August Life

First of all, apologies for a couple of weeks absence. Empire as always was fun, but draining and there was so much politics going on this time that I was busy the entire weekend despite planning on having a more relaxed weekend, but that’s always how it goes.

Since then, I’ve hit an energy low, culminating in being ill and off work yesterday. It was one of those things where you have low level background illness, but you have a full weekend of stuff lined up, so you just ignore the illness, and then as soon as you stop it catches up to you and slams into you.

On the other hand, I have been doing a lot of cool things, so I’ll just catch you up with some of them.

Photo Credit – Charlotte Moss

Empire

So, only a three day event but that just meant everything was packed into a shorter time frame:

• Started the weekend with a combat linear for my mages. Got to beat up an ice giant, and we rocked it!
• Got invited to a banquet in the summer realm (which was really tasty roast)
• Found out there what the linear had allowed an Eternal to do and caused drama – whoops!
• Culminated in one of the Eternals getting super mad (that part wasn’t me) and flipped her food across the entire table!
• Record length conclave sessions
• Didn’t die during battle
• Attempted to join mage coven and was prevented by yet more drama
• A meteor is crashing into the Empire and one of my nation persuaded conclave to vote to crash it on our territory, striaght onto the Vallorn – TERRIBLE IDEA
• Spent a good day running around undoing that decisions
• Got that decision undone and it is now crashing somewhere much more sensible

So yeah, that was an interesting weekend. Bring on event 4. See above for a really cool photo taken by the brilliant Charlotte Moss of me striding through the forest. As far as I remember this was at the start of the battle on Saturday and the guy that you can just see under the tree tripped and hurt his ankle so I was making sure he was okay before going back to join in the battle.

Adara

Long Weekend

So I had a five day weekend the next weekend. I was supposed to be going somewhere, but due to drama and funding issues, cancelled those plans and had a lovely five day weekend just relaxing at home. Boyfriend was also off, which was nice, although his cats were a nightmare, bless their little derp faces.

Mostly what happened then was a lot of roleplaying. Monday was Princess, and Princess continues to be great. The GM is encouraging me to write a lot of fan fiction about it and my character, and I am happy to supply him with that. I have my special snowflake thing and a friend who’s visiting for the entire month came in and played a DPC (directed player character, somewhere between an NPC and PC) to help us with plot. It was fun!

Friday we then started up D&D again!!! The last time we played that was in January sometime, and we had the break because we hit level 11 and changed tiers. Admittedly we filled the gap with a Star Wars game, which was fun, but I had missed D&D so! Playing my hot-headed Ardent, making the bad decisions, getting talked down and round into the sensible thing and then running off straight into the terrible mist of death was so much fun. That, and our paragon path powers are amazing!

NAMA August Graders

Last Weekend

So, Saturday during the day I clean the flat because people will be coming round and I’ve been putting it off for weeks and weeks. That was exhausting, but did mean that I didn’t have to stress about it when I went to my party in the evening. We saw Suicide Squad – enjoyable but messy is my official verdict – and then went for Nandos which is always fun in a large group. then back to mine for board games.

Sunday had to get up early so that I could go and grade for my next Taekwondo belt. As you can see from the photo above, I passed – First Class Pass! Although I was so nervous (and this is the ill as well) that I didn’t sleep the night before and my instructor said that she could tell I was practically terrified because when I did my Kata (set routine of moves) I was so wooden. Admittedly, I was, because brain weasels kept telling me I was failing. Silly brain weasels, I did fine. I now have an orange belt.

Straight after that I went to IoD to roleplay my changeling and werewolf. I was so tired I gave the last game of the day, Mage, a skip. And since I was grading I turned up late to the first game. But that was fine, that character’s a bitch so I can be exhausted in character and just avoid responsibility and doing things. Werewolf was the issue as the STs once again find new and interesting ways to cause my character feelings and yank her chain around. She went from confused to lamenting to lust to terror to rage to determined to full on lethal damage and hurt to extraordinarily upset and convinced that she’s got to break up with her boyfriend. Seriously. All in one game. I love the STs. And hate them. Mostly love though.

Birthday Dragon

This Week

Of course because I was putting off my ill when I did all that, waking up on Monday was fun and after calling in ill I spent most of the day sleeping. Sleeping is great. Eating not so much. Back in work today but my boss has said if I feel particularly bad I can probably go home. Hooray for summer holidays and college being so quiet it could be called dead.

Tomorrow I do have the day off though because it’s my birthday! Hoping that if I take it really easy today then I can enjoy myself tomorrow, but actually I don’t have to leave the flat and I have some presents to open and I can have a super chill day, which’ll be nice. The legion pre-patch is live and awesome and I suspect that my partner is upgrading my computer with a couple of new bits as my present so I’ll probably play that. Might also see if I can get the N64 working and blast from the past with Pokemon Snap. Maybe some sushi. It’ll be chill and great.

I also have some fun things lined up for this weekend, so as long as this illness starts going away, I should be having a pretty good week overall 🙂

Emotional rollercoaster

Death is harder on those who are left behind     – Robert La Fosse, Nothing to Hide

My changeling character is a lively, enthusiastic, bubbly, life and soul of the party kind of girl. There’s an innocence and sweetness about her which never fails to bring a smile to other people, and at the national a couple of weekend ago, I got complimented about the way that I roleplayed her, and had people telling me how much they enjoyed it.

We had our local game yesterday though, and for once I didn’t get to play her as I usually do. Not even as the slightly confused person she can sometimes be, or slightly sad when she learns an unpleasant truth. No, yesterday we learnt that my character’s husband, and another prominent member of the summer court, were dead. They died taking down a True Fae, killing him so that our freehold and Suffolk’s could live in peace and the war could end.

So as soon as the one member of the summer court who was well enough to turn up to the gathering delivered the news, my character immediately shuts down, picks up for a frantic half hour of, “No he can’t be dead, he can’t be.” Sees his grave, and then immediately goes into a fugue state where nothing really gets through to her.

(I’ll make it extra clear at this point that this is all in character in the game that we play, and no actually people have been hurt, just their character and some imaginary NPCs)

And you know what? It was so hard to play her as a depressed person. And it was completely out of the blue (well, not completely, out of character I knew that they had gone to fight him, but not that they had died doing it), so I just had to make it up as I go along and it was actually one of the hardest thing that I have ever had to roleplay, just sitting there and staring into space and not reacting to anything. I did decide to wander off, back to his grave about halfway through the game, hoping other characters would chase me. They did in the end, but not immediately like I thought they would, as they kind of went “We’ll just give her some space.”.

It’s great, because my character has been after her independence for ages now, trying to prove that she can make her own decisions, and she can be a grown up and look after herself, but then this happens, and she basically shuts down so that she CAN’T look after herself, but people are still trying to let her, not realising that all the will and effort has gone out of her because she still doesn’t believe that he’s really really dead.

And after the game ended, I started crying, because playing a grief stricken person is hard, and all the emotion I had just welled up in me and I started sobbing whilst still going around and hugging people and it was just so emotional the whole game, and I don’t think I’m over it this morning.

I love story telling, whether it’s in a novel, or in a role playing game, but that doesn’t mean that it is always easy! The one thing it is though? It is always rewarding. And the grief is hardly going to be contained in this one game. To a future filled with more drama and roleplay!

26 – Tears

The castle was empty, decayed, after the war had taken it’s toll. The walls were ruined and keep barely habitable any more. It was deserted, apart from one.

The ground was hard and dusty, but she didn’t care. She only had eyes for the piles of stones that were in front of her. A pile of stones and a crude headstone were all that were left to mark the place where he had stood, so proud, and so strong, guarding the Freehold that had meant so much to him.

‘It was the death he would have wanted.’

‘He died defending what he loved.’

‘He loved you too much to take you into that danger.’

What were words to her? Words didn’t change anything. Words couldn’t bring her husband back.

She reached out, with one shaking hand, and placed in on a stone.

One tear leaked from her eye, and dropped onto the dusty floor. Then there was another, a matching pair of dark dots on the floor. Slowly at first, and then in rivers, the tears leaked from her eyes, and sobs erupted from her chest. She doubled over, her hands over her face, sobbing and crying as the grief overwhelmed her.

He was gone, and now the world was wrong.

 

– For Zephyr & James

Day 28 — This year, in great detail

Well. This is not going to be in great detail at all. I keep telling you I have a bad memory, don’t I.

January onwards I was still at university, doing third year things like my dissertation and modules and things, although I only had one module plus other work, it was pretty sweet. I was still doing my blog back in January so there might be some things on there and…oh! Hey, I just remembered. Finally, a use for facebook timeline! Right, so looking back, I was blogging, eating sushi, and getting drunk at something. IoD was still really new at that point as well, so we were setting up things in that. Not much else.

February: There was snow, a friend was moving to another university and was horrified to discover they have no games society, so we suggested she start one. I was doing ref things for LARP, doing my dissertation in the library, went to Nandos at some point, bought plant vs zombies in a steam sale and went to Animus soc which was it’s usual fun self.

March: Lots more IoD and shopping for IoD. I really should stop shopping for characters. More essay writing, because 5000-6000 words is a hell of  lot for a scientist! The shipping wall was born and thus started a run of angst since I wasn’t allowed to see it. Went to Great Yarmouth with my dad, had the 24 hours roleplay and stayed up for 39 hours to enjoy it. Dyed my hair red, again. More dissertation (screw references!) which I actually finished this month and then even more IoD. I have an obsession with it.

April: More IoD, that’s just standard. Though there was that awesome comic Irina drew about us. We managed to kill deathwing in world of warcraft. Bad weather in england – shocker.  I finished university work and started preparing for exams and for some reason which isn’t explained my boyfriend was awesome.

May: Revision was the first thing this month! Followed by IoD of course, although there was that utterly annoying national plot in changeling. More classic british weather. Then i did my exams and was free of the education system. Then there was a birthday party.

June:  I was a bit ill, and I think there may have been some sort of national that happened, either tha or leading up to it. there was talk of requiem at least. Oh yeah, this was the month where there was that mouse in my toaster. I got rid of the toaster and refused to open the new one until we moved house. Moved house and everything was good, even though I hate packing and stuff.

July: Has a visit from a friend, there was summer time fun in the garden, found a hedgehog in the garage. graduated. That was a big thing. British summer hit and I started to melt. I went with ym boyfriend to meet his nephew for the first time, and got some incredible cute pictures.

August: I rediscovered scrambled egg on toast. Hmm, might have to go make now as that sounds delicious. Kept leaving my facebook logged in around my friends. Lost my purse, found ym purse, but then that started off the whole chain of having to replace my debit card. More IoD.  Had a birthday at which I got very drunk and passed the rule that I am never allowed to drink wine. Ever. Walking dead game started up. I started applying for jobs and job seekers, those little bundles of joy. Moved again in my current house which is full of lovely people.

September: Applied for a job tht was door to door sales in disguise and was not impressed, but at lest I got to play with kittens. Debit card arrived. Went to my first adult event when two of my friends got married. It was an amazing wedding. Also went to her hen party before the wedding. Cineman doughnuts are delicious. There was a new expansion of WoW and I played the crap out of it, still am. And then there was the best shades downtime forever.

October: More job searching, job seekers and IoD in general. A good day happened as well, which was a surprise at the time. Apparently a rather boring month other than that, so I have to suppose that I was playing a lot of WoW.

November: Fireworks and NaNoWriMo started November. There was a lot of shades thing going on around the game.  More IoD and a day out in London with my mother which was awesome and amazing and I discovered tapas. Had my first job interview, which I didn’t get, but the interview was good experience. Broke my laptop and then got a netbook from a friend which I fixed up with help from my housemate. Well, he did most of it actually. NaNoWriMo was great as well, I won this year.

December: Christmas thinking, I learnt to knit to knit my presents for this year and broke reality by knitting a Möbius strip. Yeah, I’m not sure how that happened either. Did a christmas spring clean and realised that my housemates manage  to shove a lot of crap under the sofa’s, although I too m guilty of that. Went home for christmas, decorated the christmas tree, bent a spoon with my mind (and a mixer). Had about four roast over the period of a week, watched Dr Who, and cleaned out my room at home.

So actually, with the help of facebook, I can tell you about my year in detail. 🙂

Day 22 — A website

Well, just give me something very open ended will you.

So there’s the usual emails, facebook, tumblr, this website. All those ones which you usually have open in the background just in case something happens on them. Google is obviously a frequented site, as well as wowhead for all my wow questions, wiki’s for various information on everything I do. currently on the Lost wiki since all the quotes and rumours from sunday’s game have gone up and they are amazing! Also have a whole list of web comics I read (OOTS, Girl genius, Gunnerkrig, Grrrl Power, Slightly Dammed, Girls with slingshots, Shadowbinders, xkcd, Magellan and more.). Hmm, lets see if my bookmarks have anything extra special in there…

Hmm, not really. Lots of individual tumblr links, but everyone knows about tumblr.

Oh, there was this website I was pointed to yesterday that all my friends know about. Lets see if I can remember what it was called.It’s something to do with white wolf world of darkness, about a vault like area 52, where they lock up all the bad and dangerous things. It sounds really cool but I can’t seem to find it. Ah well.

The website address I’ll give you is http://wodindex.wikispaces.com/Complete+Changeling+the+Lost because I use it all the time. Because I am a geek and love changeling.

Day 20 — A hobby of yours

Well this one is easy, roleplaying. It takes up most of my social time, I have to say, and generally keeps me sane.

What I am in at the moment. Couple of tabletop games, Rogue Trader, Second Sight and Mirrors. I’m also thinking of running my own tabletop game, and seeing how I like GMing and STing.

Live games, there is Shades of Norwich Requiem, Mage, Sabbat, IoD Mage, IoD Changeling at the moment. No more prospects thank god because I would need to find some more time to play them. Although they are nice and spaced out.

LARP is on Sunday’s, still going, still plodding along.

I like roleplaying, it allows me to be things that I’m usually not, and there is so much possibility, and we sometimes have some emotional things going on, like a scene we just did yesterday for Changeling, which is going to be a good thing to think how to roleplay through and how my character would react to everything that happened. It’s going to make the game on Sunday great 😀

April

Well, exactly a month since I last used this blog. Oops. In my defence, I discovered tumblr and created an IC tumblr account for my changeling character and it’s freaking awesome. And then I had work, and life stuff, and I am just a little bit lazy as well.

Easter is going alright, I didn’t go back home since I got distracted and I only had three weeks to do everything and I still haven’t done everything because everything is a lot. Stupid work. Found out that the presentation I have to give is on Monday, which is a lot sooner than I thought it would be, which is annoying. And I can’t seem to get into the groove of working today. Don’t know what it is because I’ve been doing awesome at revising all week, but today it’s just not coming to me. I have the weekend as well, but I know that I’m just wasting away today and it’s irritating, but I can’t focus and grrrrrrr.

On the plus side the gaming in my life is going very very well. The second sight mortals game has started up again and we has two sessions last week and a session tomorrow and I have my innocents game tonight. Might have to skip LARP on sunday though if I don’t progress on the presentation enough. Or just take it with me, or something. I am as obsessed as ever with changeling, and determined to lose at least a little bit of weight before the next game. If I cut out all the bad stuff I keep eating and then do some exercise then that should be a good start, and save me money as well. Sweets add up after all.

Finding a job is annoying. Need to go into Employability when term starts up again next week. Graduating. I keep thinking about it. It’s a funny thing. I don’t want the uni life to stop, but I’ve realised that my life would hugely benefit from more structure than it has now. And I do want a job after I graduate, it’s just a case of what I can find. Opened a fortune cookie the other day. It said “Your next interview will result in a job” which made me laugh. Now I just need to get an interview.

What else has been going on in April. Oh yeah, the guild has managed to kill normal-mode Deathwing and heroic mode Morchok in Dragon Soul which is sweet as (yes I am on about World of Warcraft for those of you that care).

Hmm, graduating. Still find it weird. Should probably book my robes sometime soon. Luckily my exams (the two that I do have) are spread out, one on the 4th, the other on the 22nd. So no rush, but it’ll come sooner than I would like it to I bet.

So that’s a summary of my month. Or the bits I remember. I am not good at remembering stuff after all. Well, some stuff.

Getting there

Dissertation is 98% done! That means I get to finish and tweak it tomorrow, and then actually hand it in on Thursday, which is its due date. So yay! Things have gone according to schedule! Thankfully. Then I have another essay and a week to do it in, but there we go. The work won’t stop til I graduate and then I have to get an actual job. The horror.

Need to apply for more jobs. I just has responses back from the last of the people I applied to over christmas, and it’s another no. Which is needless to say, annoying. Something to do over easter, as well as revising and working on a presentation I have to do in week 12. I’m glad it’s in week 12, if I didn’t have easter to do it then it would be very very bad indeed.

Still obsessed by changeling. Can’t wait for the next game, it’s going to be amazing. Been doing downtime roleplay with my motley mate, and she’s been drawing different things and they’re all really really good and this is only fueling my obsession, but I now have one of the pictures as my background and then I’m trying to do my own pictures, although I suck at drawing humans which makes it tricky.

But yes. Obsessions are pleasing. And then I will have easter, although it’s not going to be much of a break and more of a do everything, since I need to find a house, jobs, and do some work, and go home, and revise for my two exams. Hooray for only having two. Easter Break is not going to be much of a break.

Changeling

Can’t remember whether I have done a post about changeling, but I haven’t done one in while so I can absolutely do one here. Changeling is another Live Game that I’ve been playing. It’s an IoD – Isle of Darkness game, so it’s a nation wide game (or will be hen we get through our ‘initial’ trial period in the next couple of months) and runs once a month.

Changelings are mortals who have been taken by the True Fae and spent time in Arcadia (the Fae realm). They have then escaped back through the hedge (the bit that separates this world from Arcadia) and viola, one changeling. A group of changelings is a motley, and a big bunch that live in an area (for example, Norwich) is called a freehold.

My character is called Zephyr, she’s a dancer in real life and an Elemental Changeling (like it sounds on the tin) primarily of Air. She is, ever so slightly, and airhead.

Well, more than anything she a completely free-spirited and instinctual character, but it’s funny in my head to call the air elemental an airhead.

I’m having a lot of fun playing her. we’ve had four games (and the stating session) so far, and I’ve enjoyed them all hugely, and all sorts of relationships are forming. I have my motley, which is like a family, some mild dislikes of people/their behaviour and a love interest already! I love how they’ve all come about through IC stuff as well. I’m not the only love interest at the moment, and it’s fun to roleplay, since these types of relationships don’t come into the other games I play much/at all.

We’ve got a couple of psychologists in the game, one of which is my housemate, and they’ve been making up relationship charts. I keep trying to get him to let me see it, but he won’t (meanie) but I’ve made my on charts of hat my character feels about everyone, so there! But yeah, I’m a little bit obsessed by changeling at the moment. Any thread about it on Facebook explodes when Cam and Halloway’s players get involved. I wrote my background as well. 4000 words/6 pages. And I still could have gone into more detail. Why can’t essays be that easy to write?

But yeah, been on Ebay to get some props. Zephyr is going to Paris this downtime and is bringing postcards back with her. Also I get to wear pretty dresses, which go swish when I move. This may or may not have been a factor when choosing a character to play in the game.

Dissertation

In me defence – I’ve been ill over the entire weekend with a stupid cold, so not only have I not been updating this blog, I haven’t done as much work as I would like to have done either. So more than one thing has been neglected this week. Also I keep forgetting to eat, which reminds me of something I haven’t done today. I shall rectify that in a minute.

Gaming is at least going well. I felt horrible, but I did got to IoD on sunday. LARP was completely out of the question since I was ill, and there was snow, but apparently everyone else went omg snow as well, so no one turned up in the end. But IoD was pretty good. I have something to start to work on in Mage, and Changeling is just awesome. So much to do in Changeling, and far too few downtime action to do them in. Sigh. More resolve needed. On the other hand I have far too many downtimes and backgrounds to write – did sabbat last night so that’s one down, but that still leaves 4 downtimes and 3 backgrounds to write. I am sure I will get around to it at some point, but right now I’m trying to work!

Go work go! I hope by the end of this week to have 2000 words done, but since me week has been cut down by so much due to my stupid cold, the week is now not very long, so I have to get quite a bit done today and tomorrow, which requires waking up. Luckily Mark plans to come over tonight, so I can get some help with the waking up bit. As soon as I get into a working grove, which hasn’t quite happened yet, it shouldn’t be too hard. I have roughly 1000 words of planning and sketching out right now, which means that it’s bits of information and stuff I want/need to include, but haven’t written up into proper format yet. So I don’t think I’m actually in dire straights just yet. And then I can get that done and look forward to Mage, LARP and quite possibly Echo Bazaar at the weekend.

For those that don’t know my dissertation is on volcanoes. Yay explosions. I’ve also got another bit of work coming up soon, which will be a 3000 essay on a topic of my choice for earth and life. So I really need to get a fair chunk of my dissertation out of the way before that comes along, although I think I know what I’m going to do that on, as long as the lecturer’s think it’s an okay topic – Did life originate on Earth? Evidence for and against. I love this module, it’s really really cool.

Right, off to do more work. If I can get 500 to 1000 words of real essay done today, I’ll be very happy. Also need to do some more washing up today. Godamn washing up.