stonestrewn

The spring semester was supposed to start last tuesday, but for some reason my course was moved forward one week, so I got an extra week of winter vacation. I spent the time cleaning, taking walks in the snow (it's been pretty cold and snowed a lot! It's great!) and avoiding things online. Or, avoiding isn't exactly the right word, I've just been checking social media when I felt like it, not out of an obligation to keep up. And I've mostly not felt like it. It's been nice! Social media is something I've struggled with for a while... How to keep up, how to stay in touch reliably, how to participate in fandom and not have it turn stressful or leech too much of my very limited daily focus. Maybe it will just fall into place on its own once I finally get a regular, firm schedule for a longer period of time.

Also, I had roleplaying sessions on Friday night as well as Sunday which was super nice as well. Spring rp season has started and I'm extremely excited. My main group, Twilight Sentinels, have our first session on the 16th and I'm counting the days.

Classes start tomorrow, my internship in a month... And I've joined an SFF book club! It's an existing group of eight people and I'll be joining them for the first time in mid March. It's some time away still, but I look forward to it a lot.

In other news: fandoms, under the cut!

- Critical Role is dominating my fannish interest right now, for sure. I'm almost, almost done with the first campaign, only have about ten episodes left. As much as I look forward to starting the second campaign and enjoy a fandom in its heyday again, it's going to be incredibly bittersweet to say goodbye to Vox Machina. I've started really, really caring about all the characters, the past 25 episodes in particular have has some fantastic character stuff I've been so incredibly into. And I adored Tary! He was my kind of pompous dipshit! As soon as I've said goodbye to Vox Machina I'm going to write some TARY FIC!

- Still playing through Assassin's Creed Odyssey. It's an okay game? The gameplay is fun, the environments are very, very pretty, and it has enough box ticking stuff that it's great for when I just don't have the mental capacities to focus on story focused stuff and just want to press buttons and clear objectives for an hour before bed. Cassandra is a great character and there are aspects of the story I'm kind of interested in, but the experience has definitely been tainted by the DLC. Even if I won't ever buy it and play it, just knowing it exists and that the people making the game thought that was an okay ending for a female playable character... Video games are bad.

- EXCEPT SUNLESS SEA! That's a good game, and Sunless Skies come out on thursday and I am burning, yearning.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I'm glad you enjoyed your extra week of vacation! I also feel you on that taking a break from social media; I always worry about keeping up with friends I might miss otherwise, but I also hate feeling obligated to give my time to the attention merchants, if that makes sense? Like I *wish* I didn't feel obligated to check as much and trying to separate how much of it is actually about positive social engagement vs a timesink that makes me feel crappy about the other things I 'should' be doing.

Sounds like you have a lot of good stuff lined up! Do you know yet what book(s) you will be reading for the book club?

(meanwhile I am excitedly dithering over Sunless Skies!!!)

"Attention merchants" is a really good and succinct way of describing this whole feeling. It's Hard, because there's so much about social media that is valuable to me and I want to keep, but I'm just no longer willing to give it a huge part of my day and brain power.

We'll start the book club with Soulless by Gail Carringer, and then read Howl's Moving Castle and a book by Hank Green, along with a couple other I can't remember at the moment. None of these I would have picked up on my own so it's going to be interesting!

Also: TWO DAYS TO SUNLESS!!!!

I wish I could take credit for that phrase, but I heard it a couple years ago on a podcast about social media. :')

I've read Howl's Moving Castle and vaguely remember liking it! I might dust that one off when you and your club get to it. :D

(THE SUN. THE SUN. THE SUN. THE SUN.)

An extra week of unexpected freedom is great!

Keeping track of social media is something that I also struggle with. When I am home and procrastinating tumblr tends to be a background noise that sometimes produces things of interest - or allows me to do things like backtrack the Lin Beifong tag over several years. XD

I enjoy that dreamwidth is an option again, because I miss the lj days of having more time to catch up on posts - like I am doing now. I don't think tumblr really allows for that, twitter I have always failed to get the hang of - and discord is more of a chat program to me.

I have also been enjoying Critical Role a lot ever since I managed to fall into it roughly a year and a half ago. (It's also making me want to find an rp group...) I caught up with most of the Vox Machina eps - though I am missing chunks of it - mostly the Siege of Emon and onwards. I approached watching it in arcs - not always chronologically. Tary is wonderful - and Pike and Grog are, too. I mean, I love all of them but... oh boy. So many highlights and feels.

I had a lot of fun playing AC:O and so decided to get the Season Pass - aaaand then have not touched the game since that DLC fiasco happened. I had finished the main game by then, however, so in my mind Kassandra is off somewhere happily with her many lady loves. (And maybe Alkibiades.)

Yeah, I'm definitely not getting any DLC - it really, really must have sucked to find this out after getting the season pass. I'll still finish the main game, because just like you, I'm having a lot of fun. That's probably a big part of the reason the DLC is such a blow, if it had been to a shittier game it would have been more of the same, but now it just steps all over everything the game itself did good.

At least Critical Role keeps being a delight! I'm so, so happy you're into it, please talk more to me about it some time because none of my other fandom buds watch it and I've been burning alone. The only one I know who's really into it is a girl in my rp group, and we only hang out when we play and sessions aren't exactly the space for extended fannish glee.

Which, if you have any way to do so, you definitely should try playing yourself. It's unlike any other way to experience a story, and a fantastic way to socialize. If you were Swedish I would point you to some feminst/queer facebook groups I know where you can get in touch with other nerds, but maybe there's something similar for your area?

Critical Role was such an unexpected wonderful find for me. I hadn't really ever given rp-ing a second thought before - and it combines so many elements of story-telling and theatre that I love. Plus all of these voice actors are just incredibly likeabe and good and fun and a joy to watch play and banter and act. It's also given me new ways to think about coming up with stories. I often like to catch up with their episodes before I sit down and get some writing done myself.

Yeah, I should work harder on finding a local rp group. It's been on my list for a while.

Oh yeah, you're a big theater buff, aren't you? That must be such an interesting and appealing aspect of it, if you're coming in from that direction! (I like theater myself and catch plays when I can, but I can't really claim it as an interest, if you know what I mean.) I definitely was drawn by the real play rp part, I was looking for a new show and decided to give it a shot after the Adventure Zone's first arc ended, but it really was an unexpectedly delighted thing for me as well. I haven't liked most Geek & Sundry stuff prior to this so I was sort of skeptical. But they it was, definitely, just a joy.

Watching the show has made me a MUCH better roleplayer, for sure, I've been taking lots of notes on how to be more daring and immersive with the improv aspect of rp, as well as on how to play with a more active eye on the experience of the people I play with. The Critical Role cast are so proactive and careful about playing with each other, and watching that from the outside was super useful for me, who had been struggling a bit with character play and with keeping a too self-conscious focus on myself during play before this.

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