HEY @mek
When you get a chance can I pick your brain on the following re: Snowtown werewolves?
How are they treated by society, both in Snowtown and Valdesland?
Is a werewolf self-aware when they transform, or do they just largely Become Wolf?
(you can DM me on discord too if you'd prefer)
I think that's all for now 
I had various forms of creative brain rot yesterday but no good creative energy, and I was in one of those moods where I spaced out/disassociated easily. Not in a bad way, thankfully! I've unfortunately been in the position where I can't keep my brain in the present because of The Horrors, and boy is it haunting to be sitting at your desk losing huge chunks of time because your brain goes goodbye. Yesterday was just, I dunno, Brain Go Brr but I had no say-so in the controls. Wasn't a bad day otherwise, though! Work was tolerable, if a bit busy.
Today I'm hoping to be more focused! I want to actually make headway on creative projects and feel a little more grounded.
Also I was tidying up my Goodreads a bit and checked -- I've read ten books this year! That's up from, uh, five, last year, and a whole lot of ???? the years before. Reading was unfortunately one of the first things I shed completely when I was going through the Bad Times, and once I lost the habit it was hard to pick it back up. I mentioned before I don't think I'll ever be the hyper-prolific reader I once was, which is fine, but it has felt nice to immerse myself in other worlds and stories again.
(Not star rating or reviewing things on Goodreads has hugely improved my experience of it, by the way. I recommend it if you want something to track your books/reading but have any sort of similar "I don't want to owe the entire internet my opinion" discomfort.)
erikavonkaiser wrote: ↑Sat Jun 03, 2023 7:29 pmThe Jekyll & Hyde concept cast soundtrack still whips ass after all these years
It occurred to me yesterday that I haven't given Jekyll & Hyde enough credit for affecting tropes I like to explore. My characters Mags and Merillian are both explorations of "transforming into a monster" tropes, just in different ways. (And with Mags, uh, I think her "Jekyll" side is really the monster, in a roundabout way. Merillian is transformed into a monster on the outside, but his main crimes are pride and hubris vs. Mags' genuine disregard for her life and the lives of others. Plus Merillian has a himbo boyfriend, and I feel like there is a non-zero chance Mags kicked whoever her last romantic partner was off a roof or something.)
I was actually thinking about Mags a lot yesterday while I had wandering brain rot. I like the idea that at this point she has mixed up who she's told what, and what's invented vs. what was real, and all of that is probably made worse by her current condition. I was thinking of her trying to go see her parents, to ask for money or to spend the night while on the run or something like that, and she pulls up to a house and realizes her parents never lived there; she made those parents up. She was applying for a scholarship at college and needed a tragedy backstory, so she made up a set of tragedy backstory parents and a house for them to live in.
I do think Mags had parents, mind you, or has them, or whatever. I think she probably had an uneventful childhood, even! I don't think there's any big event that made her This Way, except herself.
I also think she's not entirely positive where her parents live anymore, or what their names are.
She's the worst! I love her.
erikavonkaiser wrote: ↑Sat Jun 03, 2023 10:17 pmHEY @mek
When you get a chance can I pick your brain on the following re: Snowtown werewolves?
How are they treated by society, both in Snowtown and Valdesland?
Is a werewolf self-aware when they transform, or do they just largely Become Wolf?
(you can DM me on discord too if you'd prefer)
I think that's all for now
Good questions! I'll get back to you on the first one -- I need to reconsider some previous setting rules before I answer it. For the second, to an extent it'll depend on the severity of the transformation; how Wolf they become depends on the fullness of the moon (/the presence of any other ""allergens"") and how much self-control they have over it. Less transformed, they'll have more presence of mind/self-awareness/memory, and the opposite for the opposite. It'll happen more-or-less on a scale along with how much impulse control they lose and how much dumber (for lack of a better word) they get. Let me know if that's not clear enough and I'll break it down more!
Okay! So all over the place you'll get certain kinds of beliefs about werewolves:
-There's still a solid percentage of people who don't believe they actually exist, though in modern times that number has gotten fairly low -- there's just a lot of evidence out there now. ""werewolf truthers"" are not quite regarded at the same level as flat earthers in the real world, but it's close
-There's people who see werewolves as monsters -- this is particularly common in more rural areas, where 'don't go wandering off into the woods alone' stories featuring werewolves as the mechanism by which the protagonist is punished for their hubris are also pretty common. I'm assuming you're asking about Valdesland specifically for Leon's backstory purposes, and I'd say that it's likely he grew up with these and has unexamined lycanthrophobia (as it were (this is not a serious term)) from it
-There are people whose experiences with werewolves more feature people who have taken steps to manage their condition, so see werewolves more in terms of having a disability. Also for Leon purposes, I wouldn't be surprised if he's hit culture-clash of meeting people who think like this -- or otherwise have softer opinions of -- people that he's grown up thinking of as the boogeyman
-And of course people who have more mixed opinions, or not-very-strong opinions
More populated places (including Snowtown) have a higher percentage of people who are more live-and-let-live about werewolves, in part because these places also have more resources to help werewolves manage themselves and to be able to defend the area from werewolves who have less interest in being prosocial about things. Less populated places have a higher percentage of people who at minimum view werewolves as something to be cautious about and at maximum something to be eliminated entirely (very similar to views on non-were wolves, in areas where, for example, livestock are at risk). Snowtown in particular also has a general more-positive-than-average view of people with abnormal traits (consequently, the populations with those traits are also higher-than-average in Snowtown), so werewolf opinions skew a little more neutral-to-positive than in a similarly sized city in Chavidea or Valdesland
All of that in mind I think it might make sense for Abraham to mostly have experience with people who at worst pity him, especially given his privileges, and if Leon has a negative reaction I would expect Abraham to be surprised by it. I don't remember if the current direction SBB is going still has werewolves attacking people in it, but it would also make sense for Abraham to have a personal interest in stopping that from turning public opinion more negative. (This is something a lot of werewolf groups/"packs" take upon themselves, is stopping solitary or more violent groups from becoming a problem)
Let me know if you have more specific questions, or if any of that's unclear! I'm also trying very hard to not have it end up being a metaphor for racism, but that's a distinction that needs to come through in writing, so please keep that in mind as you're playing with it
Wasn't planning on it! Making it a metaphor, I mean. I think I'm having some brain struggles as it pertains to using someone else's sandbox so I'll probably keep SBB shelved for now, but I'll add the werewolf stuff to my notes. Thanks! I appreciate the help and heads-up.
erikavonkaiser wrote: ↑Tue Jun 06, 2023 3:11 amWasn't planning on it! Making it a metaphor, I mean. I think I'm having some brain struggles as it pertains to using someone else's sandbox so I'll probably keep SBB shelved for now, but I'll add the werewolf stuff to my notes. Thanks! I appreciate the help and heads-up.
No no, I just mean that the way its set up it would be easy to interpret it that way, but that there's not a lot I can do about it without completely changing the setting. So it just needs to be intentionally steered away from that direction, to avoid 'people think this minority group are inherently violent and dangerous, this is a metaphor for racism'. I'm not at all thinking you were going to end up going that way or anything, I just wanted to acknowledge what it sounded like and express that I do not want that
Yesterday was a pain and I tried and failed not to be very grumpy about it; today I'm still out of sorts, but am trying to cheer up. I got groceries this morning and am gonna see if I can muster some excitement to play video games. Probably I should make sure I go outside and touch grass, too.
Life goes on, and all.
Feeling better today! I think I just needed a day to sulk a bit. I did pep up after doing projects and chatting with some friends, though! I hung out with @Dax Webster while he helped me with some Final Fantasy stuff and I also lurked in party chat with the Toes while I was doing some painting projects. It was nice! I definitely do The Thing that I think a lot of my peers do, which is have the urge to self-isolate when I'm feeling down. Sometimes that is necessary, especially if I'm crabby and short-tempered (absolutely zero reason to put myself in situations where I'll snap at someone who doesn't deserve it), but a lot of the times it helps alleviate The Horrors to be around friends and making jokes and remembering that life is okay actually.
One of the projects I did was a dumb white lady Pinterest thing but it was fun! I put splotches of paint on a canvas, put the canvas carefully in a plastic bag, and then put peanut butter on top of the bag for Baby Dog to lick so she could "paint."
It was cute, I'm gonna let it fully dry then I think just go ahead and put a gloss on it and keep it as-is. I considered filling in the white spaces (if I had it to do over I'd prep the canvas with a background), but I want it to be intact. It's a Baby Dog original!
Speaking of Baby Dog, we went to the dog beach this morning where she had big fun and is now a-snoozin'. Otherwise today I think my plans are to work on some writing stuff, exercise, do laundry, and chill. I have two errands I want to run but I'm gonna knock them out first thing tomorrow (I just need to drop off donations at two different locations, so nothing too strenuous). Then D&D tomorrow night, woo!
Okay lemme have another coffeedrank then play a bit more FF14 then it's time to go on a run