nasturtium buds peeking from gorgeous nasturtium leaves
blooming cosmos, pink and gold
one hummingbird drinking at the cute clay feeder we have hanging in the backyard
many little quail scurrying across the road, grown-up quail pairs on either side to keep everyone in line
someone trimming public landscaping bushes into nice clean shapes
a tawny mutt balanced in a little wooden box strapped to the back of somebody's bicycle
I spent a little more than 48 hours in Flagstaff the other weekend. gorgeous weather. wonderful wool and fiber festival (even if my very favorite vendor couldn't be there this year). also, as always, the most excellent traveling companions. so grateful to those lovely humans.
on Sunday, the last day of the festival, I spent 3 hours teaching a little lacemaking workshop and it was wonderful! just 6 enthusiastic students, plenty of time, plus friend Shannon helping out as unofficial assistant, and it all went so well. I'm so glad everyone came ready to learn and practice and struggle with the weirdness that is tatting and tatted lace. I hope they all keep going with it. and maybe some of them will join The Lace Coven too.
the days since then have felt like a dragging two-dimensional swamp, somehow. I think I need more rest.
since summer 2024 I've been prioritizing the whole weekend of Flag Wool, every June, for a getaway with fiber friends. (this year the festival dates conflicted with my favorite academic conference and I confess it was not quite a difficult choice even though I do miss Computers & Writing and all its fun community a good bit.) a different house rental each time. some shuffling of who attends. so much gratitude that I get to be included in the fun.
at some point along the way I was handed a copy of this book, The Lost Flock, by Jane Cooper. a meandering autobiographical style, very well researched, and fascinating to read. will I ever find myself tending sheep on a remote Scottish island? highly unlikely. more than happy to read about it though. storms and mud and diseases and all, it sounds pretty romantic.
.jpeg "cover image of The Lost Flock: close-up collage-esque sheep face against a green and blue island")
sheep and shepherds. cheese and fleece. community and stories. the books are not that similar at all but you can see the echoes across the two covers I'm sure. blue sky or sea. green hills. close-up on a fleecy sheep with beady ovine eyes. more fleecy sheep wandering the hills in the background.
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I don't reread books that often, but maybe I'll revisit these two again sometime soon. the whole Tiffany Aching series is splendid and poignant and worthy of deep attention. maybe I should acquire a boxed set of them. hmmm.
has anyone in the world of the wee free men considered teaching them how to perfectly shear a sheep? I can't remember.
sheep shearing is a dying art, they say. a strange little niche profession, so delicate and demanding. too bad we don't have any magical little dudes to help out with it. sometimes I wonder if I would or could ever learn. such a prospect feels almost as far-fetched though, most days.
sheep need shearing. I'm glad that at least a few other humans out there still know how to shear them. the shearer who typically demonstrates at Flag Wool is Mick Hofmann. my guild friends who have fleecy animals hire him every spring to come shear for them too.
there weren't many nice fleeces for sale at this year's festival. even if there had been though, I remain uninterested in acquiring any raw fleece to process myself. carding 6 batts of Finn two summers back was tedious enough, I promise.
if the apocalypse arrives and all the industrial fiber mills become defunct and I need to process wool by hand, I'll get over the tedium and hopefully also make friends with someone who can teach me shepherding and shearing too.
at a certain time of day, the shadows that fall from the southeasterly sunrise across the somewhat-elevated sidewalk behind our house line up just exactly right with the angles of wide concrete pavement and granite-pebble landscaping and the gully on one side. and for however long the sun and earth match up that way, we get to watch a shadowy parade of me with the pugs, walking with perfect balance on the top of the shadow of the earth against itself.
I suppose the conditions for this must happen at least twice in a day, whatever times those may be depending on the time of year and the slant of the earth's axis. in the mornings, lately somewhere near 8:00 a.m. or so, the shadows slant northwest. we don't often walk that path during the other half of the day, but I imagine in the early evenings the shadows must slant more to the northeast.
so what?
it is a thing to notice. a small event-thing among many other variously-shaped event-things.
I haven't bothered photographing our shadows. it's nice enough to just notice it when we happen to be out walking at the right set of moments.
the morning pug walks require more layers this month. hats, gloves, fluffier scarves. I crocheted a new puppy pug coat in red and beige for the skinny little Faramir. his old grey pug coat still barely-kindof fits, but it didn't look as warm all stretched out of his lanky body.
the other day, this lengthy stretch of fencing (branded nicely enough with so much black, white, and red to represent the construction company Sundt, whose slogan seems to be three standalone words, "Skill. Grit. Purpose.") went up all along the drive that goes between my academic office building and various parking lots between here and places off-campus.
I'm told that they'll be building a new dormitory somewhere on top of the rocky, scrub-filled gully on the other side. it'll have more student housing and more classroom space. so cool. so necessary.
some of us in my academic office building are mildly worried that this new construction will block our most excellent west-facing views of Granite Mountain. we shall see, I guess. I remain hopeful that the slope of this gully will mean the top of the new dorm will be low enough for us to look over from our third floor offices.
as I walked back out from my office to my car last Tuesday, I noticed a little grey-brown bunny frantically searching for a way through the fence, up and down the hill in short bursts, back and forth over the blaring red curb, every so often sprinting for its life all the way across the road back to the unfenced rocks and bushes to the east.
I watched it for a solid few minutes. it hopped away in panic from my slowed footsteps, then dashed in further panic across the path of someone's big white SUV driving up past us both.
I didn't see the bunny come back that evening. so I studied the fencing as I walked. surely one little bunny would eventually find a gap to squeeze under, I thought. (the creatures seem to squeeze through pretty tiny gaps in our back garden gate, after all.)
if the chainlink were bare of this black branded tarp, then could a little bunny more easily get through? or if the corners of each fence panel were less square and more rounded, that would surely help.
I wonder if any of the planners and facilities and maintenance people worried about the impact of this construction project would have on the non-human critters in the area. hopefully at least a little bit. probably not as much as they worried about other aspects though-- the costs of labor and fencing and other materials; the design and the blueprints and the building's whole physical footprint; and the timing and logistics and how soon they can start selling spots in the new dorm.
at the bottom of the hill, the fence merely ends,. for now. the sidewalks remain open and the parking lots in regular use. for now. if the bunnies are persistent enough, they will find their way back into their hideaways in the scrub-filled gully.
and hopefully they will all find new hideaways once the gully is dug out and filled with a bunch of concrete and whatever else dormitories are made of.
and if not?
they're just bunnies. some of their cousins, whichever side of whichever fence they've ended up on, will replace them soon enough.
you'll have to imagine the raucous drones and strains of the bagpipes and fiddles in the air while all the Irish and Scottish and Welsh flags fly against the bluest sky. it was a very very sunny and warm fall day, but thankfully there was a decent breeze.
there was a little bit of knitting too, among the spinning adventures. I'm working on (and have been for like a year now) this two-color shawl from the Lyrical Knits collection. very slow progress.
in other guild news, we also have a ton of our work on display at the local library for October. five of these items are mine-- 4 little tapestry hoop weavings and 1 knitted cowl knit from handspun local merino wool.
since the eve of 2024 one month ago, it feels like so much has happened. some of it too fast, too soon, too painfully.
the
grief of losing the first little doggo that I ever really shared my
longterm day-to-day life with... I cannot describe
it. as much as I'd like to keep trying to, the feeling altogether and gargantuanly
transcends words. the whole experience is impossible to talk about in
any satisfying, accurate, indubitable way. "losing"? "letting go"? that
we "had to" say goodbye? what kind of stupid, broken euphemism circus is this?
everything about our language-cloaked expressions of such pain just
feels utterly inadequate.
it is probably irrational to think no one else could ever know what I mean, even if the words and metaphors feel so flimsy. it's not like I'm the only person to ever experience this sort of sadness. nor is this the first unexpected loss in my life. but it has been the closest and the sharpest. so far.
on new year's day I wrote something about how the world (a world so embroiled in hate and genocides and ugly senseless conflict!) is an absolutely crushingly horrific mess, how my heart hurts and hurts and hurts, and how this loss seems to prefigure and to threaten-- or, even more, to promise-- every other inevitable loss I will ever have to face for as long as I live.
it's one thing to philosophically observe, in general, that nothing can last forever. okay. of course. to confront and deeply feel it-- specifically-- as one solitary ending to the life of a inimitably cuddly goofy fuzzy little domesticated animal... that is different.
other aspects of this January were plenty normal, whatever
that means. most of my activities seem to come with rather suitable words with which to sketch them into
sharable imagery: going to bed early and sleeping in. checking out
library books. reading and ignoring and sorting and replying to emails.
seeing friends. enduring snow and rain and cold. demonstrating crafts at the
museum. putting birdseed in the feeder in the backyard. talking with
family on the phone. eating quiche. drinking tea. making soup. needing a
haircut but not yet ever managing to go out and get my hair cut. sweeping the
floor. running errands. craving hot chocolate. writing lists and syllabi
and assignment sheets. spending money. making things. existing.
sure, nothing lasts forever. change is nature. this too shall pass: all of these phrasings alternatingly as full of solace as they are of tragedy, representative of a fact more solid than perhaps any other so-called fact. death and endings are, from one point of view, more normal, more mundane, more irrefutable than any of the other relatively comfortable, unassuming, smoothly proceeding lifestuff I might casually document and remember about this particular month of the year. that's what feels so difficult and impossible about it.
the vortex of this heartache felt immeasurable, indescribably vast and infinite, from the inside.
even so, from a day or two or ten beyond, it begins to shrink and fade. all future moments frame it into something more manageable.
January, perhaps fittingly, seems so very long. all the transitions it spans-- all the shifting, deepening of the dark season, the post-holiday recoveries, the shiny new beginnings of a calendar year and of an academic semester-- all of that is a lot for 31 average winter days.
I don't know if it really did feel longer for me this year, or if I'm only saying that because it seems like an appropriate thing to sigh into this semi-bleak and impermanent world.
one month ago, as the cold moon began to wane and the spinning earth began to tilt just barely back towards the sun, our little old dog ate his last breakfast and went on his last stumbling walk and took one final car ride, sitting on my lap. I only knew him for half his life. I wasn't sure if I'd get along with such a beast at first. but we did get along, so well. I loved that pug and I'm glad he was here to share so much of the too-short day-to-day of my life for a while.
opening match 4: Changeling: the Lost vs Star Wars: Force and Destiny
the last few weeks have been full of traveling and sunshine, so this halfway mark of the opening round is a little later than planned. will I get through the next 4 before summer is over? hopefully yes.
I've been excited to write about these two-- they're unique, and they make an interesting pair. on one side, the first (2007) edition of White Wolf's Changeling sits in all its alluring glitter. on the other, we have the somewhat more austere yet still very colorful and fun Star Wars: Force and Destiny, from 2015.
Changeling enchants me with its concept alone. all that old lore come to life, wrapped in the shadowy politics of World of Darkness-- it seems like a perfect combination, reminiscent of the fairytale retellings and urban fantasy novels I used to love from Robin McKinley, Holly Black, Liani Taylor and the like. in writing this review I also remembered the handful of chapters I recorded for a LibriVox edition of Mr. Wirt Sikes 1880 folkloric anthropology book, British Goblins:Welsh Folk-lore, Fairy Mythology, Legends and Traditions. there are so many small and mystical stories wiggling around in the history and culture of every place humans have ever lived. the source material for anything based on fairytales is pretty infinite, I imagine.
and who doesn't love Star Wars, right? it's got equally enchanting heroism and adventure threaded grandly throughout a seemingly endless galaxy. it's a place where one might encounter shiny droids and rugged smugglers in equal measure. a chance to be part of that galaxy is gonna be pretty cool, in any case.
I've mostly followed the same outline for this match-up review: a quick table of metadata,
summaries of past characters I've made in each system, thoughts
on the books' aesthetics, mechanics, and approachability, and finally a note on my brand new/tournament-specific characters. the uniqueness of these two systems just seemed to warrant a discussion of mechanics before diving into details about new character concepts. and so, onward...
| SYSTEM | Changeling: the Lost |
Star Wars: Force and Destiny |
| back cover tagline = | "A storytelling game of beautiful madness." |
"A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away..." |
| publisher = |
White Wolf |
Fantasy Flight Games |
| pub. date = |
2007 |
2015 |
| original cost = |
$34.99 | $59.95 |
| length = |
7 major sections / 349 pages |
13 chapters / 444 pages |
| my exp. level = | some | a bit more than some |
I've created and played two characters each from these two systems. both Changeling games were short and sweet. for one, little Synthia Starling, a birdlike young woman with a Beastly seeming in the Winter Court, explored derelict buildings and made deals with otherworldly creatures in just a couple one-on-one sessions; and then, Liv, another Beastly seeming (this time snakelike), joined up with two other lost souls to bravely infiltrate the Hedge and take down a twisted carnival ringleader. this was around Halloween time, so the short three-session game had a lovely autumn coziness mixed with spookiness underneath.
my Star Wars characters were created for longer campaigns, though the first didn't last all that long in the end. a friend in Louisiana was running a sort of mashup of Stars Without Number using templates from the Star Wars RPG books for some things. so I made a pink Twi'lek-- very rich and spoiled (or at least that's what she wanted people to think), also a talented enough smuggler. her name was Luura'blen and she had a sparkly pet vulptex (one of those crystal-fox-looking creatures). designing her was pretty fun. pink skin, darker pink/red freckles at the ends of her headtails, lots of shiny, pearly jewelry, and silky clothing. technically I must have used the Age of Rebellion core book for her stats (Force and Destiny doesn't have a smuggler path in it), but we'll call that close enough; it seems relevant to write about her here anyway.
some years later, we played an online Star Wars roleplaying game specifically with the Force and Destiny book. all four of us created young padawan characters who would ultimately live through the infamous Order 66. mine was Yahla Sota, a Togruta with golden coloring and a strong Jedi heritage in her family. for young Yahla, it was a privilege to be sent into Jedi training. she wanted so badly to prove herself worthy of that privilege. but in the end, after all the suffering and loss she endured, she couldn't always hold onto that happy trust in the Force. everything got more complicated than she ever thought it could.
the whole story was epic indeed, following us through training, building our lightsabers, surviving shipwreck, facing betrayal, and eventually fighting against the Sith directly. I wrote out a few segments of our adventures, centered on Yahla's perspective, over on this other blog of mine. that campaign was one of the longer and most satisfying I've ever been part of. and Yahla was a character I felt (increasingly, over time) that I could play quite distinctly and purposefully different from any vaguely-alternate version of myself. she was braver, steadier, yet more impulsive and almost vengeful at times.
the Changeling games I've played were small in scope, with relatively tiny, cozy stories. on the other hand Star Wars is built for sweeping space epics, and that's what Yahla's story grew into. big or small, both systems have given me very neat opportunities to explore ideas and circumstances and reactions outside my own experience.
underneath its vibrant, shiny, mottled deep-green cover, the Changeling book evokes a bit of creepiness-- it's not a hedge of glinting leaves, but one of menacingly sharp thorns. splintered bones. spiky antlers. every interior page is bordered with a Celtic-ish chain of thorns or vines. fancy drop capital letters stretch and curl ostentatiously at the beginnings of the interstitial vignettes. the tagline for this game invokes the idea of "beautiful madness," and there is beauty indeed, tinted with World of Darkness grime.
parts of it feel ancient and mythic. other corners are more Grimm, marked with the well-worn wheel ruts of once-upon-a-time. all of it is a little bent, a little rusty-- unpolished and unpredictable. the ancient clocks of this enchanted place are looming and wrong somehow. time in the fae realms cannot be contained or measured like the mortals pretend. nothing works the way a scientist might insist it should. and those untouched by the wrenching trauma of an otherworldly kidnapping couldn't know just how evenly, how deceptively the glitter is mixed with the shadow, the darkness with the sparkle. inbetween-ness is a big theme in this system. you've been taken, lost, and you can't ever really go home. you've seen too much. your soul and your skin will always be a little twisted. a line from chapter 2 says it rather succinctly: "To survive is to carry scars" (p 98).
this game is a blood-stained alley leading to a hidden courtyard, a gleaming estate with endless gardens, where the most intoxicating music drifts through the air, where beautifully manicured topiary might dance with you if you ask nicely... but the overgrown path and tiny doorway only appear on Mondays during a new moon, only if you come alone.
this game is a dusty old cobwebbed attic with antique lace handkerchiefs wrapped around mysteriously half-burned scraps of sepia photographs, where your eyes chase imps and pixies around your peripheral vision, where your weeping waxy candle in its old-fashioned brass holder could betray you to the monsters at any moment.
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the vibe of Star Wars is more straightforward, I want to say. the book is colorful but understated, its type and layout mostly boxy and tactical-looking. but it's also got marvelous art folded in at almost every opportunity. chapter breaks come with gorgeous action scenes across a full spread, each of them with dynamic and cinematic depth. the end papers are panoramic landscapes of Tatooine's desert, and in one of the later chapters is a very awesome map of the whole galaxy.
as you might expect, dichotomies of light and dark pervade this system. good vs. corruption, honor vs. selfishness. these tensions provide the core of Star Wars generally and of this book, Force and Destiny, in particular-- it's all geared toward Force users like Jedi or Jedi-in-training. the art and the tone of the rulebook contribute to a sweeping sense
of destiny: every decision may echo with epic
importance. we're all connected, after all. the Force will guide you like steady stepping stones across a muddy field, if
only you trust it.
this is fairy tales in space after all. it's dramatic in a futuristic way, but the brushstrokes of action, adventure, and fantasy form familiar shapes with comforting trajectories: everyday people touched by something marvelous and huge that changes their lives, heroes-to-be discovering their destinies while navigating seedy hives of villainy and drudging through some version of a dark, despairing swamp, holding on to their light as best they can.
the mechanics of Changeling build on the World of Darkness system with added twists of whimsy and magic. we're using d10s again, with the same basic stats, merits, Virtues, Vices, and your character's attributes and skills will inform most of the dice rolls made to measure success at any given action. on top of all that, a changeling comes from one of 6 "seemings"-- the archetypes of faerie-ness (Beasts, Darklings, Elementals, Fairest, Ogres, or the Wizened) that influence how their looks have supernaturally changed-- and one of 4 season-themed Courts (5 if you count the Courtless as a Court, I suppose). Changeling-specific advantages include Glamour and Wyrd, both used to fuel some pretty cool magical abilities, like manipulating luck or disguising your face as someone else's.
as you progress and learn to control the wyrd powers instilled within you as a changeling, you'll learn more and more powerful Contracts and forge useful Pledges with others in changeling society. at character creation you get a certain number of these, and thereafter use XP to purchase more.
choosing Contracts and thinking up Pledges feels, to me, a little like the rotes (pre-made spells) and improvised magics (anything you can think of and describe convincingly) of Mage. thankfully there seem to be fewer Contracts to choose among, most of which are limited by the seeming and the Court you belong to, which makes things a little simpler. Pledges, though, still intimidate me. they seem pretty hardcore in terms of all the levels of binding and consequence that can be built into them.
instead of human Morality, changelings measure Clarity-- how strong is
your mental hold on what is real? how much has your magic use degraded your
sense of self and continuity? living with knowledge of both the normal world and the Fae can be treacherous, but changelings know that the thorny paths inbetween-- the twisty Hedge that grows and shifts around the edges of reality-- those spaces and paths are useful, too. finding safe(ish) ways in and out is part of cultivating and maintaining magical power. the Hedge and the thorns are in large part what irrevocably changed you; you may as well bend that to your own benefit, and your allies, if you can.
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whichever career and specialization you choose will guide your character's progression along a skill tree, kind of like the ones they have in video games. all the Force powers have skill trees too, with prerequisite skills leading up to more potent or more efficient options for each type. there are Force powers involving speed and balance, some for mind control or sensing into the future, and others for telekenetics. it's all really fun to see these in actual gameplay.
the skill trees may seem overly structured, but there are enough options among the species, backgrounds, and careers to keep it feeling open-ended and full of possibility. you've got plenty of choices for what to spend XP on, and plenty of in-game story reasons to guide those choices.
the custom dice are the weirdest part of the Star Wars RPG system. you can buy a custom set along with your rulebook, or you can use regular d6s, d8s, and d12s in place of Boost dice (d6), Ability dice (d8), Proficiency dice (d12), Setback dice (d6), Difficulty dice (d8), Challenge dice (d12), and Force dice (d12). that is a lot of different kinds of dice, with not-so-normal symbols on all the different sides. during structured play (like combat or other risky contexts where you need dice to decide outcomes) it's common to roll a combination of all 6 of the main types for any given attempt. and the dice aren't just measuring success or failure-- they also indicate advantages and threats from the situation or environment, along with moments of triumph and despair. you can fail triumphantly, or you can succeed with a touch of despair. I like all the narrative possibilities of that, and the creativity it encourages.
in addition to Force dice and the points of light or dark Force energy they generate for each player to use, there's also the mechanic of Destiny points. at the beginning of each session, players roll one Force die and add its result to the Destiny pool. light side Force points are shared by the players, and dark side Force points are given to the GM. each time either side spends a point to upgrade their dice or trigger something beneficial for their characters, that Destiny point ebbs and flows into the opposite side-- light side points become dark side points, and vice versa. it's a pretty fun and dynamic way to represent the balance of the Force.
I rate the approachability levels of these books and systems as average, and just about equal. both books are neatly organized and consistently designed, though the newer publication has a cleaner style that seems easier and more accessible for the average reader. but Star Wars wins a few more aproachability points, simply because of its mainstream-ness and because the book is self-contained, rather than an extension of a larger set of RPG worlds.
surprisingly, I found that the core rulebook for Changeling barely mentions its World of Darkness base. there's a few lines about it, but it almost seems like they expect readers to know and already be in on that half of the system. maybe that's a fair assumption. if you're picking up Changeling and you don't have the core World of Darkness book already, you won't get too far with it. it's also fairly dense, just in terms of tight line spacing.
the popularity and ubiquity of Star Wars content in the media today does potentially make this RPG system a bit easier for the average person. but while its overall themes and stories may be more accessible, that may or may not matter in terms of the heavy levels of detail and technicality offered by this rulebook. it's got like a million tables and charts for everything, from a 100-point morality ranking system with strengths and weaknesses at each level, to fiddly weapon stats and dice conversions. there's a lot going on just with the dice, too! during our long campaign, we had a Discord bot handle dice for us and it wasn't so tricky to get the hang of... but you've still got to know which dice are for what and why, plus how to read the results. it's math with symbols instead of numbers, which some people might find more fun that regular math.
given my prior experience here, I simply made one new character for each system as part of my tournament process.
starting with the base World of Darkness stats of Briella Jameson (outlined in opening match #1, in case you missed it), I had to remold her concept quite a bit more than I did for either Werewolf or for Mage.
in those games, a fully formed person meets their magical
transformation with their eyes more or less wide open, even if they
don't have a choice about it. but in Changeling, there's no choice and
much of the time no awareness of this transformation until it's already
happened. the Fae steal away children, babies, and shape them into
whatever they may want to play with in or control out in the absurd
expanse of Arcadia. the child might not realize until eons later that
there's something wrong, that there's a somewhere they were stolen from
and could, with enough effort and luck, get back to.
so for
Briella, I rewound the clock of her life and imagined her as a plucky 9-year-old on a family vacation. alongside her mom and dad and older
brothers she goes out hiking, learns some basic bouldering, scrambles
up red rocks without fear, all along the way collecting sunburn stripes and mosquito bites in total innocence...
until she falls...
...and the malicious, arbitrary, hungering Fae spirits of a mirrored mountain domain push her down even further, through the plane of our reality and into another. they let her fall through the normal earth and into a broken alternate world. the Fae contrive to put a cobbled-together replacement daughter, lifeless, at the bottom of the trail for her parents to find, and Bri herself is trapped away from them, groomed by her Fae keeper to climb and climb and climb, up and up and up and up, endlessly traversing an Escher-esque mountainside that extends forever into the corroded sky.
when she eventually, painstakingly, barely sane, crawls her way out again through a mere splinter-crack in that magical mirage, it's impossible for her to tell how long it's been. through the horrible purposelessness of endless climbing, she has become like the earth and sandstone, her skin baked into a bright tan, her eyelashes and brows the color of sagebrush, her pale hair like bleached desert grass. I gave her an Elemental seeming (earth, if you couldn't guess) and membership in the Summer Court. she's forgotten her true name, but the echoes of it bleed into what she calls herself now: Jamie Scree.
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for Star Wars, I created a Zabrak named Proxa Tonaullu.
she's from the planet Iridonia, where in ancient times the Sith had close ties with Zabrak high council. she's heard these legends and wondered what they may mean for her once she feels the Force awakening in her own life. I made her a Warrior with the Shii-Cho Knight specialization. Proxa feels called to greatness, ambitious to the point of obsession, but also merciful and kind when circumstances dictate. she's just 18, strong in mind and body, with green eyes, bark-brown facial tattoos in her family's traditional design, and two small polished horns at each of her temples. she is still learning to channel and use the Force, but she knows she'll be an absolutely unrivaled fighter for the Jedi soon enough.
this is another difficult one.
like I mentioned, our Star Wars campaign from a few years back was above and beyond one of the most excellent games. it's a unique system and it was hugely fun to play. largely that's down to the other players being marvelous and of course dearest Jeremiah being great at running such things.
but then I've always felt drawn to the intricate ins and outs of all the faerie magics and mysticalness in Changeling, and I
get pretty excited about the character design aspects of the system. I could spend hours and hours daydreaming, imagining all the cool looks you could give a Changeling character with this or
that seeming, sketching and spinning little vignettes about all those little details and how they show up.
yet I'm highly aware that, just as with Mage, my enchantment with the concept and aesthetics vs my actual experience with the roleplaying system might not balance out in the most practical or fun way. character design is one thing, but cool imagery in my head all by itself doesn't mean much for roleplaying unless I can fit it into the world of the game. the actual playthroughs I have done came with more brightness and whimsy than I expected (though perhaps I should have expected more). the wild, improvisational nature of RPGs strikes again, I suppose.
I haven't played as long or as much within the world of Changeling yet, so I don't feel like I can properly measure how well it lives up to what I think I want it to be. someday... if we can find the right roleplaying group and the right stretch of months for meetups, I might try to run a Changeling campaign. I have half a notebook full of setting notes and NPC ideas already. when I started brainstorming, I took inspiration from the show Killing Eve mixed with the film Primal Fear... who knows if that'll still work out if I ever go back to it. I should probably aim a bit lower and run some World of Darkness one-shots first.
so if I had to finalize this judgement today, based on gameplay alone it would tilt towards Star Wars. simple and mainstream though it may be with all that overarching light vs. dark dichotomy, its lore and world do still make room for plenty of depth and nuance. and even if the dice are pretty weird, that's part of what makes it so fun and unique.
next new one-shot: The One Ring
next match-up review: The One Ring vs. Scion: Hero
seasons of 90 days each. seems like plenty of time. one quarter of a full circle, fair time for each mood of the year.
what was I wanting to blog about?
paper and trees. loud noises and how to hear through them.
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I've been thinking a lot about my grandma. grandma Ashdown. she comes into my dreams
my coat pockets for the past two winters have held traces of that March funeral three years ago: a whole pecan my dad had given me. bottle of lotion from the hotel. baggage claim slips.
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this week the seasons tangibly tilted, almost all at once, one into the other. winter-spring chills are banished by the baking warmth of full-on spring. snow and freezing feel like the smallest of old memories from here.
there are new plants! phlox and day lilies and an easter cactus.
the last day of classes, yesterday. the whole semester at its boiling point, with only grading and emails left before it all simmers away.
for summer break? so many art plans.
and exercise plans.
reading and rereading,
writing and rewriting.
paints and puzzles and games. plenty of sunshine too.
I'd been thinking about all the roles from whatever Goffman theory of something or other... but I'd forgotten the words for it.
my other grandma was a teacher. she taught much younger humans than I get to teach, and I don't know how she had the patience. but if it weren't for her and others like her who somehow do, all the building blocks of reading and writing wouldn't be there for my students to use for anything more advanced.
-
six years ago, riverside vows in the rain.
now? I must finish all this grading and work. then we'll go lay about in the sunshine. fix my bike. go camping at least 3 times. family reunion adventures in July. rent kayaks every week if we feel like it.
-
I found this letter in the back of an old mostly-empty journal. it's a letter I never sent, for some reason. there isn't year with the date of Jan 22 in the corner-- but all evidence (the stationery, my careful handwriting and lack of capitalization, the turn of phrase and the doodles at the bottom) points to 2001 or thereabouts.
it is written to yet a different grandma-- step-grandma, if we need to be that specific. it conjures different memories. twenty-two years ago? when I was barely almost kindof a grown-up?
"grandma chesley:dear past self, it will not settle down. but you'll learn to settle yourself and settle into yourself. eternity may or may not exist in any meaningful way for these limited human brains of ours, but peace does, at least.
greetings! all the family says hi and wishes you well. i decided that i would write this whole letter just because. [hearts] life's been crazy as it always is. i wonder when it will all settle down. anyway meanwhile i go on through all these crazy experiences, thinking all sorts of crazy things while in so many different moods. it seems like everything changes, but never the way people expect. i really really hope my life turns out well. most of the time it seems like i have no clue and won't amount to anything special. the things i care about can be so ridiculous and yet so serious... that's just more proof that life is a paradox.
for all the wrong in the world, the truth seems extraordinarily unbelievable at times. it certainly is hard to concentrate on the good and the beautiful when so many trivial matters lie in the way. i think i would give anything for an eternity of peace, and i guess that is really what we are reaching for.
[smiley, heart, flower, star, leaf, raindrop, rainbow]"
there's not been much of anything new in my courses for several semesters now... but at long last, this spring, I am teaching a very brand new course-- brand new both to me and to everyone:
HU 145: Themes in Humanities (the art and history of podcasts)
HU 145 is a sort of catch-all lower-level Humanities credit, required of all students so we can make sure our pilots and engineers have some well-roundedness about them. I have specifically themed my version of this course around "the art and history of podcasts," because why the heck not. it has been so, so fun to plan for this little 100-level intro course. nothing like it has ever been taught on this campus. and maybe nothing like it has been taught anywhere, since I have been making it all up as I go.
the welcome note / course description I wrote for students / the course catelog goes more or less like this:
This semester, we will explore podcasts and other audio productions from a critical perspective. We will practice our listening skills while examining the conventions of radio and audio production, analyzing the styles and genres of specific productions, and thinking carefully about the cultural contexts in which audio media circulate ideas and contribute to public (or not so public) discourse. Tracing similarities and differences across the history of recorded sound, we will discuss how audio media has been used to record historical events and stories, to foster fandoms and communities, and to shape or re-shape human cultures.alongside two sections of that awesomeness, I've got one good old standard section of COM 221: Technical Report Writing.
my students all seem pretty cool so far. it's early in the semester-- we're all still getting to know each other. I trust that learning is happening, little by little, in all of our spongey curious brains.
--
relatively unrelatedly, I'm gonna toss some recent photo bits in this post. do enjoy the randomness.
foggy winter morning, not long ago
weaving, upside down
red toenails, contemplative pug puppy
the sun and the sky and the mountains somewhere down near Tuscon
blooming orchid. light-starved succulents.
my first Tunisian crochet project: a shawlette of ruffles. (this is the yarn-- isn't it lovely?)
of course all the nuance and mushiness of our beautiful human language means that it can be both. being can be separate from doing. and doing can be absolutely everything that supports our being.
so the phrase "do what you need to be" has been rattling gently around in my head for weeks now. often the thought is shadowed by a somewhat-related question as to the meaning of need vs. want.
needing and being and doing. how would we draw out a diagram of how these versatile verbs truly relate to each other?
it seems impossible to be without needing. and so much of our doing is to fill our various needs. I suppose, too, that how (or whether) we meet which needs shapes whoever we are. circular.
do what you need to be.
so many ways to parse and ponder on that phrase...
are the 'do' and the 'be' two sides of a math formula, one in which the what you do-- the variable--must equate just so with your whole being, irrevocably?
or is the fulcrum of the sentence further over to the right, after the emphasis on need, as if to give us permission: do whatever it is you need to do in order to give yourself space to simply be?
I like that interpretation, I think. but I still don't quite know if I understand it. does it prioritize doing too much? does it make the rambunctious, busy, difficult staircases of doing a prerequisite to calm and simple being?
the cool thing is that I can keep thinking about it. meditating on it. being, doing, and both.
one of my many indulgences this summer was the game Horizon: Forbidden West. I loved the first Horizon game when I played and replayed it some years ago. its sequel is just as great.
the art is most glorious, with characters and cultures designed so carefully, so fascinatingly. and most key of all, the gameplay is fun and challenging and relentlessly open-world. we get to play as the obstinate, fearless Aloy, the redheaded chosen one, journeying through the wilderness to literally save the whole planet, heroically helping everyone she can along the way.
I can't quite tell if Forbidden West is more challenging than its predecessor or
if I'm only feeling that way because I've successfully beaten the first
one twice but have only made it through maybe two-thirds of the sequel. who knows.
almost since the opening cut scenes of this game made its themes so beautifully clear, I've wanted to blog about the analogue between its plot-setting and our own impending collection of climate disasters.
on this version of earth-- far, far in the future--we venture forth to explore and fight and piece together clues amid poisonous red vines, blighted land, thick storms, and corrupted machines making all of it even worse. the communities Aloy encounters tell of ruined farmlands, deepening scarcity, increased violence among the western tribes. barren sand has swept over most of what was once Las Vegas. the sea level has risen to bury San Fransisco. the earth is becoming less and less hospitable.
the game reinforces these threats in mild but consistent ways for the player. if you set foot on the red blight, your character coughs and sputters, losing health points little by little. it's not uncommon to find the bodies of birds, boar, and other wildlife struck down by those deadly vines. when you hunt, you might harvest blighted meat just as often as rich game.
Horizon: Forbidden West presents an open world, with lots of choices about where and what you'll spend your in-character time and effort. but it has limits, too. structure. boundaries. edges-of-the-map.
in real
life, we have fewer of those, in some ways. we have real physics and real mortality, but there are no big blatant textual
warnings that "you are now leaving the play area. turn back or your
unsaved progress will be lost."
in real life, the consequences aren't spelled out like that. not so neatly. not most of the time.
... or maybe the warnings for us just look different. maybe they are somehow differently blatant. if we pay close enough attention.
in real life, how to prevent the worst disasters of climate change is huge and complicated and uncertain. we know we have to do something, but it's overwhelming to think through which exact actions are really the best.
how nice it might be if we, like Aloy and her determined assembly of allies, had a clearly designed path we could follow to save our planet?
follow these clues,
... learn these facts,
.... bravely collect these specific resources from these dangerous conflict zones,
... simply reupload this set of technologies, programs, protocols to reboot this essential system,
... and then watch the world settle swiftly back into equilibrium with itself.
that would be fun, wouldn't it? so rewarding. so simple.
but games are not like real life.
yesterday I watched Mr. Hank Green walk his audience through the recently passed Inflation Reduction Bill. Hank Green is smart and optimistic and it's a useful video.
games are not like real life. nobody is out there handing out step-by-step instructions for saving the world. we are not disposable video game characters stuck in the gears of a predetermined plot.
pros and
cons, eh? we get no easy checklist of instructions for succeeding at this or that quest...
but nor is our path set in stone. nothing written in the stars or the script or the code of the world no matter
what. (also no completely malicious, evil, alien masterminds hellbent on destroying everything, either, thankfully.)
after blogging almost everyday for seven weeks, summer activities and naps and plans took over and left no time.
but I have still been writing. journaling... work notes... DnD vignettes... mental rants about politics and society... and yes, various blogpost drafts.
some of that writing will become conventionally useful in future lesson plans or tenure/promotion paperwork or letters to congress.
some of it will simply exist.
other things I've been up to since last week:
reorganizing and tidying the china hutch, carefully
-spinning wheel practice, frustratedly
-making cheesecake, indulgently
-watering plants, generously
-planning a weekend camping trip, hopefully
-taking Hamilton for short walks, lazily
-dealing with our fritzy air-conditioning, longsufferingly
-and, resignedly, failing at Wednesday's wordle.
I fail at Worldle all the time (despite having won 2nd place in a geography bee once upon a time; someday I really need to sit down and try to master all the countries in Africa), but I don't think I've failed any of the daily Wordle puzzles before this. ever.
I still think the game should have a mechanism for signalling when a letter shows up more than once. but maybe that would make it too easy...oh well.
life is about way more than mere success, thankfully.
Wordle 396 (20 July 2022) X/6
⬜⬜🟩⬜🟨
🟩⬜🟩⬜⬜
🟩🟩🟩⬜⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟨⬜
🟩🟩🟩⬜🟩
🟩🟩🟩⬜🟩
last month I got to attend the 2022 Computers & Writing conference, hosted on the charming East Carolina University campus. this year, it was a hybrid virtual/in-person event, which means that on top of the eight in-person sessions I inhaled one after the other while I was there, I also still have at least 12 tabs open from the online program, just waiting for me to spend proper time with some of the virtual presentations. one of them is this one about academic twitter and such, which features none other than friend Patti!
friend Patti is, as I write, gallivanting gloriously around in Portugal or somewhere similarly awesome thereabouts. from her instagram missives, it all looks terribly fun.
traveling for this conference was fun, but stressful. I used to love airports and the shock of new places. maybe I'm getting old and tired, or maybe the pandemic times have just cast shadows over it all. or maybe some of both. all the airports-- Phoenix, Charlotte, Raleigh/Durham, Detroit-- they were all crowded, hectic arenas. were they just as crowded, before? I can't remember.
here are some photos of the little creek I walked by on my way to-and-from the conference events that week.
and one of the lovely pathway itself, through the tall green trees.
while I was in North Carolina for conference reasons, I took some time to explore downtown Raleigh before I had to come home. it was pretty cool.
I don't know what this tall reflectively blue building is, but it surprised me as I wandered. I felt ambushed by it in somewhat the same way I did by the Eiffel tower. only this was bright daylight.
through the gaps between trees and buildings there, you can see the white tents of an arts festival. I had just enough time that afternoon to browse four or five booths, let the live music wash disjointedly over my ears, and wish for more time to souvenir-shop.
I did manage to acquire a nice belt from these recyclers-of-bicycle-tubes, for Jeremiah, before hurrying to return a rental car and resubmit to the circus of the airport. little did I know just how much of a merry-go-round the Raleigh/Durham airport would become for me that fateful Sunday.
but that's a whole other story, and perhaps too complainingly for here, anyway.
last week, real horses:
this week, fantasy machine horses in Horizon: Forbidden West.
