a little bit lately!

I think it's something in the air, since I feel like a lot of my friends are in a similar place. It's the weird threshold of not being at threat level midnight depression, but just being a little bit "off" and feeling exhausted all the time. Some of it may honestly be the seasonal change, since one thing I've noticed about my thirties is that the transitions between seasons are more notable on my brain and body. Some of it may just be that sometimes life can be kind of exhausting in ways that catch up with you!

In any case, it's disrupted my routines and I'm only just coming out on the other side of it. I took yesterday off work as a mental health day and that helped a lot; I puttered around at a slow pace, caught up on tasks I'd not had the energy for (small stuff like repotting a plant, preparing a package to get mailed, hanging up a picture, etc. -- stuff that doesn't fall under Required or Necessary in terms of tasks, but that builds up and adds to background stress), and tried to spend some time outside enjoying the temporarily cool weather. Today I'm still not at 100%, but was able to wake up without feeling dreadful about it, go on my run, and generally exist as more of a person than a zombie. It just gets to me, sometimes, the feeling that I'll never have the time and the energy to create the things I want to create, and that I should be spending my time off more productively, but then when I do get time off I'm just so tired, which repeats the cycle.

Anyways, I'm back at work today and trying to get back into writing again and generally tend to my routines, since they're the only way I can manage to create anything at all. Hope everyone is well!

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Re: The Cracked Mug v 2.0

Unread post by erikavonkaiser »

[insert life update here]

I'm tired, pretend I talked about how work has been hellishly busy, then I vented about some coworker frustrations, then I mentioned that I woke up at frickin' frackin TWO IN THE MORNING today, wide awake, and decided to just stay awake so I can go to bed early tonight and maybe get some proper rest

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Re: The Cracked Mug v 2.0

Unread post by erikavonkaiser »

Okay, played some video games and got some rest yesterday. I'm trying really hard to rotate my good habits/routines back in; I've kinda lost myself for a few weeks due to work stress. I haven't written in a while, fell off my strength training, nutrition/food brain has been a catastrophe, etc. It happens, but being frustrated I couldn't maintain myself better won't make me magically able to withstand Chicago at its meanest.

Anyway! I've checked/cleared out my e-mails, got the apartment tidied (I actually did a good job of not falling into depression-mess, it's one of the few things I had the spell slots to maintain), and am gonna exercise then try to pull writing back up and figure out what the hell I'm doing.

Here, have some spam of my Baldur's Gate 3 blorbo; he's a Lothsworn Drow cleric named Sevaufein and maybe I'll infodump about his backstory as a reward for getting my routine stuff done today

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Re: The Cracked Mug v 2.0

Unread post by erikavonkaiser »

Forest of a Thousand Lanterns by Julie C. Dao ⭐⭐
Two stars, didn't finish

Screenshot 2023-09-05 093921.png

Woops that's two swings and two misses in a row; the last book I tried I also just couldn't get into. What they have in common is that they're both YA or YA-leaning (this one is about an eighteen-year-old but I feel YA is more a vibe than an exact age range, and anyways an eighteen-year-old is still very much a teenager), which I think was my main bounce-off.

This one I tried off the pitch that it's a hero-to-villain story, or at least a story with an openly villainous main character, and that's something I'd like to see more of in fiction. It's not not that, but didn't succeed for me enough to read the whole thing. Some of it was I didn't like the tropes it was using, despite recognizing they were tropes from an evil queen/Snow White type story, but you've got her aunt beating the absolute tar out of her, you've got her boyfriend being a controlling douche she obsesses over for no reason, you've got some uncomfortable mentions that her wickedness is some kind of malady rooted in refusing to forgive her mother annnnnnnnnd nah I'm good

#books2023

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Re: The Cracked Mug v 2.0

Unread post by erikavonkaiser »

It occurs to me I may just not like fairytale retellings as much as I thought, or I need to find better ones

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Re: The Cracked Mug v 2.0

Unread post by erikavonkaiser »

I did my strength training, went on a run, and ate a smoothie bowl and I hate how much better I feel already

but!

Sevaufein!

So he has a Lore Compliant Name (tm), although I've admittedly fudged it; his name would render in Undercommon kind of like "little whelp with a bad eye" and the idea is he was born with a marked eye:

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and in Menzoberranzan that's enough for particularly a superstitious family that likely already doesn't want a boy child to go yeah, fuck THAT noise, this one is marked by Lolth and she can have him. They left him with a sisterhood of Lolth who took him in, gave him an appropriately demeaning name, and then raised him like their little prince for --lmao no just kidding Drow, especially Lolthsworn, are aggressively matriarchal and Sev would've had A Bad Time. I think he's in the position a lot of people in abusive cults find themselves in, which is he believes the bodily and emotional pain he has suffered/continues to suffer will prove he is lovable by ensuring that Lolth, the queen of biting, the queen of binding and wrapping and holding, will love him and show him favor.

(idk if y'all know your Forgotten Realms lore but Lolth is, um, she's a bad deity to bank on doing that for you)

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anyways it's been fun to play an entirely different type of character than I normally play; my flavor of traumatized character is usually more the Erika Large Sadman, and they are usually not cruel (except sometimes to themselves, cough Leon cough). Sevaufein does not go out of his way to be cruel and wouldn't classify as chaotic evil or anything, but I do play him as utterly ruthless. He's a nature domain cleric with an Outlander background, which means from a storytelling perspective he likely left the temple at some point (my thoughts on that so far is that he privately thinks Lolth is guiding him for a Purpose, although wouldn't have admitted that to the temple sisters because they would've throttled him) and lived out in the wilds of the Underdark and, later, some parts of the surface before he got tangled up in the plot kicker for Baldur's Gate 3. I am having him lighten up a little bit as he goes along and learns that not everyone is waiting for the opportunity to kill him in his sleep, although my next playthrough I might remake him as a Dark Urge character and go full apeshit Lolthsworn.

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tl;dr I love my mean pastel goth spider son and his mean camp gay vampire boyfriend

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Re: The Cracked Mug v 2.0

Unread post by erikavonkaiser »

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Re: The Cracked Mug v 2.0

Unread post by erikavonkaiser »

Does he really think Destiny invented both the concept of content seasons and annual expansions

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Re: The Cracked Mug v 2.0

Unread post by Fetian »

Guy who's only played one game,

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Re: The Cracked Mug v 2.0

Unread post by erikavonkaiser »

mek wrote: Wed Sep 06, 2023 3:55 pm

Guy who's only played one game,

What makes it even funnier is Diablo 4's predecessor, Diablo 3, was doing content seasons since like ... 2015?? and did so for many years before it reached an end-state when D4 was coming out. So years before Destiny did content seasons, and I'm sure there's nine thousand other examples, this one is just hilarious to me because it's the same game

To give some leeway I would understand if he was trying to say "hey here's what Diablo 4 is doing, if you're coming over from Destiny it's gonna be similar" but that's definitely not what comes across and I swear to god I will fight this man on a battlefield

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