Well Art School Then
Aug. 18th, 2022 11:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kingtycoonKid's going to CIA and that's well and good and good and well. I can't remember if I bitched about buying her that mac but I did. And then that room & board. Expensive! And for art school. I'm used to room and board, no fuss I guess. At the dentist I spent a pile of money too. Expensive. And for art school. I hope horizons are broadened instead of narrowed. My position has been don't go to trade school! But I make suggestions and don't issue demands. Broader horizons. Your kid you know, you want a better way for them than you & while that's materially impossible - at least psychologically I think it'd be good if a better way of being were presented.
Basement dwelling discord chatting never sleeping is pretty overdone but I extend my belief that kiddo will become great, learn to have personal power.
We go for a long walk, I do mostly - to get her at her ma's and then go to Tommy's like old times, all times. I miss it from the neighborhood. The old neighborhood is going well - people out on the public areas playing some kind of therapeutic or exercise based drums, dudes busking to the beat. Dinner and big smiles all around, full. An end, moving out & on - I mean. Down the hill a mile, maybe 2? To the college I walk past, but still - away. "Do you think you'll still come over on the weekends? You can if you want, but I won't mind if you don't. You've got keys & it's your house too." No one knows what's next or will be. How it'll go. I'm okay. Comfortable about it. Ready - you know?
Personal life is fulfilling & active but pretty single-tracked lately. So much dice rolling. I'm a little exhausted from all these games I've been running. They're getting better. I was in love with the mod I made - I loved the plot:
You see long ago there was a dark age, the land turned to ruin, the rivers flooded. The kings of old had been deposed & none stood against disorder, crumbling ensued & that was followed by barbarism, despotism. The first reign was a bad reign of warlords & strongmen who were only trying to recapitulate the old world. They died off in time & took too many people with them. Their cruelty is forgotten by design. The second reign returned to the land. The woods & wetland kings, those who could call to the plants & train them to grow usefully & well. The second reign - a rebuilding time of mud & work, pervasive want & steady, slow increase. The best of those kings was Snake Flying - who (unbeknownst to most) bargained with the primordial forces to enrich the land & uplift those people who followed him. His big secret was that he made bargains with Creaking Knot a prince of trees as well as Illimitable Growth the governor of plagues. These princes bowed to Snake Flying and holding them by the leash he built the region of Lachrymose Stone into a bucolic, fecund land where people could live in peace & health. Of course he died one day some thousand years ago & got buried in an earthen cairn shaped like a serpent (Ohio). Patrolling the grounds of the tomb & growing into a herd there - came the catoblepas - the ugly guardians who kept the leashed princes from escaping long after Snake Flying's demise. The place became a resort, a tea-house & inn - famous for its lavender scented water & dangerous sort-of-tame beasts.
They even devised a method of touring the paddock & kept a gift shop & museum of the lineage & natural history of those catoblepases.
The peace of the place was wrecked when drunkards of the Sourlight warrior-sisterhood, blowing off some steam, killed the last catoblepas. One of the remaining sisters comes to Lachrymose stone in search of help, having crawled through the night through the marsh on her belly - because once the catoblepas had died - suddenly the trees came alive & people's bones begain to turn to jelly. Her leg bones had gone all bendy and soft & she warned that there were many more affected worse than her back at the inn. And won't you please go and help?
I think it's a fun premise - weird mystery - figure out about the old king buried there - in two halves- the front & the back! Gross. And battle or contend with the primordial ancient gods of nature to make the land safe once more. Anyhow. Playtest? the players couldn't figure out the puzzle & just fought & fought the monsters in maybe the most boring version of events that could have transpired. I still believe in it as a mod but I need to figure out how to fix it for audiences.
Over dinner we workshop it, I think that the maps are too big - roll20 you know? Too spread out, not enough filling in the gap. Possibly. I think I said the words Gift Shop more times in one day than in my life combined but they never did consider looking there for clues. Gotta try with another group I guess. See if I can wring something out of it.
Otherwise I've been interviewing with the county. I kind of want to work there, public service? At last a little. I'm so tired of business. The interviewers say dispiriting things about 'business units' and so on - as the MBA's have come to govern all process & thought - but still, it's better to help your town out, as best you're able than it is to enrich some dumbasses who believe what the MBA's tell them. We'll see.
Basement dwelling discord chatting never sleeping is pretty overdone but I extend my belief that kiddo will become great, learn to have personal power.
We go for a long walk, I do mostly - to get her at her ma's and then go to Tommy's like old times, all times. I miss it from the neighborhood. The old neighborhood is going well - people out on the public areas playing some kind of therapeutic or exercise based drums, dudes busking to the beat. Dinner and big smiles all around, full. An end, moving out & on - I mean. Down the hill a mile, maybe 2? To the college I walk past, but still - away. "Do you think you'll still come over on the weekends? You can if you want, but I won't mind if you don't. You've got keys & it's your house too." No one knows what's next or will be. How it'll go. I'm okay. Comfortable about it. Ready - you know?
Personal life is fulfilling & active but pretty single-tracked lately. So much dice rolling. I'm a little exhausted from all these games I've been running. They're getting better. I was in love with the mod I made - I loved the plot:
You see long ago there was a dark age, the land turned to ruin, the rivers flooded. The kings of old had been deposed & none stood against disorder, crumbling ensued & that was followed by barbarism, despotism. The first reign was a bad reign of warlords & strongmen who were only trying to recapitulate the old world. They died off in time & took too many people with them. Their cruelty is forgotten by design. The second reign returned to the land. The woods & wetland kings, those who could call to the plants & train them to grow usefully & well. The second reign - a rebuilding time of mud & work, pervasive want & steady, slow increase. The best of those kings was Snake Flying - who (unbeknownst to most) bargained with the primordial forces to enrich the land & uplift those people who followed him. His big secret was that he made bargains with Creaking Knot a prince of trees as well as Illimitable Growth the governor of plagues. These princes bowed to Snake Flying and holding them by the leash he built the region of Lachrymose Stone into a bucolic, fecund land where people could live in peace & health. Of course he died one day some thousand years ago & got buried in an earthen cairn shaped like a serpent (Ohio). Patrolling the grounds of the tomb & growing into a herd there - came the catoblepas - the ugly guardians who kept the leashed princes from escaping long after Snake Flying's demise. The place became a resort, a tea-house & inn - famous for its lavender scented water & dangerous sort-of-tame beasts.
They even devised a method of touring the paddock & kept a gift shop & museum of the lineage & natural history of those catoblepases.
The peace of the place was wrecked when drunkards of the Sourlight warrior-sisterhood, blowing off some steam, killed the last catoblepas. One of the remaining sisters comes to Lachrymose stone in search of help, having crawled through the night through the marsh on her belly - because once the catoblepas had died - suddenly the trees came alive & people's bones begain to turn to jelly. Her leg bones had gone all bendy and soft & she warned that there were many more affected worse than her back at the inn. And won't you please go and help?
I think it's a fun premise - weird mystery - figure out about the old king buried there - in two halves- the front & the back! Gross. And battle or contend with the primordial ancient gods of nature to make the land safe once more. Anyhow. Playtest? the players couldn't figure out the puzzle & just fought & fought the monsters in maybe the most boring version of events that could have transpired. I still believe in it as a mod but I need to figure out how to fix it for audiences.
Over dinner we workshop it, I think that the maps are too big - roll20 you know? Too spread out, not enough filling in the gap. Possibly. I think I said the words Gift Shop more times in one day than in my life combined but they never did consider looking there for clues. Gotta try with another group I guess. See if I can wring something out of it.
Otherwise I've been interviewing with the county. I kind of want to work there, public service? At last a little. I'm so tired of business. The interviewers say dispiriting things about 'business units' and so on - as the MBA's have come to govern all process & thought - but still, it's better to help your town out, as best you're able than it is to enrich some dumbasses who believe what the MBA's tell them. We'll see.
