This Week's Rambles

Definitely No Resolutions This Year

2011-12-28T19:20:00.001Z

I never stick to them. In a couple of days I'll be off to Suffolk to see in the New Year, so thought I might as well do a review of the year/look forward to next type thing now. My overall impression of 2011 is that's it's been....twelve months. Not much more to say.My crazy idea was indeed crazy, and I failed to actually write to most of the places I intended to. It's pretty much impossible to exist on paper without picking a binary gender, but i think we knew that anyway. Maybe one day I'll have more spoons and can try again to raise awareness. Until then I'll just keep being female when it matters and maybe start flipping a coin when it doesn't....My other plans went pretty much nowhere too. I did try the writing thing again but, ugh. Same old problem of not being able to focus and force myself to write something I know isn't good. And lack of plot. Plot is useful for stories. And even blogging fell away as you can probably tell. I suspect I shall largely not be bothering in future. Unless I really can think of something I really want to say and think people might actually want to read. So probably not then. As for the rest of the year...stuff happened. I found out my ex had died. Other people died too, including my SO's grandma. People were born too, and that's much happier to think about. I had a job, for a bit, and my SO jumped through more hoops for the NHS. It's possible I've forgotten some really important event this year, but that's really all I can think of right now. And I'm expecting 2012 to be much the same (although we could do without the deaths and losing of jobs). So - no resolutions. I have no idea when I might update this again, if ever. Hope you all have a good new year and indeed a good future in general.

Return to Vvardenfell

2011-12-05T11:08:00.001Z

Dragons, schmagons. Silt striders and skooma addicts are where it's at. We've been having computer troubles for some time - our main PC died a sudden death and not having the cold hard cash to buy a new one, we've just been coping without. We have our own laptop/netbooks for internet access, the back-up desktop works just about for that too, and the Wii keeps the Terror occupied gaming-wise. Then 11/11/11 happened and, not being able to move on the internet for reviews, progress blogs and general Skyrim-related chatter, we began to feel a bit left out. At this point my clever other half pointed out that my laptop ought to be able to run Morrowind. It was, actually, one of the reasons I bought such a high-spec laptop when, ostensibly, it was only needed for work: mostly text-editing. So she went ahead and installed WINE, Morrowind and both expansions, and found, to delight all round that it did indeed run. Until you got into combat or tried to load a saved game at which point it crashed.Fortunately, that was easily solved by downloading the latest version of WINE instead of the stable version, and, despite occasional problems with sound, it mostly works fine. Of course, that now means all three of us are fighting over my laptop - because now the boy is old enough to be able to play with only minimal help. He can read and understand most of the dialogue, he has no problems with the controls and when he gets the hang of finding quests for himself he'll be away. Currently he seems to be hung up on creating new characters - he's got four now, different races and classes but all fighters and all barely out of Seyda Neen - but hopefully he'll settle down soon and get deeper into the game. He's been watching me take on a Dwemer ruin with some fascination, so maybe he'll try and head there at some point. Maybe I'll prompt him in that direction.And, gee, but I'd forgotten how much I love this game. Even though I've played it so much in the past that I doubt there's much "new" left for me to do, I keep finding things I'd forgotten all about and just wandering round and doing things in a different order is being fun. And the alien environment of Vvardenfell appeals to me much more than the more Earth-like greenery that was, admittedly, so stunning in Oblivion. I also much prefer the approach to the main storyline - you can and indeed are encouraged to ignore it to start with - something that didn't really feel possible in Oblivion what with the end of the world happening and all that. Not that it's a perfect game by a long shot, but it's currently being enjoyable and the fact that I - hardly an accomplished gamer - have managed to complete it and most of the side-quests I've attempted is definitely a point in its favour. It's feeding our family's craving for Elder Scrolls action for now, and despite the arguments about who's turn it is, it's bringing us together by giving us a common current obsession. All of which means that I'm quite happy to put off buying a new computer until after Christmas, when we should hopefully be able to afford it. And I probably won't be dropping it immediately to rush off and play Skyrim instead. Although the dragons do look very cool....

[Fiction] Terribleminds' "Brand New Monster" Flash Fiction

2011-10-13T13:06:00.000+01:00

I often think about trying to write something for one of the flash fiction challenges Chuck Wendig regularly throws out, but rarely do I get very far. But for the latest one, I actually managed to sit and finish what I'd started. And then agonised over actually entering it because I'm really not happy with it. But as it's the first thing I've actually written in ages,and it might not actually be as rubbish as I think it is, I thought I might as well go ahead. I still haven't thought of a title for it though.

Legs aching, chest exploding, eyes losing focus; every step, every breath hurt like hell but I just kept running and running and running. I had to get away from that...thing.

I can barely remember what I was doing before I found it. Why I was late home, why on earth I was on the wrong side of town in the pouring rain without even a coat. I guess I must have gone straight to Rob's after work. But now I was miles from there too, and soaked to the skin and terrified and running for my god-damned sanity -- and I can't even remember how or why. I think that's what it does. It lures you out. Calls to you on a subconscious level and leaches your very memories away.

I found it in a box. An ordinary bloody cardboard box, like it was a broken lamp or an abandoned kitten. Lying by the bins amongst all the other rubbish in the back alley. Not Rob's back alley. I'd already gone a few streets by then. Why the hell didn't he stop me leaving the house? Had we argued or something? And I looked in the box like it was the most natural thing to be doing in the world: poking around the rubbish in a nowhere street in the pitch black and pouring rain. I looked in the box and it was there.

It was bigger than the box, I'm sure. It must be my size at least. Vaguely man-shaped but looking for all the world like it was made from a sock. You know, a huge woollen sock. Crazy, huh? Who could be afraid of something as daft as that? But the mouth. Dear god, the mouth....a gaping maw of darkness and heat, no teeth, no tongue, just a few tendrils wisping out and the sickening stench of blood and vomit. And as it rose up in front of me I felt the overwhelming urge to move in and give it a hug, let it embrace me, and I so nearly did, until at the last minute Rob pulled me back.

HE WAS WITH ME. The realisation so nearly, fatally,made me stop dead. I stumbled slightly but managed to press on, the fear of the impossible creature behind me propelling me forward as I tried to make sense of my fragmented memory.

He was with me. We must have left his house together. Went for a walk -- in the rain? It doesn't matter what our rationalisation was, it must have been that thing calling to us. Why else would we have gone to that alleyway? Why else would I have opened that soggy cardboard box? And then he saved me. Pulled me away and told me to run and then, stupidly, stopped to stare as the monster grew bigger and threw itself towards us. I stopped too - stopped and watched in horror as it enveloped him.

How could I have forgotten that? How could I have forgotten his scream?

A kerb nearly tripped me up and brought me back to the present. I didn't dare hesitate to check behind me, somehow I just knew it was still chasing me. That slight mental tug that had drawn me to it in the first place. Having escaped, I now only wanted to get as far away from it as possible. And now I had no idea where I was: suddenly realising I really didn't know, not even the name of the city I was in. If it was a city. It felt to big to be a town. I was totally lost and I was getting slower but I was still moving. Still running.

I had to keep running.

I tried to remember more about what had happened but there was nothing there. Only the stark memory of the creature's bizarre appearance and its sudden attack. Now I was digging around my memory I realised how little was left. I didn't know where I was or where I'd been. Who I was. My name? A chill hit me as I realised. I suspected the creature was feeding on my memories. And it was feeding on them even now, even as I ran. Was it gaining on me? If I stopped to look behind....

The shred of survival instinct which had kept me running all this time made me accelerate once more and I drove myself forward towards the street lights. I could hear traffic now, the first time I'd been aware of the existence of other people since...since I could remember. I headed towards the sound, desperate to find someone, anyone, who could make this madness stop. I blundered past the moving cars, not caring for the danger I was in and not noticing the drivers' angry shouts but making my way towards two tall men in familiar hi-vis jackets that some remnant of memory told me would be the ones to help. I didn't slow in time and collided with one of them, before falling, babbling in his arms and then blacking out as the cost of my exertions caught up with me.

They found Rob's clothes soaked in blood in an alleyway a quarter of a mile from his house. My deranged ramblings and erratic behaviour that night aroused the suspicions of the police, but in the end they had to let me go. Slowly, I've pieced all my memories back together; all but why we left Rob's place and went to that street.

I don't go out at night.

Fields, LARP and all that

2011-09-04T16:39:00.000+01:00

Once again, last weekend we were in Locko Park having spent a silly amount of money and I once again spent a large chunk of it wondering if it was really worth it. Overall, though, I think it was.

My other half and the Terror both seemed to enjoy themselves anyway. I actually saw more of my SO than usual as she had some time off running encounters, and saw very little of the boy as he decamped to another group's tent and mostly played with the younger boy he first met last year. So I had some guilt and some boredom and some frustration at still feeling trapped in camp, but not so bad. I got to watch some rituals which are always fun, and didn't die or even get knocked out, and regained a bit of confidence about going near fights and actually healing people. Still a lot of feeling useless, but that was probably just my silly brain. And having a Lifemaster or two in camp for one attack. You do feel a bit superfluous then.

But oh dear I do wish I didn't suck so much at roleplaying. Failing to improvise details from my character's background is one thing, failing to even be able to recount the known parts of it is another. And how on earth did I manage to create a character who is even more shy than I am in real life? I still can't quite bring myself to retiring her and trying again with something different though. I suspect my own shyness will still be the limiting factor. And I really love the group I'm in now - they're great people to hang around with - and I can't see my next character concept fitting in so well. Plus I'd have to find different kit and all that. Effort. Probably not worth it.

Anyway, that's it for me this season, and next year I'll probably go through all the same worries and feelings and thoughts and end up coming to the same conclusion: I'd miss it if I didn't go and all I can do is keep trying to get more involved. Now I just have to try and get my mind back in this world.

Sudden Breakup

2011-08-04T17:03:00.000+01:00

It's taken me a day or so to get together my thoughts but I think I'm about ready to try putting them into words.

At first I was shocked and then angry and then just terrified. Now I'm beginning to accept it with a sad sense of the inevitable - let's be honest, we both knew it wasn't going to last. Despite what you might think, it's not that I felt I could do better. I loved it while it lasted, although maybe I didn't always show it. And in reality it wasn't you - it was me. I was just not going to be the person you wanted me to be. I tried, maybe I could have tried harder. But you shouldn't have to put up with me and my problems out of a misplaced sense of loyalty, or worse, pity. And you helped me a great deal, but you shouldn't have to wait the years it could take me to improve. You need someone right for you, now. You deserve that.

I wish I'd done things differently, but still, I'm trying not to blame myself too much. Wallowing in self-pity or worse, regressing to how I was before, would do me no good and I intend to take this opportunity to regroup and learn and maybe even figure out what it is I really want from life. Things move on, there'll be other chances, and maybe one day I'll find "the one".

I just want you to know I'm sorry it didn't work out, and I don't blame you for giving me the boot. I hope you can forgive me my faults, and there will be no hard feelings between us. I promise this is the last you'll hear from me, unless I desperately need a reference of course.

So goodbye job, it was nice knowing you.

Moving On

2011-07-16T17:58:00.000+01:00

Maybe it's the cold I'm lumbered with or maybe it's the medicine I've taken for said cold, but I'm in a philosophical (and surprisingly laid back) mood. So excuse me while I ramble a bit.

It's been quite a week. Due to my usual practise of completely losing track of how many pills I have left, I ran out of sertraline last weekend. Cue much being tired, stressed, tearful etc. But I still failed to go pick up another prescription and I'm starting to think it isn't worth it as I'll be over the worst of the withdrawal by the time I get any. So once again I'll try going without. Maybe I'll manage for more than a few months this time.

Work was all going smoothly until Friday. It's always Fridays, isn't it? May have to change working practices again. And I have no confidence that I'll be able to provide the required information on Monday. But frankly, that's not my fault, and I once again find myself thinking "I'm just not paid enough to care". All I can do is work with the information given to me. If that's wrong or incomplete, well, tough.

Friends came and we chatted. Friends came and we gamed. There was even talk of roleplaying again. Would be kind of nice to get to play something. Might make me want to GM again. Any other attempts at creativity have been failing before getting to a keyboard. Even this bout of actually attempting to communicate is getting harder to continue. But I know if I stop I'll never get round to finishing. So I'm going to struggle to the end. And not stop to edit, for that way lies the delete button.

But some other things happened this week that may have also led to my not-entirely-cough-medicine-induced philosophical mood. Firstly my Facebook feed suddenly had a lot of posts from friends dealing with the sudden loss of one of their own - a young man I never met and had never even heard of until then. I still know nothing about him other than that he's gone and a lot of people are going to miss him. Then the very next day I discovered (again via the wonders of the internet) that some other friends of friends had lost their newborn son. Hard to express enough sympathy in those circumstances, especially without feeling like an intruder in complete strangers' grief. Tears and raging against the injustice of the world just didn't seem enough, so I just buried myself in my own life's petty problems and tried to forget it all.

As you can tell, I failed.

And today I've been too ill to do much, beyond sleep, veg out in front of DVDs and make the very vague and fuzzy decision that I need to change my attitude to life. I need to stop wallowing in the feeling that I'm missing out on something. I need to stop telling myself with every passing day that I'm wasting my life. I need to stop feeling as though I have an obligation to blog, or write, or run games, or entertain my friends with witty or interesting posts on Facebook/Twitter/Google+.I need to stop telling myself my son's life is boring and he's growing up without "a proper childhood" (whatever that means). I need to stop counting all the things I haven't done yet. I need to stop, basically, and be content with just being. Because yes, life is short,and yes, I don't know how long I've got left, and yes, each year seems to go by faster, but I doubt that when I do die, whether it's tomorrow or in fifty years time, my loved ones are going to think "she never did watch Twin Peaks".

Stuff

2011-07-01T22:34:00.000+01:00

Oh, what's this? *blows dust off* A blog? Wow - I'd forgotten all about it. I should really use it more often...

Yeah, I've not been feeling up to writing much. Don't know if that's good or bad. Work been keeping me busy. Time going by so fast. No rpg sessions to write up. Little motivation to try and review the things I've read/watched because I soon move onto the next thing. The news - well, I get to bitch about the government and newspapers on Google Reader and Twitter so don't feel the need to go into depth here. I guess I just haven't had anything to say then.

My SO is in Dublin this weekend for evil plotting and the Terror and I are going to my parents tomorrow for the night. It's my dad's 60th on Monday so I've bought him a present,which I haven't bothered even trying to wrap or disguise but I'm still not going to say what it is just on the off chance he reads this before tomorrow. It may clink slightly.

A few weeks ago I suddenly realised I'd been breaking my "no answer to binary gender question" thing every time I checked in at the doctor's surgery, and then felt rather stupid for not realising earlier. As I've mostly chickened out of trying to get a new bank account or anything it's not being much of useful experiment I suppose.

I'm getting better at using Excel due to work, but still not that great. I keep thinking there must be an easier way of doing the things I do, and then failing to find one. My boss is lovely and I'm getting better at dealing with the people who turn up for one reason or another but I still feel too damn shy and have to work myself up to asking stuff. But they don't seem to wanting to get rid of me, so that's something. Still haven't booked any holidays. Should really do that.

Think that's about all the news, if you can call any of that "news".

The Shedding of Heterosexual Privilege

2011-06-08T15:45:00.000+01:00

As a short follow up to something I mentioned last time, today I "came out" at work.

Just chatting with my boss about planning holidays and the conversation went something like this.

ME: Yeah, we'll have to have a think about when I should take time off as J--'s writing up so can't just look after him full time.
HIM: J--, that's your boyfriend isn't it?
ME: (blushing and avoiding eye contact even more than usual) Girlfriend, actually.
HIM: (a beat) Oh. (embarrassed) Sorry.
ME: (embarrassed) S'ok.

And then we carried on as before. I don't know why I was so worried, although I'm still kind of dreading the inevitable conversation about who the Terror's father is then. But only kind of. The fact that this even bothers me at all is an uncomfortable reminder of how easy I've had it so far - the heteronormative assumptions that underpin so much casual social conversation used to work in my favour too and now I feel like I ought to give a brief bio whenever I first meet someone.

Or just get a t-shirt with "My son's daddy is my girlfriend" on it or something.

Life, and other complications

2011-06-05T17:12:00.000+01:00

I think work is still going well. A couple of panics but no real complaints so far. I still feel a bit uncomfortable and not confident enough to take charge and suggest things that would make my life easier, but then I suppose I am technically a temp and who knows how long it'll last. Even if my immediate boss at least talks as if I'm going to stay (unless tempted away by better job). But it's good to have something to do, even if I'm tired for the rest of the day afterwards, and I'm managing not to eat too many cakes.

Slowly trying to make other changes to routine, but mostly everything seems rushed and panicky until suddenly I have nothing left to do that day. Falling asleep earlier in the evenings means I never seem to have much time to watch things, and I'm falling behind with reading too. Roleplaying has just stopped, but we still play board games so that's ok. I'm just getting scared about how fast this year is going by. Have a strange sense of unreality a lot of the time, but that could just be the tiredness I suppose. It does feel like I've wandered into someone else's life though. Especially when I catch myself happily chatting with boss at work or going to talk about volunteering at the local environment centre (although whether I'll really have the energy to....) or doing anything else that a few years ago would have seemed like an impossibility. Or when I stop and look at the Terror and think "That's my son. I'm his mother," and other such mind-boggling truths.

I really am beginning to suspect this "growing up" thing is just a myth.

I still end up shaking after making a phone call though. I still jump when the phone rings (at home and at work) and put off answering it as long as I dare. I still find myself being too shy to strike up conversations, even with people I know reasonably well. And, despite a lot of bravado online and in my head about sticking up for who I am and not being cowed by social expectations, I still can't bring myself to correct my bosses' assumption that my SO is male. And now it's got to the stage of being even more awkward to say anything without the whole "well why didn't you say something earlier?" response. Although possibly what I find worse is the knowledge that in their position I'd make exactly the same assumption.

What A Difference A Week Makes

2011-06-04T18:02:00.000+01:00

Last Friday I was, oh I don't know, probably lounging around trying to motivate myself to pack and get things sorted before going away for the night. Being lazy and playing lots of computer games (Online Dominion, I'm looking at you). Tomorrow I'll be going to work at my new job.

The night away was another trip up to Durham to stay at my parents so they could babysit while my SO and I went to a friend's 30th birthday party. We're all getting old now. The best bit (although always good to see R again) was getting to see her best mate from uni that neither of us had seen in something like eight years. Although I didn't get to talk to him, our girlfriends sat chatting quite happily while I strained to hear anything over the loud (but good) music. It was a good night, anyway, and I didn't get too drunk, which is just as well as the Terror woke me up at Unearthly O'clock in the morning. Saturday we bimbled and went home late, watching Doctor Who after tucking the boy up in bed. Sunday was nice enough and we even managed to pick up a couple of comics leftover from Free Comic Book Day. People came round to play 40K and the Terror got to watch a bit - he's dead set on getting an Ork army, although I doubt he has the patience (or skill) to build and paint them.

Monday was when it all started. I trawled the Jobseekers as I usually do, found one ad for a data entry position and sent off my email. An hour or so later I got a phone call from the agency asking for more details and explaining a bit about the job and telling me they were passing on my details to the company. This led to a frantic chase to make sure CV was ok in .doc format (don't ask) and to find and scan and email my passport and qualification certificates. Then I relaxed a bit, happy someone hadn't immediately gone "over-qualified, under-experienced" and passed me over.

Tuesday I get a phone call from the man at company asking me to come for interview. He gives convoluted directions (as he assumed I'd be driving) and I say I can make it and then panic a bit afterwards while I try and figure out how. I spend rest of day in shock from stress and my SO looks after me, even sorting out and ironing clothes for me to wear. Realise I can make it, even after going to other arranged meeting about volunteering at St Nicholas Fields. Start to relax just a little.

Wake up early on Wednesday and feel fairly ok. I know where I'm going, it should all be fine. Worst comes to worst, I don't get job and can't do anything useful volunteering-wise. Back to square one, not a problem really. Meeting at St Nick's started off well enough and then a minor crisis cropped up which he had to go deal with. I waited for a bit, with everyone being very apologetic, until he came back and said he was sorry but he really needed to go speak to someone else....So we agreed to sort things out by email and maybe meet up another time or whatever. Because I'd finished there early I could go home and catch my breath before going to the bus - and more importantly go buy milk to break into the tenner I had. And then I could go catch earlier bus. After hanging around at the bus stop for a bit, I decided to walk over to Heslington Road and maybe catch a bus there. One turned up and that's when I realised I'd left my purse at home after getting back from the shop.

I ran.

I grabbed purse.

I made it back to original bus stop in time to sit down, count out change, and then stand up quickly as bus I'd originally planned to get came. I at least then got a bit of a sit down before getting off at the station and trying to find my way to this place. It wasn't as far away as I thought and I would have been early if I hadn't bottled out and retraced my steps to ask someone for directions. Once there, I was a bit out of breath (it was hot) and nervous but somehow managed to catch someone's attention and remember the name of the man I was supposed to be seeing. It was pretty plain sailing from there. I babbled a bit, tried not to play down my computer skills too much while still being honest, tried to divert attention from my lack of experience. I got shown a short-cut back to the station and everyone I'd spoken to there seemed nice and friendly. I left feeling it had gone well and if they decided to go with the other person, I could be pretty sure it wasn't because I'd come across as a raging lunatic or an idiot. We celebrated with wine that evening, and played Dominion because I'm kind of fed up of trying to run D&D and C won't play Robo Rally. The spoilsport.

This morning I got a call from the agency, who hadn't even known I'd been interviewed until the guy told them he'd decided to go with me.

I have a job.

It's part-time, flexible hours that fit in with childcare.

It's only temporary for now, but the company is still getting organised and may or may not have more work for me in the long-run.

It's the other side of town but I can get there.

I have a job.

I have a freaking job.

Wow.

That Was The GEF That Was

2011-05-31T21:18:00.000+01:00

It was very strange being the one at work on Friday while my SO got to stay home and pack, but there it is. I was forced to bring home cupcakes too, which we took with us, picking the Terror up from school and heading straight to Locko. Turned out we were parked right near one of the car parks, so ended up pitching our tents right in front of our car. Handy.

And then the event. Once again I mostly stayed in camp for sake of being near little one, although he mostly ignored me and played with other kids and hung around in their tent almost all the time. There was much standing or sitting at gate, laughing and chatting with friends, and booze. There was also Saturday - in which I mostly slept. And cried a bit. And generally felt a bit lost and useless but then a big Glaswegian came and made me talk at him (about coal wagons, because that was all still in my mind from work) and then I felt better. We really do have awesome friends, who manage to look after me even when SO is working her little ref socks off. Which she did. "Plot light" event indeed. But hey, we all had fun in the end.

There was a Balrog, which we avoided, a big battle which just got confusing and scary and lots of skirmishes in or just outside camp in which I was the Worst Healer Evar and had more power spent on picking my one-hit-wonder ass off the floor than I managed to spend on healing anyone more useful. Two weddings, a Wavesinger competition, Healer Gate, frozen Grandmaster - all fun. I may even have got some keen back. Plenty of time for that to wear off before August though.

A Working Week

2011-05-20T16:57:00.000+01:00

I think I'm possibly beginning to get the hang of this going to work thing.

I've been sleeping more and my SO has been doing the washing up more and no doubt I'll end up far too far behind on housework and I've abandoned Wii Fit for now (although might try and fit it in at weekends) but, slowly getting a new routine sorted. Walking to work isn't too bad, but walking back leaves me little time to get changed and rest before I have to go fetch the Terror from school so maybe I should try cycling. But other than all that I think it's been going well.

Everyone seems nice and friendly enough, and so far no-one's complained that I've done anything wrong or been going to slow. I think I'm getting to grips with their system, but still have been a bit shy about ringing people up to address problems I've had. But I know they're coming back next week to finish training me and hopefully sort out the stock issues (as stuff hasn't been checked in and out of stores due to lack of IT on site, the actual stores and the virtual records just don't add up). Hopefully by the end of next week I'll be a bit more confident and a bit more settled there and there'll be a few less problems. Hopefully....

Can We Make A Deal, World?

2011-05-02T12:36:00.000+01:00

I tell you what - I promise to try my very best and actually get of my arse and do stuff without fear of failure if you promise to stop with the ableist bullshit, ok?

Time to Change has been running a campaign trying to get people to talk openly about mental health, so here's my little contribution.

I suffer from depression and anxiety. This is hardly a surprise to anyone who knows me, but I want to try and make clear what that actually means. I take anti-depressants, because I'm worse without them, but they don't make me "better". I get by with the help and support of my friends and family- especially my partner who makes sure I get fed and have someone to talk to, as my attempts to open up to a counsellor have always ended in failure. I'm not suicidal, I don't spend all day in bed, I manage to eat regularly (but not overeat), I manage to get out of the house most days, I can go into shops and answer the phone and talk to people in social situations. This doesn't mean I'm not ill though. Just because I'm lucky and my depression is very mild, doesn't mean it's not there, or that it's just a bad mood, or I'm over-reacting to a negative mind-set and I just need to pull myself together. I am ill. And, as I'm beginning to accept, I probably always will be.

This acceptance doesn't mean I'm giving up or going to spend the rest of my life wallowing in self-pity or am placing myself in a "victim" role or any of that nonsense you might be thinking. In fact, it's the complete opposite of giving up. I spent too much time as a teenager and young adult hoping that one day I would be "better", that I'd get over whatever was holding me back and everything would be ok. Even once I'd realised that wasn't going to happen by itself, I looked to doctors to help me, to cure me, to make this horrible mental illness go away. And they couldn't. At that point I nearly did give up.

But accepting that I had a chronic illness, that I had a disability was just the first step to learning how to live with it. Hoping for a cure for my depression and social anxiety is about as much help as hoping for a cure for my myopia. But instead of trying to deny I'm short-sighted or struggle on without any help, I buy glasses and wear them and get on with life. Mental illnesses are not so easy to cope with, of course, but I have learned (with help from both professionals and other sufferers) how to catch those negative thoughts and realise they're not true, how to set myself achievable targets and get myself moving each day, and how to occasionally give myself a break. I've learned how to do that but it doesn't make it any easier. Unlike riding a bike, it doesn't really get easier with practice and I doubt it'll ever become second nature for me.

So obviously I have bad days.I have relapses where it feels like the rest of my life is going to be like one of those bad days, because that's what depression does. And on those bad days I reach out and tell people I'm feeling bad and go fishing for sympathy and things like that because that's what I need to feel better, to get enough of a grip on myself to get past the bad moment and pick myself up again. And when one of my friends is in a similar bad place, I give them sympathy and love because that's what they need right then, not a lecture on how they can make things better. It's called a social support network, and it's one of the most important things a person can have. Sure, it might be better to teach a man how to fish, but a starvation victim who is too weak to hold a rod really just needs the damned fish. Learning to catch your own supper comes later, when you're strong enough.

But still. I've been a slump lately and I've done enough whinging and asking for sympathy, and I've been given it because I have friends who are great and understand. And now I need to learn how to fish. (Metaphorically, of course. I'm far too much of a softie to kill my own food.) So apologies for the self-pity and whinging, and I hope you can forgive me. As for the deal, I'm going to try and keep my end of it, so do you think you can uphold yours? Don't assume just because something works for you, it will work for everyone. And don't assume just because someone doesn't look unwell or disabled, they must be fine. Thanks.

Motivation

2011-04-26T11:53:00.000+01:00

As in, I have none.

School holidays are always hard. As much as I love The Terror, he does sometimes live up to his name, and even when he doesn't I feel guilty about not doing more fun, exciting and educational things with him. All our spare time seems to be spent with me on laptop wasting time, him watching telly or playing games on Wii and when I finally manage to drag myself and him away from our addictions there is usually much whinging. Or he wants me to play with him and I can only handle small amounts of that, not having the energy or the imagination to keep up with a seven year old. While the weather has been great, and we have mostly been managing to get out for a bit every day, when it's too hot we really don't want to stay out long. And I get tired so easily I need to go home and do nothing for a bit.

So mostly the last two weeks have been not going outside enough and not doing enough exercise and eating far too much. Few days around my birthday (yes, I am officially Old now) were good, but exhausting.I have Stuff now, including more books to read than I'll get through in a reasonable time. And chocolate and whisky, which won't help with diet, but makes life a little more pleasurable. But now the time has come to try and get back to a routine and pick up my Wii Fit regime and look more seriously for work and I'm dreading it. Of course, there's only a couple of days and then another long weekend, one in which my SO will be away, so there's little chance I'll really be ready to do anything and I'm not sure what I should do anyway.

Which brings me back to the motivation thing. I occasionally think of things I could do (or "should do", but I'm trying to avoid that) but they just seem to big and scary that I can't even make a start. Trying to concentrate on smaller things that actually might be useful in and of themselves, instead of just the first step on a long journey, but even those seem to fall by the wayside or be too hard. Every day is a battle to actually get myself to do anything without just collapsing into tears from stress. Or sometimes just a battle to not collapse into tears full stop. And yet sometimes, when the pressure is off, I find myself just getting things done and being ok. But only sometimes. And while I occasionally think "I should mention this to the doctor" whenever I get there I either just forget or can't think of the words or am feeling more positive and think I'll be ok or feeling more negative and think that's just the way it's always going to be. I guess it isn't really my GP's job to help me get my act together but then I'm obviously depressed so maybe it is. But the community mental health team made it clear to me last time I was referred there that they considered me "well enough" to get by with self-help. Despite the self-help failing being the reason I was referred there. But that's the NHS for you - desperately underfunded and unable to cope with long-term "mild" mental health problems.

Now I've rambled for a bit and forgotten my point, if I had any. But I suppose I've managed to blog, which is one of the things I keep trying to do and failing. So that's a start.

The Campaign With No Name - March 30th

2011-04-18T10:13:00.000+01:00

The party reach the black octahedron in the middle of the lake and disembark. The sides are stepped enabling them to reach the entrance half way up with ease. Rather than a doorway, there is just a perfect pitch-black hole cut into the stone - magical darkness that even the Drow cannot see through. On entering, they find themselves in a well-lit corridor of sandy-coloured stone, with bright green vines growing through gaps between the bricks. The air is fresh and the plants lightly scented. A sense of health, wellbeing and relaxation penetrates the area.

As the Warlord starts to pull a brick from the wall to see what's behind it, the rest of the party wander down the corridor, only to hear an ominous thud behind them. A large stone boulder had dropped from the ceiling behind them and starts to roll slowly down the corridor towards them. Despite his best efforts, the Warlord fails to pull the stone he's working on out in time to jam it in the way,and he's flattened by the boulder. Only Chuck runs ahead to try and outpace the rolling stone; all the others are knocked down by its relentless movement. After picking themselves up, the Warlord simply continues his excavation of the wall and Mouse and the Drow investigate where the boulder came from, after failing to stop it with the Drow's spells. Chuck runs straight for the end of the corridor, just staying ahead of the rolling boulder and makes it through the door there before it crashes into the wall. The boulder then falls as the floor opens up underneath it, leaving a pit before the door on the corridor side.

On the other side is a dusty, grey, large room with an aura of solemnity and contemplation. A statue stands at one end and a large circular mosaic occupies much of the floor. As Chuck wanders forward to investigate it, the Warlord finally breaks through the wall he was working on and emerges in the same room Chuck is in. Only temporarily confused by the geometry of this place, the rest of the party take this route to avoid the gaping hole left by the boulder. They decipher the inscription on the statue and deduce that the mosaic is in fact a puzzle they need to solve to find a way out. They do this easily enough, and the whole completed picture suddenly starts to descend. Beneath appears to be icy cavern. The Warlord flies down -

- and finds himself flying up into a large ice cave, with several devils standing menacingly around. The rest of the party jump through, landing awkwardly near the hole in the floor, momentarily disorientated by the change of gravity's direction. A fight soon starts, and with some teleporting, some fire and a devil oscillating up and down through the hole for a while, the party are victorious. Above a ledge, embedded into the wall, is the stone tablet they were sent to look for. They gather around it.

Re: Census

2011-03-27T20:43:00.000+01:00

Those of you with persistent memories will recall I had a crazy plan, which I've been mostly sticking to, but more by avoiding answering the offending question than by explaining why. Still, today is census day, and this meant I needed to actually write a letter to include with the form. Here it is, for better or worse.

To Whom It May Concern,

I am writing to explain why I have left Question 2 unanswered on the enclosed Census form. My objections to the question are two-fold.

Firstly, the phrasing of the question. “What is your sex?” is problematic as it unclear what precisely is meant by “sex”, and the manner in which this is usually decided at birth relies entirely on the appearance of one's genitals. I hope you can appreciate that I consider this to be too intrusive and personal a question to ask. Also, I believe that formal guidance given to the transgender community has clarified that transsexual people are explicitly permitted to select the option that reflects their “acquired” gender regardless of whether they possess a Gender Recognition Certificate or not. Thus I find the decision not to phrase the question in terms of gender, thereby bypassing the awkward question as to what is someone's “true” sex, both baffling and disappointing.

Assuming that the intended question is “What is your gender?” leads me to my second objection. The two given options, “male” or “female”, are too restrictive. Once one acknowledges that a person's gender may differ from that assigned to them by their outward appearance, it is hardly surprising to realise that their gender may differ from either of the two most commonly recognised sexes. Or that they may be unsure as to what their true gender is, and not wish to just answer based on social expectations. In other words, it is both simplistic and erroneous to assume that gender is a binary, as Western society does, and insisting that everyone has to fit into one of these two “boxes” (“male” or “female”) is discriminatory. While it might be anticipated that the number of people in Britain today who would identify as a non-binary gender is small, the truth is we will never know unless efforts are made to begin to collect this data. I feel that the 2011 Census missed an opportunity to do this.

Yours faithfully,

Adele Taylor

The Campaign With No Name - March 2nd/9th

2011-03-10T20:29:00.000Z

The long trek through the Underdark with the remaining Kua-Toa was coming to an end, and the party were asked to wait in a side-cave while the rest checked the way was clear. Suspecting a trap, the adventurers stood watchful, and sure enough, they were soon surrounded by Troglodytes when a false wall gave way. However, Chuck was able to hold several at a distance while the rest were butchered, and despite being outnumbered, the party triumphed. The Warlord even got to find out that Troglodytes don't taste any better alive than dead.

However, when the second-in-command of the Kua-Toa finally traipses back, clutching the translation stone and looking fairly miserable, it transpires it wasn't a set-up at all. The Kua-Toa were also attacked by Troglodytes and their leader and several others were killed. However,they finally beat off their attackers, and the remainder of the expeditionary party and the player characters set off for the Kua-Toa settlement. The ramshackle town is spread along the shores of a vast underground lake - almost a sea. The far side isn't visible, and a pyramidal-like structure pokes out in the distance. The characters are taken to the house of the new leader's aunt, and fed well. The Warlord is given lots of fish.

The following morning, they are led into a small "temple",hewn from rock right on the lake's edge. The main area is lined with guards, and they are told to stay back and not approach the "god". The guards then step back to reveal an alcove at the back, where an Aboleth Slime Mage emerges from underneath a large ornate cloak. The party are not impressed. The "god" communicates telepathically with a lot of crackling, images, vague impressions and broken Common. At first it demands a task from them, and expects them to join the ranks of it's worshippers. After that is met with polite derision by the party (and the Warlord entertains the idea of riding the Aboleth like a pony), it changes it's tune and instead offers them treasure in return for completing it's proposed quest. They are expected to go to the ziggurat in the lake, find and bring back a stone table, and hopefully while they are there, discover the "secret" of that place. Deliberately vague though the instructions are, the party decide to go explore the pyramid/ziggurat/whatever anyway, and then maybe come back if they feel like it.

The Kua-Toa leader is apparently annoyed about this, and warns them no-one ever comes back from the ziggurat. He then lends them a row boat to cross the lake. They are about two thirds of the way there, when they are suddenly attacked by a group of Kua-Toa wielding harpoons. Although they don't recognise any of those that attack them, they suspect they were sent by the town they just left. The harpooners repeatedly pull the Drow and Mouse into the water, but rarely manage to hold them there, while the few that climb onto (or are teleported into) the boat are dealt with by the Warlord. Despite the drawbacks of having to fight in water, the party still succeed in thwarting their attackers. They row on towards their destination, although the Drow does have to fight the Warlord to go back for Mouse who was briefly left in the water after the battle. As they approach the black obsidian structure, they realise that what at first seems like it's reflection is actually its continuation underwater - it is not a pyramid but an octahedron.

The Campaign With No Name - Feb 9th

2011-02-10T10:11:00.000Z

As the Warlord and Drow had gone for a swim, Mouse and Chuck entertained themselves by sitting around on the stairs and then exploring the tower for anything they might have missed the first time. The other two had been gone some time, and they were carefully examining the mouldy remains of books in the library for anything still legible when they heard footsteps on the stairs - coming down from above.

Hiding behind the door, they waited until the footsteps stopped outside, the door swung open and....Dungeon Master walked into the room. He looked round and spotted them, and then, as if the incident where he was their captive until he escaped never happened, proceeded to tell them the Warlord and Drow had been captured by some Kua-Toa and would soon be executed. He then failed to dissuade them from mounting a rescue mission - his insistence that they should go and "get revenge" on the Magus instead was duly ignored as Chuck at least didn't quite trust him. Funny that.

With some difficulty, they managed to swim through the tight passageway and emerge gasping for breath in the flooded cavern. They followed the tunnel above ground to a T-junction and, with no clue as to which way the others might have gone, decided to left-hand map. Sneaking along, they soon spotted a couple of Kua-Toa carrying spears ahead, with what seemed to be the Warlord's in front, just disappearing round a corner. After debating whether to just attack or not, they decided to follow them for a bit.

Meanwhile, the Warlord and Drow had indeed met some Kua-Toa upon reaching the t-junction. As neither side immediately attacked, the Kua-Toa instead, jabbering in some language neither of the two characters understood, gestured for them to follow them. They pushed and poked and led the two down the tunnel to the right. While the Drow began to wonder whether the Kua-Toa thought they'd taken them prisoner, they emerged into a large cavern with several other of the fishy humanoids and were led to a crude tent. Inside they were given a possibly drugged drink and the Kua-Toa leader talked to them using a magic stone to translate into Common. Due to several misunderstandings, he concluded they were idiots obsessed with fish, but offered to take them to meet his god. They explained their other friends couldn't make it through the watery tunnel, and it was agreed that they would accompany the team sent to explore the last fork in the tunnel system to see if it led to the surface.

Sure enough, it did, albeit through a steep sink-hole that the Warlord was able to fly up through but would have been difficult to climb up. However, just as they were discussing going up to fetch Mouse and Chuck (and Cat of course) from the Bloodtower, those very persons spoke up from the shadows behind them and said "Hello!" Although they were annoyed that they'd had to swim when they didn't need to, the party were at least all together again, and happily not dead despite what Dungeon Master had said.

They accompanied the Kua-Toa group as they made their down to their home, travelling through the deep caverns for a couple of days. The Kua-Toa mostly stuck to side passageways once they got deeper, to avoid "trouble" they said, but one "awake period" the leader came to tell them that they needed to go on "the King's Highway" for a bit. It dawned on the party that they really were in the Underdark now. Despite the King's Highway's reputation as a treacherous path full of murderers, they had little trouble until one narrower part where, suddenly, chaos broke out and the party found themselves stuck between masses of fighting Kua-Toa, and facing a Blood Ooze.

The Ooze hurt badly, not least because it sprayed necrotic and poisonous blood everywhere whenever it was hit, and attempted to drain the blood from anything that stayed too close. But the party rapidly took it down, giving it little opportunity to hurt them. The Kua-Toa were less lucky.

Plans, Schmlans

2011-02-08T11:29:00.000Z

The problem with making plans is sometimes the spoon thief comes and gets in the way. (In case you haven't read The Spoon Theory, go read it now. It works for mental illness just as much as any physical one. And sometimes I remember I'm actually ill, and not just lazy.)

It's been less than a month since I mentioned some of my plans for this year so maybe I shouldn't be judging myself too harshly, but I do seem to have run aground already. The daft writing project (using Celtx) has been dropped due to the ongoing problem I seem to have when it comes to writing fiction - failure to think of a plot. You just need to glance back through the last few blog posts to notice that I haven't managed that many reviews, and most of my posts have indeed been about my game or whining about life.

I have made little progress in brushing up my linux skills and haven't even made a start on learning Python or any other language. And while a few things have been put aside to be taken to charity shop or tip, there's still along way to go.

But the biggest problem was my really crazy idea which has indeed proven to be as daft and hard to manage as I expected. Mostly because I've utterly failed to write any form of explanation that I can send to people. So mostly I've just failed to fill in online surveys, Eagle nominations and competition forms, and abandoned my resolve to switch banks; all with the intention of emailing someone and then trying again but apathy and writer's block got in the way. And I now have a job application form to send off, with the gender question on the equal opportunities monitoring form left blank, and no idea what to say in the accompanying letter, or who to address it to, or even whether to send one at all. Not that I expect to get very far with the job anyway, but I don't want to completely screw up my chances of even being considered by coming across as something of a loon. Which is just pure cowardice I know, but there. I'm not going to cave just yet though. I'm leaning towards just sending in the application, and working again on a letter to send to the employer pointing out the problem with their form, but whether I'll ever manage to write that letter or not I don't know.

On the other hand, I wasn't sure if I'd be able to even write this post, having failed to last week when I first thought of it. So maybe it'll take time but maybe I'll get there in the end. Same with the other plans, I guess.

That Was The Weekend And The Weekend Before That

2011-02-07T12:11:00.000Z

Missed last week's weekend round-up due to depression running off with all my motivation, so this will have to do double duty. In reverse order,just to be awkward.

Last night was Being Human night, and it was good. Zombie was effectively scary, gross and surprisingly moving in the end. Despite my initial dread at a "werewolf baby" storyline, George and Nina won me over in the end. Damn me for being so easily manipulated by TV. I'm less fussed about Mitchell/Annie - it'll only end in heartbreak when she finally finds out the truth about the Box Tunnel killings. Also watched Becoming Human which was good, albeit short, and while it was fairly obvious the bully wasn't going to be the killing the poltergeist act was well done and Matt moves from being a pathetic victim to a slightly scary powerful being bent on revenge. Mostly, though, I love Adam's out-of-date pop culture references (Rentaghost, Bergerac). Kids today, no culture....

Sunday afternoon we wandered round town a bit and popped into Games Workshop to ogle the models, but managed not to buy anything. Before that the SO tidied and sorted some things out so downstairs looks a little less like a junk room while I read Bad Science and tried not to get stressed out about tidying, sorting etc.

Saturday evening, the SO and I settled down in front of Quantum of Solace (which was good) with wine and chocolate biscuits and brandy butter. Then we played a game of Zombie Fluxx which involved more taking off of clothes than it would have done if we'd had company or less wine. Earlier that day we went to our local library for the first time since joining a couple of years ago and got three books out each (have no idea what the borrowing limits are, but a book a week seems like a reasonable amount to read). I got Bad Science, a Tom Holt novel and a book about the battle of Fulford. Maybe I'll do reviews when I've finished them.

The weekend before had also ended in me watching Being Human and Becoming Human. That Sunday had mostly been spent recovering from the busy two days beforehand, as Saturday evening we had friends round for chilli, booze and boardgames. The depression was starting to kick in and I struggled with playing Ticket to Ride for the first time, but that was more due to my mood and indecisiveness than the actual game, which was good fun and I didn't actually do too badly. Earlier we'd gone to visit Nana and take Benjy for a walk, after having brunch as Wetherspoons and before dropping off my mum at the train station.

Mum had been staying to babysit while we went to a house cooling party Friday night. I think I mentioned before that a couple of friends are breaking with tradition and actually leaving York instead of staying here forever like everyone else we know. It was a good night, cider, snacks and people I hadn't seen in ages. I even came away with West Wing DVDs as they had spare box sets of seasons one, two and seven.

So, busytimes.

The Campaign With No Name - Feb 2nd

2011-02-03T12:30:00.000Z

After a restful night in the sleeping quarters of the Bloodtower, the party continued to explore the tower, heading down past the "ground" floor where they first entered. The next floor down consisted of a library and a dining room. A careful looting rewarded them with an antique map, scrolls of Consult Mystic Sages, Anthem of Unity and Detect Treasure, some residuum and several spiders. A collapsed staircase led directly to the flooded kitchen below which the Warlord investigated before deciding it would be easier for the non-winged party memebers if they all went down via the main staircase.

The stairs ended in waist deep swamp-water which filled a large hall with double doors on the outside wall of the tower, as well as a door through to the kitchen. On reaching the bottom of the stairs, they noticed several things begin to swim through the water towards them. The Warlord charged one (or at least waded towards one and poked it with his spear) and discovered they were ghouls. As the other adventurers were still making their way down the stairs, the ghouls quickly surrounded the Warlord and grabbed him, their claws digging in deep. The Drow splashed into the water and cast a large spell to push the ghouls away, then Chuck immobilised a couple of them while Mouse starting picking them off (with difficulty, as using a greatbow in deep water is not easy). A couple more came into the room from a corner, but a Storm Pillar helped deal with them. The fight was short, but still hurt a little.

After deciding there was nothing worth looting on this floor, being mostly underwater, the Warlord found a narrow tunnel leading down and investigated it. It was a tight swim and he started running out of breath before managing to surface in a large rocky cavern dimly lit by phosphorescence. A large tunnel led straight down through the water, but another above water looked more inviting. He went back to persuade the others they should explore that way. The Drow followed him, struggling with the swim a little, but after one look at the cramped hole, Chuck and Mouse decided to stay behind as they were not good swimmers, and Cat was refusing to come down off the stairs altogether.

The Campaign With No Name - Jan 26th

2011-01-27T13:23:00.000Z

The party are continuing their exploration of the Bloodtower on the Moors, and, after deciding not to sleep in the barracks they find,continue heading up the stairs. The next floor up was a much more opulent sleeping quarters, and a quick search found some gems and gold hidden beneath a precious bowl filled with expensive soap. Again, they decided not to take a group bath and spend the night there, and headed further up the tower.

The next level up had a locked iron door which the Warlord kicked down. The room was roughly semi-circular and contained lots of empty shelves and chests. A thorough search found a magic ring that had been missed by whoever had cleared out the room, and a secret door to the other half of the level. This room was bare apart from three circles of intricate runes and sigils inscribed in the floor. After some studying,Chuck deduced these were teleport circles and carefully made a note of the "co-ordinates" in order to be able to teleport back to here should the need arise. Then they went up the stairs to the last floor.

The stairs came out in the middle of the open plan room which contained only a sarcophagus and another teleport circle as its defining features. Apart from three skeletons, a boneclaw and a human woman dressed in black robes, that is. Obviously having been waiting for the adventurers to emerge, the skeletons were quick to attack: shrieking in such a manner that chilled the characters to their bone before moving in for the kill. The party reacted quickly, trying to damage them as best they could with the sounds of their horrible shrieks still ringing in their ears. The boneclaw moved to the top of the stairs where it could hit them with its huge claws whenever they moved or were distracted by attacking at range. On being hit, the human turned into a flock of ravens and flew to the other side of the room then later targeting the two spellcasters with her own magic. The Warlord was able to help slaughter the skeletons before going to take on the boneclaw: Chuck holding it in place for him. The party found the necromancer's spells to be quite damaging, even over a short time, and when Mouse swapped places with her, a spectral tendril emerged from the floor and caused the elf to fall, unconscious and with her life-force draining away.

The Warlord skewered the boneclaw and shouted at Mouse to get up, rousing her. Despite their best efforts they failed to be able to stop the necromancer fleeing to the teleport circle and, muttering the word "Ometh", disappearing. Quickly realising that it must be a short-range teleport, Chuck and the Drow deduced she must be just downstairs, so while Mouse got to her feet and raced downstairs with Cat, they went through the teleport circle themselves. The Warlord, unconcerned with chasing after fleeing enemies, shrugged his shoulders and investigated the sarcophagus. It contained the perfectly preserved body of the former leader of the group of necromancers that called the Bloodtower home. After careful prodding to make sure he really was dead, he searched the body and collected all the expensive jewellery he could find.

Meanwhile, as Mouse was clattering down the stairs, Chuck appeared next to the surprised mage in the teleport chamber, and blasted her out of the room. The Drow then appeared and also blasted her. She hit back at the Drow and Mouse who had just emerged from the stairwell, both of whom promptly collapsed. As she made a beeline for one of the other teleport circles, Chuck tried desperately to stop her while also feeding the Drow a healing potion. The fight then became an undignified bout of pushing, both magically and bodily as they scrapped over who got to stand on the wanted teleport circle. The Drow helped, while also going to get Mouse up, but got dropped again. The necromancer got onto the circle but paused to try and find a piece of paper, giving Chuck time to push her off and then trap her with a wall of fire. The desperate woman stepped into the wall of flames in an effort to escape but died before she could utter the keyword. Unfortunately, the paper she carried was burnt to a cinder.

Shortly after this,the Warlord made his way down to help patch them all up, and they decided to head down to the bedroooms and sleep before exploring the underground portion of the tower.

That Was The Weekend That Was X

2011-01-24T09:07:00.000Z

Social life suddenly rather busy this weekend, with three friends coming round Friday for drinks and games, and then another two on Saturday. Friday night we introduced some people to Betrayal at House on the Hill which they rather liked, then played a few games of Dominion. Was all good fun, although I wish we'd managed more nights like that as soon there will be fewer chances. (People aren't allowed to leave York! It's a black hole for graduates...)

Saturday, we went into town as the Terror wanted to spend some of his saved up pocket money on a Bakugan Trap. Argos didn't have any in new catalogue, so he got a Super Assault Bakutremor Something-or-other. More cards we don't quite understand, and he doesn't have enough to play a game with us but he's less interested in the actual rules than in the Bakugan ball/figure/whatevers themselves. His money.

We then took the long way home, via Rowntrees Park and ended up dragging ourselves home and sending my SO out to get a very late lunch from the bakers. Afternoon was mostly spent watching Spiderman. Then C&D came over for tea (sausages, chips & peas) and 40K again. This time I got roped into playing, using my SO's tyranids. For my first ever game I think I did ok - I mostly know the rules, mostly, and the carnifexes and hive tyrant are at least difficult to kill. Things I'm bad at include judging distance and line of sight, deciding where to place things and what to attack, and remembering not to charge into cover. So yeah, maybe I'd do it again. C won, of course, being far better than the rest of us, although D came close to a draw but was just a little too far away. My SO's dark eldar got hammered early on, but they still managed to inflict some casualties. Wine, biscuits, and another couple of games of Dominion (C won again then went home to let someone else have a chance of winning something) rounded out the evening.

Sunday started ok, then I got down and anxious for no known reason and ended up going back to bed and falling asleep. My SO brought me breakfast in bed, which was nice. Then shopping and after lunch the Terror went round to friend's house and we went for walk into town to get birthday cards and to check out perfumes at Lush. Watched end of Stardust over tea, which finished just in time for the Terror's bedtime. I forgot all about new series of Top Gear, being too excited about new series Being Human, and BBC3 being actually watchable which it was thankfully. So I settled down with cake and whisky and watched episode one, which was wonderful despite a few weak moments (the vampires organising "dog" fights is a bit meh, and the Mitchell going to get Annie back was anticlimactic). George and Nina were great, the annoying character got staked, and the new house looks like it'll be a great setting with just the right level of quirkiness. Looking forward to more.

House of Mystery by Matthew Sturges & Luca Rossi (and others)

2011-01-21T11:28:00.000Z

I originally picked up the second volume of House of Mystery on a whim, attracted by the title, cover art and some of the names ringing a bell (Bill Willingham in particular). I quickly got round to tracking down the first volume and have been waiting impatiently for each trade paperback release after that (resisting buying the monthlies for money and space considerations). I've just finished reading volume five, "Under New Management", which seems like a good time for a review.

The eponymous House is Cain's abode in the Dreaming - until it disappears from there (much to his annoyance) and turns takes up residence at a crossroads between worlds. It becomes an unconventional tavern where patrons pay with stories, staffed by those who find they cannot leave. Architecture student Fig Keeler is one of those trapped there, and the arc plot follows her discoveries about her life (which turns out to be far from ordinary) and her pursuit by a mysterious pair called The Conception, who want her for unspecified reasons. The latest volume introduces yet another twist into Fig's increasingly strange life with the re-emergence of a brother she'd forgotten she had.

Scattered amidst the ongoing story are all the tales told by customers and staff; shorts featuring guest artists and writers telling every sort of story you can think of - poignant, romantic, scary and often funny. They showcase the rich diversity of the situation - as the characters can come from any conceivable setting, there is a whole host of fantasy worlds that we just get snippets of. Short stories in just about any format (prose, graphic, film) are one of my favourite things due to the efficiency needed and the density of invention that can be crammed into a few minutes or pages, thus this anthology-eqsue series was bound to be one of my favourites. That it also touches on and expands the setting of the Dreaming (from Gaiman's Sandman comics) is just a bonus.

The Campaign With No Name - Jan 19th

2011-01-20T12:23:00.000Z

The party approached the half-sunken Bloodtower across dense marshland; the Warlord flew to avoid getting his boots dirty. From his higher vantage point he noticed something lying in the swamp waters ahead of them. A hydra emerged and was quickly held in place by Chuck,charged by the Warlord, peppered with arrows by Mouse and blatted with yet more damage by the Drow. Somehow it survived the initial assault, and attempted to bite the Warlord, and later, Cat and the Drow, but didn't pose much of a threat. Once slain, the Warlord proposed skinning it so they could disguise themselves as a Hydra. No-one else seemed too keen on that idea, so it was put on hold.

They decided to enter the Bloodtower via a gash in the wall rather than try to get to the window half-way up. The stench emanating from the hole warned them that a ghoul was in the area, so Chuck cast Thunderwave into it to clear the immediate area and cautiously stepped inside. As it was pitch black apart from dim light from the glowstone, Chuck also cast Light on a nearby stone slab which lit up the wretched stench ghoul hiding just behind it. The party crowded near the entrance and tried to stay away from the foul-smelling undead, again peppering it with damage from range until it ran in close. Once bloodied, it attempted to flee to a door at the far side of the room, but was pushed back and killed. The door then opened, and a skull lord cast a deathly ray onto the Warlord. A horde of zombies then attempted to enter the room, but the Warlord was ready with his spear and skewered each of them as it came close to him. Unfortunately, they then each exploded, showering the Warlord, the Drow and Cat with necrotic energy. But once they were all dead, the skull lord was easily dealt with. While he attempted to hide in the darkness of the other room, Mouse was still able to pinpoint his position accurately enough to destroy his last skull.

After a brief rest, the party decided to ascend the central staircase, ignoring the way down for now as they had no idea how many floors may be below ground. On the next level up they found an alter to an ancient exarch of death named Ometh, which they didn't desecrate just in case. There was little else on the floor, indicating that most of the furniture and any valuables had been taken a long time ago. Another floor up led them to two dormitories - the beds intact but no personal possessions in sight.

That Was The Weekend That Was IX

2011-01-16T22:32:00.000Z

Friday night (after QI of course) the SO and I ended up playing Tetris (or at least the latest Gnome clone) while listening to this. That's a good night in for us.

Saturday was unexpectedly spent in Nottingham. Not that we were inexplicably teleported there or anything, just that the SO had a plot meeting (for larp) she'd forgotten about and it was moved to Saturday morning. So we got up early and went to Nottingham for breakfast. As you do. Then the boy and I had to leave while plot happened. Thankfully, another plot team member's other half was on hand to escort us around the city centre. We window shopped and laughed at the Terror getting bored and discovering that picking on someone two feet taller than you isn't a good idea. Then we went home, while others went to a faction meeting and IC social. Now I'm craving larp, although I know I never get as involved as I wish I could. Damned social phobia. How did I end up so emotionally involved with a hobby I'm so ill-equipped to deal with? Bah.

Then in the evening I discovered Dropquest, and rapidly got annoyed with myself for not being able to do it. Today I finished it, mostly by looking up the answers or by my SO telling me what to do. Briefly considered getting back into ARGs, then thought better of it.

I also managed to apply for a job that I actually liked the sound of, and am trying not to get my hopes up too much. Another admin assistant job, but for a start-up based at the science park that didn't specify someone with experience. These days I'm just overjoyed to notice the absence of "must have experience of a similar role" in job descriptions. But still no guarantee I'll even get an interview, so, yeah, mustn't get hopes up.

This evening was once again spent watching Misfits - finished first season now. As I probably won't get round to writing a review, let me just say this: I'd sell a kidney to able to write something that good. Probably both kidneys in fact. Have also been drinking cider, and realising that I may have had too much. Not in a "rolling around drunk" kind of too much but just starting to feel a bit melancholy. Which is not the way to end a week, but hey.

Other Plans for 2011

2011-01-14T11:59:00.000Z

I didn't really make any resolutions, although you could say my Big Crazy Idea was one, but I still have a few ideas and plans for the year. Which I may or may not get round to doing.

We really do need to de-clutter the house and get rid of some of the baby things. The baby bath and fireguard are taking up too much room near the back door, and if we clear out the closet in the Terror's room we could a) possibly make some money from selling stuff and b) have room to store stuff we do want to keep, like magazines or old artwork or other things of nostalgic value. But I've got a feeling we'll still be saying this in ten years time....

I'm going to learn to program. I've put it off for too long, and my SO will probably quite happily get me understanding Python so I can follow her code if nothing else. I also need to learn more about *nix...and I don't think the idea of me as a sysadmin is any dafter that me as a shop assistant (which unfortunately is where all the jobs are). So employability increase, maybe. Maybe.

I'm also going to try and write more. I've been trying to update here more frequently, and hopefully not just about gaming or whining about life. I want to try and write better reviews of the books I read, TV I watch, etc, not just for here but maybe even try and get some published. If I can get myself into the habit of writing and writing to deadline, the idea of being a freelance writer would be a bit more plausible. And people keep telling me I'm good. I've also been thinking about another crazy project that, frankly, is so daft that I don't want to tell anyone about it other than the couple of people I've already mentioned it to. So, sorry, but all I'll say is I've downloaded a copy of Celtx again....

The Campaign With No Name - Jan 12th

2011-01-13T12:03:00.000Z

Having dealt with time-travelling undead ogres, the party headed south to the Bloodtower, politely ignoring the Warlord's suggestion that they institute a "scorched earth" policy.

While most of the journey was uneventful, as they were passing through a wooded area Mouse spotted several figures lying in ambush ahead and called a halt. The Warlord immediately charged into the trees and flung a large Dragonspawn into the open for the others to attack. Several Dragonborn warriors and a mage emerged to fight them, but Chuck drew off most of them with an illusory pile of gold they were compelled to stay near. While the soldiers were bombarded with area attacks by the two arcanists, the martial characters dealt with the Dragonspawn and its friend, and the Dragonborn mage who found his fire spells ineffective against many of the party. Cat took the brunt of his attacks before retreating, with the wall of fire he threw up barely hurting the Drow at all. His attempts to flee were curtailed and the Warlord finished him off. The three remaining soldiers were easily dealt with, being still too attracted to the magical treasure to provide much of a fight.

Chuck found the mage's gloves to be of great interest - increasing the range of teleportation effects on others as well as providing an additional repulsion effect. The party pressed onwards.

OOC notes: The first was actually quite long and felt like it dragged a bit, but the players at least dealt with the not-particularly-a-threat effectively. For easing us back into gaming after the break it did well enough.

That Was The Weekend That Was VIII

2011-01-10T20:48:00.000Z

Saturday started with brunch at Wetherspoons - necessitated by the lack of food in the house for breakfast at home. Honest. It's not that we enjoy it, we just had nothing else to eat. Then we went to town to fetch a couple of things - like a cafetière for Nana's birthday and something to unblock the drain with. Barnitts sells everything, so we were able to buy both there. I'm sure they're used to people buying odd combinations of stuff...

So the afternoon was spent being slightly scared of how much the sulphuric acid bubbled when poured down the drain, but it seemed to do the job as our yard no longer has a small flood every time we empty the sink in the bathroom. I, of course, kept well clear, and let my SO be all manly and do it all. Then she cooked a chili for the first time in ages, and we had C and D round for 40K and booze. Extra booze was bought at the Beer & Wine shop for the rest of Nana's present. I ignored the geeks playing toy soldiers and read Linux Format instead, but once they'd finished we had a couple of games of Dominion.

On Sunday, we took Nana her presents and then took her out for food. Our first choice was closed, much to the Terror's disappointment, so we went to a carvery which we hadn't been to for a while. And ate too much, of course. Then back to Nana's to play with Benjy, who's getting big and learning to stand up on back two legs, and try out her new cafetière.

That evening, once Terror was in bed and SO out at D&D game she keeps going to despite not seeming to enjoy it (maybe that's just my impression), I watched the last two episodes of Peep Show and another Misfits on 4oD. And ate too much Christmas cake. Think I may need to keep a closer eye on what I eat....

Defying Gravity, AKA My Crazy Idea

2011-01-06T13:20:00.000Z

At the end of last year I mentioned I was making Plans for 2011. Well here's the big one.

Every time I am asked on a form (or in person) for my sex or gender and the options are to pick one of "male" and "female" I'm going to refuse to answer and explain why.

Why? Partly because I'm still thinking hard about my gender identity (although I'll not go into that now), partly because I don't see why everyone needs to know (I'm a person, deal) but mostly because I know people who can't honestly answer that question and I think it's about time society started to recognise that. It won't, of course; I'm far too much of a cynic to think anything will actually come of this. But at least I can say I have tried.

Gender isn't a binary. There, I said it. Some people will go further and claim gender doesn't even really exist, but having met people who are fairly sure they have a gender (usually, but not always, one different from that assigned to them at birth) I'm not so sure. What I am sure about is that not everyone fits neatly into one of those two boxes that we insist on putting people in, and even those who do can have good reasons for not wanting to reveal which one. Thus, if nothing else, we ought to have the right to keep that information to ourselves in most (if not all) circumstances. It's considered reasonable for people to decline to give their ethnicity, age, religion - why not gender? Better, of course, would be more options for filling in gender fields - even just "other" would be a step in the right direction.

Some points. Firstly, I am not trying to appropriate anyone's identity. I don't consider myself transgender (I really must blog about my gender identity soon) and I am all too aware of the cissexual privilege I have. I'm not going to actually try and live as non-gendered, I don't think I'm capable of doing so and I'm not sure it would achieve anything. Secondly, I will inevitably capitulate. I'm willing to make life a bit more awkward for myself, for a bit, but I have neither the money nor the mental energy for protracted battles with bureaucracy. All I want is at least some acknowledgement of my point. Thirdly, I suppose for any chance of making an impact I ought to recruit others in this insane campaign of mine. Maybe once I've written up draft letters I'll investigate creating a Facebook group. Maybe some of those feminists that keep going on about smashing the gender binary would like to help. I dunno. Fourthly, I have no idea whether this really is a good idea and whether I'll be able to keep it up.

It may or may not have escaped your attention that 2011 is a census year. That, in part, is why I'm choosing to do this now. Although the census asks for each person's sex, for population projections, what it actually collects is gender and in principle the ONS is both aware of this and of the potential need to collect data on gender identity (only document I could find is this pdf). Maybe a small act of civil disobedience can help nudge them towards doing something about this in future.

That Was 2010 That Was

2010-12-29T18:44:00.000Z

I very sensibly made no resolutions for this year other than to keep trying. Well, I mostly kept trying, or at least I like to think I did. Eventually. After a few slumps. I suppose, all things considered, that's all I can ask of myself.

So what happened this year? I actually passed my viva and graduated - I'm a doctor now. That never quite stops amazing me. I've failed to find any work though, or get any closer to deciding what sort of work I'd like to do if I had the choice. My SO changed her name legally and cleared some of the hurdles the NHS chooses to put in place of anyone wishing to transition. I started blogging about the games I run and play in, which meant I was posting (and writing) something at least semi-regularly. We lost Nana's dog Charley and gained an adorable ball of fluff, Benjy:

There were probably other important things I've forgotten, I'm pretty bad at this sort of thing, but that pretty much sums it up. I have plans for next year, some of which are Plans, but I need to think about them more and will post when I'm next at home. We're off to visit my parents and meet friends up in Durham for a few days before heading south in the new year to visit other family we haven't seen since, well, about a year ago. So I'll be offline for a week or so and will have plenty of time to think, read, and scribble notes the old-fashioned way with pen and paper. When I'm back, I'll have a better idea of what my Plans actually are and how much I want to share with you. Until then, I hope you have had and continue to have a good half-way-out-of-darkness celebration.

Bitesize Reviews

2010-12-27T22:13:00.000Z

Been meaning to write a whole host of reviews of things I've seen or read and not got very far at all. So I'll try a shorter approach. Mostly spoiler-free thoughts on The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson, Locke & Key, Despicable Me, The Event, The 4400 and Misfits follow.

The Girl Who Played With Fire is the second in the Millennium trilogy featuring the journalist Mikael Blomkvist and his unlikely acquaintance Lisbeth Salander. It's possibly even better than the first. Pacey, long but gripping, detailed and believable (just about) and a labyrinthian plot that fits together perfectly by the end. Like the last novel, there's a ramping up of action and tension in the last third of the book and it just keeps getting higher and higher and....an absolutely jaw-dropping moment in the penultimate chapter that made me wonder if Larsson had really done what it looked like he'd done. In several ways it felt more like the final part of a trilogy, wrapping up plot threads left from the first book and people moving on. Which makes me wonder what on earth the third book will be like.

Locke & Key: Keys to the Kingdom is still being brilliant. The montage of adventures in the latest issue makes me really wish for a list even just of names of the discovered ones so far, and goes another step towards convincing me that there is a lot of depth in this concept that might never be fully explored. Even with upcoming TV series. Just need to convince Messers Hill and Rodriguez to sell the RPG rights to someone who'd do it justice....

Went to see Despicable Me (2D version) at Vue's Kids AM this morning and wasn't disappointed. While there's nothing especially original about it, it was still fun and engaging enough for all of us with some great moments, perfectly delivered dialogue, and the children, minions and "hey, this is a 3D movie!" moments weren't at all annoying. The soundtrack was quite good too. All in all, one to buy on DVD as much for us as for the Terror.

I seem to be the only person in Britain who continued watching The Event to the end, judging by the amount of chatter on forums etc. I found it quite fun - a lot faster moving and less frustrating than FlashForward was, although again slightly hampered by the (presumed) main characters being a bit...bland. And the villains a bit two-dimensional (obligatory humanisation of the female hit-person not withstanding). And the plot moved along mostly obvious lines with just the occasional tweak that I didn't seem coming, and some startling revelations non-the-less. But I've been enjoying it, and hope it does make it back after the hiatus, but I'm hardly holding out hope for a second season. Zeljko Ivanek is by far and away the best thing about it, by the way, and come to think of it, I seem to recall thinking the same thing when watching 24 (way back in its first season, wow).

Another thing I've been catching up on on 4oD is Misfits. I have some catching up to do, as I completely missed the first series and now the second is finished too. Trying to avoid spoilers is....problematic, and therefore I know what happens to Nathan at the end of series one, but so far I've only actually watched the first three episodes. Blimey, it's a bit good. I don't know why I avoided it so long. Possibly the "youth" styling putting me off - I really should have paid more attention to everyone saying, "no, actually, it's really good".

And after having the DVDs for,well, ages, I finally finished watching season one of The 4400. Another one where I knew the end-of-season twist in advance, but still fairly enjoyable. The characters are (gasp) actually likeable, and although the investigation-of-the-week mostly drags a little and there's the usual "moody shots with sad background music" bit in every episode, it overall kept my interest and I probably won't wait another few years before opening the second season boxset.

The Campaign With No Name - Dec 15th

2010-12-16T12:26:00.000Z

The party continued exploring the Small Dungeon of Koptilla and found one more chamber. Past an ugly statue of some rock-like monster, there was a large column of crackling blue energy flanked by two Blaspheme Imperfects. A small secondary chamber could just be seen at the back, with some sort of glowing symbol on the wall.

The party decided to mostly stay outside. Chuck tried to keep the blaspheme away from them and Mouse and the Drow started damaging them heftily. A large undead ogre emerged from the secondary chamber and teleported the Warlord towards him. After destroying one of the blasphemes, only to have it reappear from the energy column, the party realised they needed to shut that down. Chuck ascertained it was pure necrotic energy, and the Warlord made his way to the back to investigate the thing on the wall. It was a tile, the symbol of Ogremoch glowing with necrotic energy on it. The Warlord wrenched it from the wall before he was drawn back into the fight. The fight was turning into a long one, as the blaspheme regenerated (but rarely got to do any damage) while the ogre swept everyone to the floor with his flail (including himself on one memorable occasion, thanks to the Drow's Chaos Link spell). Eventually, Chuck got to examine the tile and concluded it was the key that was generating the column of necrotic power and, hoping that it wouldn't just explode, flung it into the swirling mass of energy.

It imploded, drawing sparks of blue energy from the ogre and the remaining blaspheme. The two undead then continued to "leak" energy and could only move very slowly, ensuring the party were able to finish them off. A careful search of the chamber turned up a magical silver headband that could attack opponents with merely a thought. Exhausted and depleted of resources, the party decided to rest there.

That Was The Weekend That Was VII

2010-12-13T14:36:00.000Z

So it's that time of year again, you know, where people start complaining about how they hate this time of year, or start their festive traditions and I get overly stressed about everything that needs doing. But maybe I'll blog about that tomorrow.

So the weekend just gone then. Watched another 40K game on Friday evening - my SO trying out another variation of Dark Eldar against a friend's Tyranids. The DE got eaten of course, but didn't fare as badly as feared. Another friend was also watching (he's just getting into it and started collecting Imperial Guard) and afterwards the four of us drank wine and played Dominion.

Saturday we went up to Durham to stay with my parents so they could babysit the Terror while we went to a friend's party. Actually remembered to take Christmas cards up, and friend's present, although hopefully we'll be up again at some point to exchange gifts with family. The Terror didn't want to go and then didn't want us to go out without him, but once there he was happy enough to see his beloved granddad and (my cousin) M again. We had tea with family, and then got ready. The party was vaguely fancy dress - I went as the 11th Doctor having found a tweed jacket in a charity shop for not-very-much and the free bow tie from latest SFX Collection. No, there are no pics. Although the jacket was too big, the shirt I stole from the barely-touched side of the wardrobe actually quite suited me and I think I might wear it again. Probably not with a bow tie though. Party was ok - music was good if a touch too loud, SO drove so wasn't drinking much and therefore probably found the conversation a little more dull, and it is always great to see my oldest (in terms of years known) friend, especially as she's now a bit more settled and seems to be coping with all life throws at her. (Note to self: probate's a bitch. Update will just in case....)

Sunday I got to sleep in, and appreciated how much warmer my parents' house is than ours as I was able to sit around in pajamas quite comfortably. We went out for a short walk, just the two of us again, mostly avoiding the ice and only getting rained on a bit. Went home and had tea and then headed out to Nana's to meet her new puppy.

Due to my slump and lack of posting, I didn't mention here that Nana's dog Charley had died. She was fifteen and her kidneys went and everyone was understandably upset, but she'd had a good life. We knew Nana couldn't go on for very long without a dog, so it's hardly a surprise she got one but oh my! He is the cutest thing ever. Six weeks old, called Benjy, about the size of a guinea pig, white and yellow and creamy coloured fur and with more energy than your average toddler it seems. He investigated us straight away (he seems to like nibbling on feet) and ran around lots before the Terror and my SO tried to teach him to play tug-of-war and then he found the small duck toy and spent quite a while killing that. He also tried attacking the bigger one but couldn't get hold properly and mostly tried clambering on top. Those little legs don't quite work right either, but he can sure move at a heck of a pace. He then crashed out and slept on the Terror's lap for a bit. Taking photos was difficult due to him not staying still long enough, but some were managed and I'll have to see if I can get copies. Then I will subject you to the cuteness too.

Oh, and then last night I watched more stuff on 4oD. Maybe at some point I'll blog about those, and other stuff I've been watching, reading, etc. No promises though.

The Campaign With No Name - Dec 8th

2010-12-09T15:39:00.000Z

The party journeyed south to the Catacombs of Koptila - all that remains of an ogre culture that is alleged to have journeyed through time to escape attacks from aberrant creatures, and destroyed the town that had built up in their absence on their return.

In the first chamber, they are confronted by three well armed ogres and their pet Scythclaw Drakes. Acting quickly, Chuck teleported two of the ogres and one drake into a corner of the room and trapped them with a wall of fire. This allowed them to concentrate their attacks on the remaining ogre before the others could charge through the fire to attack. Although the ogres hit the Warlord a couple of times, and the drakes knocked several of the party to the floor, the monsters proved little trouble as they were repeated pushed back into the fire until they perished. While resting afterwards, they inspected the bodies and found each ogre wore a silver bracelet engraved with markings associated with the Earth Primordial Ogremoch.

Moving through the iron doors they followed a short corridor to another open room with a short staircase at the far side. Inside was another ogre, covered in markings implying he was a thrall for an Ogremoch cult, and two hill giants. Although Chuck tried to keep the giants away from the party, they could still do some hefty damage by rolling boulders with large amounts of side or back spin at them. Eventually the three large humanoids were trapped on the stairs, hemmed in by each other and a flaming sphere and taking damage from Mouse's arrows, the Warlord's charges and the Drow's spells. Although the Warlord had to pause to heal himself part way through, the battle was as one-sided as ever. Again on examining the bodies, they discovered the ogre was wearing a silver bracelet. A passageway at the top of the stairs led further in to the apparently badly named "Catacombs"....

Trans Talk

2010-12-07T22:29:00.000Z

This is a transcript of the talk I gave, today, at the YUSU LGBT "What Is Trans?" event, with partner's name redacted. The first time in years I've spoken in public without panicking or bursting into tears.

--
I'd known my partner J about five years before she first told me she thought there was a part of her that was female. That's probably not quite how she phrased it at the time as she really struggled to put into words the thoughts and feelings she had but that was the overall impression I was left with. She was relieved I didn't think she was crazy and wasn't going to leave her and I was confused why it should be an issue. I couldn't see how it would affect our lives at all and anyway it kind of made sense. We'd always joked about how she was more girly than me, and that we got the gender roles the wrong way round. And at first nothing did change - she tried on some of my clothes occasionally and we kept it between ourselves. Our son thought it was silly that daddy should wear a skirt sometimes, but after a while just accepted it. But the pressures of life and having to maintain a male front for family and the public meant that after a time it became less frequent and almost forgotten, at least by me. About a year later, she decided to try it again and this time told some close friends. By then she'd read more and found other people online who had similarly fluctuating feelings of gender - sometimes male, sometimes female - and settled on the description of "bi-gender": that is, both male and female. So she asked to be called by a girl's name and referred to by female pronouns, at least in private, and took to wearing skirts and girly tops around the house more. Eventually she decided she needed to choose a new name, one that was gender neutral, rather than splitting herself between two personas, and settled on J. That caused some problems, as trying to explain to people why she wanted to change her name without outing her led largely to handwaving and muttering about "likes the name better". And I suppose that was the start of her public transition, as not long after that she came out to people at university and was overwhelmed by how accepting everyone was.

I should be honest here and admit that I didn't accept all this as calmly and rationally as I may be making out. I did have worries, and fears, especially early on when J was still struggling to figure out who or what she was. I felt a kind of loss for the man I had fallen in love with, and was afraid of what our future might be like if she was transsexual. How would the family react? How would we be treated by others? What impact would it have on our son, our plans for future children, our sex life? I mourned for a while for the loss of a "normal" family life that we would likely never have. But even at the time I recognised how irrational those thoughts were - we were never a normal family. She was fundamentally the same person I'd known and loved for years, just expressing a facet of her personality that had been repressed for too long. And not once did I think of leaving her, or that transitioning would be the wrong thing to do if it made her happier and more comfortable with herself. So by the time it came to tell family and the wider world, I was completely supportive of J and so unconditionally accepting of her gender that I forgot that this was all news to them and I found myself trying to explain something I couldn't really explain. Gender is not something I really understand and it just seems so obvious to me that a person is the gender they say they are and no-one else has the right to question that. After all, each of us is the only person that really knows what it feels like to be ourselves. But others have their own view of people and it can, admittedly, be difficult to shift that initial label of "male" or "female", especially when someone is filling a gender-specific role such as "daddy". So I suspect a lot of people subconsciously pigeonholed J as "a man who crossdresses" and largely carried on referring to her as "he". And while at first J was largely happy to use either set of gender-specific pronouns, over time it became obvious she mostly preferred female ones.

Indeed, as time went on, and she became bolder at dressing more effeminately more of the time, she found she was only reverting to what we came to refer to as "boy mode" when she felt she needed to to avoid attention in public or to present as more male for the family. And I became more used to thinking of her as a woman, and she felt more like a woman who is a bit boyish rather than a man who is a bit girly. So when it came to legally changing her name, she went for an overtly feminine one, although she still mostly goes by J. And despite this my family continue to refer to her as "he" and our son still calls her "daddy" and "he" and sometimes it's hard not to fall into the habit of copying them. I certainly don't feel able to correct them, although maybe with time they'll come round.

I haven't mentioned doctors at all yet, and that's because most of this happened without any input from them. Referrals from the GP got lost twice and a psychologist dragged out their consultations and insulted her before grudgingly allowing her to see a psychiatrist who could declare her mentally competent enough to be put on the waiting list for Leeds Gender Identity Clinic. It's easy to see why so many people end up seeking treatment privately or through less orthodox channels. But we haven't given up on the NHS yet, and despite my growing skepticism we will just have to wait and see what they can do. And no doubt there will be many more obstacles in the future. University is possibly an unusually safe and accepting environment, but she's nearly finished her degree and may well have to seek work in the wider world. I'd like to think that she can avoid discrimination and that potential employers will just accept her as she is, without any fuss, but I know it is far from a given. Every time we are out together and she grips my hand a little tighter in response to stares, I am reminded that I can't protect her from unthinking strangers who don't know how to deal with someone who defies their expectations. All I can do is stand by her, support her, and let her know she doesn't have to go through this alone.

The Campaign With No Name - Dec 1st

2010-12-02T15:06:00.000Z

After dealing with the vampires, the party returned to the inn to demand free food, booze and praise for liberating the townspeople. That night, most of the party wake up the sound of someone exclaiming "Yes!" quietly and then teleporting away, while the Warlord, whose grip Dungeon Master had just snatched his staff back from, slept on soundly.

In the morning, with no idea where to start hunting down the fugitive DM, the party examined their map again and decided to head out to Mad Maldek's Tomb and from there to the Catacombs of Koptila, and circle round back to the coast, visiting the points of interest on the way and hopefully collecting a lot of Treasure/Undead Tax.

They arrive at the tomb and head down some stairs to the small entranceway whereupon they discover a couple of large stitched together corpses guarding the doorway. They attack and manage to pin in the cadaver golems and destroy them without taking too much damage. Heading through the doors, they come to a large space set out as a very messy laboratory of some sort. Along with another golem, there are four putrescent zombies, a skeleton wielding what appears to be a spine, and a floating jar containing a brain preserved in some sort of liquid. As the fight starts, the skeleton turns out to be quite deadly with its spine-flail, and most of the party concentrate on that while Chuck deals with the zombies easily. The floating brain-in-a-jar sends a sparkling ray of psychic energy towards Mouse and causes her to turn her bow and arrow on the Drow causing him quite a lot of damage before she is finally able to shake the effect off. The Warlord charges the brain and hits, only to find himself teleported back across the room. But despite these set-backs, the heroes prevail as always, and find a pair of magic boots and a large sapphire to take as loot. Chuck also investigates the scattered notes and concludes that while the now definitely dead Maldek was indeed quite mad, he had made progress on the creation of golems from cadavers as well as preserving his brain after his body had begun to fail. The appropriate papers are taken, in case they are of further use.

GM/Life Fatigue

2010-11-19T22:16:00.000Z

So yeah.Another fortnight and no more gaming write-ups. Maybe I'll feel more up to running next week but I think I'm losing interest in my D&D campaign. It has been 12 levels and things are getting a bit samey. I can't seem to find ways to make fights new and interesting and with certain players' abysmal luck with dice turning things into a grind it's all been feeling a bit "meh". I suppose I should talk it over more with the other players, but wondering if taking a break and playing something different for a while might be good. Although I'm not sure if I could run another game right now. I still have a (mostly mental) list of ideas for campaigns and one-shots but I doubt I'd get very far prepping them.

See, it's not just D&D I've been getting bored with. It's just about everything. I have to force myself to pick up a book to read. Life's being a bit of a drag. Sure, some bits are good - I have a laugh with the Terror, or a nice night in with J, friends, playing games, drinking cider, watching Spaced, whatever. But it all fades away and I go to bed tired and don't quite fall asleep or wake up several times in the night and realise that the next day is going to be another whole load of housework and killing time.

Tempting to say it would be better if I got a job (or failing that, volunteer work) but I suspect I'd just end up dreading that as "yet another thing" to be tolerated. I just can't seem to shake this negative mindset. And yes, I know the reason I'm like this is "I'm depressed" but that doesn't make it much easier to live with. The meds help me get out of bed in the morning and mean I maybe only cry once or twice a week instead of once or twice a day, and I am so far managing to get a modicum of exercise/outsideyness a day but I still need "a project" to focus on. I think. But whenever I start one, I get bored within a few days and once I get bored I start hating to have to do things. And with housework and exercise and job hunting I can just ignore the hating it and think "but I have to", that's not so easy with stuff that's supposed to be enjoyable like gaming or reading or writing.

But hey, I cope. I'm mostly slacking off and watching TV/DVDs/iPlayer once housework is finished. Forcing myself to find things I might vaguely find interesting or funny and carrying on reading my way through our collection of Mage: the Ascension books. I'll live. At some point I'll have to stop slacking off and get a job or something but I'll worry about that when I get there.

The Campaign With No Name - Nov 3rd

2010-11-04T14:03:00.000Z

The party paused only briefly before following the mist-form vampire lord through the doors to the innermost chamber. There, they were taunted by what appeared to be a corpse on a throne, which exploded as soon as it was attacked. They were attacked by some battle wights and a human figure at the back of the room cast spells and raised vampire minions which were shot to pieces or died on the end of the Warlord's spear. The vampire lord just lurked in a corner.

As they were fairly worn out from the previous battle, it took them longer than expected to deal with the wights and the necromancer, and suffered quite a bit of damage but had just enough healing to keep going. Once they finished with those, they turned their attention back to the vampire who remained in mist form and tried to bargain with them before (foolishly) turning solid again and throwing himself on their mercy. They quickly ended his (un)life.

OC comments - After quite a break we decided to play D&D again. It ended early because I was getting tired though, and as they were out of dailies/encounter powers the fight was beginning to drag.

Quote of the session
C: "Unfortunately for him, my spear's name is Mercy."

So...it's been a while...

2010-10-26T23:24:00.000+01:00

How've you been? Long time no see etc. Yeah, I know I said I'd blog more regularly but you know...life gets in the way.

Or rather it doesn't. I haven't blogged mostly because I've had nothing to blog about. Gaming took a hiatus and we've been playing Betrayal at House on the Hill instead, which we got for our anniversary. Yeah, we had an anniversary - eight years me and the SO have been together now. We didn't get to go out and celebrate due to her having an infection which resulted in a tooth out - antibiotics meaning no alcohol and eating being slightly painful. Maybe one day we'll get a babysitter in so we can go and celebrate a bit later.

Then there was the boy's birthday. He's seven now. Meep. Presents and party and all that - he mostly seems to have got Lego which is cool and has kept me busy the last few days "helping" him build them. He's more interested in the mini-figures, at least with the Star Wars stuff. Now it's half term and I'm trying not to just let him play computer games all the time but, ugh. Rain. Cold. Don't want to go out. Etc.

Job hunting is still being a pain as there aren't that many jobs. Got one letter sent off and another written for when I get round to printing it out. Not sure if I'll hear anything. Trying not to get too panicky about long term prospects - got a while yet before SO's studentship runs out.

Back on sertraline. Was getting far too depressed and unable to do much. Too early to tell if it's really working - I'm mostly running on placebo effect and sheer willpower now. If I don't collapse again before Christmas then I guess that means they're doing some good.

In a moment of madness I agreed to speak at a trans event next week. Have been fretting far too much about what I'm going to say. At some point I'll just have to sit down and start writing, then ask SO and friend(s) for help editing. At this rate I'm going to be worrying too much about what to say that I won't get to start worrying about the actual talking in front of people thing until it's too late. Maybe that's a good thing actually...

The Campaign With No Name - Oct 6th

2010-10-07T11:01:00.000+01:00

After defeating the vampires that interrupted their drinking, the party had a good night's sleep. The following morning, they talked to the innkeeper who informed them the vampires were believed to have a lair in an old tomb in the very centre of the forest. After a long, wet, walk, the party found the stone stairs down into the tomb and entered.

Inside were several townspeople who seemed to worship "the master" and attacked them, despite the Warlord's efforts to get them to worship him instead. The cultists were easily dealt with, but the three snake constructs that guarded the corridor leading to the main chamber of the tomb provided more of a problem. Eventually, the Warlord had to actually get down from the steps and engage in the fight, rather than leave everything to the others.

The next room was a large one, containing two towering zombie hulks and several vampires. Chuck immediately divided the room in two with a Wall of Fire, so they only had to deal with a few vampires and one zombie to start with. The vampires were once again easily dispatched, and the zombie destroyed by being pushed into the wall of fire. However, once the wall was dropped, they discovered the zombie could get up again...This time, the two zombies caused some problems as they could hit quite hard, while the vampire minions were still mostly ineffectual. The vampire lord that they had defeated the previous night hung back until the zombies were nearly defeated, and then rushed forward and dominated the Warlord before charging at Chuck. The Drow was able to finish off the zombie and deal a large amount of damage to the vampire lord. The mind-controlled Warlord then charged him before being able to shake off the effect, and Chuck rushed toward him to help him recover from the aftereffects of the vampire being inside his head. The vampire lord took this opportunity to turn into mist and flee through another door, deeper into the tomb.....

Primal Adventures V

2010-09-30T12:40:00.000+01:00

(Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four)

Another long absence meant we spent a chunk of time recapping where we'd got to. Then we carried on our trek through the woods, noticing more and more odd things - there didn't seem to be a noticeable sun and, come to think of it, the trees did look a little....tentacly. I put another notch in my "weird stick" and the Shaman consulted the spirits to be told it was the influence of the Far Realm on the world. I mused that I didn't really know how to cure an infection of the world, rather than a person, and the Shaman pointed out we should try and find what was causing it and remove it. After wandering around a bit to figure out which way we'd been going (as the ground didn't seem to be taking footprints) we carried on in the direction we hoped the tribe's camp was - the direction in which it was easier to walk.

Eventually the trees thinned out and we came to a grassy area that was less grassy than we remembered it. After a few feet the grass gave way to...sand? We also seemed to be slowly sliding forwards (towards the "desert"). As we started to take this in, some more floaty-tentacly-things came through the trees and we moved, with great difficulty, towards them to fight them. The ground definitely seemed to resist us moving away from the sandy area, and we still kept sliding towards it. This reduced movement didn't help when the Warden managed to get himself surrounded by tentacle-beasts and took sufficient damage to knock him unconscious.

What followed was mostly the Barbarian hacking away at the things which seemed to hit harder and harder with each successive hit, while I thinned out the minions and the Shaman kept picking up the yo-yoing Warden until he ran out of healing and healing potions. Eventually I went down too (in two hits) and the remaining two had to deal with the last couple of baddies by themselves. Thankfully, the biggest had hit a couple of times and then wandered away, presumably bored. We seem to be letting a lot of things escape.

The fight took all night. A quick post-mortem afterwards seemed to suggest the monsters mostly just got lucky - not missing meant their damage got ramped up to the levels of 6d6. With fewer of us helping to take them down, it took the barbarian longer to deal with them despite being able to throw out large chunks of damage, and the reduced maneuverability meant they could surround us easily. Thankfully the two of us who went unconscious only failed one death saving throw each, but unless we get an extended rest soon we're in a fairly vulnerable situation. The feeling of danger was an interesting extra element to the fight, as we'd been going through without taking a lot of punishment thanks to Longtooth Shifting and our Shaman. So all in all, a pretty good session, even if I did end up with nothing to do by the end.

That Was The Weekend That Was VI

2010-09-26T21:05:00.000+01:00

Celebrated the Terror's first dance class on Friday with tea at the Black Bull with Nana. The Terror lived up to his nickname by not wanting anything on the children's menu and mucking about just a bit too much. Still, he settled down once food came and it was good food with good cider, followed by good chocolate cake so that was, um, good. Still, Friday evening was a bit "bleurgh" once QI was finished.

Saturday, we actually got to sleep in, but still made it to the cinema's Kids Club to watch Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore. It was ok, and for 95p a ticket you don't really need much more than that. In the afternoon we headed into town to pick up my new glasses from the opticians, and had a bit of a wander around the Food & Drink Festival trying not to gape at the chocolate, fudge and baked goods too much....We bought a couple of pies to try - a game one which was a tad disappointing and a "huntsman" one which was topped with stuffing and much nicer. On the way home we passed Oddbins and went in on a whim to see what whiskies they had....Spotted A'bunadh on the top shelf but sadly it was only their taster one and they had no full bottles in. The man instead suggested GlenDronach Revival which we tasted and then went, "yeah, ok." That evening we opened the whisky, but only after finishing off the wine C had brought round. We mostly played Dominion, but finished off with a couple of games of Chez Geek which is always fun.

Today has mostly been more "bleurgh" though. I managed shopping, just, despite falling asleep in bed after getting dressed. Had a bit of a nice walk this afternoon, and am settling down in front of the telly tonight while J is out playing D&D. Tomorrow I go see the doctor and decide whether I need to go back on anti-depressants. Can only hope next week will be a bit better than this week has been.

The Campaign With No Name - Sept 22nd

2010-09-23T11:16:00.000+01:00

Continuing the interrogations of their prisoners, the party managed to establish that the Magus was originally from their world, had no idea (or was deliberately vague about) how he got to this world, and was willing to give them anything they wanted in return for his freedom. His measured opinion on Dungeon Master was that he manipulated people into acting out stories for his own amusement. Mouse, confused by all this talk of other worlds, was given one of the Drow's leaflets on Dave, and once again began to doubt the sanity of her fellow adventurers. After an extensive intra-party debate, during which the Warlord proposed just killing both of them and never speaking of them again, they opted for Chuck's suggestion that they just let the Magus go as he was, at least to start with, as much a "victim" as they. The Magus left quickly, groveling and promising them any magic items they want if they come find him in his tower in Vek.

Moving back to DM, they admitted they had no proof that it was he who was pulling people from outside into this world, and despite some misgivings, decided to risk giving him the ring as Chuck didn't want it anyway (due to its tendency to implant thoughts about taking over the world). After spending five minutes "absorbing" it somehow - apparently turning it into the pure essence of magic - DM looked a lot healthier and was surprisingly compliant when they decided not to give him his staff back and to make him come with them for a while.

After checking that Charles was indeed no longer in the time trap and concluding that there was little point chasing after the chronomancers just yet, they decided to head back to their house to check on the progress of the repairs. The workmen had cleared a lot of the rubble but hadn't yet started rebuilding. They were mostly sitting around drinking tea. The foreman came up to talk to them and explain that it looked like it would be more difficult than they first thought and will probably take longer and cost more money. Oh, and could they get some feed for their horse? The men found it in the stable half-starved and while it had been eating grass and corn from the surrounding fields those plants didn't look all that....healthy.

They took watched through the night just in case, but DM failed to try and kill them in their sleep. He continued to follow them meekly as, after consulting the map he'd given them showing the nearby locations of undead, they headed south to a forest inhabited by vampires. They arrived at one of the surrounding towns, Newtown, just before dusk and went to the local inn. The innkeeper was nervous and kept mentioning how it was getting late, but they continued to drink and had just persuaded him to let them stay the night when a gang of vampires burst in. The party immediately issued a demand for Treasure Tax, which just confused them. As more vampires piled in, they passed the question of Tax to their leader who indignantly replied that round here, people paid taxes to him. After a failed attempt to beguile the Warlord, the vampire-in-charge drew his sword and Mouse promptly shot him.

Chuck moved in front of the group and asked if this really was going to become a fight. The vampire leader simply growled "Kill them," at which Chuck blasted away several of his minions and replied, "Was that directed at them or me?" Mouse shot down most of the vampires as they charged, including those who were outside but entered at the sound of a fight. Their leader attacked Mouse but then became flanked by the Warlord and Cat, and once the last of his servants had been teleported outside by Chuck he turned into mist and fled. The party settled down to finish their drinks and some hours later the innkeeper came back and acted both surprised and terrified that they were still alive.

OC Comments: Was afraid the thing with the Magus and DM would drag on too long, but thankfully the players decided to just do something and then found something else to occupy themselves with. Although I gave them the map ages ago, it shouldn't be too hard to level up some of the adventures and the others I may have to rewrite, but it's certainly easier than thinking up yet more new things.

Quote of the Session
Me: "He draws his sword."
D: "Is it a particularly nice sword?"
Me: "No, just a bog-standard short sword."
D: "Oh, in that case I shoot him."

The Convoluted History of The Campaign With No Name, Part Two E: Finally Getting Up-to-date

2010-09-21T17:56:00.000+01:00

The First Bit, The Second Bit, The Third Bit, The Fourth Bit

The mages and the party teleported from the Arcanum to the Mages' Guildhouse in Port Haven. Due to a weird glitch in the teleport spell, everyone had a brief "vision": Mouse and the mages all saw themselves in a potential near-future situation, the Drow had a vision of Dave showing him the whereabouts of a magic dagger, the Warlord unearthed a "memory" of a possible past-self, and Chuck merely saw the wizard whose body she is inhabiting and a Tiefling arguing on a featureless plane. The mages chalk the strange occurrence up to "one of those things" and the group sets out cross country to the field where they left Charles. Once there, they check the area is still clear of undead, and the Drow digs in the spot indicated by his vision, finding a dagger that glows with divine light. The mages enter the barrow, examine the area around the frozen Charles and then start preparing for the ritual to free him.

The adventurers guard the barrow to ensure the mages are not interrupted, and it is just as well as with a bang and a cloud of smoke, a small army of undead appear across the other side of the field. As they soon make short work of the charging skeletons and zombies, they take the fight to the site of the horde arrival. The mages finish their ritual and emerge to inform the party of their partial success: they believe they have released Charles from the trap, but possible at the point in time he would have come out anyway. Or possibly another point in time. They're fairly certain he survived. They just don't know when. They suggest they may be able to do "some sort of divination" and retreat back into the barrow.

With another bang and cloud of smoke, the Magus himself arrives, along with a small retinue of skeletons and a "hostage". When he realises the PCs care nothing for the strange woman they have never seen before in their life, he attacks anyway and the woman seeks out Mouse to hide behind. After a kiss, Mouse is unable to attack the woman directly, even when she reveals herself to be a succubus. The succubus and the skeletons are eventually dealt with and the Magus beaten to the point where he flees. Chased and shot down by Mouse he surrenders.

Desperate, the Magus pleads for his life, offering them power, money, anything they want. As this doesn't seem to sway them, and begin contemplating just killing him, he blurts out that he can tell them Dungeon Master's "secret". He had just started telling them that he was working with DM to discover the secrets of a type of powerful magic item known as an "artifact" when the gnome himself appeared from behind a tree and hit the Magus with a colourful ray of magic that caused him to collapse in agony.

What followed was nothing but confusion.

The Drow cast a spell at DM to prevent him turning invisible before going to see how injured the Magus actually was. Mouse took this as a cue to attack, and promptly shot at the newly arrived wizard. The Warlord followed her lead, and Chuck and the Drow stopped the Magus from escaping. A three-way fight ensued, with the DM dropping the Magus at least once while pleading with the characters to stop fighting and just give him "that ring". After turning invisible and trying to sneak up on Chuck but being caught out by Mouse's sharp eyes and a pinch of magic dust, he finally stopped fighting and just tried to plead for the ring that Chuck had - a ring which seemed to be both powerful and evil. As Chuck was unwilling to hand it over without a good reason, they decided to take DM prisoner as well as the Magus.

Tying both of them up, they clubbed the Magus unconscious and questioned DM. He told them he needed to "consume" powerful magic items to survive and explained he'd attacked the Magus to stop him telling them "lies". A lengthy interrogation failed to get much more out of him, other than an admittance that there had in the past been other "outsiders" who he tried to "help" while also getting them to find items for him to feed on. The Magus was from a party of such adventurers, who had turned against him, as they also did in the end.....

And that's it so far! I've finally got up to date and will try and do fortnightly session write-ups, much as I do for J's primal campaign.

That Was The Weekend That Was V

2010-09-20T08:13:00.001+01:00

On Friday I finally got sick of trying to make a decision and just went ahead and reserved a bike at Halfords. So Saturday mostly consisted of waiting around until I could go collect it, hoping it would be the right height etc. Fortunately it was fine, and the frame is actually a nice colour and the stars aren't too girly so that's all good. We put off buying helmet, lights etc, and just got a lock - I suspect it'll be a while before I'm going fast enough or near roads enough to worry about wearing a helmet. I practised a bit on the way back and despite a few wobbles it seems riding a bike isn't something you forget even after 15+ years. The boy was so proud of me he promised to make me not one, but TWO badges - one for managing corners and one for riding past a group of dogs without running any of them over. Not that he's made them yet. Think he's forgotten.

Had D over for tea and fed him leftovers, which he repaid by buying us cider. I'm not quite sure what we've done to deserve such nice friends...We had a booze and cheese and games evening and managed to introduce him to Carcassone, which he promptly won despite my SO's farming prowess, Zombie Fluxx, which he managed to win on his second turn, and Chez Geek, which he came perilously close to winning too. Talk about beginner's luck....I sucked at usual. But it was fun.

Yesterday I mostly slept.

The Convoluted History of The Campaign With No Name*, Part Two D: In Which The PCs Do Politics

2010-09-13T21:48:00.001+01:00

The First Bit, The Second Bit, The Third Bit

Shortly after taking office, the new Captain of the Guard learned of the ongoing rivalry between the Guard and the Sheriff. Having spotted the crude assassination attempt, he summoned the Sheriff who blustered and denied everything. He quickly set some poor underling the task of working out how to arrest/kidnap/dispose of the Sheriff and went to the pub. After hearing about this, Mouse did some "investigating" of the Sheriff's house and found evidence that he was blackmailing members of the council. Some kerfuffle and public posturing followed, and one of the blackmailees dropped hints that if the Warlord could possibly sort out the Sheriff problem once and for all that would be nice.

Chuck and the Drow went to the Grand Assemblage of the League of Eternal Discovery, and joined the Arcanum by solving a teleport maze, with the intention of using the extensive library to learn rituals. The Drow had a strange experience with a door in the library everyone else wanted to get away from but he felt strangely drawn to....An epiphany on the nature of the universe followed, while anyone else nearby just got a headache. The door may have hidden a Source of Arcane Magic or something. Whatever it was, it didn't distract him too much from spreading the Word of Dave and having some pamphlets printed.

The mages in the Department of Chronomancy were excited at the prospect of studying a Time Trap in person, but due to interfaculty politics and the need to maintain quorum in the senate, getting permission for a field trip was less than straightforward. The person in charge of signing off on expenses would only do so if the party found his sister first, who was missing presumed investigating leads to the ruins of Alabaster City in the jungle to the south.

So, leaving the mages to prepare for the trip to rescue Charles and the city Guard plotting to take down the Sheriff, the four adventurers headed south, following hints and rumours of a determined archaeologist and avoiding most of (but not all) the dangerous wildlife. They made their way to a hole in the ground that was the adventuring mage's last known destination, and fought some duergar that were guarding it. Making their way down, they faced stirges and more duergar, and an angry dragon at the bottom who told them to p*ss off before attacking. Once they'd beaten the dragon up a bit, it shapeshifted into a humanoid form and admitted defeat. Turns out the dragon was the mage they were looking for, and she thought they were rivals looking to steal her "find" from her. She showed them the decorative portal that she believed led to the Alabaster City but which she had been unable to open. She conceded to return with them, but only to regroup and do some more research before heading back, and they headed back to the city.

Once back in the city, the Sheriff sends an assassin after them, who dies horribly. Then he attempts to settle the situation by a duel, with the winner taking up the combined post of Sheriff and Captain of the Guard. However, as he names a champion to fight on his behalf, the Warlord decides to name his own champion, and persuades the dragon mage/archaeologist to fight on his behalf. The Sheriff's champion turns out to be a bitter, twisted, Pete who had been held captive and tortured by the Magus all this time and now sported a withered Wight claw instead of his normal left hand. The dragon mauled him horribly, Mouse stopped the Sheriff's bodyguard unleashing undead to distract from the fight and the Warlord stopped the Sheriff himself escaping. Once it was all over, the Warlord left some poor sap as Acting Guard Captain, the mage had been press-ganged into sitting on the council and the Sheriff was due to be executed.

Then they finally set out to rescue Charles from the Time Trap with the Chronomancers.

* Yeah, I've given up.

That Was The Weekend That -Ow!

2010-09-12T21:23:00.000+01:00

At some point of Thursday my left shoulder went from "slightly achy, must have slept funny" to "Ow ow ow ow ow!" Since then I've been mostly trying to rest it, but the pain crept from shoulder to all around my neck and while mostly just "constant ache" rather than "stabbing pain" it was still enough to make my days kind of....meh. Not being able to keep myself busy with housework, I got bored pretty quickly, as even reading caused my neck to ache after a while from having my head down (bad posture I suppose, but you try holding a book up for any length of time).

So, um, yeah. My weekend has been one of painkillers, naps that are painful to wake up from, and not doing much. Slowly seem to be get better, and might just have to force myself to try some (gentle) yoga tomorrow to see how I fare. But apart from that, and the boredom, and the sense of lacking direction or meaning in my life, I have nothing to report.

That Was The Weekend That Was IV

2010-09-05T22:04:00.000+01:00

This weekend was less exciting than the previous one, I admit. For the Bank Holiday weekend, we were at the Gathering, and despite depression getting its teeth into me pretty strongly at first, we all had a good time. The Terror enjoyed playing with other children and he was old enough and responsible enough to know he wasn't to leave camp without one of us, so we could pretty much get on with our own thing provided we weren't going to be away for too long. I had a nice surprise at the group meeting when I found out I was being given a factional training voucher (way to instantly buy occupational skills) for manning the gate over the last few years, and after some angsting finally splurged some of my OSPs on various stuff like being immune to disease. That and a Monday of being witness to the death of an eleven-and-a-half year old character and the subsequent angsty role-play, it was pretty good.

This weekend, nothing really happened. I've been a bit stressed for no apparent reason, and my SO has been a bit ill with a cold but only one evening of really suffering thankfully. Friday night, D came round for tea, wine and painting tips as he's interested in playing 40K and we then got to introduce him to Firefly. Last night, C & T came round with healing booze and the ill girl won several games of Dominion. Tonight she's out for her other D&D game, and the evening has flown by, with help of cider. I applied for a job at Boots (stacking shelves in evenings, I've got to try something), watched and listened to some comedy on BBC iPlayer and failed to come any closer to a plan for life, career, or even what to do in my game on Wednesday. So no change there then.

Primal Adventures IV

2010-09-05T12:55:00.000+01:00

(Part One, Part Two, Part Three)

After a prolonged absence due to work getting in the way, we finally got back to J's game and had a pretty awesome session.

We spent some time debating what to do with our "infected" packmates - those that had attacked us and looked "wrong" somehow. After whipping up a potion to sedate them, we tied them up, and deciding against dragging them all the way back to the cave of nasty kobold ritual, found a rocky outcrop to pile them under. As we were hurling the last one in, we all got the brief sensation that we were throwing them into a gaping mouth instead. After prodding the rocks to make sure they really were just rocks, we shrugged it off as a mild hallucination, although we were slightly spooked when we realised we all saw the same thing.

Then we headed on towards the tribe's camp, cautiously in case of any more attacks. But it all seemed peaceful. Too peaceful. Despite everything looking normal (grey leaves making the ground springy underfoot, trees turning to follow our progress like they always do) we did eventually notice that it was unnaturally quiet. There was no sign of birds or other creatures anywhere nearby. After deliberating for a bit about whether to retrace our steps or not, the shaman discovered that the ground was slippy when walking in one direction, but not in the other. I started to keep track of "weird things" by making notches in a stick. Despite being slightly worried now, we decided to press on towards the tribe.

We found a suitable clearing to spend the night, but were woken by a group of floaty-tentacly-things and a Thing-With-Eyes. The fight against them was somewhat disorganised, and more insubstantial floaty-tentacly-things kept coming out of the trees to surround us, but we were eventually successful. I did add another notch to my "Weird Stick" though as every time we were hit by a floaty-tentacly-thing, as well as the searing pain in our head we briefly saw the world in strange colours (green grass, brown tree trunks etc).

Afterwards we all praised J for her brilliant GMing - she totally managed to get the point across to the players that the forest was changed in very disturbing ways, but that our characters just accepted it as normal. The intrusion of the Far Realm has clearly gone further here, but how our characters are going to realise this or what they can possibly do about it I have no idea. We've had another break from gaming due to work and larp, but once again I can't wait to get back to it. While at the same time having no clue what we should be doing. It's great.

The Convoluted History of My Campaign*, Part Two C: Adventures in Time and Space (In Character)

2010-08-12T20:45:00.000+01:00

The First Bit, The Second Bit

Charles, Mouse, the Drow and the Warlord touched a magic mirror and found themselves teleported to a small room at the top of a tall tower. Thanks to some clues left by previous explorers, and the Warlord's uncanny knowedge of history, they managed to establish this tower belonged to a castle that was under seige and existed about three hundred years in their past. The area was apparently caught in some sort of time loop, resetting after the beseiging general was killed by a demonic arrow. After trying various other methods of saving the general's life, they decided to avoid confronting the demon prince directly, and instead took on his mortal ally, the beseiged king. Butchering him and taking command of the castle, they surrendered to the surrounding army and were then able to leave via the portal they arrived through.

Back in their present, they headed for the coast to hire builders and ignore Dungeon Master's heavy hints about finding the lucky stones. Instead, after destroying a proto-railway, capturing a pirate ship, setting up their own shipping business and taking over a mine by force, they set off to investigate areas of Shadowfell "taint" in the region. The first they went to had a haunted bridge, and after dealing with the undead there they were approached by a farmer who had a wight problem in one of his fields. The three battle wights caused little trouble for the heros, but as Charles approached a treasure chest he suddenly froze in mid air.

Dungeon Master turned up to berate them for wandering off, and, after careful examination, came to the conclusion that Charles was caught in a Time Trap - frozen in stasis until a predetermined instance when he would be let free as if nothing had happened to him. With no way of knowing how long he might be held in the trap, the party decided to travel south, to find a group of mages who studied time magic.

They sailed to Somewhere South on one of their own ships. After a storm, they needed to stop for repairs at an unmapped island. As they headed inland to find drinking water, they were attacked by Sahuagin. Following them back to the other side of the island, they found a cave occupied by their leader - a young Bronze dragon. Rather than just killing it, as they had with all its followers, they convinced it they were Treasure Tax Collectors and raided its hoard. Among the items they took was one of the very stones that Dungeon Master had been urging them to find. And a shark's head in a jar.

From Somewhere South, they struck out south east across land, finding another dragon to kill/tax and showing up a local lord who had run a group of kenku off their own land. On hearing of a necromancer that had been hunting for a tomb of a tiefling empress, they decided to investigate, wondering if it was the Magus. They found the tomb, and despite lacking their cleric, they managed to destroy all the undead within. To their surprise, the necromancer was not the Magus, but was a familiar face - the wizard who had been Tom's character before the Warlord. Claiming the Warlord has stolen his "soul", the wizard fought them angrily, but they spared his life and decided to take him with them until something could be sorted out. The Drow decided to ask Dave (the GM) if another player could be found for the wizard. Mouse, utterly confused by the whole situation, found herself on the receiving end of a sermon about the creator Dave and how her fellow adventurers weren't actually from this world at all. Fortunately, crazier beliefs exist in the world, so she didn't run away from them just then.

As they continued on their journey, they passed through a swamp and were ambushed by some snaketongue cultists. The wizard convinced them he would be more use fighting alongside them, and was freed from his bonds and given his wand back. The party explored the cultists' temple, killing more of them and resting the night there. While they all slept, both the wizard and the Warlord had a dream of Chuck speaking to them, claiming to have been trapped in a noncorporeal state observing the world and being unable to exert (much) influence over it, but had discovered how to talk to the party members while they slept. Now, however, in this shared headspace, Chuck couldn't leave. The Warlord woke up as normal, and Chuck woke up in the body of the wizard. On discovering this, the Drow pointed out that his "prayer" had been answered, and vowed to become a Paladin of Dave. Oh, and then they killed some yuan-ti and some snakes.

They finally arrived at the city of Pravarum, where the mages they sought could be found at the Grand Assemblage of the League of Eternal Discovery. On entering the city they discovered two things: that the position of Captain of the Guard was vacant, and that there was an archery contest being held. Mouse soon won the archery contest, and the Warlord became the Captain of the Guard by virtue of turning up.

* Does no-one have any good ideas for a campaign name? Come on guys!

Apathy

2010-08-06T20:19:00.001+01:00

I'm a bit behind on my gaming posts, got another one for the primal campaign and n more to catch up on my campaign's history. But I just can't be bothered these days. Not that I've got better things to do mind. Just summer holidays/job hunting/general life getting in the way and tiring me out.

So, um, yeah. Just to say I'm not dead I guess, just bored and apathetic and unmotivated to blog about anything other than why I'm not blogging. Go figure.

The Convoluted History of My Campaign*, Part Two B: Giraffes and the City (In Character)

2010-07-19T11:46:00.001+01:00

The First Bit

The countryside near the City of Vek is more varied than usual due to forgotten ancient deeds of wizards, or something. First, the intrepid party passed through a forest. They were attacked by a polar bear, a stirge and a rather ineffective giraffe. They managed to kill the stirge and the fleeing giraffe, and subdued the polar bear enough so that when the owner of the circus it had escaped from arrived he was able to recapture it. Unfortunately a misunderstanding about the circus folks intent led to the wizard setting them on fire. Dungeon Master appeared, furious. He took the wizard with him when he vanished and later on a dragonborn warlord who also claimed to be Tom turned up. They were beginning to get used to this sort of thing.

While stopping to rest at an inn, their cart and horse was stolen along with two others by a hapless group of goblins. The party soon chased them down and retrieved the stolen goods, although one horse was slain and its cart destroyed in the process. Next, they passed through a desert. On hearing of some gnoll raiders that had a base to the south of the road, they decided to go "deal with" them. The gnolls were sharing their lair with a grell, which posed more of a challenge. Finally, they passed through a swamp. A foolish young black dragon decided to attack them. It failed to stay out of their reach, and was slaughtered. Charles reluctantly took only the head as a trophy.

On finally reaching the city, they gained entry by claiming to be merchants, and promptly got involved with some gang warfare and became acquainted with a wanted criminal. They cleanly sorted out both problems by helping the criminal to escape the city and faked his death using a magical amulet and the body of an alchemist who'd been supplying bombs to the gangs. They were then able to claim the bounty on the outlaw, and as part of it were given the deeds to a house in the west. They explored much of Vek's sewers, hunting down an escaped mutant crocodile and allowing it's prey, a giraffe, to escape. A straight-forward task involving retrieving stolen property led them to uncover a group of assassins. While wiping out the assassins, they encountered a young elf ranger called Mouse, and her animal companion, Cat. The head of the assassins turned out to be a crippled black dragon who'd made her home in the sewers. The five of them soon made short work of her, before retiring to the inn.

During the night, Mouse was woken by another assassin who had just slit Chuck's throat. The assassin and his partner were soon captured and while claiming to not know who had hired him, they admitted he was ordered to kill all of them except the Warlord, who they were to kidnap and leave at an arranged spot at dawn. Dropping the assassins off with the authorities (and leaving Chuck's body for someone else to deal with), the remaining four made the rendezvous and discovered those sent to collect the Warlord were warforged soldiers from the castle. Suspecting the Magus, the King's advisor, to be behind this, they decided that they possibly still weren't ready to take him on. After exploring the sewers some more, and finding a way into the Magus' undead guarded tower from there, they left town and headed to their new house.

Approaching the estate, it was obvious something was wrong. The crops in the surrounding fields grew progressively sicklier and warped as they got nearer the house, with the nearest plants being almost unrecognisable as anything of this plane. Searching the outhouses carefully, they found only a shadow-tainted horse who had apparently been recently fed. On entering the house through the main door, they discovered it to be overrun with demons and the restless spirits of the cultists who summoned them. After killing all the invaders they came across, they went down to the basement where a portal (presumably to the Abyss) lay. Dungeon Master appeared to help them close it. He then informed them of a set of magical stones, scattered across the world, that had untold power when reunited. One of these stones happened to have surfaced in the nearby town of Port Haven. As the party wished to engage craftsmen to rebuild the ruined wing of their house, they resolved to go there next. However, while searching the house for valuables, they came across a walled in mirror that was obviously magical. Throwing caution to the wind, they touched the mirror one by one and vanished from that place.

* Still need to think of a name.

The Infernal City by Greg Keyes

2010-07-19T10:47:00.000+01:00

I don't expect much from a video game tie-in novel, let alone one I happened to win in an online competition. Which is just as well, as, honestly, The Infernal City doesn't offer much.

This is not to say it isn't a reasonably entertaining read, but probably only if you're familiar with The Elder Scrolls games. Most of the fun comes in recognising the setting, being able to visualise well the locations and spotting the various references to the games: Vivec city and the Ministry of Truth are mentioned, the eruption of Red Mounatin is referenced, the sword Umbra is a key plot point and even the Huntsman Hircine make an appearance. Aside from this, the floating city of Umbriel is a fascinating creation and vividly evoked: its alien nature is described well and you get a feel for the social dynamics without too much exposition. The potential of it as a location makes me wish Bethseda would release a game set there - maybe another expansion for Oblivion?

The plot is fairly basic: floating city appears, killing people it passes over. Various heroic types set out to try and stop it. Presumably being only the first in a series, they don't get very far, and the ending seems a little rushed. Also, there are far too many characters for so short a book, and some have distinctly less to do than others. Indeed, the subplot involving the spy/government agent Colin could have been dropped completely - I assume it will be continued in further books but here just seemed an unnecessary addition. He only appears about three times, and his investigation doesn't uncover much that isn't at least implied during Prince Attrebus' storyline.

Overall, its just a bit too pedestrian and predictable. I probably won't go out of my way to read any follow-ups, but if I see them in the library (or happen to win them in another competition) I'll probably pick them up. I admit to being slightly curious to see how Umbriel will be stopped and the protagonists stuck there escape.

House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds

2010-07-15T17:10:00.001+01:00

Alastair Reynolds' House of Suns tells the story of Campion and Purslane - two clones or "shatterlings" of the Gentian Line whose sole purpose is to explore the vast reaches of the human-colonized galaxy, experience as much possible and share those memories with their fellow shatterlings. An unexpected and horrific act of violence upends their world and while they attempt to solve the mystery of who was behind it, further betrayals lead to a desperate chase and fight for survival.

Reynolds certainly write very well, and specifically writes space operas very well. A human race spread across the galaxy and remnants of a vanished super-advanced race might well be age-old tropes of the genre but still feel fresh in his hands. Fans of his Revelation Space series will recognise his distinctly realistic approach to the physics of the setting including believable space battles, mind-boggling lifespans due to relativistic speeds and ingenious weaponry that only an astrophysicist could think up. The book has its fair share of intrigue as well as spaceship porn, and raises a lot of questions about identity and how important memories are to making us who we are. Add to that a carefully weaved plot that manages to both reward reader expectations and subvert them without it feeling like a cheap trick and you've got a pretty good read.

A not necessarily major criticism however is that, towards the end of the book, the protagonists' actions can seem meaningless and futile as they are trapped by events beyond their control and at the mercy of smarter, more capable and almost god-like beings. Their failure to achieve their goals can be a little depressing, and the ending is...odd, as if they've accidentally completed someone else's pilgrimage and you're not entirely sure how you or they are meant to feel about that. But nevertheless, it is still a book I would and will read again - not least to reread the flashbacks to Abigail Gentian's early life with the benefit of hindsight to see how it ties in with the main plotline.

The Convoluted History of My Campaign*, Part Two A: Four Players and a Dungeon Master (In Character)

2010-07-08T17:26:00.000+01:00

A masterful GM called Dave decided to run a 4th ed D&D game. He gathered together a diverse collection of his friends: Charles, an upper-class Englishman who hasn't quite realised the Empire is no more; Pete, an Australian philosophy lecturer; Ed, an experienced roleplayer; and Tom, who...well, he's just Tom.

They created their characters (Charles made a dwarven cleric, Pete, a human swordmage, Ed, an eladrin rogue and Tom, a human wizard) and settled down to the first session. A storm hit, causing the electricity to go off. Dave borrowed a black, skull-shaped candle from his creepy housemate - a mistake as it turned out as it gave off a lot of smoke and smelled awful. First Dave, and then the players blacked out.

And the four players came round in woodlands, inhabiting the bodies of their characters. To their confusion, they seemed to have all the knowledge and abilities their characters would have. Before they could spend too long pondering over what had happened, they were attacked by a group of kobolds. Shortly after obliterating them, they were approached by a Gnome wearing red robes and carrying a staff, who told them they would have to search to find the way home and gave them all shiny items. Pete got some magic leather armour, Ed got a dagger which did thunder damage, Tom was given a green hat which could conjure up a small creature to fight for him, and Charles got some goggles which told him more about the creatures he was facing. The Gnome (quickly nicknamed "Dungeon Master" by the players) also told them of more kobolds hiding out in an abandoned hall to the north, who had been harassing the nearby town of Fallcrest, and suggested they do something about it. He was confused by their apparent reluctance to do as he said, but as they had nothing better to do, they decided to go hurt some more kobolds anyway. After that, they mostly refused to pay attention to Dungeon Master (much to his annoyance) and headed north to find more dragons to kill, as Charles wanted a trophy.

There was a brief interlude where they were attacked by drop-bears, took one prisoner, and then negotiated peace between the drop-bears and some lizardfolk. Then they came across the remains of a battle and were attacked by some skeletons that were less dead than the rest. The nearby town was populated by creepy clones who seemed blissfully unaware that the battle was long over and were awaiting the return of their warriors, oh, and who turned into mindlessly violent zombies come nightfall. Dungeon Master arrived to provide exposition - turns out some guy called The Magus had arrived and performed a ritual that went wrong - during the day the townsfolk looked like him but carried on with their previous lives - and also took the magical stone that was preventing the dead from rising in this Shadowfell tainted part of the land. They enlisted the help of a nearby dragon who was an expert ritualist (and much too hard for them to kill, yet) and managed to undo the worst of The Magus' doing, but without the magical stone the town would continue to be plagued by zombies. The party set off after The Magus, to the City of Vek.

On the way they came across a ranger and his son who were vaguely helpful and offered them shelter while telling them of a mining operation nearby which was causing problems. The morning they decided to go investigate this, they awoke to find Pete had disappeared and in his place was a half-orc fighter who claimed to be called Chuck. Mysteriously, Chuck told them she'd come in place of Pete as he couldn't make this week's session. As none of the others remembered anything from outside game, this didn't seem to make much sense, but they soon forgot about it and beat up some orcs. Investigating the orcs' mine they came across some kuthrik which they killed, and some more orcs, which they killed. The deepest point of the mine turned out to be the lair of two purple wyrmlings....the party fought well, but the wyrmlings' breath dazed them and after a long fight and the rogue and fighter on the ground, the other two decided they had to flee to heal up. Before they could come to the rescue, Chuck came round, alive and a prisoner of the orcs. After fighting off the orcs, Chuck met up with the others and they went back to finish off the wyrmlings, finding the rogue's corpse there. They took the body of their friend to bury, and one of the wyrmlings to stuff for Charles' trophy. They also discovered that part of the treasure they'd looted was a special Artifact that could by used by the cleric to deal extra damage to undead. This seemed like a useful thing to have when going to confront a necromancer like The Magus.

Outside, they ran into a drow sorcerer who looked a lot like Ed. In fact, he claimed to be Ed, although he also had a vague memory of having always been a drow. Chalking this up to another weird thing about this place, they continued on towards Vek.

To Be Continued....

*Still trying to think of a name.

That Was The Weekend That Was III

2010-07-05T22:00:00.000+01:00

The last few days have mostly been lost to a low-lying fog of depression. Saturday was mostly good, with friend visiting for a few hours in morning and lunch out. SO had to go plot evil in Nottingham and, due to lateness of plotting, stayed overnight so it was just me and the boy for a bit. We coped, although I did get very bored once he was in bed. Realised I was still sucky at fighting in Oblivion and tried Black and White instead but got a bit bored. Despite the handholding, I felt I was still going much to slowly and didn't quite know what to do. Maybe I was just in wrong state of mind.

Sunday morning must have happened, and while waiting for SO to come back I started to read House of Suns. Reynolds fast became one of my favourite authors after reading Revelation Space a couple of years back, but it's been a while since I've read any of his stuff. Will try and do a proper review when I've finished it, so far it's being interesting with the usual Reynolds thing of far future civilizations, realistic physics and cunning tech.

Rest of Sunday I don't think went too well. I had a couple of naps and was mostly stressed. Some Carcassone in the evening helped lift both our moods, and today started off ok but it didn't take too long for apathy to kick in. Lack of suitable jobs to apply for meant less stress but more pessimism for future. Housework is hardly enthralling either, and again this afternoon I had a nap rather than do anything useful or even fun with my time. I managed to drag myself to school to pick up boy and started to wake up more on way home, but suddenly got a hit of agoraphobia and began to get jumpy whenever someone walked by. We were still on campus at this point, so my far-too-sensible six year old suggested we go see Daddy as he knows to tell Daddy when I'm "not feeling well". Hugs helped calm me down a bit, and we went home together. Got boy's school report which was mostly good (only problem is he talks too much and doesn't always pay attention - quelle surprise. So after going through it with him, we decided to "celebrate" by having a meal out, as it's been ages since we went to our usual pub meal. Probably didn't do my diet any good, though.

And then this evening I've been feeling pretty good. Silly moods. Watched University Challenge and then had to watch the Only Connect repeat on iPlayer as our digital TV reception is still only partial (after a few days of being non-existent). So, um, yeah. That's it.

Primal Adventures III

2010-07-01T13:55:00.000+01:00

(Part One, Part Two)

To recap: we're longtooth shifters, bad stuff is happening, we were on our way back to the rest of our tribe when we got attacked by some of them looking not-right.

After beating our tribemates into the ground, we paused to catch our breath and then while the others debated what to do with them, I examined them. They didn't appear to be infected or ill, and no signs of anything outwardly wrong with them except their colouration which was a bit too grey/black. Whatever had changed them and caused them to not recognise and attack us was definitely not natural and beyond our experience, and indeed understanding. As they others took weapons off them and talked about tying them up and taking them back to camp, I suggested trying to sedate them. It was while the Warden and I were scavanging for ingredients to do this that the Shaman spotted more coming through the trees towards us, weapons at the ready.

A fairly chaotic fight kicked off. The Barbarian charge at stuff through the trees, the Warden went after others that were coming in from the left, and I ended up being flanked after charging one on the right. I got stabbed up pretty bad, and the Shaman and his pet spirit bear came up to heal me up, and then got stranded as I charged something else. Things went kind of badly for him, and me, as the two squishiest party members, but miraculously neither of us went down. I think I was on four hit points at one point though. By contrast the other two were barely being hit. Then one of the enemies got past everyone, picked up one of the unconscious "prisoners" and made a break for it through the trees. The Barbarian chased him down and killed him, while I had to intervene to stop another one grabbing another body. Another badly injured one fled, but we let him go to gang up on the last one who'd barely been touched all fight.

After beating him into the ground, the DM told us we felt great, stronger and more powerful. We hit level 5.

So the game pretty much stopped for bookkeeping. The DM was giving us the appropriate Weapon/Implement Expertise feat for free, but as most of us had already taken it, we got to pick another feat as well as a level 5 daily power. I decided it might be big and clever to get Longtooth Spirit Shifting which ups the regeneration given by our racial power by two - in other words doubling it for heroic tier. This should help me recover a bit faster as I seem to get hit a lot (from the charging into fights, I suppose). I also reluctantly decided to retrain away my level 2 utility: Skittering Sneak (which lets me turn into a mouse-sized animal and gain bonus to Stealth) while fun, has few actual applications, whereas Sudden Bite (which lets me shift into beast form before making opportunity attacks) is a lot more useful as my basic attack in human form *suck*. Mostly due to my refusal to carry a weapon, but still. I think I like the idea of emphasising the difference between my character in human and beast forms - she's more aggresive and impulsive in beast form, and more curious in human. That could work, if I ever remember to roleplay it that way.

Turns out that fight was a very hard one by XP budget - the enemies were a higher level than us and there were more of them. Yet we still coped, even with lack of coordination on our part. Slightly worried how far the DM might push it in an effort to challenge us. Will just have to wait and see I guess.

That Was The Weekend That Was II

2010-06-27T17:45:00.000+01:00

Yesterday was a good day. Bit hot maybe, but we had some friends from larp visiting York and we met them for lunch in the Old White Swan. They do fantastic sausages there, even if their "toad-in-the-hole" is really just "sausage and veg in a giant yorkshire pudding". Afterwards we bought ice-creams and wandered round the Museum Gardens and by the river for a bit before going to look at the Minster and then heading out round the walls. We set off home once we reached Walmgate as the boy was getting tired and bored, and anyway we needed to get home in time for Doctor Who.

Blimey. What can I say about Doctor Who? Well, I'm still slightly diappointed Amy's house didn't turn out to be a TARDIS or something similar, and the way the Doctor escapes seemed a little too easy, but then Moffat does love his predestination paradoxes and the whole thing was great fun. Fezes are definitely cool. And we knew that scene in Flesh and Stone was important, and it was great to see more of Amelia. Oh, and Rory is now my favourite companion of the new Who. Even if he's not plastic any more. And actually leaving some questions to be answered next year was definitely a smart move. Still unsure about River - I keep wanting to like her but sometimes she's just a bit too smug and the "being mysterious for the sake of it" is beginning to wear thin. Maybe once we get to see "earlier" River, when she doesn't know more than us/the Doctor, she'll be a little less annoying.

Last night was topped by C coming round and buying us booze from "the beer shop". Rather than subject him to more football, we played Munchkin (which I lost horribly, twice) and Zombie Fluxx (which I won less horribly, once). Good fun.

Today's been a bit more "bleh". Too hot, mostly, and then we watched the England-Germany game. Ahem. Well we didn't deserve any better, to be honest. We've done pretty rubbish this tournament, and our defense today was mostly absent. Boy didn't watch it, and was only briefly disappointed to discover we wouldn't be playing again. He's got Black & White to keep him busy.

There may be more gaming tonight, and I still have some booze left as we bought more for the match. May need it, too. Monday tomorrow, and I'm not exactly looking forward to trying to job search thing. I know nobody likes it, but it's just a bit more dispiriting when there really isn't anything to apply for except those damned "work from home" schemes. I may have to start applying for jobs I have no hope of getting just for the practice. And that does feel soul-destroying.

The Convoluted History of My Campaign*, Part One: Out of Character

2010-06-24T13:21:00.000+01:00

You might want to take notes, this gets complicated.

So I started my D&D campaign with four players - my SO, JS, T and C. Their brief was to think of a character they wanted to play and then build a D&D character they would make - the intention being the character they ended up playing would have their "player"'s personality but their "character"'s abilities and skills. Confused? Yep, well, it wasn't such a good idea as it first seemed for many reasons, not least because while my SO and JS chose previous characters from other games as their "players", T and C chose real people they know. It largely fell by the wayside, though, except as a slight backstory quirk, so never mind.

So we started with my SO playing a human swordmage called Pete, J playing a Dwarven cleric called Charles, T playing an Eladrin rogue whose name I've forgotten and C playing a human wizard who never had a name as far as I can recall. They did some stuff, all was good, then my SO got a bit bored of playing the swordmage and wanted to give a half-orc fighter a go. Being GM's SO has it's perks, so we happily invented another "player" called Chuck who takes Pete's place.

Shortly after that, I misjudge how hard a couple of Elite Controllers can be, and we narrowly avoid a TPK by me letting the half of the party still on its feet to leg it. I give the players who were left behind a few choices, and as my SO hadn't been playing Chuck long, she opted for the character to be taken captive. T was quite happy to let his rogue die though, and built a Drow sorcerer instead (still played by the same "player").

Next change happens when C finally gets sick of playing the wizard and asks to try a different class. He makes a Dragonborn warlord and after a few sessions decides to stick with that over the wizard. Of course, then my SO's gamer ADD kicks in again and she asks to play a twinked out elf ranger to help the party dish out more damage. I say yes, because I'm a sucker, and because it gave me an opportunity to shake things up a bit. So my SO's new character, Mouse, is a "native" to the game world and has no "player" behind her. Chuck gets killed in a scripted assassination attempt.

So at this point the party consists of a Dwarven cleric "played" by Charles played by J, a Drow sorcerer "played" by E played by T, a Dragonborn warlord "played" by someone who may or may not be T played by C, and Mouse, an Elven ranger "played" by no-one played by my SO. Got it?

This actually lasts a reasonable while, before out-of-character drama happens and J takes a break from the game for "some time". I play Charles as an NPC for a bit before realising "some time" could be anything from months to forever, and cunningly manage to write the character out of the game for an arbitrary amount of time, simultaneously sending the remaining party on a quest away from all the undead they'll have difficulty dealing with without a cleric.

We ran with three players for quite a long time. Then, just after I foolishly introduced C's old character (the wizard) as an NPC which had reason to tag along with the party, a colleague of my SO asked if he could join in. As he was new to 4th ed D&D, we thought we'd give him the quite easy to run Mouse (if in doubt, Twin Strike) and resurrected Chuck to "play" the wizard.

So as it stands we have D playing Mouse; C playing (via some intermediary) The Warlord; T playing (via some intermediary) The Drow (aka Balthus); and my SO playing Chuck "playing" C's character's old character. I'm hoping this set-up actually lasts for a bit.

* If anyone can think of a decent campaign name, by the way, I'm quite open to suggestions. Otherwise I'll just have to keep referring to it as "My Campaign" which is a bit dull.

Bugger it all, I'm just going to write

2010-06-22T18:12:00.000+01:00

I was thinking about blogging about the Budget, but meh.

I've been in a bit of slump lately. Whatever the cause of this slump, it hasn't been helped by my inability to think of things to write, either fiction or for this blog. There've been a number of competitions over the last few weeks for short stories and flash fiction that I've looked at and maybe even started writing something for only to peter out within a few lines. And when a friend linked to this and said she was going to give it a go, my first thought was "oooh" then my second was "nah, I can't write a whole novel" and my third was "but maybe I could give it a go...." Cue a couple of days of wracking my brain for ideas that would fit in with the brief - and coming up with nothing. I despaired, wondering what had happened to all my ideas. And then gloomily sulked, because even if I had a clue what to write about I wouldn't do anywhere near a good enough job actually writing about it.

But you know what, I'm bored. I spend large parts of the day not knowing what to do with myself, and even if I'm not a good writer and even if I never do get better, it's not going to harm anyone to put words into a text file and see what happens. So while I have no idea what I'll write, I'm going to write. Maybe I'll never write more than a hundred words here and there, half scenes and semi-descriptions and not quite poems. But maybe if I keep writing it all down, all the crap, all the starts of ideas, maybe eventually I'll be able to start pulling bits and pieces together into something longer, something coherent. But even if I don't, I'm no worse off than just not trying.

The Was The Weekend That Was

2010-06-20T22:00:00.000+01:00

Blimey, it's been a busy couple of days.

I suppose Friday night is usually considered the start of the weekend, and like many other people we spent ours drinking alcohol, watching twenty odd people kick a ball around for a bit and wonder where the hell all their motivation went. The boy stayed up for the first half but was plainly getting bored even during the ten minutes or so that England decided to actually play some football. Afterwards, we played Carcassone, and I did even worse than usual. I'll blame the wine.

Saturday we wandered into town for Free RPG Day and picked up the D&D and Exalted freebies. I also finally bought Underdark, thereby ensuring my players don't go anywhere near that place at any point in the rest of the campaign. Then we packed ourselves into the car, along with a friend from SO's other game she plays in, and went up to Durham for "Nerd East" - a mostly LARP kit fair run by the uni's student larp group, but which also had a games room and several stalls selling minis, used and new rpg books etc. The main draw was not so much the fair itself, but the people we knew who would be there, and despite the boy getting quite bored at points, it was a nice enough way to spend an afternoon. One couple of friends were down from Glasgow with their little boy, and the two youngsters got along like a house on fire (only slightly less destructively). I resisted buying anything and got to play a couple of games of Ca$h 'n Gun$ which was quite fun (you get to point foam guns at your friends and shout bang occasionally - what more could you want?) and then, after some working out of logistics, we ended up going to a barbeque. It was a very late night for all three of us, boy was falling asleep after his playmate went to bed, and we didn't get back to York until half eleven, but it was great to spend time with a bunch of people we mostly only see while larping.

Due to getting home so late, I deliberately avoided the internet this morning so as not to be spoiled over Doctor Who. We went to my (former, I suppose) supervisor's house for lunch. Despite some hiding and name calling to start with, the three eldest children (our boy, their daughter and eldest son) were soon playing together happily and energetically, while all four adults got to coo over the eight month old baby. After a lunch of some of the best burgers I've ever tasted (in homemade bread buns, nom) we went to Burnby Hall Gardens for a lovely walk and to let the kids run around some more. Not of course that this helped wear them down in any way, as they were still hyper when we got back to the house. But despite having to drag a very tired and grumpy boy away, it was a brilliant afternoon - they really are a lovely family and it's always reassuring to realise its not just your child who can cause chaos! Although I'm still not sure how anyone manages with more than one, so I don't think I'll be changing my mind on that front anytime soon. No matter how cute babies are, and how good the boy seems to be in the "big brother" role.

When we got home we finally managed to watch "The Pandorica Opens". Wow. Um.....wow.

Primal Adventures II

2010-06-17T19:58:00.000+01:00

So after a skip week where we played the Battlestar Galactica boardgame instead, we went back to my SO's Primal game (story so far here).

We decided we'd best just catch our breath before racing after the escaped "floaty-tentacly-eyes-on-stalks-monster". Thankfully, we'd injured it enough so that it was leaving blobs of, well, goo, behind otherwise tracking a flying thing would have been difficult. As it was, we were able to follow a trail of goo blobs to the nearby swamp - home of the dragon that told us bad stuff was happening and not to interfere with them stopping it. With no idea of where it might be heading, and the swamp slowing us down much more than it (as it could fly) we reluctantly admitted we were never going to catch it up. We trudged back to the cave to make camp, intending to head back to the rest of the tribe after a good night's sleep.

My inquisitive Druid examined the patches of earth where the goo had fallen. It looked.....wrong, somehow. Not necessarily darker or twisted, but more defined than the surrounding area and slightly surreal. Being reluctant to actually touch the goo, I tried setting it on fire. It didn't really burn though, which is probably a good thing.

We had a disturbed night, with maddeningly surreal, weird and physics-defying dreams. Probably sleeping in the entrance to a cave where an otherworldly being had been summoned wasn't the brightest plan. The Warden was on last watch and in the brightening day heard the sounds of an approaching group of creatures and woke us all up. Suspecting it was another band of goblins (as we'd run into a few before) I scattered caltrops over the path just before it widened into the clearing in front of the cave and we all attempted to hide. (Not being particularly stealthy, this ranged from crouching behind rocks, to blending in with the trees and standing in the cave entrance hoping it was shadowy enough.) But rather than it being goblins, it was in fact a chattering group of kobolds.

As they didn't immediately look like the corrupted, warped kobolds that had been doing the summoning, I called out "Are you nice kobolds?" and after some intense discussion one was pushed forward to do all the talking. In a conversation limited somewhat by their halting common, we managed to establish that they were there to stop the summoning ritual which we'd failed to stop. We admitted we'd killed all the bad things in the area but one had got away, and they investigated and poked around the site a bit (shadowed by my druid who desperately wants to learn everything she can about what had been going on). They went off to report back to "Boss", and I told them to say we were willing to help. Rest of party were less convinced about being willing to help, but my character at least is worried by this incursion into her reality, as well as fascinated by these things she doesn't understand. Plus the dragon had compared this incursion to an "infection" and infections spread....

we finally retraced our steps of long ago to head back to the tribe's camp and let them know what lay this way. On the way we ran into a small group of longtooth shifters who looked slightly familiar but who didn't seem to recognise us. Oh, and they too were slightly...wrong. Edges too well defined. Surreal. Just like the patches of ground the Far Realm creature's goo had fallen on. When they first saw us, they just growled.

While most of us held off attacking until they did anything hostile, the Barbarian ran up and (failed to) hit one of them. To be fair, this was probably how the barbarian greeted most people. But attack us they did, and we had a pretty hard fight, not least because the dice hated us and we kept missing repeatedly while the GM rolled good damage. With some struggle, a lot of chasing after two sneaky ones who kept running to hide behind trees, and the barbarian not only getting hit lots but taking a wack of damage too, we finally managed to knock them all out (for once we reined in our killer instincts). And that's where we left it.

Hopefully it'll only be another fortnight until the next session. I'm really getting into this, and the plot is a lot tighter and more focused than my own rambling game. Or at least, that's how it comes across - maybe my SO is making it up as she goes along too! Will need to keep poking her to make sure she does enough prep to keep on schedule.

A sentence

2010-06-08T19:52:00.000+01:00

I read a sentence today. A sentence I feel needs sharing with the world, along with my views on why this sentence is so wrong.

First, though, let me point out the context of this sentence. It was in the final paragraph of this book review - a review that for the most part was even handed, interesting and led me to be vaguely interested in the book. Unfortunately, it ended with what I can only presume is the reviewer's own pet cause which apparently isn't mentioned in the book, that of "population control". Alarms bells should already be ringing - rare is the person who thinks it is themselves, their family, and their friends who need "controlling" as they, of course, are responsible citizens whose impact on the environment is either sustainable or at least justified by the worth they bring to society. It's a slightly jarring shift, from sympathetic discussion of changes in human society (which is what the book is about) to a sudden polemic on a contentious issue which he feels the books should have addressed. Whether a book review is really the place to air one's political opinions is another moot point, but not one I have strong opinions on either way.

Also, I'd like to point out in fairness that I don't know whether the reviewer does indeed hold these opinions, or whether he was merely espousing a possible argument or pointing out the rational, but hardly ideal, conclusion. Indeed, it would be strange for someone to refer to something they support as "draconian". Maybe it's all a terrible editing error, but regardless I want to address this one particular sentence just in case someone is wondering what is so repellent about it.

So, to the sentence.

In order to stem population growth, governments should close international borders to migration and impose a draconian policy of family limitation like China's where it is needed.

I cannot argue against the aim of stemming population growth, although some would, as the impact of an aging population in developed countries begins to make itself known. However, history seems to suggest that better education (especially for women), less poverty, lower infant mortality and accessible birth control will all tend towards people choosing to have fewer children. This certainly has happened in Europe - a few years ago, Italy introduced financial incentives for women to have more than one child in an effort to boost its population as birth rates had fallen so low. As better education, for men and women, less poverty, lower infant mortality and greater freedom of choice in planning families all seem like laudable goals in and of themselves to me, a side-effect of reducing population to a more sustainable level is just a bonus. So my issues with this sentence are not necessarily with the stated goal, but the suggested means.

Firstly, "close international borders to migration". Aside from the fact this smacks of xenophobia more associated with the likes of the BNP than anthropologists, I fail to see how this would help. Common sense says that the movement of people around the world has little impact on global population (unless I missed an important part of sex education). In fact, all a lack of migration would achieve is to ensure that the overpopulated parts of the world stay overpopulated, and people in poor countries with no food, education or jobs are stuck there. Unless of course that's the idea - famine, war and other such things will "self-correct" the too big population.

Secondly, enforced family limitation, while certainly having the potential to be very effective, is a horrendous violation of human rights. I'm not sure I can present a rational argument against it, it's just so obviously a gross invasion of privacy to have the government decide something as basic as the size and shape of one's family. Problems with China's programme are many and varied, not least an increase in abandoned children (predominately girls). It's hard to imagine a scheme which would, in practice, be both effective and humane and even if one were to agree with the idea of government dictating how many children a family should have, a "draconian policy" is, pretty much by definition, not an agreeable one. More telling is the phrase "where it is needed" - in other words, only in countries with high birth rates, which just happen to be the poorer ones of course. It's true people do tend to be more in favour of "draconian" laws if they don't apply to them.

In conclusion then, this sentence is several shades of stupid. The kind of jaw-droppingly stupid that means I've spent a good part of the day thinking about how stupid it is and pointing it out to other people so they can see how stupid it is too. That it isn't the stupidest thing I've encountered today is a story for another time, however.

How (Not) To Run A Campaign

2010-05-27T21:01:00.000+01:00

As I mentioned last week, I've been wanting to talk about my gaming for some time. As an experienced GM, I reckon people may be able to learn a lot by hearing about how I run things. Mostly, how not to do it. So, here's the guide to running a D&D 4th ed game, just how I did it.

Think of simple concept for your game. Then complicate it.
For example, my initial idea was "Let's do an Order of the Stick style game, where the characters know and make in-character references to the rules," which I complicated with, "and let's make it a homage to the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon!" Seizing on the trope of "gamers pulled into their fantasy world" as a way to justify this lame excuse for a comedy game, I failed to explain the idea sufficiently to my players, who nontheless agreed to go along with it. Mostly because they wanted to try out 4th ed.
Start immediately, with maybe a page or two of notes to guide you.
Preperation is for wimps and people who want a consistent story arc. I scribbled down some ideas for stuff they could do, statted up one NPC and grabbed the Kobold Hall mini-adventure from the back of the DMG to throw them into. I've pretty much been making it up as I go since then.
Abandon all your cool ideas if they require too much planning. Also if you keep forgetting about them.
I was going to run it as a series of "episodes" with them levelling up after each one, but realised that a) they'd be levelling up far too fast and b) there was no way in hell the players were going to be railroaded into doing what I had planned for them anyway. My pet NPC ("Dungeonmaster") also keeps failing to turn up to pester them because I keep bloody forgetting about him, and can never think of enough clever things for him to say anyway.
Steal pre-made dungeons, adventures and encounters from books or the internet and drop them in where they make sense, regardless of how much you have to tweak them to make them level appropriate.
The reality of your made-up world is more important than game balance, and you can do just as good job as the professionals anyway.
Change the metaphysics/background/plot/whatever as you go to fit in player choices and changes of character.
Just say yes to everything and make it work later. Player fun is more important than the reality of your made-up world.
Tailor the magic items to particular characters in the party by predicting what they would like, find useful, or enjoy.
You'll get it wrong, but no matter how easy you make access to magic items in the game world, they'll never bother buying anything better, so you've got to try.
Pick monsters and plan encounters to suit the strengths of just one character; put these all on a map so they know exactly where to go; make it a major theme, plan the next few levels around it and give them an artifact to motivate them to pursue this line of the story.
Of course, if, say, the cleric's player has to drop out of the game for personal reasons, then they might not be so good against undead, and you'll have to scrap all your plans and make up a side-quest to get them out of the area for the foreseeable future.
Do about half an hour's game prep sometime before each session.
Who has time for more? The players will probably do something you didn't plan for anyway. And don't bother learning monster abilities before a fight. You'll pick it up as you go and never miss anything important that could change a whole combat.
If they roll a really good skill check, let them trick the dragon out of its treasure. Just make sure that the next dragon they come across attacks them before they get to open their mouths.
Let the PCs acquire assets (such as ships) all over the place. Give them command over a small army. Encourage them to start their own religion.
After all, what could possibly go wrong?

NB. I'm not saying I regret all of these. It's mostly been fun, and hopefully is still being fun for the players. I just keep having to change my plans and ambitions for the game as we go. And I still suck at combats, which makes them drag a bit. Maybe the next time I start a campaign, I'll be better prepared and get it right.

Primal Adventures

2010-05-20T14:40:00.001+01:00

I've been meaning to do a weekly report (actual play, reflections, thoughts etc) on my gaming for some time, and might as well get round to starting it. Currently I'm in two D&D 4e games which run on alternate Wednesdays at our house. Yesterday was the one run by my better half, in which I actually get to play.

We're a group of Longtooth Shifter (werewolf-lite) Primal characters (which means we get our powers from Primal spirits: think animal spirits, elementals etc), who are the scouts for our tribe and, having just moved in to a new area, are checking the surroundings for threats and mostly responding by killing every living thing we find. Now there are four of us, we have all four roles covered. I play the Druid, the Controller, whose main tactic is to Wild Shape into Beast form and charge into battle: doing some damage and herding the enemies together so I can shift back into human form and blast them with an area of effect power like Tundra Wind. It's not a wildly effective tactic as I'm quite squishy and sometimes have difficulty extracting myself from fights to heal up - as far as I recall I'm so far the only member of the party to have lost consciousness in any of our encounters. C plays the smashy-hitty Barbarian (Striker) who charges around killing everything in sight and gaining temporary hit points left, right and centre, while being mostly unhitable thanks to his ludicrous AC. GM is being slightly frustrated in attempts to threaten him much, but did manage to bloody him towards end of epic fight of epicness (see below). T's character is the Shaman - the Leader and the healing machine, giving us free healing or temporary hit points all over the shop if we stay close to his spirit companion. Combined with the Racial power of Longtooth Shifting which gives us regeneration when bloodied, we're a pretty hardy bunch and while fights tend to be long we can take on harder stuff because we don't go down so easily. The newbie, D, joined late and plays a Warden - the Defender/tank who has some smack-down powers and a very nice daily that ties in thematically with my cold based powers too (we're a nomadic tribe of wolf-like people, I keep imagining we're used to Northern forests and cold winters, despite lack of background from GM).

In our effort to seek out and destroy all life in the vicinity, we have so far found and dispatched kobolds, goblins, rats, ankheggs and ~~swamp horses~~ crocodiles. While killing the kobolds we encountered some weird, floaty, tentacled things and interrupted some sort of ritual and were stunned (and somewhat scared) to have a run-in with a dragon who told us "this will be reported" before leaving. We mostly tried to forget about this, but after bumping into some black dragons in the swamp who gave us a plot dump ("The Far Realms are touching our world and stuff is trying to come through. This is bad. We're trying to stop it. Please don't interfere or we'll eat you.") we went back and found yet more weird, floaty, tentacled things and some very icky once-were-kobolds conducting more rituals, but of chanty evilness this time. They seemed to be corrupted by....something, and helping....something, "come through" to this world.

Thus began the Epic Fight of Epicness. This single encounter lastest about three sessions with one fight per session: after finishing off the kobolds and assorted monsters in the first area we realised chanting was still going on deeper in the building and rushed off to investigate. Here, as well as more floating tentacles and another chanty kobold we found three glowing rocks that helpfully "revitalised" us (let us gain the use of an encounter power back). Although due to their positioning and a lack of mobility we didn't use them as effectively as we might have, it did mean we had enough healing to keep us going. Also, near the beginning of the first fight the Barbarian and Shaman both used daily powers which gave us a huge edge - the Barbarian was gaining temporary hit points every time he hit something and we all had damage reduction which made us a lot tougher than the GM was perhaps expecting. Still, the second fight dragged on for quite some time, and we'd finished off everything before realising there was still chanting going on....The final room had four chanters, a horde of more monsters protecting them and a ball of smoky swirly something in which a shadow was growing larger. Unfortunately for me, this is where the dice starting hating me, and as well as failing to stop the shadow turning into a ....thing (a Beholder (almost certainly), although my character is just going to think of it as a weird, floaty, tentacled thing with eyes), I mostly flailed and killed a few minions, maybe hit a non-minion once and ended up on exactly zero hitpoints at one point. The Barbarian was actually starting to hurt as everything ganged up on him (his fault for going to attack the beholder once it came through) and with the Shaman rushing off to the previous room to recharge healing, we ended up spread out and struggling. In the end, the beholder escaped, to be hunted down another day.

It was a pretty fantastic battle overall - the having to work to recharge encounter powers made things a lot harder and we were a lot more reliant on our at-wills. The damage reduction and Longtooth Shifting lasting throughout it all was a plus, and despite it seeming a bit of a slog at times, there was just enough variation between monsters and set-up in each room to keep the fights interesting and different. Plot-wise, it seems to be going interesting places too. The idea is that as a nomadic, rural tribe that worships Primal spirits, we know little to nothing about things like Abberrant monsters, the Far Realms or anything related to Arcana. This all being strange, disturbing and utterly alien is perfect flavour wise and something I'm loving roleplaying. My druid, being an inquisitive little so and so, is trying to figure out everything she can by examining the ritual circles, listening to the chanting that was going on, and dissecting the remains of any monsters that don't just evaporate. Being an alchemist, she's also harvesting them for parts. Some day, I may work out what to do with them...

So that's the story to date, and I'll try to keep you abreast of what goes on. Next week, it's my game, and I might finally start my series of posts entitled "How Not To Run A Campaign".

ConDem Nation? Why it might not be all bad

2010-05-12T20:22:00.000+01:00

I've been avoiding blogging about the election for some time now, mostly because I kept changing my bloody mind about who to vote for, why, and what the outcome meant. Also, this will probably be rambling and without much of a coherent point, but then so are most of my posts so nothing new there.

I have spent far too much of the last few days watching the news and reading various opinions and have slowly come to a position of "we'll see".

When this election campaign kicked off, I gloomily predicted a slim Tory majority. Then the first televised debate happened, the polls saw the Liberal Democrats' popularity soar and I found myself getting swept away with Cleggmania. For once it looked like the LibDems might not be viewed as "a wasted vote" and the electorate was waking up to the idea that it had other options than choosing between the big two. But I still had my reservations. See, I'm a cynic at heart, and got stung once before when I fell for a young, good looking and charismatic politician talking about change. At the time I was too young to vote, but it didn't take long New Labour to lose my faith so much so that I've only ever voted for them once, in local elections, and then only because there were two seats and only one Green candidate. Possibly Clegg will turn out to be a little more honest and principled than Blair, but as they're both leaders who're more right-wing than the majority of their parties' supporters and who've led their party into government against expectation, I don't think the comparison is entirely ungrounded. My fundamental distrust of politicians led me to decide to vote based on policies and tried not to be swayed by personality. Despite being a borderline commie at heart, and nearly falling head over heels in love with the Green Party's manifesto equality policies, I ended up voting for the LibDems, mostly on the basis of their science policy. I may have laughably naive ideas about how to run an economy, but I feel much more confident in stating that rational, evidence based policy is essential. Ultimately, I live in a safe Labour seat, so I knew my vote would make no difference, and sure enough, it didn't.

Having thrown my lot in with Clegg's cohort, I did feel somewhat deflated on hearing the exit poll and indeed the final results the next day. The bitter disappointment that, on the day, the country that seemed to be favouring "another way" appeared to have bottled it, soon gave way to the fear that we'd have another election within a year which would lead to a more decisive Conservative victory. But the coalition talks started and like many other LibDem supporters, I was hoping Clegg would hold out for proportional representation while still being sure we wouldn't get it. The prospect of a Lab/Lib/others government, while tantalizing at first, was obviously unstable and worryingly unlikely to be popular with the general public. And while my initial reaction to the idea of them getting into bed with the Tories was "well, I'm never voting for Lib Dem again", it did begin to look like the only viable option. Bluntly put, if Clegg had been seen to block the formation of a stable government it would have killed any chance of getting electoral reform in the near future. In order for arguments for PR to have any weight, you have to show that hung parliaments are not a huge problem. And while the Tories' sop of a referendum on AV (which they will campaign against, and probably win) is far short of any real change in the voting system, it is, frankly, better than nothing and at least a step in the right direction.

Still, I felt a bit maudlin last night when Brown resigned and Cameron headed to Buckingham Palace to become PM. But the confirmation that it was to be a "full coalition" tempered that slightly and even gave hope that some good Lib Dem policies might actually have a chance, while stopping some of the worst Tory ones. Sadly, reading the details of the deal it's all too easy to feel betrayed on a few key points: Trident, immigration and the married couple tax allowance spring to mind. But there's the good too, in particular the willingness to at least look at reforming the House of Lords. And overall, the move to fixed-term parliaments and Cameron actually sounding like he means it (but yeah, politician) when he talks of taking Britain "in a historic new direction" gives me some hope that there is sincerity on both sides to make this coalition work. And that's what we need if we are to convince people that PR is a viable alternative to our current system. So as unpalatable as a Conservative government may be, and as dirty as some may feel for working alongside them, I still hold out some hope that, if nothing else, it's better than if only the Tories were running the show.

I can understand and sympathise with activists, voters and members abandoning the party in disgust. I dare say this will lose them a lot of votes and I'm a bit worried that it may spell doom for the Lib Dems and they'll go back to being an also ran, or possibly just fall apart completely from internal disagreement. I'm not sure how worried I should be about this, as I've already admitted they're probably too centrist for me and I'm unlikely to have anything other than a Labour MP for the foreseeable future. There's a distinct possibility I'll go back to being disillusioned and apathetic about politics, but for now I'm willing to admit that "it could be worse" and at least we've seen the back of bloody ID cards. I can't imagine ever welcoming a Tory government, but I'm happy to wait for them to actually screw up before jumping down their throats.

Already running out of ideas

2010-04-25T20:37:00.000+01:00

A few days back I had the crazy idea of trying to blog ever day. After two days of reviews, though, I ran out of time and focus and instead decided to try and think of something to blog about every day, but not worry if I can't. Last couple of days I've even failed to manage that much.

I suppose I could add to the mountains of words that have been written about the general election campaign, but I still feel a little underqualified to do so, being a political naif in many ways. (In fact one of my biggest problems with blogging is that I constantly doubt the validity of my own opinions and thus cannot see why anyone would be interested in them. This is probably why I suck at small talk, too.) There's TV shows and stuff, but I think I'd be even more rubbish at reviewing them than I was with Coraline and Locke & Key. I could probably ramble at length about how not to run a rpg campaign, and maybe some other stuff but I need more motivation (i.e. more poking) so maybe during the week.

That just leaves life and stuff, and not much has been happening. Mother-out-law been ill and still hasn't kicked her chest infection so may or may not be up to looking after active six-year-old for a weekend. Thankfully my parents jumped at the chance to have him, so we will be off to the Spring Moot next week without him, and I get a "proper" event without being tied to the tent once he falls asleep. Managed to get enough people together for a six-player game of Battlestar Galactica - I was a Cylon, much to C's delight as he always accuses me anyway. That's because he's a Cylon, of course. Last few days I've been quite "meh" which may just be down to being on reduced dosage or that time of the month or something else I just haven't thought of yet. Nice weather and mostly managing to not stress, but still feeling just a bit sad for some undefinable reason. Trying to ignore it and get on with housework, reading (Complete Arcane at the moment. I'm pretty much banned from running D&D v3.5 so it's mostly for ideas. And completeness, because it's a book we own I haven't read yet), watching TV and doing game prep when I remember. Not sure how successful the ignoring part is being, though.

"You know I don't like recipes"

2010-04-22T14:28:00.000+01:00

After far too long of not getting round to reading it, and having never managed to see the film either, my wonderful SO gave me a copy of Coraline for my birthday. (The original novella, not the graphic novel.) And it is, as everyone said it was, marvelous.

If you don't know the basic plot I can only assume you were living under a rock when the movie was made or really really dislike spoilers. If the latter, stop reading now. It's the story of slightly neglected, bright young girl who discovers a passageway to another world just like her new house but better and more interesting: a world occupied by her "other mother" who wants spend time with her and cook her favourite foods and make her life fun and full and wonderful. And to stop Coraline going back, the "other mother" steals her parents. Of course, Coraline isn't going to put up with that and goes about rescuing her parents and the other mother's previous victims, and it all works out happily in the end, although not quite as easily as Coraline first hopes.

The story is beautifully and simply written, as one expects coming from Neil Gaiman. Coraline is an absolute gem of a protagonist and a realistically crafted child of indeterminate age whose attitude and voice seem "right" from my not-too-grown-up perspective. The "real world" supporting characters are colourful enough to start with (while still being believable) to make their fairytale "other" versions all the more frightening. The plot plays out at just the right pace, gripping while not seeming rushed, and the (often grotesque) details bring the other world to life in its delightfully creepy entirety. It is, frankly, as brilliant as everyone said it is, and I can't wait to read it to the Terror because I'm sure he'll love it too.

Although the risk of him developing koumpounophobia (fear of buttons) is something to consider first.

Shadows over Lovecraft

2010-04-21T14:28:00.000+01:00

Locke & Key is the best comic series out there. You should be reading it.

I must've raved about this before, shirley? I'm sure I've been telling people to buy it for months now. At least, I've been thinking it pretty loudly.

Roughly speaking, it's the story of three children coping with their father's brutal murder and discovering the weird secrets of their new home, the aptly named "Keyhouse". Only, that doesn't really do it justice. I'm not sure any summary can, because half the pleasure is in the wonderful art of Gabriel Rodriguez (gorgeously coloured by Jay Fotos) and the other half is in the sheer....madness. The weirdness quotient just builds and builds: most of the way through the third miniseries and I thought nothing could surprise me any more, but no, there was another brain-melting moment in the last few pages of the latest issue (Crown of Shadows #4). Perhaps if I took some time to step back and reread the whole series more carefully, I'd be able to offer a more constructive review, rather than just gushing with praise, but that's for later. Right now I'm enjoying the ride.

The writer, Joe Hill, first came to my attention when I entered a book review competition a few years back purely to get my hands on a new book before it went to print. The book I was given was Heart Shaped Box and, not being much of a horror fan, I was pleasantly surprised. I wrote my review and didn't win, but I did get an honorable mention, which is what I keep clinging onto whenever I get the crazy idea to start writing reviews again. (If I ever find the review, I'll post it or something. If I haven't already.) So I saw Hill had brought out a new comic miniseries that came highly recommended by the usually reliable SFX, I thought I'd pick up the first copy to see what it's like.

It's now the only comic I buy as it comes out, and the wait between issues is excruciating.

The first miniseries, Welcome to Lovecraft, introduces us to Tyler, Kinsey and Bode Locke, who move, with their mother, to the family estate in Lovecraft, Mass. following the death of their father. There, the youngest, Bode, discovers a door that separates body and spirit when you try to go through it, and meets, and later frees, a supernatural being that was probably trapped on purpose for a good readon. Their father's killer escapes prison, with help of said supernatural being, and goes after the family again. Ok, I know that sounds a little predictable, but trust me, it's a good story, and a good-looking one too. It's now available in paperback, and as well as acting as a prologue to the rest of the series, is probably the most self-contained, so really you have no excuse not to give it a go. Go buy it. Now. If you read it and hate it, you need never listen to any of my recommendations again.

If you love it, though, you can move on Head Games (which will be out in paperback). This is where things start to get really strange. We get hints of things in the Locke family past, and Bode finds another key. If I have one criticism, it's that it just ends too soon and asks far too many questions while answering very few. But again, the art is beautiful, the characters alive and believable, and the world rich and deep enough for me to want to explore much more. (A friend said it's a very game-able setting - I'd love to see what he'd do if he got the licence for a L&K RPG.....) Fortunately, I didn't have to wait too long before the most recent miniseries started: Crown of Shadows. Just read #4 of 6, and so far we've discovered more about the past, realised how awesome and bad-ass Kinsey actually is and had everything go badly for the kids as the bad guy(s) went on the attack. Oh yeah, and another key. Unless you want to scrounge around for back issues, you'll probably want to wait for the collection, but I'll probably be raving about the last two issues before then, if not here, then on twitter. Maybe there'll be proper spoilers at some point. Just warning you.

So that's my not-quite-review of Locke & Key. The one for Heart Shaped Box was probably better.

New start

2010-04-20T11:21:00.003+01:00

I keep having new starts. Maybe one of them will stick.

So, hectic Easter holiday: was mostly OK I suppose, although I did get a bit down and stressed toward the end, including tears and inability to talk for a while. On reduced dose of fluoxetine as neither me nor doc is convinced it was really helping. Still not sure I'm sleeping well, but don't want to try cutting out caffeine and alcohol entirely. Good weekend just gone though, BBQ with added baby cuteness at friends' house and then my birthday of still-not-being-thirty. Parents came down for flying visit and we had lunch at the Black Bull which was nommy.

Now boy is back at school, corrected thesis is handed off for checking, and I've got my days to myself again. Started Wii Fit again again - I've lost a fair bit of weight actually, but could still do with a flatter tummy and it's better to stay active than put the weight back on again. Trying to make headway with tidying and clearing the house - went through videos last night and have a black bagful to take to tip so shelves look a bit tidier but still not more room unfortunately! And need to get on with job search and maybe even confront the horrendous question of what I want to do with my life, rather than just what is available and within my comfort zone (which is currently nothing).

And, yeah, maybe I should try writing/blogging more often. But I so rarely have time or motivation and I'm not utterly convinced I'm any good at it, so I may need some encouragement (Hint, hint).

Sunny Afternoon

2010-03-26T17:19:00.000Z

I got my daily dose of Wii Fit out of the way early on so I could have a bath afterward, and then was faced with the prospect of nothing-to-do. So I decided to be all pro-active and stuff and went out for a walk in the sunshine. I had a money off voucher for WHSmith's and so headed townwards to look at books. Inevitably, there was nothing I really wanted, so the voucher went in the bin, but it was a pleasant enough walk out anyway and helped lift my mood a bit. I did then decide to sign up for WHSmith Privilege Club, so I can get emailed more vouchers I won't use. Or worse, will use to buy things I wouldn't normally.

Walk home from school marred slightly by the Terror being more brattish than usual, but he soon apologised and we dropped in to see my SO and all walked home together. Having friends over to play the Battlestar Galactica boardgame this evening and probably going to have Chinese takeaway for tea. All in all, it's been a good day after a very "meh" week.

A big ball of "meh"

2010-03-18T11:06:00.003Z

[Warning - the following should be taken with a pinch of salt as I'm depressed and missed my meds last night.]

Yesterday I had vague plans about writing here about my game, but then I kind of screwed up and lost all enthusiasm for it, and for writing. I don't really know what I'm doing here - I think this whinging on the internet is similar to when I hung around in the maths department crying: a pathetic attempt to get people to notice me and maybe help or at least pay attention to me. I should stop. Even if I somehow managed to come up with a blog people actually wanted to read and enjoyed I'm not sure that's any better. It's all ultimately about attention-seeking and I really should be concentrating on surviving.

Not that I know why that's so hard. It's not like my parents have died, or I get random abuse shouted at me whenever I step outside. But everything seems to require so much effort and I'm tired all the time and I don't know what to do about any of it but just keep on plodding on. I've pretty much given up hoping things will improve. Maybe they will or maybe they won't. I have to cope either way.

Doctor's appointment tomorrow and I have no clue what to say. Don't know if meds are helping or not. Don't really know what I want them to help with. People have suggested counselling and it may be worth a go, but I keep failing to enquire about it because I'm shy and don't know what to say, even via email. And if I go, well....I'm shy and I won't know what to say. I just feel like giving up. I failed to get the comics I wanted today because the shop hadn't put them out yet, or they hadn't come yet, or they'd sold out already - I don't know because I'm too shy to ask. The idea that I might be able to get a job is just laughable but I have to try because, well, I "have" to. I "have" to do housework, which I don't want to do, because it needs to be done. I have to go fetch my son and feed him and find him things to do, because I have at least some shred of responsibility in me and I'm not quite prepared to wallow in self-pity to the extent of letting him suffer. I'm not sure what else I can do, though. I don't really want to do anything. I have nothing to aim for, no clue of what I might enjoy. I have a new D&D book I don't feel like reading right now and even a Cadbury's Creme Egg I don't feel like eating. I don't want to have to be strong and supportive because other people need me, and I don't want to keep saying I'll be ok when I feel anything but, and I don't want to keep making excuses for my feelings because "I'm depressed" or "it's the meds" or whatever the reason is doesn't matter: it doesn't change how I feel right now.

Rambling, yes, crying, just about, coping? Fat chance. But I'll live. Or at least, I'll continue to exist. It doesn't feel like living, but maybe tomorrow it will.

Being a good person

2010-03-15T17:08:00.005Z

I probably spend too much time thinking about this. (Actually, I probably spend too much time thinking full stop, but that's by the by.) I want to be a good person. I want to do the right things. I want to be a good mother, a good pseudo-wife, a good daughter and a good friend. I want to be nice and helpful and "have worth".

I would also like to be a good mathematician, a good writer, a good GM. I want to create something, give something to the world that even a few people may enjoy. I want to be liked and admired and respected; who wouldn't? But that's where the first hint of a problem lies. Too often, I am afraid to be wrong. I don't want people to think of "badly" of me, even for a short while. And there's another problem. What nebulous concept of "bad" and "good" am I using? How am I to define these things, even to myself? What does it mean to be "a good person"?

I have vague ideas of what I should do to be "good" as I'm sure everyone does, but I try not to hold myself to these impossible ideals. I keep telling myself that as long as I try my best, that is enough. No-one can ask for more. But therein lies my biggest problem: I'm lazy. I dislike hard work. Sometimes, the effort seems like too much and the end result not worth all the hassle. At least, that's what I keep telling myself. And maybe it's true. Or maybe, because I'm depressed, I find things harder and because other people seem to manage the same things without so many tears or outward signs of distress, I just assume I'm lazy. Either way, I still find myself thinking I should try harder. How do I know I've done "my best"? How can I know that if I didn't just try a bit harder that I would manage it? At what point does it become reasonable to admit that perhaps there is a wall in the way, and continuing to walk into it serves no purpose?

So I keep marching on. I plod on every day, teetering on the edge between giving up and making progress. Some days, it's about all I can manage to survive the day without collapsing into tears; other days I get lots done but barely recognise the achievement because it's my expected norm - everyone should be able to do that. Sometimes I can enjoy things I feel I ought to enjoy: reading, watching a film or television programme, playing games, spending time with friends or family, snuggles in bed with my SO. Sometimes it feels like all the pleasure has been sucked out of these activities. And I keep thinking to myself, "I should be doing more." But every time I attempt "more", the challenges seem too great, the risk of failure too high, and I fall, if not at the first hurdle, then still far too soon. And I'm running out of willpower. I know I have to keep going on, but I don't know which direction to try, or how to get past this damned wall.

I honestly don't know what I was trying to say here.

Motivation-less

2010-03-05T11:09:00.002Z

Everything seems to take much longer than it ought to. It took three or four times of thinking "I should get out of the bath now" before i actually managed to make myself move. Got dressed, after lying on bed for a bit. Ate breakfast and felt much better for a bit, but then decided it was work time and all the energy left me again.

I was actually looking forward to relearning some maths, but now I can't concentrate on it at all and can barely keep my head up. I don't feel sleepy, or tired, I just want to lie down with my eyes closed and not think about anything. Even typing this seems like too much effort to be worth it, and I keep stopping and starting.

A walk to the shop might do me good and count as "useful" - being outside and getting exercise are what I'm supposed to do. But the temptation to stuff my face with chocolate might be too much. I know I'm not hungry, but I want to eat. Eat and sleep and nothing else. But of course I have do other things. I have a family, a house; people I don't want worrying about me; corrections to finish, and they're so nearly finished, it's nearly all done and then I can pat myself on the back and call myself Doctor. I have stuff to read, stuff to do for my game. And I think part of me still does care about all these things, but I still can't quite bring myself to get on with something. Not yet. Need to fight the apathy, build up a reserve of willpower and then go for it.

I'm sure it shouldn't be this hard.

Us vs. the Bank

2010-02-27T16:44:00.004Z

For those not keeping track, my better half came out to friends, family and workmates as bi-gender last year, and has been gaining in confidence about going around campus and around town en femme. In order to settle in her mind some doubts about whether she ever actually felt "male" rather than just "not bothered", she decided to try and "go female" full-time and see how that felt. To the best of my knowledge, so far it's felt fine. The main problem for me is that our son and I still see her and refer to her as his "daddy", for which female pronouns are confusing. It also makes it harder for her to "pass" in public if a small boy constantly calls her "daddy".

I'm also a bit concerned about how the rest of our family will react to this, and whether it will cause the boy any problems in the long run, but we're hardly the first to have to deal with these sort of issues. And so far, nothing is irrevocable, although she has now taken the first big step of legally changing her name. She's been using her new name for nearly a year now, and most people are used to it. After some debate she decided to go for the longer, female, version, and drew up the Change of Name Deed, and had it signed and witnessed on her birthday. We also went for a meal out with boy and Nana, tried the cheesecake we made which hadn't quite worked, and attempted a two-player, co-operative, game of the Battlestar Galactica boardgame. It was a good day.

Then began the great big "informing everyone" exercise. The first few places seemed to go fine, although there's still time for them to get back to us and complain that the deed isn't "official". See, it's a little known fact that in England and Wales you don't need to get a solicitor to do a Change of Name deed for you and you don't need to have it enrolled. Much like a will, provided you get the wording right and it is witnessed by two independent adults, it's legally binding. But we didn't encounter any problems until Thursday when we went into town to inform her bank.

At first, the personal banker was happy to accept it, but needed to check with the manager whether she could change her title, despite not mentioning it in the deed. As the titles "Mr" and "Miss" have no legal standing whatsoever, we weren't really expecting a problem. But she came back and told us that the manager had said they couldn't accept the deed as proof of change of name because, and I quote, "it doesn't have a stamp on it." We explained that it is not a legal requirement for it to be certified by a solicitor, but she couldn't over-rule policy and not being quite up to arguing our case then and there, we left. We wandered despondently around town, and where on our way home when we passed a solicitor's office and decided to go and ask how much certifying it would cost. It turned out to be a criminal solicitors, but we were directed to another one, where we asked if it was necessary to have a deed notarised but no-one was available, so we were sent to another place down the road.

There, we met a fantastic receptionist, who commiserated with us, and made a quick phone call. Again, no one from the family department was available, so he took my SO's name, contact number and a photocopy of the deed and said someone would get back in touch. Sure enough, a few hours later she got a call from a very nice solicitor who confirmed that it wasn't a legal requirement, but they would be happy to do it for us if we wished. Armed with this, and the passport office guidelines which explicitly state that a change of name deed does not need to be witnessed by a solicitor or Commissioner of Oaths, we went back to the bank yesterday.

This time, a manager was right there and on inspecting the document he didn't even seem to listen to our explanation but declared that it didn't look like any legal document he'd seen before. There was mention of "a raised bit on the paper" and a comment along the lines of "For all we know, you could have just printed this out at home." He seemed utterly uninterested in our protestation that that would be perfectly legal, and we walked out abruptly after saying we would be complaining. We went straight to the solicitors, and despite not having an appointment, were seen promptly. She checked the wording, which was fine, although more archaic than what they use, and asked if the problem was that it was laminated. When we told her it was "the wrong sort of paper", she said that was nonsense and the manager clearly didn't know what he was talking about. We decided to pay her £10 to make a couple of certified copies, in the hope that a solicitor's stamp and signature would be enough for them, and she told us to tell him to ring her if he wanted confirmation that it was a legal document. She was brilliant, basically, and we now have a go-to solicitors, although it would be nice to think we won't need to see them again.

Back to the bank we marched. The manager attempted to disappear, and barely glanced at the stamped copy before accepting it. He left the poor personal banker to inform us that they wouldn't change the title because it wasn't explicitly mentioned in the Change of Name deed. But they processed the rest of the change (and we realised too late that they'd taken one of our certified copies for their records instead of making their own copy) and we made a note of the manager's name. A letter of complaint, demanding both the change of title and a written apology, has been drafted and will be sent to both the branch and Customer Services. I'm not sure even that will be enough to prevent my SO from switching banks, especially as we find it hard to believe that a woman wishing to change her title from "Miss" to "Ms", say, would need to present a Change of Name deed. While the initial refusal of the deed is probably down to ignorance of the law, the refusal to change title smacks strongly of transphobia. We have several people (including myself) willing to go ask their bank about changing their title to see how easy it is. I'll be sure to let you know the results, as well as the response to the letter. If it's unsatisfactory, I might be more inclined to name and shame. At the moment, it could just be one man's bad call, rather than company policy. But that's possibly being too charitable.

In which I watch....stuff [Part Two]

2010-02-18T20:18:00.003Z

This is the second part of my "hey, let's review stuff I've watched recently" shenanigans. I'll be covering my three "must-watches" of the moment: Being Human, Glee, and Veronica Mars. Inevitably, there will be spoilers. I'm also not sure how much sense this will make if you haven't seen the shows, I'm not great at coherence at the best of times and my head is still full of snot.

I heard about Being Human through my obsessive reading of SFX and cursed my lack of digital TV until they thankfully repeated the first series on BBC Two. Even then I managed to miss a few episodes by forgetting about it. Now it's back, we have a digital TV so I can watch it as it goes out for first time on Sundays on BBC Three. Fan reaction appears to be mixed, with the usual cries of "Not as good as the first series!" but a third series has already been commissioned. It follows the adventures of three housemates: vampire Mitchell, werewolf George and ghost Annie. The first series showed George trying to learn how best to "manage" his condition, Mitchell taking on the local vampire king and Annie discovering the truth about her death and deciding not to move on through The Door. This series has perhaps been a little disjointed: Mitchell's arc about becoming the reluctant leader of the vamps has been the most coherent. George losing Nina because she can't cope with what she's become and then rapidly getting into another relationship and moving in with her has seemed too rushed even for a rebound, whereas Annie's stories have, if anything, been over too fast - I really hoped we'd get to see more of "the Gatekeepers". While I originally watched for the delectable Russell Tovey as much as the story (and George still gets all the best lines), it's been Annie's encounters with doors and her way of coping with becoming "invisible" again that have provided the best drama for me. And the latest episode (the sixth of series two), where she gets to talk to her mother again via a psychic and tell her to get on with her life, was one of the most emotional. Kudos to Jacquetta May, playing Annie's mother, for her heart-felt speech about how it feels to lose a child. I admit the vampire plots tend to interest me least, I could get the same sort of thing reading an account of someone's Vampire: the Requiem game, but "least" certainly doesn't mean "not at all". The explosive end to "Episode 6" is certainly a game-changer and I expect the housemates will discover and take on CENSSA, hopefully rescuing Nina before their attempts to find a cure kill her. Of course, the best shows pull the rug from under our feet and I may be way off base....

Glee was another programme that we heard good things about before it started showing over here and despite being described by some as "High School Musical for adults", we gave it a try. And we fell in love. Ok, it helps that my better half is a sucker for musicals and I like many of the songs featured in the first few episodes and Jayma Mays is awesome in everything she does, but I really do think Glee is worth a try even if the words "high school comedy drama" normally make you retch. Yes, some of the cliches aren't undercut enough and some of the "minority" characters don't get as much screen time as the others (it helps to be black or gay, rather than Asian or disabled) and the plotting is both predictable and American-soap-opera at its most absurd (main character's wife is faking a pregnancy and manages to bribe doctor to falsify an ultrasound for her husband, hmm......) but....there are little wry touches that are laugh-out-loud awesome (such as the leaflets in the guidance counsellors office, including "Divorce: Why Your Parents Stopped Loving You") and outrageous one-liners courtesy of Sue Sylvester (the marvelous Jane Lynch). I admit it's not going to be everyone's cup of tea, and only time will tell whether I love it as much all through the first season, but at the moment I'm hooked.

Finally, Veronica Mars is another show I heard great things about but missed entirely as it wasn't shown over here on any station I could get. Sometime before Christmas I discovered it was on every weekday morning (and afternoon) on E4 and it quickly became the fixed point around which the rest of my day was organised. It's about a high school student who works for her private investigator dad and seasons one and two at least fall into a pattern of "case of the week" mixed in with an ongoing story arc in which Veronica finds the true murderer of her best friend Lilly and discovers the culprit behind a horrific bus crash respectively. I started watching mid way through season two and have now nearly looped round, but missed chunks over Christmas and with vivas and things meaning I haven't seen much of season three and still haven't seen the finale of season one either. I'll get there in time. As with Glee, I would have thought the high-school-i-ness of it would put me off as I can hardly relate (my experience of secondary school certainly wasn't like that) and the "outsider" status is often overplayed for me, but Buffy taught me the tropes well and I suppose I learned some tolerance from that. Veronica is smart, sassy but not infallible and ultimately like-able, and the relationship with her father is fun and believable. The cases often throw unexpected twists and the whole thing has that glossy look and feel that makes American dramas so watchable. Enough exposition is given in the voice-over to make catching up with current state of the ongoing investigations easy if you've missed a few episodes, and I'm finding the whole thing very addictive. Soon I'll find out whether it stands up to rewatches as well. If so, I might need to splurge on the DVDs - allegedly region-free despite what the packaging might say (and there's always the computer).

So, that's what I've been watching (beside QI, duh, and far too many cartoons)

In which I watch....stuff [Part One]

2010-02-15T19:28:00.011Z

Specifically, Moon, Being Human, Ponyo and Glee. Heck, maybe I'll even throw in Veronica Mars. Spoilers ahoy!

Came down with a cold a few days ago and so haven't done much over last few days other than watch...stuff. Because I've been struggling all day to get this damn thing finished, I've decided to split it into two posts. Later, I'll attempt to review the TV series I'm currently watching. Today, I'll look at the two films I'm seen recently.

First, we finally got round to watching my Christmas present: Moon on DVD. Having heard nothing but praise for it, I was really looking forward to it, and boy does it not disappoint. Sam Rockwell plays Sam Bell, the lone worker at Lunar Industries base on the moon, harvesting helium-3 to be sent back to Earth for use in the fusion plants which provide most of the planet's energy. He is nearing the end of his three year contract and looking forward to returning to his wife and daughter. His only company has been the base's AI GERTY (voiced by Kevin Spacey) and he's going a bit stir crazy....

The film is beautifully atmospheric (yeah, yeah, ironic etc. ha ha); the slightly creepy incidental music, slow pace, lack of dialogue and Spacey's emotionless AI voice all add up to give it that 2001 vibe early on. The model work gives it a timeless feel too - CGI dates movies more than anything else and I'm sure this one will look just as good in ten, twenty years time. Having been spoiled on the clone issue, I was surprised at how early that was revealed but then I feel one of the strengths of this film is that way it supersedes expectations. A set-up of a lone person on a deserted base often leads to a horror/thriller style film, for instance. One might have expected more conflict between the two clones, but they start to work together quite quickly once they realise their position. And it was wonderfully refreshing that GERTY turned out not to be evil or mad after all, but resolved its conflict of interest by siding with the clones it was programmed to help. And yet that still didn't rob the ending of any tension as I desperately hoped that Sam would get away before the arrival of the "rescue" team. Another strength would be the lack of explanations - leaving things to the audience to work out both makes them feel clever and leaves open the possibility of a theory that is better and more water-tight than your own. So very little is revealed about the science behind both the helium-3 harvesting and the cloning/memory-implanting, which is great because then nothing in the film is objectively wrong. It's never explicitly stated that the clones have a three-year life span, just heavily implied. If you choose to believe that this is nothing inherent but is instead due to radiation poisoning and new-Sam will live a full and healthy life on Earth, then fair enough. It makes an already quite upbeat ending all the happier. And while it's fairly obvious that simulating moon-strength gravity for the entire film would have been technically difficult and unfeasibly expensive, no attempt to shoehorn a mention of artificial gravity into the script was made, leaving the viewer to make up their own mind as to whether it all "actually" took place in low gravity or not. (At least, that's one way you can think of it. I'd vote "no" as the treadmill and skipping wouldn't work too well in low g.) The only confusion that came from not having things spelled out for us in our household was that we weren't sure whether Eve's dad was meant to be the original Sam Bell or not: the one sentence he spoke wasn't enough for me to recognise the voice and Sam had admitted Tess had been leaving him, but then Eve also confirmed it was "the Bell residence" so maybe that should have been enough of a clue. Overall, I think it's a wonderful, thoughtful film and the disgraceful lack of Oscar nominations belies the idea that they reward merit rather than popularity.

Yesterday we made a family trip out to the cinema. It was fairly packed (being half-term) but we still got our pick of seats to see Ponyo - Miyazaki's latest about a young boy who befriends a magical fish-girl. Despite being "rescued" by her father, the fish-girl Ponyo wants to become a human and escapes to find her friend Sosuke again. Her transformation throws the world into imbalance however, and floods the island Sosuke lives on. After travelling to find his mother, Sosuke affirms his love for Ponyo as a human or a fish, and she agrees to give up magic to become a human child.

Definitely aimed towards the younger portion of their usual family audience, it's more a Totoro sort of film than Spirited Away say, with a simple story and much of the delight coming from the astonishingly accurate portrayal of young children. The visuals are as rich and luscious as ever, the characters are all like-able and Sosuke's relationship with his mother in particular warmed my heart (hmm....I wonder why?). Miyazaki's recurring theme of the damage humans do to the environment is revisited, and while the portion of their journey where they identify extinct fish now magically brought back to life may seem a little too pedagogical it is exquisitely drawn and captures the childlike wonder that is appropriate for such a scene. You do have to remember to switch off your adult brain as the story doesn't particularly hold up to real world scrutiny (what sane mother would leave two five-year-old children alone in a house while a storm hits?) and the ending might seem a little anti-climactic with no real peril (compared to a heart-stopping moment or two earlier). Once you do, you realise it has the same sense of magic, adventure and wish-fulfillment that young children put into their own stories (albeit with a more coherent narrative), and for that, it is the perfect children's film. And I suspect like many other Studio Ghibli films, it will be one we watch time and time again.

So here's what happened

2010-02-11T11:49:00.002Z

I had lunch and a walk in the freezing cold with my love and got increasingly nervous but nowhere near panic, thankfully. Didn't have to wait long in coffee room before internal showed up and invited me into office. There was the awkward shaking of hands and then the external went through what the viva was about (check work is my own, see if I can put my research in wider context, go through any concerns they have) and then proceeded to start with the hardest question ever: what part was I most proud of?

That was my first but far from last moment of sitting in silence wondering what the hell to say before they moved on and framed it another way by asking if it was the published work (from our paper) I was most proud of (which I half-agreed with) and then went on to talk about what I felt was the most significant or hardest parts of the work. I started to relax and despite a few more bumps the time started to fly by as I discussed my disappointment with not finishing one of the calculations and why that was so interesting, as well as clearing up some notation confusion and doing some simple calculations on the board, mostly because they were fun. (Although I did utterly fail to explain why taking the trace of a projector gives the dimension of the subspace it projects on to - "it just does" was about all I could manage.)

I wasn't utterly convincing when it came to suggesting what impact the ultimate goal (which we didn't reach but took steps towards, hopefully) might have on theoretical physics but I was saved in part by the examiners disagreeing with each other on whether it had any bearing on physics at all but agreeing that at least it stood by itself as a piece of pure maths.

And then we moved on to the corrections and clarifications stage which is when my heart really began to sink. This is the part where you realise why it's called a thesis defence as it really does feel like your work is being attacked and ripped to shreds. As I predicted my introduction took most of the flak as it was riddled with missed out explanations, glossed over technicalities and occasional abrupt jumps of topic. There was also a point when the external launched into an explanation of an alternative approach and I wondered whether all my work of the last few years had been barking up the wrong tree, which while it had no bearing on the worth of my thesis for PhD still undermined my confidence somewhat. One small glimmer of hope was when the external said "If we decide you have to delve back into the \LaTeX..." which at the time I took to mean most of his quibbles were small but I suppose, on reflection, it could have meant the exact opposite! Overall the tone was positive though, and once past the first two chapters the pace picked up and my biggest fear - that the unfinished work would be deemed insufficient - didn't come up at all.

The first two hours had flown by and so I'd refused a break, which meant we finished just before five o'clock. They asked me to step out for a bit while they discussed and I went to the coffee room just opposite to get some water. My supervisor immediately appeared in the doorway wanting to know what was happening, looking about as nervous as I felt. I hadn't thought before then what it must have been like for him in the office next door to the one the viva was held in....He went back to his computer but came out into the corridor to watch as soon as my examiners emerged from the office. They shook my hand, offered congratulations and the external confirmed there were corrections to be done. I'm not sure at what point I started smiling but I suddenly noticed I was shaking more then than I was before the start! They went off to deal with paperwork and my supervisor came up an gave me a hug.

I was still full of nervous energy so paced round the coffee room as I wrote a text to send to just about everyone I knew. At least the first one got sent before I ran out of credit....cursing myself for not topping up beforehand and failing to manage to do so there and then, I rushed to a computer to try and catch my partner online but by then she'd already left work to see if I was finished yet. My supervisor bumped into her before I did and blurted out the news and only when she came and gave me a big hug did I finally start to relax. We then proceeded to tell everyone by text, email and Facebook and I did the somewhat nerd-ish thing of changing my Twitter picture to one of Matt Smith.

Then we went to the pub, picking up a couple of friends on the way.

It was a good night - couple more friends met us at the pub and then we went to Bella Italia for a meal. Couple of pubs afterwards - possibly having two doubles of whisky on the go at once wasn't such a good plan as I couldn't finish either, but despite being somewhat legless by the time we got home, I wasn't too ill. After enough water, anyway. With boy at Nana's for the night we got to have a lie-in this morning too, although the house was somewhat strangely quiet.

Today - it still doesn't quite seem real. Possibly it never will. But I feel quite happy and mostly relaxed right now and so am determined to enjoy it while I can. Corrections can wait until next week.

I'm a doctor(ish)! Go me!

The Big Day

2010-02-10T11:29:00.004Z

Today's the day I've been dreading since, well, since I started a PhD. After the stress and general searing anxiety of the last few weeks, I suddenly hit a period of calm yesterday where it seemed like I'd gone through panic and out of the other side. Today I'm a bit more nervous, but nowhere near as bad as I feared. In two and a half hours I have to meet someone new and talk to them about my work.

I know I'll be fine. I might not do stunningly well, he might ask all the questions I don't want him to ask, and maybe I'll freeze up a bit at the start and have difficulty talking for a bit. But ultimately I'll survive, and I trust my supervisor's judgment enough to have confidence that my thesis is worth a pass. I expect there to be revisions, possibly more than I really want, but even that is something I can cope with. It was easy to establish this sang-froid once I realised I don't actually have a lot riding on this. Yes, it would be a disappointment (and not just to me) and frustrating should the last five years work turn out to be for naught. But I don't have a job or career depending on the outcome of this afternoon. And my self-esteem has already hit rock-bottom lately - I can't imagine it getting any worse. But it could get better. And getting through my viva should help with that.

Besides, however badly it goes, I have a night out with friends to look forward to. Unless I get arrested or hospitalised, and it's hard to see how it could go that badly....

Coping

2010-01-26T14:34:00.002Z

Well, just about. Every day still seems to be a struggle but I've been crying less (not at all today) and actually got things done (ironing, game prep, nothing onerous). Read a load - mostly catching up on magazines I subscribe to (Radio Times, SFX Collection, New Scientist) but finished Iron Council (less depressing than Perdido Street Station, which isn't exactly hard) and The Unwritten (awesome literature-based-ish fantasy by Carey and Gross). Think that's about it.

So, yeah, trying to get ready for viva without panicking, still looking for jobs but not letting it get me down, all that. Doing bits and pieces as best I can and trying not to spend all day in bed or napping on sofa. That's harder than it should be.

My feelings are caught in a loop I know I need to break out of, but can't think how. Or rather I can, but that would be too hard and painful and would hurt other people too, so isn't really an option. I keep struggling on hoping time will do it's trick and heal everything. I think it's working. Hard to tell.

This was a mostly pointless blog post, brought to you by not wanting to go out in the cold and the desire to finally write something after several days of failing.

Struggling

2010-01-18T13:55:00.003Z

Days seem so empty. I try and fill them up. Can't relax sometimes though. Think I should be doing something "useful" but then fail to think what "useful" thing needs doing. Must be loads of housework that needs doing, but I seem to blind to it. Or it all just seems too much and I don't even know where to start. I can't bring myself to even pick up one thing and tidy it away. I surrender to the helplessness I feel surrounded by this chaos.

And then the insidious thoughts creep in.
"I must be stupid, I can't think what to do."
"I'm too lazy."
I recognise these for what they are though. Unhelpful, self-depreciating labeling - classical symptoms of a depressed mind. But then worst of all:
"I'm too weak to stop being depressed."
As if I could somehow cure myself if only I tried harder.

Well, who knows? Maybe that's true. But beating myself up about it won't do me any good. Bursting into tears and lying huddled on the bathroom floor for half an hour won't do me any good either, but if it happens, it happens. I just need to try and recover, pull myself together and move on. Need to stop being so hard on myself everytime I slip up. Need to stop stressing so much that I'll worry people if I let on how hard I've been finding it lately. Because, frankly, I'm fed up of pretending I'm ok. I'm not. I don't take medication because I'm ok - I take it because I'm ill and I hope it will help.

No, I don't know what you can do to help. I don't even know what I can do to help. I don't know what I should be doing, I don't know what I will do. I'm just writing this to get it off my chest. I want someone to help me, to make it all better or to just give me some hope that one day everything will be better and we'll all live happily ever after. I don't expect anyone can actually do that. I'm just trying to keep on going.

First Ramblings of the New Year

2010-01-08T09:01:00.004Z

And they will be rambly.

Didn't sleep. Not much at all. So much for saying to the doctor that it seemed to be settling down. Decided to stick with meds after all, see if there's any improvement but if this carries on I'll go from being permanently apathetic and uninterested in doing anything to permanently tired and unable to do anything. Not sure which is worse.

This year it has mostly been snowing. This satellite picture from yesterday illustrates the point perfectly. Put off going up to visit my family until this Sunday but I doubt we'll be able to make it even then. Christmas presents are going to be even later then. The Terror was late back to school as while they were officially open for first day of term, no-one turned up. Or not enough staff to have a full school day anyway. Been a nervous wait for me each morning, sending them off on a bike in the snow. But I've been generally nervous and tense and just trying to get things done even though the apathy is still largely there.

Failed to run my game on Wednesday due to dearth of ideas. Fortunately my beloved stepped in we finally had another session of hir Primal only 4th ed game, which was fun. Sure was nice to relax and be able to play again. Not sure what's happening next week - might take a vote or see who comes up with ideas first. I had a couple the following day, my creative juices are not totally frozen, just a bit slushy. Brain death today though, but then as I mentioned above I didn't really sleep. Until nearly getting up time of course, so everyone was running late.

Not sure what else I've done that's worthy of comment. We made a snowman of course. You have to do that at least once. Read Unseen Academicals - good, not his best but still good. Played Killer Bunnies and the Quest for the Magic Carrot for third and fourth time ever. I won the second time. It's a bit random and I can see why some people hate it for that, but I think it's fun. Maybe just because it involves killing bunnies. Meh, think that's it.

Looking back, looking forward

2009-12-31T09:33:00.002Z

Wish I could think of a less pretentious post title. Ho hum.

Three hundred and sixty five days ago I wrote this post in which I uncharacteristically made several specific resolutions s for 2009. Well.....yes. As is often the case, most of them fell by the wayside. Life, depression and anxiety got in the way: my exercise regime slowly died, the house is almost as much of a tip as it ever was (and now we have even more stuff) and the paucity of posts on this blog show how well I managed to keep writing. Money being tight and friends being busy means our monthly "dates" never really happened, and while I do try and play with the Terror as much as I can, I could (and probably should) do more. I did achieve one however - my thesis was finished and submitted after only a short extension. That's always something of an anti-climax though, and with no idea when the viva might be, it feels like the work of the last five years has just slipped into limbo.

Not sure what else I can say about 2009 - it's been a short year. Seriously, I'm not sure where most of it has gone. Eaten up by the thesis, I suppose. We did have a horrible period where two friends and my best friend's father died in the space of a few weeks. The theft of Daddy's 30th birthday present the day after we bought it was another low point. But I suppose on the whole it's not been a bad year. Our closest friends and family are well, despite some troubles, and while the black dog is hounding both of us still, the meds I'm on seem to be helping more than not (for now at least). The Terror is thriving at school. And my beloved came out as bi-gendered, and began to be more relaxed and happier as hirself.

So looking forward to the next year, it's tempting to once again say the usual things: I ought to exercise more, the house needs clearing out, I should start writing again. I really really really need to start looking for work. But after this year's failure, I've learned my lesson. I won't say "never again" because by this time next year I might well have changed my mind, but for 2010 at least I won't be making a list of goals that I will inevitably fail to achieve. I have only one resolution: just keep trying.

I hope that's enough.

Christmas, and all that

2009-12-26T15:32:00.002Z

Full of cold, but just about compos mentis enough to blog last few days.

We had a hurriedly arranged trip up to Durham on Christmas Eve to meet friends and exchange gifts. We prepared for the worst, and after a nice lunch and chat, set off home again early in case the roads iced over. Turned out to be a hassle free trip, and we probably could have popped in to see my parents after all, but never mind. We'll be off to see them in a couple of days or so.

Christmas Day itself got off to an early(ish) but relaxed start - the Terror was the most laid-back six year old ever and initially quite happy to just empty stocking and unwrap two presents before saving the rest for when we were at Nana's. As morning went on, he became more and more excited though, culminating in a tantrum once we got there as we didn't drop everything to open all the presents there and then. He calmed down enough to be allowed to open a few more, and while he was pleased enough with the presents from Santa which were mostly exactly what he asked for, it was the look on his face when he opened the Ben 10 Alien Force annual that really made the day for his daddy and me.

Lunch was fantastic, as always (Nana does really good roast dinners) and the boy even discovered he liked Brussels sprouts. Wine, food, more presents - yeah. All good fun. Then came the inevitable building of his Lego Power Miner Mine Mech and Clone Trooper Walker, while I mostly dozed under dual effect of wine and cold. My presents included Moon, Unseen Academicals and hydrophobic sand from my beloved, and the wonderous Grandville by Bryan Talbot, as well as too many other cool stuff to mention. And some chocolate, of course.

Then we all settled down to watch TV. Well, us adults did, the Terror kept playing with his Lego. The much-awaited animated adaption of The Gruffalo as as delightful as it ought to be - beautiful, sedate with flurries of action and simply impeccable voice casting. That was definitely a winner. The much-awaited Christmas special of Doctor Who was, by contrast.....odd. It lacked the bang of the usual specials, which may be no bad thing, but I felt it fell a bit short of the epic build-up it was presumably aiming for. This is not to say there weren't parts that had me squee-ing in delight - Wilf was magnificent as ever, John Simm sold the Master's insanity wonderfully and, well, Timothy Friggin' Dalton, people! The ending was certainly jaw-droppingly over-the-top if nothing else. But as a whole, it just seemed a bit...messy. The pacing felt wrong, the Doctor was too subdued and didn't really do anything, too many questions were asked with not many answers - which might all be attributed to being only the first of a two-parter, but it fills me with dread that next week's finale might also be too rushed and fail to satisfy. I suspect if this had been the penultimate episode of a series, I'd have been quite happy with it, but it actually felt overly long for the story that it did tell. A rewatch might also be in order. As is usual with new Who (and Russell T. Davies' specials in particular) opinion online seems to be heavily divided over whether it was any good or not. Usually, my opinion is "sure, flawed, but it was fun", and I think that was the problem - Wilf and Time Lords aside, it didn't feel fun. Of course that might have been the cold, and maybe if I rewatch it when I'm feeling better I might enjoy it more. Or maybe it just wasn't that good. Now I'm just rambling...

After heading home yesterday, and finally getting boy to bed, I gave parents a quick ring and then huddled down to watch Poirot. Beautiful, and wonderful acting again, but by heck, that was a convoluted plot. I never tire of watching David Suchet as Poirot though - he really is excellent - and John Hannah of course. Even though that, and the desert archaeology, did lead to me thinking of it as "Poirot in The Mummy".

This morning we all slept in, nearly nine o'clock before boy managed to wake me up. Lazed around all day, watching cartoons and reading Grandville - steampunk noir with anthropomorphic animals. "Awesome" doesn't quite do it justice. Plotwise it might be nothing exceptional (detective investigated murder and uncovers high-level conspiracy), but the War on Terror allegories add a nice topical layer that ties in beautifully to the Franco-Anglo antipathy in this alt-history where we lost the Napoleonic wars. Actually, does it count as alt-history if all the characters are animals? Bah - who cares! This book is just bursting with imagination and truly gorgeous visuals. And The Adventures of Tintin as the opium-dreams of washout druggie Snowy? I nearly wept with pleasure.

Built and played another of the Terror's haul from Nana: the Lego game Lava Dragon. The boy was a bit disappointed the dragon didn't really play a part, but it's a neat little game with the wonderful mechanic that you build the dice as you play. Main criticism is that it's a bit too short, and if someone gets ahead then they're likely to win. Both these could be dealt with by building a bigger mountain to play on though....the true joy of these Lego games is the easy customisation!

So that's been my festive season so far. Sorry for the rambly post, trying to work on getting better at reviewing stuff. Hoping to watch Hamlet, not sure if boy will keep quiet for it though. Maybe I'll post a rambling review of that too....

Time to stop caring and do another blog post

2009-12-13T10:16:00.002Z

It probably won't be any good. Not least because I drank too much cider last night and am feeling rather ill this morning. Despite having got up at half seven, I'm only just starting to wake up now, at gone ten. Was a good night though, usual suspects plus one for booze and games. I don't think I did or said anything stupid, which is always a bonus, and hopefully didn't bore people too much. I do talk utter garbage when I've been drinking.

Nearly Christmas and shopping for presents is just about done. Need to get a few more for the boy, have given up trying to think of something else for SO. Another week of school and then trying to arrange times to visit friends and family for catching up and exchanging presents. I'm deliberately trying not to stress about it all too much and mostly succeeding. That'll be the apathy showing through then.

Back on antidepressants after visit to doctor. Last few weeks have just been getting worse and worse: even when I've not been actually reduced to tears, I've just been sitting around bored and unable to motivate myself to do anything. Just a general feeling of despair that this (housework, tv, game being highlight of the week) is going to be the rest of my life, along with the usual lack of confidence in myself to do anything better. Oh and the crush thing. Breaking my heart on a daily basis. No amount of telling myself not to be stupid will make it go away, but that doesn't stop me from trying. Bah. Stupid emotions. Making life complicated. Suppose I can only hope that the meds help enough for me to find motivation to do things and slowly sort stuff out. Of course, with me being depressed, hope is pretty hard to find, but I'm trying to keep things in perspective.

So there, a blog post. Sure I had more to say. Will probably regret saying what I have. But this time I'm not going to delete it, I'm going to publish it. Like so.

Song Fu

2009-12-01T13:36:00.004Z

Been lazing around, being a bit ill, not really up to much. The usual but with added coughing. Anyway, after I accidentally gave all you loyal readers false hope by not realising re-setting up Twitterfeed would probably repost my latest blog post to Twitter, I thought I'd better do an actual blog post. See? I do think about you. Just not in a creepy way. Honest.

Ahem.

Anyways....let me tell you about Song Fu. This is a music competition arranged by Quick Stop Entertainment that I first became aware of a year ago when a friend (of the "larp friend" variety, i.e. someone I've probably never actually spoken to because I'm so gorram shy) called Joe Lamb begged people for votes. (Joe's stuff is quite good, you can listen to a bunch of it here.) The idea is to promote and inspire creativity in under-recognised musicians by challenging them to write and record a song on a specific idea (last time included "using only ten words" and "happiness" as challenges) in a week and visitors to the website vote for their favourites. (I'm rubbish at explaining stuff, I hope that vaguely made sense and wasn't too inaccurate.)

So, if you like quirky independent music then you should definitely go along and listen to the latest offerings. Voting is now open on Round 2, which is all about numbers, and while obviously I'd encourage you to vote for Joe "Covenant" Lamb's song "2", I'll also point out Jason Morris's geektastic "Natural 18" and Edric Haleen's "Zero Point Nine (Ad Infinitum)" which tackles a misunderstood issue close to my mathematical heart (although the pedant in me winces at the use of the word "paradox"). Lex Vader's offering is all about The Prisoner - what's not to love about that? So go, listen, vote and tell all your friends to do the same.

Now I have to go find some way to stop my toes freezing off. Be seeing you.

Just Another Blog Post

2009-11-13T11:51:00.003Z

It's been a while. So, what have I been up to? Um...not much really. Apart from the usual moping around, not doing enough housework and whinging about it all on Twitter.

A Situation has cropped up which is currently making our social life both a bit more packed and slightly more awkward to arrange. It involves one close friend being pretty depressed and torn-up and another being bouncing-off-the-roof happy, so for us stuck in the middle its a very mixed feeling. Trying not to worry too much about the first one and mostly succeeding - seems I'm too selfish to fret about another person's feelings for too long. Got enough of my own to put up with. Stupid feelings.

Finally got round to reading Making Money. It's good. (This is why I don't try and write reviews....) Also read Locke & Key: Crown of Shadows #1 - I've pretty much given up buying comics monthly due to money issues, but Locke & Key, along with X-Factor is something I can't wait for. Wondering whether to keep going with my subscription to New Scientist as I often end up reading the articles online before I even get round to breaking it out of the wrapping. Would be greener and save me money, but I'm ridiculously old-fashioned and prefer reading hard copies. And I like my money going towards the publication/production of things I enjoy. I think I'd rather drop the Radio Times, but we actually use that. Sometimes.

What else? Oh, I'm addicted to Drench, probably because its the only game I've found in a long time that doesn't frustrate me (as I suspect sometimes it's just impossible, so it's not my fault if I fail). A friend linked to this site, so I spent too much time yesterday thinking about gender and sexual identity again, trying to figure out who/what/why I am. (Conclusion: I don't know! Does it matter?) On a not-really-related topic, I finally found and started reading GeekDad and wondered why it had taken me so long. I've all but given up on writing that blog post explaining my work - it just suddenly seems like too much effort for not enough gain, and I don't know how much I can explain without it getting boring or too complicated. PLUS I'm probably oversimplifying for those of you who might actually be interested in the maths. So, yeah. Maybe one day, but not anytime soon.

And on the subject of writing, Chuck Wendig (yes, him again) has a whole host of tips on writing (including the wonderful "How (Not) To Create Characters") which I make the mistake of reading, which makes me want to start writing again. By which I mean it again makes me want to start writing - I don't think I've ever really had a sustained period wherein I actually wrote. I've always been more of a wannabe than an actual writer: I like the idea of writing more than the actual doing. I realise I'm hardly unique in this matter. But I lack enough hobbies (it seems) so my mind keeps going back to it. However, these days I don't even get the ideas (or if I do I quickly forget or try and work them into my current game). The last couple of snippets of fiction I wrote (and posted here) weren't really stories, they were yet more of me trying to explain how I feel and wrapping it up in lies and fantasies to protect it against outside interference (the "it's only a story" defence). And I don't think I can really write about, well, me: my life, my current crush, my friends. Not without upsetting people anyway! And not without me spending even more time thinking about things I don't really want to think about. I want a distraction from all that, but it clutters up my thoughts so much I can't seem to break free.

I've spent too long writing this, too. I've been moaning about having a bit of a cold, but I seem to be better now than last night so really should stop lounging around and get on with that damned housework.

Emo

2009-10-29T21:15:00.004Z

I appear to be in a big "what's the point of it all" phase. Really would have thought I'd have grown out of that by now, but no. Seems growing out of things is all a big lie.

So, yeah, I know - "the little things". I'm trying to enjoy or at least do things and keep myself busy in the hope the black dog gets bored and wanders off but it doesn't seem to last and with the ongoing imagination failure I've been having too it's been getting harder and harder to think of new distractions. With my SO being stressed and similarly struggling to keep hir head above water, and this week being half term and thus having a six-year-old to entertain, somehow, I've pretty much failed to keep up the pretence of being ok. Or, at least, am in the process of failing.

Hence this blog post is here to serve simply as an apology: should I inflict my miserable self-pitying wailing on you IRL or via Twitter, I'm sorry. Hopefully it's just a blip and I'll certainly feel ashamed of myself later.

Lost

2009-10-14T13:33:00.003+01:00

In meaning, if not time and space.

Still working on that "more about my work" post. Pictures being a problem. I'm terrible at pictures. Even ones with just straight lines in them. It's this computer malarky - I'm just not that great with technology. Doors for example. Doors give me great trouble, especially car doors.....

I digress.

Lost. Yeah, I still feel fairly lost. Within spitting distance of actually submitting, which isn't quite the end of it but is a huge hurdle. Still no idea what I'm going to do for the rest of my life. Being a housewife hardly suits me, I'm rubbish at it. I've tried very hard to do housework properly but I mostly end up giving in and just doing the bare minimum to get by. Too lazy. And I get so bored and lonely. I suppose there's people I could talk to via internets but most of them are busy, and the ones who aren't I don't know that well and wouldn't know what to say. Not that I know what to say to the people I know well either mind. I'm pretty rubbish at small talk that isn't just surreal rambling. Fortunately, some people like that. Or they're just being very polite.

Was there a point to all this? Probably not. I just felt the need to write something to distract from my failure to write what I intended to. Inside I'm just a bundle of emotional turmoil and slowly coming to the conclusion that I'm not reacting the way I expected to because, shock, horror, I might actually be growing up. Or possibly I just don't care anymore. Which may or may not be the same thing. Either way, I'm not sure it's a good thing.

I hope that doesn't make any sense. I probably need to be more subtle in future.

Um...so not much has actually been happening lately and I'm sorry for wasting your time with this no-content post. Assuming you've actually read all this. If you skipped to the end, don't bother going back and starting from the beginning, m'kay?

Reading, links and stuff

2009-10-03T15:05:00.000+01:00

Ok, let's try. Been a long time, still not up to composing post on my work, so a bit more of a random update. Chuck Wendig refers to this as "painting with shotguns". My attempt is probably even less coherent than that.

First, life update. Very very nearly finished thesis. Should probably send latest draft to supervisor to have him go over it again. Kind of scared by how close I am. Have mostly been filling my days doing little bits of housework and trying not to cry. Yes, the depression is still there. Not quite worked up to going back to GP - not really sure what to ask him to try next. Not sure whether situation now is better, worse or the same as when I was on meds. Something to mull over before deciding how best to manage this illness.

The Terror is nearly six and we've mostly organised his birthday party. Go us. Need to chase up a few people to see if they're coming or not and actually pay for it this week. Then sort out his present.

Our TV broke. We're getting a spare one from my granddad next time my parents come down, but we've been coping ok for now. Annoying that it happened right at the time the new series of Peep Show had just started, and FlashForward and True Blood...Still, means I've been doing more reading instead.

Finished Lucifer, which built to a fantastic finish and then carried on for another volume - not that any of it was bad or unwelcome, just not quite hitting the highs of the previous books. Mike Carey is definitely on my list of "buy more" writers (the only reason he's not on my "buy all" list is because he's so damned prolific). Also read last "proper" Changeling: the Lost book - Swords at Dawn (there's the pdf only Goblin Markets which I'm sorely tempted by despite not usually buying pdfs). I love that whole gameline. I have so so many ideas for Changeling games I could probably run nothing else for the rest of my life (but my players might have other plans). The story-lite I posted earlier today was probably as much influenced by Changeling as by my own stupid obsession. Another notable read this week was Umbrella Academy: Dallas. There aren't really the words. If you haven't experienced the sheer genius, the wonderful surreal madness that is Umbrella Academy, then go read it now. You won't regret it.

No, seriously, go read it now. It's much more interesting than this post.

And finally I'll finish by rounding up some of the stuff I've found (or rather, had pointed out to me) on the internet lately. All shared on Google Reader, so you've probably seen it already. There's the cool stuff: LEGO chrome bricks, maps warped by population density, the Ig-Nobel prizes and XKCD being awesome as always. There's the serious stuff: a petition to the UK gov. allow "other" as an official option when recording gender. And there's both: LEGO's 2010 calendar with all profits going to the National Autistic Society. I think that's it for now.

Ok, my next task is to write the next step of the explanation of my work. I suspect I'll fail and not blog again for a month or two. Until then....

[Short-short story] Incubus

2009-10-03T10:44:00.005+01:00

He haunts my dreams. I don't recall for how long. Just that at some point, he's always been there. Handsome, with urbane wit and a sly smile, I fell for him instantly. Hard. There was no seduction involved and none needed; the attraction was too strong to be resisted and with the conversation-less ease that exists only in dreams, I went from seeing him, to being in his arms, to being in his bed. I was his.

Each night he returns. The dreams started getting longer, wilder, more intense, and I started waking up exhausted. I'd think about him more and more during the day, ignoring more and more of my life to lose myself in my fantasies. Thoughts of him lay heavy on my mind and I longed to see him again, welcoming each night as a chance to return to his embrace.

Now he haunts my days as well. I barely need to close my eyes to see his face, his voice answers unspoken thoughts, and I can almost feel his touch as if he were right beside me even now. And as much as I long to be with him, to feel his soft skin against mine, I know I need to find a way to escape.

Because I'm starting to get afraid. He's more arrogant, more demanding, crueler. As he pushes his way into my waking life, he becomes more confident, more eager, hungrier. I don't know what he wants and I daren't ask, but I have worked out what he's using me for and I'm scared that the right thing to do is to stop him. Scared because I don't think I can. I don't think I have the strength to tear myself away, to ignore him and push him away. To forget.

I love him so very very much.

Er...

2009-09-15T17:18:00.001+01:00

...yeah. Not dead. Think that's it.

Epiphany

2009-08-24T11:50:00.001+01:00

Every day is a succession of suppressed urges.

That's what it is.

Meh

2009-08-05T08:41:00.002+01:00

Still can't think of anything worthwhile to say. Or even different from "life is same as ever". So tired so much of the time - had blood test but that came back fine so it's not anemia. Could be side-effect/withdrawal from meds (cut dose, going to come off). So bored most of the time as well. Occasional bouts of happiness or contentment which just don't last anywhere near long enough. Have just lost interest in most of my life. Hopefully PhD will be over soon. Then I'll have less stress for a bit. Maybe I'll even get round to blogging more.

Idea fail

2009-07-19T21:26:00.001+01:00

I've not been doing too well at this writing thing have I?

Gender, and other things

2009-06-29T01:20:00.001+01:00

So time for my inevitable post about gender identity. Been a while brewing, but probably not any better for it. Was the topic of conversation of a sort the other night and today (well, yesterday technically) a friend gave me a "trans ally" badge (or "not a jerk" badge as someone put it).So now is as good as ever.

For those you don't know (and I doubt anyone actually reading this doesn't) my beloved partner/fiance/baby-father is bi-gender (the hyphen is useful, or people might think one if talking about Blefuscudians or something). As sie puts it - somedays she's a girl, other days he's a boy. Gendered pronouns get a bit confusing as one would imagine - several people (myself included, unfortunately) tend to default to male pronouns (having been used to knowing him as male for so long), others default to female which she would probably prefer. And often we use gender neutral pronouns (specifically "sie" and "hir"), which I will use in this blog post at least.

And to be perfectly honest, the pronouns issue is the biggest problem for me. We always used to joke that sie was more of a girl than I was and that we got the gender roles the wrong way round in our house. The revelation (to both of us, as sie told me as soon as sie got hir own head sorted) a few years ago didn't really change the way I viewed hir or felt about hir. I think that in itself took me by surprise more - I had the feeling that I ought to be more bothered or at least have some opinion. But no, it was just a "ok then" and some effort to try and remember and adjust my language accordingly. When sie "came out" more recently, I was nervous for hir, but as more and more people were told and accepted it just as naturally as I had, and hir confidence and general happiness increased I was happier too and brimming with pride that sie'd overcome a major obstacle (more internal than external) and was becoming the person sie always should have been. Even the name change wasn't as much of a problem as I'd anticipated, and our son just accepted it in the way kids just do. He's less accepting of the idea that his daddy might be a girl occasionally, but then he also says boys can't have long hair, so what does he know? He's five - he's still learning about this gender thing.

But then, aren't we all? Gender isn't about stereotypes after all. While my beloved delights in nail varnish and can chat happily with workmates about clothes, I really don't grok the whole make-up thing at all. And, sure, clothes can be pretty, and so can jewellry, but ultimately I just want something to keep me warm/cover me up so I can go out in public. The only clothes I'm likely to get excited about are Last Exit To Nowhere t-shirts or the like. It was my fiance who started me wearing skirts and tighter fitting clothes, and admitting being a girl wasn't all bad. I think if not for hir I'd still be wearing geeky t-shirts and tracksuit bottoms. And for every "typical woman" behaviour I engage in, I bet I can find a "typical male" one as well. I don't really "forget" I'm a woman, I just joke I do, but I've never really considered it an important part of my identity, and hearing feminists talk makes me wonder if I'm missing something. Yet apparently I'm a cisgendered woman. I see no reason why I shouldn't be.

And I have no idea what it really is about. I'm hardly an expert and am not in the right frame of mind at the moment to even begin to guess. Because really gender is just another label, and labels are neither a good nor a bad thing inherently but exist mostly for societal convenience. Mostly, but not exclusively. Some people, like my SO, and to a lesser extent myself, feel the need to apply labels to things, including themselves, in order to better understand them. And of course one always want to be able to understand as much as possible, especially oneself. So labels like gender, sexuality, ethnicity etc are as much about a person defining themself as declaring "This is who I am" as they are about society or PTB categorizing people and declaring "This is who you are". Which is why a limited set of labels, defined by the relevant authority, is a bad thing. Which is why binary gender is a bad thing. And forcing people to choose one, when they'd much rather choose both, or neither, or something else entirely, is not only a bad thing from a personal liberty point of view, it also misses out on potentially important information about the sheer variety of people that can and do exist. (I hope that makes sense.)

I drifted off-topic slightly I think. It's late, I'm getting tired as the coffee wears off, and I doubt I really have anything useful left to say. My point was intended to be that I don't judge people by labels, most people I know don't either, and that a person doesn't really change just because the label changes. I call a person by the name they want to be known by as that is the polite thing to do. Likewise, I refer to people by the pronoun set they choose, the title they choose, whatever, because that is simply the polite thing to do. I accept that people have the right to be who they want to be, regardless of whether I understand why they feel that way, and get rather angry at other people who think it's any of their business. I guess that's why I qualified for a "not a jerk" badge.

And just because I muttered a bit about labels - here's the list I think apply to me. I'm a cisgendered, heteroflexible, heterosocial, atheistic, liberal, social phobic, chronic depressive, female geek. Although once again I almost forgot the "female" part. Maybe I do forget I'm a woman occasionally.

--
tl;dr - gender is confusing, people are who they are.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

An Idiot's Guide to My Work (Part One)

2009-06-15T10:32:00.005+01:00

Idiot's Guide as in a Guide written by an Idiot, you understand. I don't expect it to be helpful to other Idiots.

So I'm busy avoiding writing a thesis entitled Rational R-matrices and the Exceptional Lie Algebras. (Actually I'm not being too successful at the avoidance: I might even be nearly finished. In a month or two.) As "algebra" is a word that seems to make most people's eyes glaze over, I think I'll leave all the maths for a bit and talk instead about particle physics. But not the hard bits, so don't worry.

Prevailing scientific wisdom states that everything is made up of small particle-like things (only particle-like because of quantum, y'see). I'm not going to delve into it, because it's largely irrelevant and I don't really understand it all myself. In fact, all I really need is for you to believe that people might be interested in what particles do and how they interact, like in places like CERN where they smash particles into one another to see what they get.

Now, as theorists, we try and say something about what happens when particles collide like this. In other words, we try and describe the "Something happens" bit. (We use Maths! for this of course. In particular, we model the particles as existing in some vector space and look at algebras acting on that space. Which algebra we pick dictates how the particles can interact.) There are lots of different possible ways particles could interact, but we're interested not only in sensible ways, but in easy-to-describe ways and want to end up with maths we can actually work with. (This is the big secret of science, I suppose. We pick a theory not only because it works [sort of] but because it's understandable and easy to make predictions with. Shh, don't tell anyone.) A particularly nice set of rules for particle interaction are what we call integrable theories - amongst other things these say we need only consider two particles at a time.

So we look at a situation where two particles go in, and two come out. The thing that describes what happens in the middle is what physicists called a scattering matrix - or S-matrix for short.

This has to satisfy various conditions for the theory to be integrable, but the only one I'm really interested in is the consistency condition for three particle interactions. Because we are only looking at two particles at a time, if three particles collide we split that up into three sets of two-particle interactions. The consistency condition is that it doesn't matter what order we do it in:

This is called the Yang-Baxter Equation and my thesis pretty much consists of constructing and checking solutions to it. Now the eagle-eyes among you will have noticed my thesis title mentions R-matrices, not S-matrices - that's because I'm a mathematician, and not really interested in scattering matrices at all. Fooled you! But you can chalk it up to historical reasons and a difference in terminology if you like, and still think about particles interacting whenever I bleat on about R-matrices.

Ok, that's Part One done. Not sure when (if ever) I'll get round to doing Part Two - I have a thesis to avoid finish writing after all.

Poll results and GEF

2009-05-26T17:21:00.002+01:00

Ok, first off - poll's over and it looks like Maths/Science/Technology is the winner, closely followed by Parenting and Gender/Sexual Identity. So I better start thinking of things along those lines to blog about. Mental Illness, New/Politics and Tanks might get a token mention at some point.

But first - my weekend. The three of us went off to the Great Erdrejan Fayre at Locko Park. The weather stayed surprisingly dry but a bit too hot for the likes of us. We decided to let the Terror get involved with the kiddie plot and he apparently behaved himself (at least we had no complaints and he was good when I tagged along for the final encounter). He spent most of the rest of weekend following one group of children or another around and disobeying my orders to tell me where he was going before he went, but I think we struck a reaonable balance between allowing him his freedom and keeping an eye on him for safety. I think I missed him more than he missed me, anyway!

So I spent a fair amount of time in camp where he could find me if he needed to, but with nothing really to do. A bit of time on the gate, a lot of time dozing in the shade....obviously I did some healing, and even got to help out in a rite which was a bit scary (not least when we all got Decayed). But mostly I was an observer again - I do seem to treat larp as more of a spectator sport but there is still the possibility of my confidence growing and getting involved I suppose.

My SO had a good time, if being too busy to do the one thing sie wanted to do this weekend. There were some tears and snappiness on Monday morning as I stupidly forgot to take my meds and was stressed about packing up, but other than that I think I was mostly ok, if a little bored at times. Kept looking round traders thinking of stuff to get for my next character - but I doubt changing character would really get me more involved as it's still my shyness I need to overcome. On the plus side, we didn't drink much so came home with almost as much booze as we left with!

Ok, next blog post will be about....maths. Or science. Or technology. Or something.

New poll!

2009-05-18T19:47:00.003+01:00

Well, I do keep meaning to write more and write more about stuff that isn't jusy how crap I'm feeling. But I think I need some incentive so I've created a poll which you should be able to see over there ----> just below the About Me bit. As I know at least - what, two, three? - people read this, I'll be disappointed if no-one or only Tom answers. As I'm sure you'll notice by the square boxes it's a "select as many options as you like" style poll, and feel free to suggest other topics by commenting on this post.

Then you might just have to poke me to actually write something, but we'll cross that bridge when forced to by the advancing tanks.