The Geek's Meow

It’s interesting, I relatively think of this writing as practice for myself.  I’m generally shouting into the void.  As a result, I don’t have to worry much about my potential readership, because honestly only a few people may be reading it with any regularity.

Except for the minor factor that I know of a few people that do check in from time to time.  More than anyone, I believe my most consistent readership member is my mother.  That’s right… as cliche as it is… at least my Mom reads my blog.

This makes for an interesting contemplation.  Many of the things I would post about in the Wayback Machine format can be very personal, and involve my parents in one form or another, sometimes directly and sometimes just their lasting impact.  But it is always, always, through my filter and may not be the same as the way they remember the events.  May not paint them in the most favorable light.  I can paint myself as unfavorably as I like, but to do so to an active reader seems… it seems crass.  I appreciate the eyes, the reliable views, and I have no direct desire to alienate.

But I also don’t want to stifle myself.  If there is a story to tell, I should practice telling it.  Not everyone will be a fan of everything I write.  That’s the truth about being a writer and a human, you will never please everyone all of the time.  And truly quality writing has the power to ignite!  That can be positive, that can be negative, depending on the reader and the writing.

How much do I write for me?  How much do I write for my readers?  How much do I write for a single reader?

So I had a meeting end early.  Hooray!

Since we had a tool outage yesterday, I have a bit of a backlog on things I want to be done with by the end of the week.  GREAT, time to work on updating some articles and writing a new one for our customers.

This is an update, should be easy to start on and then revisit after my next meeting.

Wow, this could really use a chart with some of this content, I’ve never made a chart like this…

Researching… coding… coordinating… reviewing… testing… reformatting…

DONE.

Oops, looks like I missed the entire next meeting.

It’s interesting how seemingly innocuous things can be triggers.

I’ve heard many things about the new Fox show Legion, a Marvel mutant-related story.  Some people love it.  Some hate it.  Some want to like it but can’t deal with the inconsistent narrator or lack of direction.  I heard the concept and purposely waited to hear how it was taken by my friends – they know I have a bit of sensitivity towards how schizophrenia is portrayed.

As angry as I can get when it’s portrayed badly, it turns out there’s another end of the spectrum, where it’s well enough depicted that it gets into my head in a bad, bad way.

There’s an uncomfortable feeling where the world is filtered, an uncertainty about whether other people perceive things the same way I do.  I see colors and wonder if what I call “red” is what looks like “blue” to other people.  And we just all call it the same thing because that’s what we’ve been taught, even though our viewing is utterly different.  These are the things I genuinely wonder about.  I’m not schizophrenic, though my grandmother was, but I have manic episodes that have come very close to a schizotypal experience.  I have argued with my roommate when she wasn’t home.  I have had to ask to have someone rescue the cat from the freezer, though she was never put in there.  Reality has been an uncomfortably fuzzy scenario for me, though no where near what a type 1 bipolar or true schizophrenic suffers.

So I sat down to watch it, a little nervous but having been reassured by my nearest and dearest that the depiction wasn’t a bad one.  I thought that was enough.  I was wrong.

I’ll carefully avoid any spoilers, but as the episode progressed I felt my heart racing.  I had to look away at times.  Sometimes I could feel tears well up in sympathy as the main character tried to sort out what was “real”.  Since we started with dinner I had a glass of wine, but when offered another I knew that was not the kind of mindset I wanted to be in, I either had to be sober or completely intoxicated, but anywhere in between was going to be a problem.  The main character is clearly the shifting perspective that filters the events, but since he can’t believe his own mind, there’s no way for the viewer to believe what is on screen.

And I became twitchy.  Uncomfortable.  I declared at the end that both I had a feeling I didn’t like the show, but also that I felt compelled to watch more.  Every piece of set dressing and wardrobe is in question.  Comments about the show “going off the rails” in later episodes confuse me, because I can see there are no real rails to start with.  There are illusions of rails, but I feel odd in that I can see where they are already not there, which is apparently something other people are only finding out about 4 or 5 episodes later.

Last night I couldn’t sleep well.  Even now thinking about it I can feel my sentences breaking down, shorter and segmented.  I doubt I will voluntarily re-read this entry, so you have my apologies.  I’m not fully on a manic bend, but I am skirting the edges, and I really believe the Legion episode kicked that into gear.  I’m having to slow my breathing when I think about how I felt last night.  Thoughts are spinning about without good control, and I want to ensure I don’t act too impulsively.  All because a TV episode reminded me of the worst this could be…

Damn you, Legion.

We’re hopping into the Wayback Machine to November 2008.

I’d recently been promoted to Billing Team Senior – the first level of people management – at Blizzard Entertainment.  So me and my team were bracing for impact, as Wrath of the Lich King was on the horizon…

I’d been at Blizzard for about three and half years, starting shortly after WoW’s launch, and through the Burning Crusade expansion, which had experienced a host of delays.  So it was amazing that Lich King had set a target date before the holiday season and managed to stay on track!  To this day it remains my favorite expansion for WoW, it was well executed, balanced, with compelling story, fun new elements (like the Death Knights!) and still NOT LATE!

So the day of launch we prepared to do a full 24 hours of coverage, meaning my late shift team was moved to work an even longer and later day.  We were pumped, with a full plan to have a team “Slumber Party” – coming to work in our PJs, plans to order pizza and braid each other’s hair (I was the only female on that team, and the only one with anything resembling hair braiding skills… or enough hair to effectively braid) as we worked up to midnight helping players upgrade and venture into Northrend.

Before our shift I decided to be clever – since we were finally releasing a game in the planned and expected pre-holiday window, something Blizzard isn’t known for, I decided there would be a special email and treat for my team.  I stopped at Target and got individually wrapped Hostess Ding Dongs, little individual cream-filled chocolate cakes.

I sent out the email just before our shift, so it would be waiting as my dudes arrived:

Hey Team,

Now these points of data make a beautiful line,
And we’re out of beta, we’re releasing on time.
So I’m glad I got burned…
Think of all the things we learned
For the people who are still alive.

PS: Please come to my desk for cake

And then I waited.  And waited.  They came in.  They checked their emails.  But nobody came to my desk?

Well, in quoting Portal’s theme song so accurately, I had cleverly sabotaged myself.  If GlaDOS taught us anything, it was that the cake was a lie.  Nobody believed there was really cake, and they refused to get fooled.

One by one each of them would come to my desk over the course of the evening with questions or issues and I would point out the reality of the cake, get them to take their share, and send them on their way.  Every last one of them was STUNNED that the cake was real, each member of our team was sure I was laying a clever trap.

One even hesitated to unwrap the foil around his cake, sure it was still somehow a lie despite the evidence of his eyes and peers.

I guess I really was the one who got burned – especially since I brought just enough cake for the team and forgot to count myself.  For me the cake really was a lie.  But we had a great launch, a fun and silly night, and I was introduced to TECHNO-VIKING:

The second law of thermodynamics states that the total entropy of an isolated system can only increase over time. The increase in entropy accounts for the irreversibility of natural processes, and the asymmetry between future and past.

Everything rots.  Decays.  Descends into chaos.

And this is why I don’t bother buying 100 of the same socks and just not worry about them matching.

What?

There is always a temptation, when you’re scrambling to find a match to the sock you have in hand, in a rush, to throw them all out, buy a wealth of the same sock, and never have this problem again.

Thus, I own a lot of the same brand and style of white ankle sock.  I didn’t quite go all the way in eliminating other socks (especially since I generally prefer black socks that are crew length) but I did stock up, over several trips to Target, in these socks.  In my optimism I thought this would make it easier on those rushed mornings to grab two matching socks!

Alas… entropy bested me.  Wearing them wears on them.  Washing them wears on them.  Colors shift over time.  So this pair, which has been worn a little more often than that pair, soon doesn’t match if you swap their mates.  Each pair carries the character of it’s experience. To add salt to the wound I’m clumsy, and the lost sock that doesn’t make it from the washer to the dryer, or falls in front of the washer before the load even goes in, gets a different experience from it’s dear mated and washed/dried companion.  Some of them have holes and are nearly gray socks, some are still crisply white and utterly hale.

The best laid plans of socks and speed end in entropic events that foiled me forever.  In fact, the near-but-not-quite similarity actually has now complicated the scramble for socks when I’m rushed and sleepy.

Sigh.

Today is International Women’s Day, and so many people are trying for a “Day Without a Woman” strike and protests (http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/03/08/519161040/female-workers-asked-to-join-in-a-day-without-a-woman-protests)

I honestly thought about participating – it would be easy.  My work has generous paid time off, I didn’t have any meetings today, I even had a dentist appointment in the morning so I was out for about an hour anyway.

Put then I realized I would be putting in a PTO request.  I would be adding my “time off” to the Out of Office calendar for tracking in case people were looking for me.  I’d be making up the work the day before and the next day.

The impact would be negligible at best… and I work for a company that is already quite aware over all of it’s female impact.  We actually have someone who’s role is “Diversity Chair” which means she is actively working to improve our company stance on diversity and the like.  There is an entire Diversity community of practice!

Some women at my work didn’t do so because they felt there are too few females to have a significant impact.  Others felt their work commitments had to come before the luxury of a “strike day”.  I feel like I’d be taking advantage of the luxuries I am offered that would allow me to “strike” with no consequences.

But I still feel strongly about the matter, so I wear my red t-shirt and make this post.  When we take our picture this afternoon to show our support I will make time in my day.  We all have ways of making our voices heard, this is my little drop in the bucket… let’s hope there are enough of us that it becomes a flood.

… I am not.

Which is odd.  For the longest time I was clearly and completely a morning person.  Years ago I’d wake up at 4 or 5 am and decided I was completely awake, so I’d go to work at the crack of dawn.  I look back at that time and wonder what was wrong with me?

I’m still no night owl – staying up to 11 pm or midnight is a bit of a special occasion.  I can now “sleep in” until 8 or 9 am.  But try to get me on the road before 7 am, and I spend the day half-zombie.

I’m no early bird anymore.  I’ll never be a night owl.  At this point I’m sort of chronically exhausted pigeon.

Cruelly trapped between worlds, and forced to get myself back into my early-bird sleep cycle (except weekends, where I’m expected to be a night owl), is leaving me feeling more than a little wrung out.

One of the biggest challenges of tabletop RPG playing is “metagaming”.

Metagaming – using knowledge you have as a player to influence the actions or knowledge of your character who would not have access to that information.

It’s generally easy to identify and avoid when it’s obvious or intentional.  When the person across the room does something you shouldn’t know about, and your character acts to counter – that’s metagaming.  But it comes in more insidious forms, harder to guard against forms.

It becomes hard when you know about the world your character is playing in – sometimes you meet an unusual monster, but knowing that a Hydra is going to re-grow it’s heads when your character has never heard of it can be tricky.  What would the character really have done in that moment?

I’m watching back episodes of Critical Role currently (http://geekandsundry.com/shows/critical-role/) , what’s impressive to me is that the name “Vecna” keeps being thrown around as an opponent – and I happen to know this famous Dungeons and Dragons creation.  Vecna the Lich, Vecna the Demi-god, Vecna the source of the “Eye of Vecna” and “Hand of Vecna” as powerful artifacts.  And then there’s the fantastic “artifact” known as the “Head of Vecna”.

To gain the power of the eye or hand, one must remove one’s own left eye or hand respectively to install the artifact.  So in one legendary campaign a rumor reached the party of the “Head of Vecna” and it’s amazing power.  Reasonably, once it was acquired, there was an assumed decapitation in order to replace one’s head with the epic HEAD OF VECNA.  The party in question fought for the right to be the bearer of the head…

And if failed.  Dead party member, and something went wrong.  This didn’t stop the party from trying again with another party member, of course…

And that failed, too.  That’s right, the “Head of Vecna” was one of the great D&D based practical jokes!  These fools are now famous for cutting of their own heads for the dream of the power foretold in a fake artifact.

This is the only thing I can think of when I hear Vecna, it gives me the absolute giggles.  If a Dungeon Master even whispered the word Vecna I would utterly lose my mind with giggles and glee.  I know some of the players here are experienced tabletop gamers, and yet no reference to the knowledge of Vecna – even his eye, hand, or infamous head – in or out of character has been made.  Not in the cross talk, banter, or actions of the characters that seem to be racing headlong into trouble at the potential hands of Vecna and his followers.

The Critical Role crew impressively remains impassive, or appropriately passionate in character only, about the looming threat of Vecna.  That’s really great to see, encourages me to hold myself to a high standard of avoiding even unintentional meta-gaming.  To think deeply and thoroughly as my character.

So for you gamers out there, I challenge you to hold yourself to that magical high standard.  If they can do it every week on camera, we can do it in the dens, living rooms, gaming stores, and on all tables we find our fun atop.

Brain Weasels – the gnawing self-doubt that you can’t control, often associated with depressive episodes.

Also known as Radio F.U.

Several of my friends have been suffering from them lately, and I’m not entirely free of their toothy embrace.  They attack worse in the quiet hours, when you’re trying to shush your thoughts, and through the static comes all the things you can make up to make yourself feel like scum.  The little fails, the assumed wrongs, and all the shades of ill you could possibly endure or make up.

Just because they start as a voice in your head, it doesn’t mean they don’t drain your energy, steal your sleep, leave you feeling queasy and sick of yourself.  It’s a mental illness with a strong physical impact.

I have bipolar disorder, as I’ve mentioned before, and I am all to familiar with them.  So if you’re feeling their insidious poison, remember that you’re not alone – those of us who have heard that little middle of the night (or afternoon) broadcast stand with you.  Ask for help, we’ll help hold up your shield.  Remember that you don’t need to fight this battle by yourself, no matter what the weasels say.

We are Team Anti-Weasel.  Radio Go You!  (As the Bloggess reminds us – Depression Lies.)

Everything these days seems like a remake or a sequel coming out of Hollywood.  Some of them are excellent – I enjoyed the new Ghostbusters, Star Wars is alive again and I’m in love again with the universe, and I’m looking forward to catching John Wick 2 in theaters!

So as I’m percolating on RPG characters, I remember the light back story and concept for a tabletop character I played many years ago, from a Vampire: The Masquerade game.  It was a Sabbat campaign, and for fun I threw a mortal with a little too much knowledge of vampires into the mix when I joined the group – it kicked off the Race to Embrace.  Several characters wanted to make her their vampire child, generating an interesting conflict in the world, even amongst the players of the game.  Of the Player Characters (PCs) the leaders in the race were a Brujah (a clan of bruisers, strong and direct) and a Malkavian (madness incarnate, wicked tricksters and a crazy cracked view of the world).  But then, from the shadows, came the independent NPC (Non-Player Character) Assamite (assassins, but with interesting shades of skills from stealth combat experts to wicked wizards and not to be underestimated the clever scholars) who circumvented the PCs and took my character under his wing.  The campaign ended before the character had developed dramatically, though.

So then I start to think again, where would that character have gone?  She was in her late teens when she was embraced as a vampire – how would Fahamisha have settled into her clan?  Would she have stayed with the Sabbat pack that she was keeping an eye on?  What skills would she have focused on, how to develop in a world outside of a clan that is generally held in high suspicion?

I think, if Hollywood is allowed to remake all their greatest hits (and misses) I also get to revisit the stories of my past and turn them into something stronger, sharper, more interesting.  It also gives me a chance not just to advance the character, but to go back to her origin story and shape the events that made her, deepening the character all around.

The advantage to this is that a friend may be starting a Vampire game soon, so if I get the approval (Assamite is not a commonly accepted player character and I wouldn’t want to fight for a disruptive figure if it won’t work with the Game Master’s plans) I think this is the perfect time to re-write history!  If not, there’s a lot of room for creativity in the world of Vampire.