| DnD Sketches: Raina |
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| 10:42pm 26/08/2009 |
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Raina
I'm inclined to comment first on the fact that a woman scorned seems to be the last thing you want bearing down on you on a battlefield. It seems to be a theme amongst the girls I play with that when you upset their characters there is little time for forgiveness and all the time in the world to get even. This theory of mine encompasses all that I see in Raina. D came to play with Jamie and having no expectations I can say that my bar was set pretty high once I began to understand how D went at things.
For those of you wondering: Raina is a paladin. Man is she ever a paladin. D showed interest in playing a worshiper of the Raven Queen (which for those of you DnD impaired is a polytheistic goddess of death). The jist of this diety is to make sure that everyone is given a fair chance at death and that it is carried out when it is destined to do so. Have I set the scene nicely? Good. Raina wants you to die with ever fiber of her being. She wants you six feet under and to stay that way having seen life, grabbed the t-shirt then promptly exited in whatever fashion you choose to do so. She doesn't fuck around. When she's not telling others that the goddess of death waits to embrace them in their alloted time she's raining down holy terror upon those who chose to cheat death without so much as a thought to where they came from or where they are going. Ironically enough Raina was the first character to see the gates of the afterlife in my game and she came back having an appreciation for life and death and the line between them. I'm excited to see where she goes from here. |
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| DnD Sketches: Paelias |
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| 11:31pm 16/08/2009 |
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Paelias
Now I had never played with Jamie before I started this game and I was rather curious to see what he'd come up with. There were a few concepts thrown my way and all of them warning signs that this is someone who enjoys intrigue in his games. For Jamie nothing is as it seems to be and the world through his character's eyes would reflect that I was sure of it. Paelias is the reflection of all that is rotten in the world looking back into its core. If the world has its naive parts then Paelias represents the cynical. You'd be hard pressed not to throw around words like "evil" and "morally unsound" around Paelias but he takes it in stride because he knows that someone has to think in the darker side of the grey to make sure all the bases are covered.
As I go through session after session I see the deeper (and darker) sides to Paelias. His love for his ward who ends up saving his and others asses more often than not, his desire for power over the magic of telportation and his need to push the envelope whenever it needs to be pushed and often times when it doesn't. When you agree to take Paelias along you agree to take the good with the bad and that's the bottom line. |
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| DnD Sketches: Nerwen |
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| 09:36pm 04/08/2009 |
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Nerwen
Before I met ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) stregapez I had heard tell of a very talented gal from zerodan who was looking for a game. The game was in the early stages of development and we had only a handful of hopeful character concepts. When stregapez shot me her concept I was at first impressed by the promptness and secondly taken aback when I read into the history of that which is Nerwen. As I drew this at work, the beginning sketches, a co-worker saw it and stated, "Wow, she's hot... that...is a she, right?" I told him that guys generally don't have breasts but when I had thought about his reaction I realized that I was on the right path.
Nerwen is something of a bold defiance in a world of tragedy and horrible occurences. She stands up to it all and never waivers despite the overhwelming pressure for her to admit defeat, conform and submit to the ideas of others. She's lived longer than the rest of the party but obviously is no physically worse for wear. Nerwen seeks something that no one else will know and even she strives to define. Nerwen reminds me of a lot of my own qualities - the qualities of indecision and rebellion if for no other reason than to defy change. Nerwen is still seeking her purpse in the world and that is as noble a cause as any of us can hope for. Let's hope she hits her mark. |
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| DnD Sketches: Ghost |
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| 11:30pm 26/07/2009 |
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Ghost_in_the_Machine
Some characters are lovers and some are fighters. I've rarely actually seen someone play a character who just loves to fight. This is the first of a few sketches I'm doing to off-set the intense work I'm doing on the up and coming web-comic. It's nice to be able tod raw something and actually get it out there as opposed to drawing a character I've already drawn about twenty times. So let's begin with Ghost shall we?
When I started this long-ass game that I've been running since January I knew I had to get a bunch of people who knew how to carve out a character. I needed people who could sculpt, not trace. Well, be careful what you wish for I suppose. I started the game because zerodan requested we dig into 4th edition. Now, this post isn't really about my feelings on 4th edition so I'll skip right to it.
What I got from zerodan was a combination of Madmartigan and his own mixture of mischief and honor. The result you see before you is something of a cocky fighter, a man of few words and many ladies. Hope might spring eternal but for Ghost confidence wins through. You are looking upon a fighter whose merit is measured not by the number of foes he can fell with a single swing of his hammer but rather the number of drinks he can drink long after he's already drunk you under the table and the women who still wonder what his real name is.
Ghost's real name is a fable for more serious times. Once a man of honor and privelage it's obvios Ghost has taken to the more adventurous lifestyle upholding friendship above most other things. A very long story cut short: he seeks to one day regain his honor and in the time being have enough fun for the lot of us. |
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| Station. |
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| 10:52am 22/06/2009 |
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Upon walking this Summer-time quest, I've found it difficult to stick to multiple ideas all at once. Still, I've managed to make it work o far and have finished the very, very rough draft of the Werewolf primer for Rome. I've found that losing the fear that this will never get published behind and just writing because it's what I should be doing is quite liberating. I can write all sorts of crap that most people will never see and the fact that I wrote them makes me feel better.
I had a similar experience once in high school. I would doodle and draw whatever came to mind and even though it was all on lined paper I felt free of the confines of my stagnancy. This is leading into my next campaign promise which is to produce some images for public consumption involving the web-comic I am currently boiling around my head. So far I've drawn about twenty zombies and a handful of people. I'm stacking up the odds nicely if I do say so myself.
What's next? I'm gathering information on an itch about The Wards in the back of my head. Might be time to go do orphanage research. |
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| Not Dead. |
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| 11:15pm 12/06/2009 |
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I'd always made a pact with myself that once I'd found my niche I'd never stop digging into it until I died. It was victory or death and that's the way I operate even today. Some people comment about my luck and that I'm fortunate but I consider it just to be a side-effect of my tenacity. A man is worth whatever the value of his actions to which I rephrased: a man is worth what he does between spring and fall. Summer holds an opportunity to explore new avenues and expand upon ideas hidden within. I've had many ideas that need hep getting off the ground and I'm tired of holding them inside waiting for the big bang that will have them come spilling forth like a deluge causing me to gather two of each of my ideas and make due with a large flotation device. Listed below are some of the things I'm preparing and do know that eventually I will get around to expressing all of them... in some fashion.
( Musings of a raving lunatic. )
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| Chemistry. |
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| 10:11pm 11/12/2008 |
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So, upon failing this semester of Chem 101, my truly inspiring fall of scientific porprotions, my lab teacher had jested that if I wrote a story on the chalk board then I would get extra credit. Politely I picked up the chalk and went to the board and began to write while he continued to lecture about bullshit experiments regarding gases and molecules.
This is the story I wrote. Enjoy the tale.
Once there was a girl named Sam. Sam once had a bunny until the day the werewolves came and took the bunny away. Sam was very upset that the werewolves were stealing her bunny and vowed to destroy them one day. The government came by and told Sam that she should stop looking for her bunny because the werewolves couldn't be known to everyone else. She was very upset and went looking for the bunny anyways even though werewolves were fierce and hungry for the flesh of laborers. Sam chased after the werewolves for many days. Then Sam was the Queen of the Werewolves and the government made it so she was never known again. But what happened to her bunny?
The lab teacher said he'd give me points for it because of the fact I actually put effort into it. I wasn't really thinking when I did it, just kind of floating in brain fluid. The story doesn't really mean anything but I guess I can say it is true and stupid.
Where did the werewolves come from? The teacher actually told me they had to be included. Without my prompting. Ha. |
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| Fiction: A taste of what's coming. |
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| 09:32pm 09/12/2008 |
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"Have you ever had that dream where you're falling? Sure you have. Everyone does. I had it last night. You're always afraid you'll die when you hit the ground but... why does everyone dream about falling? Even those that aren't scared of heights?"
"No matter how many good things I try to do I always feel like a bad person, like I did something wrong and I can't shake it."
"Why am I attracted to innocence? The thoughts turn dirty but in my mind they are so pure... Oh God, please keep them pure. "
"I never wondered why we look up. Our heads are meant to look up but most of us sag them. Dogs can't look up, can they? So why can we?"
"Evolution is a strange thing. We're supposed to come from monkeys but over the millions of years we've not progressed as quickly as other species. Sometimes I wonder if we're really from the apes...
Oh... Me?
No.
I don't believe in that.
... I'm an athiest."
2009 |
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| Non-fiction |
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| 07:52pm 09/12/2008 |
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I was never good at these. What a wonderful preface to seemingly unprecedented public prose and yet I feel it is long overdue and that it is something that really must happen. I suppose I have stalled sufficiently.
It may not be obvious to most but came back from Australia a mess. A changed mess, but I had scars that I would deepen and hearts that prior to my messing were left unbroken. I always felt a lonely detachment from the world something I held onto without pity or without self-loathing. It was a wonderment to me if I would ever find a niche or a place to belong instead of drifting wildly through the waves of fate, basking in the glory of my own wanderlust.
There came a few times when I would sink deep into it and I would lose myself. I mean that I would truly lose sight of who I was and what it was I was here for. Make no mistake: I came here to change the world because I am sure it asks me to each and every day. People make fun of me for my martyrdom years and they do not stop there. It is true I suffered without trying to stop it. Deep inside myself I felt that pain was teaching me something that it was enlightening me to something grand that would eventually come.
How blind was I that when it came I sat idly by and played video games while it sat reading tiny paper books in the upstairs lair of one of my best friends? One might even consider the experience like a man in the desert seeing an oasis after weeks of travel only to disregard it because he had forgotten what salvation looked like. It was me sitting blindly by while a thought had been slipped underneath the layers of my mind only to surface months later. It comes upon you like a ghost and you swear when it visits you at night that you knew it was there all along. The truth is that this post was never meant to be about me and that it is long since been time to tell people what I mean when I say that before I met you, Josie, my idea of love was inconceivably incomplete. I told you when I saw you on that ladder, painting Mae's room with all the flair and energy you have come to show me in your smiles, that I first noticed those eyes and took into account your obvious sobriety. I then noted something that stayed with me that day: your joy. Your wit comes second to moments when you are truly happy. You learn to dream again and to reach out to the stars. It is these moments that I remember why it is I ever decided to make you the craziest woman alive.
I was never good at that, either, but I bought you a ring and I brought with it my nervous clamoring, blushing and a world of trust that never once existed in me before. I write on you because it was monumental the way you make me know that odd ache around the sides of my mouth when I'm around you. For the first time I'd smile like I had remember how all along. Lots of people don't get married because of their worries for the future. I put a ring on your finger because the future was never in question. The candid moment brings me to admit the aspects I enjoy about you but would never say. I do like your knitting, I like your stories (as long as they may be), and I enjoy your criticisms and input. They come from someone I trust and even though I tend to show I am not wont to listen, I hear and I remember.
To end this public display of humiliation I will only state that I am where I am now because I knew the future was never in question when I asked you to marry me. So what can I say? Thank you, Josie, thank you. |
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| of mind and pen |
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| 10:04pm 11/11/2008 |
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Occasionally it is difficult to conjure up words sufficient enough to place in my own journal so that later on I can feel less of a buffoon when reading them. This is not the perfect precursor to these very thoughts but I felt the need to embed them anyways.
My life takes on themes in its sporadically altering existence and I am forced to gravitate towards those themes (lesser themes I should say) while they present themselves. If you know me, you perhaps see me struggle with the constant rearing of the head of nobility from time to time. You may find it agitating that I play devils advocate for someone I have spoken ill of before or that I defend those who in all logic (a relative thing) should not be defended. It's not about the balance of the scales or the proverbial good citizen that I do and say these things it is because when we are sick of the world around us we can find solace in being examples. A starving skinny man once said you should be the change you seek in the world. That, my readers, is the hardest thing.
I've begun to indulge my creative habits of spewing out ideas again. I am attempting my very best to keep them away from role-playing and games and such and just write. So far...
"Five orphans displayed in a perspective-based novel each with an allegory pertaining to a supernatural entity in the orphanage, each having to do most with the way the character perceives this allegory rather than the allegory itself."
I've also been tempting myself with the idea of re-starting Moira a novella I began about a year ago pertaining to Victorian-style investigations in a Greek mythologically-based Victorian London.
In the end, these are all just words. Nullius in verba: nothing in words. I'll have to prove myself by my actions alone.
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| Old Hat, New Shoes |
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| 11:14pm 09/09/2008 |
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I'm never one to condone the atrocities of self-felcaio that seem rampant on the proverbial tubes of the internet though I must say that for the most mundane of birthdays this one has been rather a hoot. It seeks to knock aside hedonistic consumerism for something much more substantial and fufilling. I recieved numerous calls and messages today and I must say that for the first time in this little bruttish materialistic life I was glad not to recieve a single thing except for the love of my family and the adoration of friends. I even struggle less now to say that I saved every one of those messages in hopes that they would help me in the struggles of my life.
It seems a tad perculiar to spout off about these small tidbits of communication which have filtered into my day like one might imagine a slow falling blanket falling upon a bed one has dreamnt of sleeping in for days. If I had to guess at what might have been the cause to this effectual happiness it would have to be my father. It has been a habit of my father to always remain distant from his loved ones as if it somehow helped him to maintain his guru status. Today, from some sun-filled paradise in Florida my father called and left a message wishing me happy birthday. Know that when I say I was speechless it is meant to be said with great weight.
With this birthday almost at its lazy end I am perpetually reminded of our effect on others through our actions and words. I'd like to dedicate this birthday to everyone else, may your tomorrow be better than the other days of the week, I wish you the good that I inherited this day. Everyone deserves one. |
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| Moira (Fate) [Excerpt from Current Project] |
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| 07:56pm 31/10/2007 |
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Tycho was kneeling next to the deceased. Hermes was undoubtedly long-gone from the scene and that left Tycho and the muses to look things over and gather the information. Of course, this also meant that as soon as the muses tapped a few curious souls on the streets of London her Majesty's inspectors would be all over the house. He would be hauled in for questioning under penalty of Zeus' Law and there would go his night.
Adjusting his glasses some, the private inspector noticed something next to the poor girl, who hours earlier had been answering some very personal questions from him. He reached down and plucked the small feather from under the body. Glancing at it, twirling it between his thumb and index finger, cursing the name for which the feather probably originated, Tycho rose up, and stuffed the object in his frock coat pocket.
He left her there; little Zora from the Artemis Temple all riddled full of knife wounds but not one arrow. That confused Tycho something fierce as he fingered the little feather in his pocket. The knife wounds were frantic, too. Whoever did it knew enough to strike hard but they were nervous, nervous as Hades. One slice across the throat usually did the trick, but more than a dozen holes leaked the blood of Zora as she lay in the white-sheeted bed of her home.
Tycho knew he didn't have a lot of time. Once the Artemis devotees got word of a nervous knife-wielding male wandering the streets, it would be hunting season on any bloke casually carrying his head high near Hyde Park. Quickly he removed the scuff from his shoes off the hardwood floor and made a careful climb out the window just as he heard whistles blaring down the street. Confounded Muses always worked too damn quickly. |
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| Spiderman. |
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| 03:45pm 03/05/2007 |
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Lo and behold the greatness of these times and name them for what they personify: moving picture greatness.
Spiderman 3 is out this weekend and I am bringing up the first two installments of the saga. I will be watching them at a house, with a television. It could be your television. The important part is this,
Spiderman 3 is out this weekend. I want to watch this movie with my friends. Saturday night we will brave the crowds to see the web-slinging crusader. Who... is... with... me?
Just remember, with great power comes great responsibility. |
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| Silly Brian, roleplaying is for kids |
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| 12:44pm 12/10/2006 |
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That's what I hear anyways.
I am inclined to disagree. If I cannot roleplay then half my creative juices go to the shitter. I don't ever want to hear someone tell me I'm too old to roleplay. Dudes play poker on Friday nights, some guys watch football or go to the bar. I fucking roleplay. Deal.
Yes I'm angry, or perhaps just frustrated with myself. Some say I take my games too seriously and that's all right because I do. I take them seriously because to me they are more than that. Writers write books, I make up games. It is the nexus of my ideas, my creativity. I tried drawing the ideas out, I tried writing them out... and sometimes those things work. However, to truly get the feeling like I created something worthwhile... I need to storytell, I need to watch excitement in other peoples faces when they think something dire is about to happen to a fictional character. I like the happiness, the sadness and the plot. I like discovery and adventure.
So fucking sue me if I like roleplaying too much. I'm tired of having to curtail my desire to want to play. I'm 25. I roleplay because I enjoy it. If you were 35 and you liked to paint elephants I'd say "rock on". Have the same courtesy.
Deep down I don't expect people to be as enthused or as inspired about the games as I am. But I run it for the characters and I want those characters to be involved, to have something personal to contribute. Help me write these stories and I'll pull more than my fair share of creativity to your doorstep. |
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| To whatever end |
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| 09:37pm 21/09/2006 |
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Made my life hard up until now because I never wanted the easy way out. It's a lesson that I'm always willing to come to class for. It's a step that I'm willing to take over and over again no matter how many times I fall. It's my life and for once I can call it that. I call it my own because I stop asking what other people think. I do this because I push the buttons. I started doing this because I wanted to live a destiny undesigned. I want to follow my fate and write it along the way.
It's coming back to me as I wake up day after day. The feeling in my head that fills me with happiness. It makes me feel alive being here and feeling that creativity..that "me" rising up again from the depths. I'm back, bitches. You can't run.
I feel free and the pressure upon me keeps me going. Whatever may come of my life I know it will be for the best. For all of you who can't read this I thank you for either easing me along the wrong path to eventually learn I was going the wrong way. For those who can read this know that you are and have been my friends. I thank each and every one of you and would bled out for every last fucking one of you (even if I say otherwise).
And Josie, thank you so much for everything you do for me. Thank you for reminding me constantly that I'm not drowning only holding my breath.
More to come. Prepare for the return... hide your carpet. I break houses. |
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| All My Base |
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| 02:41pm 16/03/2006 |
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I stop eating for religion and 14 days later I'm here to draft you another exciting update. But let's not call it an update. Let's not even call it an entry. Despite my best attempts I can find no reason to be sad, and maybe I want to be sad so I could be inspired. Old wounds become modern art and all that.
( Once more with feeling. ) |
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| don't call it a comeback |
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| 09:21am 03/03/2006 |
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Although not fundamentally asured that anyone will read this the truth about journals is that it doesn't matter who reads them so long as it is transcribed. With that message put forth I shall relay to you the goings ons of the now and fervently hope you somehow stumble across them and comment with a will akin to any interweb freedom fighter.
( My mind I miss the most... and food ) |
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