The Geek's Meow

Nope, not lamenting the loss of a D&D character, just regretting the vitriol of my own stomach.

Because medicine without side effects is too good to be true, the blood thinner I take (Pradaxa) was being just too gentle with me.  Lately it’s started to cause some heartburn.  That was okay, if annoying, at first.  Then the acid reflux began to burble with a nasty burn… making it difficult to swallow even my own saliva.

Oh, by the way, my psych meds cause me to produce excess saliva, because that’s handy at a time like this.

Went in to urgent care today, and they think we can handle this with over the counter solutions, so I’m trying to drop the base.  (Yes, that’s a chemistry joke, sorry.)  If it persists, it may be a bigger problem, but it will take a while to get to the point of needing a specialists.

So for now my belly is a bastion of bile, and I may not be up to getting to my regular updates in a timely fashion.

When does “Internet Famous” become “Famous”?

Some friends of mine had a great little D&D game, that eventually they started live streaming sessions on Geek & Sundry.  It was pretty cool!  Great to watch, helped that they are voice actors and fascinating personalities just to start with, with a phenomenal storyteller as their DM.

It was also an internet HIT.  They had fans, tribute gifts, they even have people cosplaying as their characters!  It was surreal watching people become called “Critters” as their supporters.  They were absolutely famous online for this great weekly show.

But at what point do you cross that line?  They are clearly famous on the internet, but how about being part of the mainstream news, does that take you from internet renown to actual notoriety?

If so, check out this CBS News article on the show Critical Role!

I’m so happy to know this crew, and that their hobby is turning into something awesome and beyond anyone’s expectations.  GRATS, Critical Role!

Back in 2010 my significant other and I opted to take a vacation to a place I’d wanted to visit for years and he had lived for years before we met… the Napa Valley.

For those who are not familiar with the region, it’s the wine growing region of California – famous for having produced the wine that beat the French wines in 1976, known as the Judgement of Paris (Wikipedia – Judgement of Paris) in an upset that shook the wine world.

We rented a vehicle with cruise control – because neither of our vehicles had it and the road trip from Los Angeles to Calistoga was estimated to be about 6 or 7 hours, so to preserve our gas-pedal pressing feet and wear & tear on our own vehicles we picked up the rental first thing in the morning.  Of course, doing so took longer than expected, packing at last minute took longer than expected, everything took longer than expected so we were on the road in the early afternoon instead of the mid-morning as planned.  The plan was for him to start driving, and I would take over at some switch over point.  Another point of the plan had been lunch at Pea Soup Anderson’s, but our timing was off.

As we pass the Grapevine he comes to realize that while I’ve been on the train to Oregon to visit my grandparents, and a Greyhound bus that ran through Northern California at night, I’d never really gotten a great visual of the bay area and never been to Napa – so he cleverly never hit a “switch” point with driving, which I realize as I’m gawking out at the deltas we are driving through.  He maintains that it’s fine and he continues to drive as the sun sets and we enter the valley proper.

Vineyards as far as the eye can see erupt from the hillsides!  Quaint little places, palatial buildings, and wine grapes wrapped around it all.  At one point I exclaim “They even put a golf course on the vineyard!” to emphasize how luxurious it all was – instead of water and sand traps, they had legitimately put grapes to grow.

“No, hon.  They put a vineyard on the golf course.  If they can grow grapes on it, they will.”  And suddenly my view of the Napa Valley did a gut-wrenching 180… this place was so obsessed with their wine development that they couldn’t even let a spot as small as a sand trap go unused.  A fascinating single-mindedness towards the driving force contained within the small form of the grape and it’s uses.

A beautiful valley, with a bit of a crazed fixation running as an undercurrent – what better place for a vacation?

Which is why we’re going back this year!

To start with – I just found out my first grade teacher is now reading these wacky entries, so this one is dedicated to Mrs. Seaton, the woman who really got me interested in the written word that has so shaped me ever since.

A little bit of background… when I was six I got stitches in my knee.  Kneeling in tall grass, we never knew what it was that sliced my knee open, but it was clean and pretty deep, so two stitches held my skin back together so I could heal, my first set of stitches.

For the next week I was limited on what I could do, so I was slowly filling and burbling with energy that couldn’t be released or burned off.  I was a tiny Vesuvius of energy potential, and the world was my Pompeii, sitting around and unaware of the danger I represented.

First grade was when I really threw myself into the written word.  Kindergarten I learned the basics of reading, but between the wonder of the library and the example set by my teacher that next year, that was how I fell deeply into it.  Regularly we would memorize and recite simple poems, which is where we tie into our story in progress.

Pent up energy.  Wounded knee.  Poetry.  What could go wrong?

The poem that week was about a kite and the winds that it played about with.  As we each got up, one by one to recite it, we got lost in the story.  I remember my friend Christy being “blown about” as if she were the kite, and our teacher was pretty entertained, never knowing how it was going to go downhill.

Why?  Because first graders are weirdly competitive, with no sense of restraint or self-consciousness that would develop later to help keep us from over-expressing ourselves.  And I was one of the worst of the lot – I knew nothing of shame, just the joy of being over the top.  To say I was a ham would be a massive understatement.  I was an utter diva, always ready to take center stage.

So successively you would see student after student get blustered about with growing enthusiasm.  When I look back on this I can see what I missed in the moment, the expression on Mrs. Seaton’s face continued to become both more bemused but also marred by a slowly dawning sense of apprehension at our increasing lack of restraint.  She really didn’t want to shut down our appreciation of the poem, but somehow this was going to end in tears.  Spoiler: They were my tears.

My turn finally came up and as I uttered the words the gentle breezes of the poem’s kite-based-protagonist became the category 5 force winds of Hurricane Colleen!  At the close of the short recitation I flung myself across the front of the classroom with wild abandon… and tripped over my own feet.  HA!

Then I landed on the split knee, cracked that fresh scab under the stitches open (luckily not popping any stitches), allowing me a scream of terror, a wash of blood, and a look of well-contained horror on Mrs Seaton’s face… as she calmly cleaned me up – I swear she muttered that she knew something was going to go wrong – and hustled me off to the nurse’s office.  I was not a stranger to the nurse’s office, where we made sure things were closing up again, bandaged, and sternly warned about my limits.

Did I learn anything?  Of course not!  I was six!  But in retrospect, it makes a great start for my motto of how, when you can’t be a good example, you should make an excellent cautionary tale.

Every year I stop by a grocery store on Valentine’s Day (or the Friday before, if it falls on a weekend) and get the silliest, weirdest, geekiest little-kid valentine cards I can find.  I try to avoid candy these days, because there are people I want to celebrate that are not able to eat sugar.

These have included (just a few):
3-D wild animals
Glitter kitty and puppy sticker puzzles
Winged kitty tattoos
Star Wars Stickers (this was last year – and someone tried to eat them)
Glow-in-the-dark celestial window clings (with “DO NOT EAT” on the back of the card – that was this year to prevent last year’s ingestion incident)

I give these out to my coworkers with glee, because essentially I am six years old and I feel strongly that Valentine’s can still be that friend-fest we all indulged in as kids.  People get super wrapped up in whether they have a Significant Other on an arbitrary day, and I think it’s better to celebrate all of our relationships and bonds!

Over all I have gotten nothing but smiles and positive reactions – along with silly games and sticker trading that make me feel GREAT!

Hope you have a happy day, no matter what you celebrate today!

I’m a fan of Anne Bishop’s Novels of The Others series, a fictional modern-fantasy world where creatures known as The Others (which come in forms we would identify as werewolves, vampires, elementals, and other less-identifiable forces of the world) are the dominant power most of the world over.  So far the story has followed a fascinating group of Others and humans in the city known as Lakeside on the Other-controlled continent of Thaisia.  March is the next chapter in this story, and I’m looking forward to it.

But even more exciting is the fact that sometimes in 2018 we start to explore other corners of Thaisia, with new characters.  Anne Bishop has always been a master at filling in the empty places in her world, so I have high hopes for where this new tale will take us.

I’ve always found that Bishop takes our common conventions of Fantasy novels and twists them in interesting ways, without going full Pratchett- parody.  It’s not humor, but it makes the common tropes get re-thought well. Her characters are deep and realistic, with diverse interests, failings, conflicts, and drives (including sex drives), whether they be male, female, or other.  This was true of the Black Jewels novels, and remains so in the Novels of the Others.

So if you are interested in that kind of world, I recommend getting caught up (starting with Written in Red) before 2018 brings us a new arc in this great world.

Source: http://happyeverafter.usatoday.com/2016/10/18/anne-bishop-new-the-others-story-2018/

So back when Star Wars: The Old Republic was new I fell into it, completely.  An MMORPG with a strong story in one of my favorite universes… yes please!

So my pretty pale-skinned red-headed smuggler needed a name, and most of the various celtic inspired names I wanted we taken, so finally I locked on Fi’onna.  Generally the name Fiona means white or fair.  This was great, and after a few levels I was given a chance to choose a family name via a Legacy, one that would apply to all my characters.

That’s when it hit me, I wanted a name that made a fine counter to the fair and sweet name of the root name Fiona… I loved deity names, and Eris was available because the game was so new.  Eris, Greek goddess of chaos (well, strife and discord) and goddess worshiped by Dischordians.

Why was this so perfect?  Oh, I tend to play this main character in a chaotic neutral manner, to start with.  Then factor in the most famous myth involving Eris was the wedding of Peleus and Thetis.  In the middle of the wedding Eris throws a golden apple of discord, inscribed with “To the fairest one” which caused a three way cat-fight between Athena, Aphrodite, and Hera – they all thought they were the fairest.

So yes, the apple of discord being a prize for the fairest ties into the name Fiona/Fi’onna… but then take the icon of the fruit by itself…

F’ionna Eris becomes… Fiona…. Apple?

Who’s biggest hit was “Criminal”?  For a smuggler?

Awww yeah.  Let’s layer on that wordplay.

And the Smuggler’s first personal quest is to recover her ship…so while the game never lets you name your ship you sure can refer to it during role-play (did I mention I was on an RP server)… And Fi’onna was captain of the Golden Delicious in my mind.

Not one person out in the world got the joke, but just the layers of puns and meaning meant so much to me that it gave me great joy.  Sure, the jest was mine alone, but it was such a careful craft, executed so well… it was almost a work of art by itself.

Until they merged my server with another and I had to rename my character as well as my Legacy.  Fie.  (I’m still a little bitter.)

Go crazy?  Don’t mind if I do!  Actually, I’m finding myself slightly grumpy, less than crazy.

It could be the gloomy weather, a lot of irons in the fire at work, aches caused by the weather, but today I feel like it’s my lack of tabletop RPG time because the more I think about gaming the more out of sorts I get.  In October I missed games due to travel.  In November, Ren Faire commitments. December was a little out of whack because our Game Master (GM) started a new job, so there were minimal games, and then only one session in January.  I was already feeling like every other week wasn’t often enough – not when I used to be in three games regularly and now I’m down to one.

That’s life, it gets in the way and all, but it still leaves me feeling adrift.  I’m now constantly scheming up new characters, playing with game concepts in my head.  Little bits of RP (like the Red Dragon Inn board game I went off about yesterday) I cling to.  I’ve thrown myself into watching Critical Role (http://geekandsundry.com/shows/critical-role/) with an insane fervor, hoping it will curb my craving.

No such luck.  Still hungry for gaming time of my own.  (And a small desire to join their game, because they’re all awesome and Matt is a great GM)

I crave the outlet of Tabletop RPGs!

Or maybe when LARPers play board games?

This weekend I got to sit down with the game Red Dragon Inn (http://slugfestgames.com/games/rdi/) – it was a board game centered around the idea of a bunch of adventurers and their post-adventure drinking binge… so it’s a little bit of an RPG based on the themed card names and different character skills.

But then we took it to a nearly absurd level of Live Action Role Play (LARP) – except for the drinking (we all had to drive shortly afterwards, so getting smashed was not in the cards for our players, only our characters).  I was a snarky Pixie enchantress with a Wolf companion, alternately adorable and tricky!

The LARPing really started with Gog the Half Ogre, who began speaking in a very Half-Ogre-ish voice and speech patterns.  Then Bryn the Boatswain garnered a beautiful brogue – and a flirty attitude that was fun to bounce off of.  So I found my voice reaching into an chirpy register and picking up flittery mannerisms!  Slowly around the table we all fell deeper and deeper into character and it was…

FANTASTIC!

Sure, we always get a little bit into extra spirits when we game, be it board, card, tabletop RPG, or video game… but this was a special magical session, with all of us slipping right into character and taking some great shots at each other.

Bryn the buxom Boatswain was the first to lose, so in-game she was passed out – thus I declared my pretty pixie was using her cleavage as a royal throne to issue decrees from! (So it kept the knocked out player interacting with us and still having fun)

Gog got needled by Wrench, a kobold artificer.  Somehow Gog interpreted that as the gizmo shooting needles as laughing at him, which he couldn’t stand, and somehow in all the madness ended up hugging Chronos the Time Lord (with bone breaking results) instead?  “Gog easily confused.”

Fiona the Volatile was plied with many, many drinks – it was just so fun to pass her all the drink cards!

Just as we’re down to the final three, me (Kaylin the Renegade), Wrench, and Chronos… and I’m nearly out, I decide I need to exercise my right to “Private Pixie Time” and flounce off in a tantrum, leaving poor Wrench to Chronos’s tender time traveling mercy. But eventually I peeked back out into the bar to also face the birthday-boy-turned-Time-Lord’s wrath, leaving him to snatch the game from my grip.  Well, it was his birthday game day after all, I suppose I can let him have the win… this time!

The characters were pre-made, so getting into the game was fast and fun, but because of the crew we had they also came to life in a delightful way.  It didn’t involve a long rule-learning that your average RPG entails, but it had so much more depth than your average board game, even while using cards and tokens to track us.

As with any RPG, you have to have a good group to make it that fun, but it was a great game for groups full of personality.  I’m hoping to pick up my own copy so I can bring it in to the office and get a round going!

So if Capaldi is retiring his mantle as The Doctor, the inevitable question is “Who’s next?”

A lot of clamor has been heard for a female Doctor, as has been proven possible by other Time Lords.  And that, exactly, is the reason the Doctor should NOT be female in his next regeneration.

Spoilers!

Missy only reveals herself as The Master to the Twelfth Doctor, Capaldi.  This means that, while Smith’s Eleven interacted with Missy, he never knew his long standing arch nemesis had taken a female form this time around, and still believed The Master was well and gone, trapped in the time-locked Gallifrey.

The Doctor and The Master have been in competition since they were children, as friends often are.  Much of their animosity seems to stem from this connection, a tie that The Master uses and abuses, and The Doctor fights so hard against.  So why would The Doctor, who works so hard to separate himself from anything The Master does and is, be the copycat?  After just finding out that The Master is a woman, how would he let himself regenerate in the same template?

The Doctor obviously doesn’t have complete control over his regeneration usually, though this concept is hotly contested.  So it’s possible the gender won’t be his imitation of The Master, but it will always read that way, at least to the two of them, to The Master as a victory to lord over The Doctor, and to The Doctor as a failing of the subconscious impulses that shape his next form.

Go ahead, make him ginger finally, give him that dream… but this regeneration, whatever they do, I hope they don’t make him a xeroxed copy of The Master in making him a woman.

Sure, someday The Doctor should be female, just not this time.