Return of the Dragons

I’m am mildly ashamed to look at how long it has been since I’ve posted on here, but this blog has not been alone in the neglect. It all started about the time I had to knuckle down and really get into the meat of my dissertation. It took a lot of my time and effort, and there’s been things since then that have just piled up, and I was really bad about picking up all the pieces that I’d left strewn behind me in the wake. I didn’t go to taekwondo for six months, I failed NaNoWriMo for the first time ever, and my eating habits spiralled in a slightly uncontrollable fashion. But that’s the good thing about life – you can always come back and pick things up. So new(ish) year and I’m really making an effort to do things.

First big and good news is that I got a new job. I started that in October and I’m now pretty settled in it. I’m an Information Analyst for the NHS now (a mental health trust) so I get to look at figures and numbers to do with mental health services and provide information to people so that we can show we’re meeting our targets and improve the service. I love it, it’s data and number crunching and SQL and excel all the time. I do miss the library, I like books and information and the people there were great, although weirdly the biggest thing I miss is how much I moved around – I’m very sedentary in this job, and I have to drive to and from work, so no more walking, and I do notice the lack of it (I try to walk during lunch time). But the job is overall more satisfying and much more my pace of working, so it’s a huge step up.

Since started my master’s degree I’ve not done much, if any reading for pleasure, so something I aim to do this year is pick up a book or three again. Not signing up to any challenges or anything, just realising the I enjoy reading and encouraging myself to take it up again. The new job is full time so I find I have less time to do, well, everything else really, so I’m really working on doing what I want to do and cutting out the other stuff that I don’t want to do. It’s sort of like refocusing. Writing comes in here as well – as mentioned above, I failed NaNoWriMo for the first time since I started, oh, what, seven years ago? And you know what? I’m rather okay with it. I decided that with everything that was going on (new job, anxious about results, some mental health stuff, other bits and pieces) I could push to try and get it done, but then I’d probably hate the story at the end of it, and liking what I’m writing was more important to me than completing the challenge. It was a good realisation and I’m still okay with that decision and I look forward to getting back into that story. Again, I’m not going to push this immensely, but I will remind myself to open up a file and put some words on the screen, because I am looking forward to getting back to writing that book I didn’t – Quiet Poison, it’s very fun to write about assassins and underground stuff.

One thing I am looking to do more of is play video games. I’ve had Ori and the Blind Forest sitting on my computer for ages, and I’ve just picked up a recent release called Rime for my switch which looks right up my street. I’ve also got Persona 4 to finish off so I can finally move onto 5 (but nothing will ever match the feels I had for 3 (playing as the girl, it’s much better)). I do like playing video games and I feel that I don’t do enough of it. I get distracted. And as I said above, working full time cuts down on my spare time, as I still have all the house and other chores to do.

Oh! Speaking of house – me and my partner are going to try and buy our first house this year! If we can get the right mortgage lender, we’ve not had the best luck so far finding one, but we will! Eventually!

In more good news last weekend I went to the first LARP player event (smaller than the main events, often run by players rather than the main crew) that I have ever enjoyed, and considering it was my third, I was almost put off them forever. I’m grateful to my friends for pulling me along to it, because I did have a wonderful time, and I’m actually looking forward to trying to go back next year. I got to heal the people from the fighting tournament, enter some contests, coming third in the crafting one, talk to people, and had a delicious nap on a huge pile of bean bags. It was a very fun and relaxed day and just what I needed to get me excited about LARP again.

What have I missed. Life. Writing. Gaming…of course. Dragons.

You know I mentioned that I won third prize in the crafting competition? I did it with this beautiful cuddly thing – my wood dragon. I’m super proud of him, even though he took forever to make (entirely hand sewn. Worth it, but sooooo much time). And guess what? People have already asked me if I take commissions – pretty damn high praise in my opinion ^_^

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!

Empire Event 6

That about sums up the weather for the weekend.

I think the thing that I took away from this event is something that I can relate very strongly to writing. When you write a story, it’s all about conflict. You make events and circumstances and things happen to your character that make things not go their way. And things did not go my way this event.

Because I couldn’t get any time off work, I only had time to make Flapjacks for the welcoming party, which were freely given, so I had nothing to sell and thus I didn’t make any money from selling cakes, which was the first bad thing.

Second bad thing, again relating to no time off work, I got there late on Friday, but at least I made it to conclave (wizards club meeting).

The third bad thing is a little more complicated. On Saturday, Heralds (think servants/aids/butlers) of the Day Eternal (Eternals – powerful magical beings (NOT gods), each on belongs to a particular realm of magic Winter, Spring, Summer, Autumn, Day or Night) Ylenrith were in the Hall of Worlds (special mages only clubhouse) with some challenges. Ylenrith is an Eternal of Purity, Maths and Music, so the challenges were music and maths based. Since I’m a very logical and intelligent person who loves maths, I decided to give the maths challenges a try. Five hours later, I hadn’t gotten anywhere with even the first and easiest maths puzzle, let alone the other two. Needless to say, as someone who prides themselves on being a logical and intelligent person, this really really upset me. Especially when there were so many people completing the music challenges and getting an audience with the Eternal.

I recently became a Day mage, and I’ve really wanted to meet and Eternal, and I blew my chance. I couldn’t solve the puzzles no matter how hard I tried. And I’ve even brought them home with me, and I’ve still only made a small amoutn of progress with pens, pencils and most importantly a rubber. Really, they seem to be more like exercises in guesswork than they are in logic.

And that basically got me very down for the whole day. I had plans, but I put them aside for the chance to meet and Eternal, and I failed. I failed utterly and miserably. And it was only made slightly better when I happened to bump into the same Heralds the next day and asked them if anyone had solved the maths puzzles. Apparently only two people had, and I’m not sure if that was simply one of the puzzles or all three. Either way, it was a nightmare for me.

But that’s what happens to characters, and in life. Not everything goes your way. Things get thrown in your way, and you either overcome them or you have to accept that you failed and move on. Which is really, really hard for me and I suspect I’m going to remain upset about this for a while to come yet.

I mean, the weekend wasn’t all bad. I got to have fun in the battle, and physicked some people after a ritual exploded, and I got a new job investigating the Vallorn (nature went crazy with life magic and now there are ents and insects trying to eat everything), so the weekend wasn’t all bad. And I had a lovely time sitting in one of the taverns as a little boy was being adorable and bowing to everyone.

But overall? This wasn’t my favourite weekend for Empire. I failed at something that was important to me, and that’s kind of overshadowed the whole thing. Also I am all of the aches and pains today and I feel rather ill, which isn’t really helping. That and it’s STILL raining.

Characterisation

Yesterday evening, as I was relaxing after a long day of running around a field killing people with fake LARP swords and then stuffing myself full of sushi, the most delicious of meals, I found myself thinking about a discussion that I have many times had with myself and other people:

When making a character, should you focus on their characterisation or their stats?

I think I was thinking about it again because I had just been at Frontier LARP, which is a combat LARP and the difference between combat LARP and non-combat LARP was very striking at that moment. In combat LARPs, like Frontier, the thing that matter to you is your stats: How many hits do I have, what’s my damage call, do I have any magical spells or abilities to help me out in this situation? You are constantly and always using the stats on your character, and most of the time that is how you are defined. I was playing my archer yesterday, and rather than asking my name, I was simply referred to as ‘The Archer’ because there was only one person with a bow, me. I heard someone saying “I need more characterisation on <character they intended to play>” and I did find myself thinking ‘Why?’ I don’t come to Frontier for the roleplay, I come for the hitting and the running around and fun, if there is any roleplay I make up what my character would think on the spot, and then add it into her character from there. For instance, some of the monsters in one encounter surrendered. One character asked if they had any healing, and when they didn’t, we killed them anyway. I decided that my character was okay with this, since she’s a survivalist, whereas another character, who upholds a code of honour, decided he wasn’t and complained about the actions for the next three encounters. That’s about as much roleplay as usually happens.

Where as in non combat systems, it is all about the roleplay. The  number of draws I make in a game tend to be very low, especially for my more social characters, who just sit around and talk, so I have to have the character’s world views and opinions mostly formed before I go into conversations, because the entire game is based around how characters react to problems and dilemma’s that they are faced with, and building up the various relationships with the other characters. Stats tend to be incidental, and are asked for by the ref when it becomes necessary.

There was just something about the difference that struck me. Combat LARP are all about the combat, so we don’t appear to need the character development, we focus on the skill and points development. Whereas other live actions games focus on character and events and how people change over time.

I think the exception to this are festival LARPs, like Empire which is happening this weekend. Because although there are combat elements to the weekend, it’s not what we do all the time. Most of the time we are in a field with other people and roleplaying so we have to have our characters interacting with each other, and thus characterisation becomes a big part of that straight away.

Overall, I think I concluded that characterisation seems to be inversely proportional to time spent whacking people with fake weaponry.

I might be rambling a bit, but I was just having some interesting thoughts, and it struck me because I am a person who like numbers, so when I hear of a new game that I might get to play, I often jump in and start crunching the numbers and looking at the stats of a character rather than the characterisation, no matter what kind of LARP system it is. It’s taken me some number of years to look at characterisation more closely, and think about the character as a person and flesh them out before I put numbers to that concept. And I do back slide. A lot. For instance a non-combat system I play in, Shades of Norwich: A Requiem Chronicle, is about to have it’s last game. However, the refs are going to run a new system in 2015, Dark Metropolis, and already I have four potential characters statted up with numbers on spreadsheets. And only one of them has any characterisation. It is the one I intend to play, and I am quite happy to scrap those sheets with their numbers and start again with the simple idea of playing a very shy researcher (my concept in a nutshell) but I do realise that I like numbers and maths and stats and will jump on any chance to stat characters first and characterise later.

Of course with writing, there are no stats, and I have to focus on the characterisation, which in turn helps with gaming, and in gaming I only have to work on one character and make them a believable person, and then I can look at how other people make their character’s believable, and that feeds back into my writing for the characters in my books. Circles and roundabouts, it all works together in the end.

Empire – Winter Solstice, Year 2

It’s been two weeks since the first fest LARP of the season, and I think I’ve finally calmed down enough to be able to talk about it.

First of all, the weather (I am British, the weather is something we talk about a lot): It was much better than last year, but last year was the coldest Easter on record for 70 years, so it was always hoped it would be. We had some sun (enough to sunburn me and my pale skin mildly) and a bit of rain, but other than that it was fairly spring like weather: couldn’t make up it’s mind whether it was hot or cold, bit of wind and some cloud cover. All in all, my perfect weather. Also one of my friends lent me this fur neck piece/scarf thing and it was so lovely and warm around my neck, it was gorgeous. And I had my lovely big cloak of course. Cloaks are the best for keeping you warm and mostly dry.

Camping: Me and my boyfriend got our first tent together, and it was lovely and big and we can actually stand up in it. I know! No more awkward trying to get kit on in a place where sitting up means you brush your head against the ceiling. And because we are now a couple we shared sleeping arrangements as well, so had one double air bed, and five duvets. One of the bottom, one of each of us, one over both of us, and one spare. We were toasty warm.

Costume: My own costume didn’t change too much from last year. I had to make a couple of repairs, which is pretty normal when you spend three/four days straight in the same outfit, running around like a maniac and skidding on your knees fairly often. About the one thing I did add was a new belt, because my mum gave me this brown plaited one with a wooden buckle and it fit really well with the thematics of my costume and nation. I play Navarr, who are kind of like woodsmen/travellers, we wear very natural and practical clothes, and we like out belts. Belts are great for everything. One thing I will need to get for next event is a couple of new small pouches. I have a big pouch, but I now have too many things to put in it and it keeps falling open! So I need some new small ones. I also want to try and do something more interesting with me hair, maybe puts some beads or copper in there (which is something else very common in my nation).

The Mage Game: Half of my game is about me being a mage, and I get to go to the hall of worlds and play around with other magical people and the magical beings known as Eternals (not gods though. definately not gods). This event we had a new system in place for how we ran things and I have to say that it is So. Much. Better. than the old one. People get to put items on the agenda (paying one crystal mana to do so) and then they get exactly one minute to speak about it. If they want to speak any more, they have to pay one crystal mana per extra minute they want. Anyone who wants to respond has to pay a crystal mana to speak for a minute as well. It keeps things short, sweet and to the point, and means that instead of taking three hours, Conclave meetings (aka mage meetings) are taking just a little over an hour instead of three. It also means that we get to heckle people when they go over time (there are sand timers so everyone knows) and we shout “Mana. Mana. Mana.” at people who keep talking after their minute is up. It’s great and the environment in the conclave has really perked up from last year when people would groan and sigh at people who liked that sound of their own voice.

My striding mate (striding: a group of Navarr who have no regular home and travel the walkways know as Trods around the empire) managed to buy an invitation to talk to an Eternal: Mazen of the Many Faces, and Autumn Eternal of Pride, greed and manipulation. So he went and talked with him and got some interesting things and now he might be acting as an emissary of Mazen to go and talk to another Eternal that Mazen wants to deal with but that Eternal won’t talk to him. It’s interesting and weird and complicated, but Autumn Eternals are very good at schemes and plots. It’s kind of their stick. While he was away I got to witness a Winter Eternal turn up and a swapping of children took place, but that was a Varusken thing so I only watched. It was cool to see a Winter Eternal though, with all the smoke and blue lights that accompanied her.

I also might have found myself a coven ( a group of mages who get together to cast the big rituals that single mages by themselves do not have the power to cast). A bunch of Navarr day mages were looking for another person since they are one person off being able to cast some of the bigger divinations rituals, and I’m going to learn day lore this downtime (magic is split into six realms: Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter, Day, Night) so I should be able to join them and actually cast my first rituals. one of the rituals I’m picking up is about sending things to a celestial library, which sounds really cool and I would love to get to interact with that, so I’m definitely going to try and cast that next game. I just need something really cool to send to it. (Day Rune ->)

The Healing Game: The other half of my game is all about healing, since my mundane skills, and most of my magic skills, are focused towards healing. This involves going out on the battlefield, not dying, and getting in there, pulling people off the front line, taking them to a space and then healing them up with herbs or magic as appropriate. Having played someone with only Chiurgeon (the most basic healing skill which lets you stop people dying) being a physick (the advance healing skill) is so much more useful and you can do so much more for people. So I went out on the battle field, only got hit by one arrow (through a crowd of twenty people, so just bad luck really, and I could heal myself since it didn’t put me on the floor) and healed up a bunch of people. True Vervain is the herb used to heal people from the floor to full, and out of the 20 I had, I used 19. Then spent the rest of the event getting more and I now have 27. Bet I’m going to use it all in the battle next time!

Of course there was another big battle, but you only go on the one with your nation (you monster the other one to help out the crew running the event, since an army of 500 is way more impressive than an army of 100, and the keyword for battles is EPIC). However there were a number of skirmishes, which are small parties of around 30 warriors who go and try to accomplish a smaller task. They don’t tend to take pure healers with them (Or rather, they don’t take the squishy healers like me) so we stand around the portal (The portal gets opened and transports us to wherever we need to go to fight, it’s really handy) and wait for them to get back and fix them up when they topple through the portal. Another reason it’s so good is because a friend of mine is another healer, so when we hear about a skirmish, we go find the other one, and then stand around the portal and chat to the other healers who might have turned up and wait for the warriors to come home. We got a bit of a reputation doing so. Well, she more than I, but she has blue hair and thus is far easier to identify and remember. See the picture of us waiting around for a skirmish to come back.

Cakes: Because I like baking, this event I decided that I was going to bake a bunch of cakes/biscuits/treats and sell them. In part this was because I saw a market opportunity – only mages can get into the hall of worlds where we have all of our meetings, so the competition is low, and the market captivated. So I spent Thursday baking my little butt off, took everything and sold it in the Conclave every night.

I made SO MUCH MONEY. I mean, this is in the context of someone who doesn’t deal with money very much, gets the standard 18 rings at the start of each game and some mana (20 rings to a crown, 8 crowns to a throne). I think I made a throne in that one event, and I was selling my cakes for roughly 2 rings a piece. I mean I spent some of it on various things (like massages, tea and cake, and more herbs) but I still had a good five crowns left at the end. And believe me, I plan to do the same next event. It’s going to be excellent, and I have learnt that tray bake cakes are the most popular out of everything, so I’ll be adjusting my menu slightly. My mother was also fantastic and bought me the wooden tray which I use to sell everything off, it’s a such a nice tray.

Next Event: I had already booked my ticket for the next event, but alas, I do not think that I shall be able to get the time off, so I shall have to time in late. Considering it’s another four day event, taking advantage of the May Bank holiday, I don’t mind too much as long as I don’t miss conclave that evening. I mean it would be nice to have the day off, but I do realise that sometimes these things just don’t go your way. Thankfully the boyfriend does have the day off, so he can go up early with the tent and get it set up with the help of friends, and then I can just drive up with the non-essential stuff, dump it, get changed and time in. It should be fine. Either way, I am really hyped for it, and am making some more in character stuff, including a guide to the Eternals, because it’s really hard to keep track of everything with a terrible memory like mine!

Empire Event 1

I think at this point I must curse the people who persuaded me to go to Empire Event 1, approximately two weeks before it happens. It is now less than a week until it happen, since I will be packing the car Thursday evening, and then driving up Friday morning (Yay for bank holidays) but I still haven’t actually finished making my costume yet. I spent most of yesterday (well, the large part of it after I woke up, which was admittedly quite late in the day) and I have managed to make my bracers and greaves, but my tunic is still unfinished. Luckily I have been able to cancel my usual social engagements tonight (Monday) and tomorrow (Tuesday), so I should have the evenings to finish it off. I just need to cut out the pieces, work out what exactly I’m doing with the seems and then sew everything together. I got a sewing machine at the weekend, with my first pay check (dances!), and it’s really quite good. A simple one, and it can’t do thick fabric, but for what I need it for currently and in the immediate future, it’s pretty good. It’s also purple, which is an added bonus.

So it’s coming along, and I might be able to finish it tonight if I really push for it, although I may have to go and find a craft knife to neaten up some edges as my scissors really weren’t designed for fabric. Should have picked some up when I was in town, but hindsight means I missed the opportunity. Ah well.

My character is statted and everything though, so I know what I am doing. Just the costume and getting all my other stuff ready now. Which I should be able to do before Thursday. I really really hope this goes well. Also need to fill up on petrol, that’s the big thing. I’m driving me and two other people up, as that’s all I can fit in my little car, but there we go. Should be good. And it’s nice to share the petrol expenses.

So yes. Empire. That’s happening soon. Kind of excited and nervous at the same time.

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. 🙂

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.

Floating Along

I haven’t been doing a lot this week. At least it seems that way. Just took a look, and I haven’t updated in a week, so that seems like I have fallen behind in my blogging promises. Unless you count a week as sunday to sunday, in which case I can still redeem myself.

LARP business, and Fenrir Matt has stepped down as a ref, which means a ref election is in the new future, and I do intend to run, and considering that I came fifth in the last election (when four refs were elected), I think I have a pretty good chance of becoming a ref. Not saying that is what is going to happen, but there is a good chance. Not sure when the election is actually happening though. Just have to wait for them to announce it.

Work is plodding along. Got my proposal done, now I just have to work on my actual project. 6000 words isn’t too tough a target to meet in 9 weeks, right?

Housing for next year is on the lists as well at the moment. I have people to live with next year, although we don’t know if a fifth housemate will be joining us or finding his own place, but he should have an answer tonight, and then we can start to look at the right number of bedrooms in the house.

I feel like I haven’t done a lot this week. And I need to get out of the house, so I shall be going to Anime Soc tonight and talking housing and watching a film the looks to be so dreadful it’s funny, which will be nice.

Day 12 — Whatever tickles your fancy

Another one of these? Just looked down the list and there are … 5! of these days. Someone was feeling lazy when they wrote this list. Okay, so for this one you’re going to get a list of character I currently have in everything, all tabletops, live games and LARP! So get ready for a long list.

Live Games:

• Requiem: Ryanne Hakuru – a Socialtic Deava Cronite
• Sabbat: Tem – the Modern Vampire, Lasombra
• Mage: Sara – Euthanatos Assassin
• IoD Mage: Animus/ Dr Millie Sheldon – Mind Mage
• IoD Changeling: Zephyr – Airtouched Elemental Dancer
• GodShock: Aroona – Goddess of the Hunt and Predatory Animals
• Echo Bazaar: Hannah – Amoral Tomb Colonist

LARP:

• Leaf (Leaves on the Breeze) – Ranger
• Alu – Poison Scout
• Seraphina – Invoker of Luck
• Lily – Water Mage
• Lady Jaine – Paladin of the Lady of the Dawn and the Newborn Sky
• Blaize – Bringer of Fiery Justice
• NPC – Turtle Mage!

Tabletops:

• Pirates Fate Game: Rose Sangria – Insane Navigator
• Mortals: Charlie Tarburt – Gunsmith
• DnD: Arisar – Down to Earth Ranger

This list just proves to me that I play a lot of games. No, I don’t consider this too many games. You can never have too many games.