I’ve never understood the “why watch somebody play a game when you can play it yourself” argument. Plenty of people watch sports or esports without actually spending much time playing the games in question. There’s a certain value in the artistry and skill displayed by people who’ve invested time in doing something professionally. One of my poisons of choice is obviously speedruns.

While I do like a good challenge, the level of practice required to execute speedruns is just not of interest to me. I would much rather just watch others do it and admire their effort from afar. I also just enjoy seeing the creativity and absurdity that typically goes into breaking these games.

I’m also going to thread the needle between Blaugust’s Introduction Week and Creative Appreciation week.

See, despite enjoying the occasional speedrun, I don’t invest a lot of effort in watching them. Sometimes, if I don’t forget, I was the twice-annual Games Done Quick (GDQ) charity event. I missed the proper summer session, cause I forgot, but there is an upcoming Frame Fatales event that’s all female. They also say they’re supportive of “trans, non-binary, or gender non-conforming” women as well, so I’ll make an effort to tune in when I can. I actually added it to my calendar so I don’t forget.

There are also two creators that I loosely follow. The first is the YouTuber and speedrunner Karl Jobst. This is definitely a guilty pleasure because his channel is much more about the goings-on within the community, especially covering reported cheaters and the details that point toward the legitimacy (or lack thereof) of their runs. He does occasionally report on notable new records as well. I just find the 1-2 videos per month to be about the right activity level to stay easily caught up without being overloaded. Unfortunately one of his recent videos covers a questionable run that occurred during Games Done Quick.

The other creator that I occasionally check in on is the Borderlands 2 speedrunner darksmoke11. There are others in the community I watch from time to time, but I enjoy the very laid back and casual tone he typically uses in his streams. He isn’t particularly loud or energetic, but he is an excellent runner. I also enjoy watching him because I get to see how the sausage is made.

He and all the other featured runners tend to make it look easy, especially on YouTube where you see the good runs or GDQ where you see safer strategies. Watching them live on Twitch, though, you get to see just how much effort it takes even with the immense skill of a well trained runner. The sheer number of tries and resets required to get things to line up right.

I’ve even learned some strategies that I use in my own casual runs from time to time. I’ve especially used some of the easier to execute skips in BL2 out of general laziness, and a few other odd tricks like swap reloading which I’m horrible at but fun to play with. I’m actually watching smoke as I write this and learning new grenade jump skips I didn’t know existed.

That’s just me though. It’s something I enjoy and the runners deserve all the credit in the world for their time spent.

Y’all take care. Maybe next year we can speedrun Blaugust?

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Hey, it’s Blaugust time! The goal is to simply promote and stimulate the blogging community by encouraging people of all skill levels and backgrounds to post. The official post can be found here and it’s never too late to start.

One thing I used to do when I was blogging more regularly was run a couple of columns. I mean, I guess they were columns? Series? In the early days it was Warframe. Later on I tried out the new free Epic game every week and gave an opinion on that, though I believe it was technically about playing something new every week and Epic just happen to throw things in my lap once a week, simplifying the process.

I’m considering giving the latter a shot again. It will at least help break up the monotony and give me something to consistently write about. It doesn’t hurt that this week’s game is Cook, Serve, Delicious 3, which is a franchise I’ve never tried but am curious about.

This is partially brought out by the unsurprising announcement that Nightingale has been delayed. This has just scrubbed yet another title off my already sparse lineup for the remainder of the year. This just leaves Harvestella and Pokemon Scarlet/Violet on my list for November.

It may also be worthwhile for me to poke around in No Man’s Sky at some point as well. I did a fair bit of play a couple of expeditions ago and just haven’t kept up with it in the past few months.

The final piece of the season pass DLC is out for Wonderlands as well, so I may consider taking another look at that. I played an absurd amount of it at release, including a max level character of each class. I stopped before the DLCs started dropping because I didn’t feel like grinding out the last couple of basegame achievements.

Right now, though, my goal is to finish up the achievements for Borderlands The Pre Sequel. I’ve made quite a lot of progress over the past week so now it’s just going to be putting in some time to run around and knock them out and playing a couple more characters to wrap up the final few. It is allegedly possible to run multiple clients at the same time in order to nail the co-op achievements. I’ll try that on my home PC because my laptop would likely explode.

So that’s what I’ve got lined up at the moment. How much of it I’ll get around to remains to be seen.

Y’all take care. Hope you have something to look forward to.

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Hey, it’s Blaugust time! The goal is to simply promote and stimulate the blogging community by encouraging people of all skill levels and backgrounds to post. The official post can be found here and it’s never too late to start.

Now this is one of those posts that I never thought I’d find myself writing. Partially because I was extremely skilled at hiding it, especially from myself. Mostly because it’s a bit off topic for the blog and tends to invite trouble. If I don’t write about it, though, I’ll always be wondering if I should. So I’ll just go ahead and rip the bandaid off, as it were. Seems appropriate to do it during the Blaugust introduction week.

I’m what the community would refer to as Assigned Male At Birth (AMAB). Since I now openly identify as a woman, I guess that technically makes me transgender. In reality, I’m just me and that’s just a partially descriptive label. No different than calling myself a gamer or a blogger. It did inform my color choice for the new logo, though.

The story of how I rediscovered this is relatively short and unamusing. I have a trans friend in London who was attempting to explain her hormone medication to me. To do so, she linked me to a two hour presentation by Dr. Powers. While it also did a good job at helping me understand what she was talking about, it also gave me the impression that transition was a real thing that real people could do. I wasn’t able to shake the idea after that.

One of the core problems now is the line between [him] and [her]. While I once regarded [her] as just a persona I created 20 years ago to express a transvestive and/or feminine identity that I could not at the time, over the last year that line has become much fuzzier.

It seems easy, to me, to take those parts of ourselves that we don’t easily accept and give them a name. It “solves” the identity issue in a roundabout way. “It’s not me that likes women’s clothing and makeup, it’s [her].”

It’s dissociative in nature.

This quote is actually from an unpublished draft I wrote when I was panicking and having an identity crisis following the presentation. That’s actually toward the latter end when I was approaching acceptance. The thing that really sealed the deal was an honest review of all related behaviors that I could recall over the course of my life. It seems excessive and unnecessary to repeat it here, but the evidence seemed pretty clear to me. I can see times when it was clearer to those around me than it was to myself.

Ironically, the amount of dysphoria I experienced up to that point was very subtle. It manifested in small gestures that I never really thought much about. In fact, I didn’t really think about myself much at all in the physical sense. I did the minimum required to be presentable in public and left most other choices at my wife’s discretion. Actually making those choices myself would have required me to confront opinions I’d rather not deal with, so I simply didn’t.

We’re getting a bit long winded, so let’s skip to the present. I did eventually begin Hormone Replacement Therapy, among many other more obvious things. It’s a very slow process, measured in quarters or years. It’s only been a few weeks and the effects in that range are practically non-existent. There is plenty of evidence that the testosterone blockers are working, though, and I can only assume the estrogen is picking up the slack since I don’t feel like absolute garbage. Quite the opposite, actually.

For the curious, I personally take 50mg of Bicalutamide 1/day and 2mg of Estradiol (Sublingual) 2/day. This dosing is a fairly standard starting dose, but most girls take Spironolactone instead of Bica. Spiro can have some rather unpleasant side effects and potential complications, though, so I opted to try something else instead.

I would also like to point out that this only represents my personal experiences and not anyone else’s. I’ll finish with a couple of common questions.

“How long have you been trans?”
As far as I can tell with hindsight, forever. I am exceptionally dense in this regard, however, and outside a small window 20 years ago it’s not something I ever really thought about or considered. Unfortunately the Benjamin Scale was in use in the early ’00s and the information available to my young self on the internet was sparse. I wouldn’t even hear the word transgender for years. This allowed me to convince myself that even though transition was something I wanted, it was something I couldn’t have. If you live that lie long enough you can almost convince yourself it’s true.

“Do you plan to get surgery?”
I swear everybody I know personally has asked me this question. I get it. For someone who isn’t trans the idea of Gender Reassignment Surgery (GRS) seems a bit ludicrous. It’s also worth pointing out that there are several different surgeries, not all trans people want all surgeries, and even if they do it’s just not available to many. Historically I’ve been very cagey about answering, but it’s a very tentative yes.

GRS, aka Bottom Surgery
Emotionally, yes, I absolutely want bottom surgery. The reality is that it’s both expensive and difficult to get access to. Right now it’s not enough of an issue for me to pursue it further. It just doesn’t seem like a practical use of resources. As a side note, I cannot legally change the gender on my license in my state without the surgery.

Top/Chest Surgery and Facial Feminisation Surgery (FFS)
I’m actually indifferent here. I’m willing to wait and see how things go with hormone replacement therapy before I consider these. Even if I asked, that’s typically the medical recommendation as well, especially for FFS. If after a year or two I feel that my results aren’t what I want, I’ll consider these starting with FFS.

I think that’s enough of all that for one day. Hopefully I got it out of my system enough that I won’t constantly be wondering if I should write about it or not.

Y’all take care. Play nice.

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Hey, it’s Blaugust time! The goal is to simply promote and stimulate the blogging community by encouraging people of all skill levels and backgrounds to post. The official post can be found here and it’s never too late to start.

It occurred to me upon review that I spent a lot more time in my introduction post talking about things I don’t do rather than what I actually get up to. I intend to try and correct that here.

We’ll start with work, because that’s where most of my time goes. I do industrial maintenance in a factory. Rather than the general purpose crew (that gets paid more than me) that fixes all kinds of different problems and equipment across the facility, my job is to babysit a specific piece of equipment and its surrounding area so they don’t get a dozen or more calls a night to deal with it. The upside is that if you’re very proactive, it’s typically pretty calm. You learn what to check and which warning signs to look for.

You can’t plan for everything, though, and sometimes weird things just happen. The better you get, the more interesting and unique failures you run into. I prefer to think of it as the mechanical version of hunting bugs in code. The overall problem solving process is very similar. You ask which bits are (or aren’t) doing the thing and walk through the pieces one step at a time to see if you can isolate which part isn’t working as intended.

Another area I spend a lot of time is listening to podcasts. I’ll go over this in more detail in creator appreciation week, but just keeping up with my subscriptions puts me around 5-6 hours per week, and it’s usually much more. I’ve considered the possibility of trying some audio books or something once I run out of back episodes to fill the time.

A contributing factor to my listening time is me trying to get at least 10k steps a day. It’s not much, but it’s more exercise than I used to get and typically requires intentional effort. It’s part of a general plan to be at least slightly healthier, although my employer has recently terminated its insurance discount program. It’s of benefit to me anyway, so why not? I’ve also made considerable effort to modify how I eat as part of this as well, but in small sustainable ways.

To that end, something I greatly enjoy but don’t spend nearly as much time on as I’d like is cooking. Most of it is just day to day feeding everyone, but from time to time I branch out and try something completely new. Right now I’m in the process of switching my kitchen over to a 36″ gas counter unit/hob and an electric wall oven, so it’s on the back burner.

Any remaining time is occupied with a variety of miscellaneous small tasks. Commenting on a few select subreddits, checking in with friends, or sometimes just staring at the wall. It really depends on what I’m in the mood for. That’s still a decent overview.

Y’all take care. Tomorrow’s probably gonna be a long one. We’ll see.

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Hey, it’s Blaugust time! The goal is to simply promote and stimulate the blogging community by encouraging people of all skill levels and backgrounds to post. The official post can be found here and it’s never too late to start.

This is still technically about me, so keeping on theme for the week. Hi, I’m SDWeasel, and I’m a digital hoarder.

There are a number of different aspects of this, really, but I just spent several hours sorting and cleaning up pictures and saved images on my phone. I find it’s a really weird experience, like living my life in fast forward or re-reading a familiar series. Yeah, I know where the story is going, but occasionally I find interesting bits that almost foreshadow what was to come. It also shuffled me to one side and got me lost in a Pratchett hole for a while.

I amazes me sometimes how often I take pictures to reference later. A product label, a screenshot of a game’s description, somebody’s CashApp info cause I was in a hurry, and lots of random documents like insurance cards. Since I don’t really police my images often, it was becoming quite crowded. I straight up trashed hundreds of pictures and organized the rest into a dozen different folders so that I could find them when I was looking for them. More or less.

I also discovered that some apps like to keep a copy of images and videos that I’ve posted or sent to others. This is in addition to the copy I used as a source, which seems strangely inefficient. For WordPress, I get it, the images must be hosted on their servers so they’re accessible. Those aren’t duplicated on my phone, though. For the messaging apps, I just don’t get it.

Either way, it needed doing and it got done. Well, mostly done. I figured if I didn’t stop and write I wouldn’t get around to it. According to the storage settings I now have 1.4G of images and 2.5G in the trash. Seems like a decent bit of cleanup to me.

We’ll keep it short today, I think.

Y’all take care. Consider spending a little time cleaning up if you’re a digital hoarder like me.

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Hey, it’s Blaugust time! The goal is to simply promote and stimulate the blogging community by encouraging people of all skill levels and backgrounds to post. The official post can be found here and it’s never too late to start.

So, my original introduction was super short by my more developed standards. Things have also changed quite a bit in that time, with me going so far as to scrub the about section on my blog page at various points. Identity is a relatively flexible thing, though, so it stands to reason it should be done again from time to time.

Let’s start with the obvious stuff. I do tend to see myself as a gamer, just not much of one these days. I very much enjoy it, still, I just don’t have the time or the drive that I possessed as recently as a year ago.

My taste in games is all over the place. Historically I’ve always had a preference toward RPGs and MMOs, but I enjoy the odd survival crafting game from time to time, and dabbled a bit in narrative-oriented games as well as simulation. Back in ye olden days I grew up on things like Mario and Zelda, with a very wide variety of JRPGs. Game rentals were much more of a thing then, though, so I dabbled in a bit of everything. My first experience in MMOs was vanilla EverQuest, which I didn’t really have the patience for but enjoyed anyway. I dabbled in a lot of games like it over the following year.

Now I mostly just do co-op sandbox crafting games like Terraria. Bonus points if it also revolves around logistics like Satisfactory. Along with that, we have the occasional journey into a random MMO for as long as it can maintain my interest. Sprinkle in some loot shooters, The Sims, Pokemon, and a hair of single-player RPG and that about covers most of it.

Heavily tied to the more RPG-oriented is a fondness for tabletop gaming, though I rarely actually play anything like that. I’ve had plans to do so for well over a year, so we see how that’s going.

I also used to read a lot of Fantasy/Sci-Fi fiction. I was particularly fond of Terry Pratchett. I don’t really make the effort much anymore, though. There are just too many demands on my time. I do occasionally re-read a Pratchett book at various times of year. Particularly Night Watch around late April and Hogfather around early December.

I do obviously write as well because nobody has seen fit to try and stop me yet. I’d say I’m not very consistent about it, though. Last year I started up around August (I wonder why) and petered out right around October. I blame New World, though I’m obviously the one who decides how to spend my time.

The real reason is a long brewing identity crisis. I find that those kinds of mental distress tend to occupy my thoughts pretty heavily, and I hadn’t yet decided how I felt about all of it and if I should even talk about it on the blog. The end result of all that is the realization that I’m trans. Discussing these thoughts on the blog would have required me to acknowledge and process them and quite frankly I wasn’t ready to do that at the time. While hardly the only topic I’ve chosen to stay quiet about, it’s been a major one in the last year.

I do occasionally talk about work as well, and my general dislike for the cold machinations of corporations. Professionally I do “industrial maintenance.” If you put the right effort in, this largely means I do a lot of pre-shift checks and tweaking followed by a lot of waiting for something to go wrong. It is, in fact, when a lot of my writing gets done, because if I need to jump up and deal with something my post will patiently wait for me to return.

Okay, that’s entirely enough rambling about myself for one day.

Y’all take care. Make sure you’re getting enough sleep.

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Hey, it’s Blaugust time! The goal is to simply promote and stimulate the blogging community by encouraging people of all skill levels and backgrounds to post. The official post can be found here and it’s never too late to start.

So many releases piling up in November. At least, that’s when the stuff I’m interested in seems to be lining up. This isn’t even a comprehensive list, just things I’m vaguely keeping track of that I happen to realize are in November. I can only assume most of them are hoping for a decent surge in the holiday gift-giving season.

Nightingale – Q4
Not technically a November release, as much as a vague Q4 2022 Early Access. I’m not exactly hanging on the edge of my seat keeping track of this, but it has the potential to be something I’m interested in. It really depends on how the multiplayer integration works out. I’ll pay more attention to it when its actual live date is close and I can see what’s actually going on.

Harvestella – 11/4
This is some kind of strange Final Fantasy meets Stardew Valley kind of title. It has jobs similar to a Final Fantasy game, it has crystals, and a very Final Fantasy sort of art style. It also has farming and seasons. I’m not really sure what to make of this title, but it sounds like something I’d like. Gives off a very FF15, but more homey, kind of vibe.

Pokemon Scarlet/Violet – 11/18
I’m also not paying a lot of attention to this title. Everything I’ve seen is mostly speculation about what it is or isn’t, but the trailers seem to be par for the course. I refuse to get excited over a franchise that thrives on being so extremely formulaic. We’ve done mega-evolution. We’ve done giant dynamax evolution. Now let’s do crystallized pokemon with big hats? All the same thing in different flavors as far as I can tell. Will I check it out at release? Probably not. I will almost certainly pick it up at some point though.

I saw something else in this time frame that I thought was interesting too, but cannot for the life of me remember what it was. All I know is I remember thinking that November was shaping up to be a pretty busy release month, and I know I’m leaving out several other large titles because quite frankly I don’t care. I’m most likely to check out Nightingale and/or Pokemon, honestly. I don’t feel especially excited about any of the titles right now, to be honest. I’m just kinda waiting to see what happens.

Y’all take care. We’ll see if anything interesting comes up between now and the end of the year.

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Hey, it’s Blaugust time! The goal is to simply promote and stimulate the blogging community by encouraging people of all skill levels and backgrounds to post. The official post can be found here and it’s never too late to start.

So my news feed has slowly been filling up with random “leaks” and stuff about Pokemon Scarlet and Violet and I figured I should take the time to at least finish Sword and Shield. Considering S/S was still relatively new when I bought it, It’s taken me close to three years to bother to make the effort. I’ve gotten about halfway once or twice, but always go sidetracked doing other things and didn’t bother.

I also don’t know if it’s because I have a really solid team this time around or not. I feel like I stomped most of the gyms, only having to try a second time on the last one. First time clear on the other champions and in the gym leader tournament. The team I used for most of this was, in no particular order, Ludicolo, Gyarados, Klinklang, Boldore, Grimmsnarl, and Rillaboom. I’ve used Ludi, Gyarados, and Klink before in other titles, but Grimmsnarl was a surprise.

I picked it up as a random Impidimp and thought its typing was weird, so I looked it up. I knew I would need a fairy type to counter the dragons you inevitably run into in the late game, and wow he slaps. Not a great solution, maybe, as he has a lot of weaknesses that are also common in the late game, but with a little strategy and knowing who to switch in when, I could easily 1 or 2 it KO a lot of the late game opponents.

Up until I picked up the Impidimp I had an Orbettle instead. Noticeably absent from my lineup are a poison or fire type, which I usually run. Especially the poison type. Very common in my teams. Except this time. I just kinda powered through and never made the effort. The rock and steel moves from Boldore and Klinklang could deal with a wide variety of things I’d normally use fire for. Especially Ice.

Anyway, I probably won’t be bothering with Scarlet/Violet at release. There’s way too much going on this Novemeber, and by the time it rolls around I’ll probably be a bit bored with the franchise. Having finished the story I’ll return to my more usual shiny hunting antics and eventually get tired to running in circles. I’m planning to finish it off sometime this week and we’ll see where it goes after that.

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Hey, it’s Blaugust time! The goal is to simply promote and stimulate the blogging community by encouraging people of all skill levels and backgrounds to post. The official post can be found here and it’s never too late to start.

I’ve asked myself this question before. What is it about this franchise that keeps bringing me back and engaged enough to pursue things like 100% completion? It’s certainly not the only series I’ve set out with the intent to do this, but the only one where I’ve succeeded. In small bursts over many years, but no other games have managed to quite hold on that far. Ironically I have a third 100% other than BL1/2, and that’s Tales from the Borderlands. You only have to finish it, though, so it hardly counts compared to the 500ish combined hours I’ve spent on the other two.

I actually went and looked, and my three highest non-100% titles (highest to lowest) are Warframe (79%), Secret of Mana (78%), and Dragon Quest Builders 2 (77%). I made a decent effort on the last two, but wasn’t really into the grind at the time. Warframe is there as a sheer testament to the 777.6 hours of playtime I have, not as an actual legitimate attempt for achievements.

I mean, I obviously have a thing for that sort of fast-paced shooter, that much as obvious. It’s obviously not the story of Borderlands, which as a rule is pretty mediocre. My favorite story in the main series, the one I think has a genuinely interesting narrative, is The Pre Sequel. Effectively allowing you to play past and future villains in order to show Jack’s journey from decent corporate officer to maniacal overlord.

I think that’s part of the key to success for the games, the characters. There are a lot of little bits of dialogue and small story moments that are well executed and memorable. Despite the somewhat juvenile nature of the games’ humor, they manage to remain rather inclusive and subvert a variety of expectations. That’s what makes Jack’s story in TPS so engaging. BL2’s Handsome Jack is an absurd and memorable antagonist. If he wasn’t such a well executed villain I wouldn’t care about how he ended up that way.

I’ve played plenty of games with a good story and engaging characters and still don’t come back to them for over the top completion though. While I like the setting and the art style, to a point, it certainly isn’t enough to make it stand out. Most of what I’m coming up with is gameplay related. The more RPG elements certainly help, but the most engaging elements for me are the gear system and the difficulty.

Something I’ve done in nearly every title are the so-called “allegiance runs.” This is where you intentionally restrict which manufacturer you can use. I didn’t really pay that much attention to it until I tried those runs, but the different manufacturers are very distinct in feel and performance. I’ve played other games like Mass Effect where there are different manufacturers as well, but nothing ever felt as meaningful and distinct as Borderlands. It adds its own layer of replayability. There’s also a decent number of unique pieces of gear and gear combinations on top of that.

The difficulty curve of the games is also interesting to me. At a basic level, it’s just a shooter that’s easy to learn. Nearly every title has developed a sort of tiered system of repeated playthroughs, each one placing more emphasis on damage type matchups and sometimes excessive use of broken mechanics. Things typically get pretty spicy by the third playthrough. Enough so that I’ve never really dabbled in anything like BL2’s OP levels, which are ten additional difficulty ranks beyond the third playthrough.

It can be a challenge, though, which I appreciate even when it’s frustrating. I’m still trying to decide how I feel about Wonderland’s lack of the tiered system. On the one hand, repeating the main story over and over is a bit tiresome. On the other, it felt like it was lacking something essential. I effectively did the same thing and just ran different class combinations through the story back to back anyway.

I find that Borderlands also has the advantage of being a largely single player experience. It’s something I can boot up and do whatever I want in without needing to worry about group content. Sure, there are the raid bosses, but quite frankly I’ve managed to solo all of them. With exploits and/or specific builds, of course. We’re not going to talk about how long it took to get a handle on Crawmerax. The point is, though, that outside of a few achievements it’s easily picked up, paused, and/or put down.

I don’t really think it’s any one of these things more than the other, but all of them together. It’s still difficult to really describe, but I suppose there’s a reason why the whole franchise has done well for itself. Maybe it just managed to settle into a sweet spot for me in particular.

Y’all take care, and remember that technically all the weapons in the games are powered by explosions. Except maybe the lasers.

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Hey, it’s Blaugust time! The goal is to simply promote and stimulate the blogging community by encouraging people of all skill levels and backgrounds to post. The official post can be found here and it’s never too late to start.

I feel that I’ve always underestimated the value of communities. Be it guilds in an online game, or a circle of friends, it’s never really been a large part of my life until recently. The result for me was a tendency to focus on self reliance. Always looking to be some form of omnicrafter in games. Focusing largely on solo content to the extent possible. Refusing to ask for help because doing so places a burden on others.

It took a long time to learn that it doesn’t have to be that way. My best friend played a large part, as did a lot of time interacting with others online. Seeing the various ways where my own involvement or interaction with others has helped them in some way. At some point I just realized how extraordinarily isolated I had made myself and began actively looking for friends and communities, mostly of the local variety.

It was actually quite an issue, because it required me to do something I hadn’t done in forever. Intentionally go out to a public event and interact with random strangers. Something I didn’t really feel effective or comfortable doing to begin with. It was out of character enough that when I actually did it my best friend asked who I was and what I’d done with his sister.

On the whole it’s been a really positive experience, if a bit awkward and outside my comfort zone. It’s difficult to describe how it’s different, though. It’s not as though I’ve never had friends or been part of a guild/community. Something about it being a more proactive intentional choice rather than pure chance seems to lend a different quality. I know how to interact, but I’m used to feeling associated with people rather than feeling connected to them, if that makes sense. It feels weird.

Alternatively, it could just be the hormone medication I’m taking now mucking about with my brain chemistry. There’s been so many things happening over the last few months that it’s hard to tell where one ends, another begins, or how causality is playing out. Ironically the decline in the time I spend gaming is tied up in all of it as well. Whether as a cause, a result, or both I haven’t quite decided yet.

Still, it’s a good change, near as I can tell.

Y’all take care. Hopefully that all makes some kind of sense.

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Hey, it’s Blaugust time! The goal is to simply promote and stimulate the blogging community by encouraging people of all skill levels and backgrounds to post. The official post can be found here and it’s never too late to start.