Autumn

 Hi,

I managed to get too busy and too overwhelmed to keep going with my original blogging scheme for the year, so took a break. I might pick up posting characters again, but stick to that - that way I have more reasons to make characters for the oodles of games I seem to have picked up recently - most from the Trinity Continuum. I've always been interested in the games and owned the first editions for a while. I have a particular love for the Adventure! incarnation, partly because I have a love of Pulp and felt the Planetary comic by Warren Ellis was a perfect model for the game which combined two things I love in one neat package. Add in some global conspiracies and the like, and I'm a happy person. 

I'm reading the Aether setting, for Victorian or Steampunk games, and find myself torn over the fact that it's doing some really cool stuff but also features a lot of established heroes from the fiction of the period, which feels a bit like a waste. I guess Adventure! doesn't feature Doc Savage and the Shadow because of copyright issues, but given that it doesn't, including Mina Murray, Doctor Jekyll, and the like feels like a glaring change of pace. I know the characters are out of copyright though, so there must be a huge temptation to use them because they're so iconic. I mean, who doesn't think Mina Murray (or Harker), would go onto hunt vampires? 

I'll make some heroes for the era and put them up here, (part of the fun of the continuum for me is the idea that a single family might produce new heroes in each of the games, perhaps never knowing their ancestors had also been exposed to Flux). 

Weirdly, I'm working on the outline for a Victorian novel, set in a world where after Prince Albert's death there was a serious spike in supernatural events, and after the Ripper's murders a second one occurred. My detectives are investigating a death at a séance, and I'm trying to work out the mystery so I can write it in such a way that the reader can solve it but it's also not too easy. I'm uncertain whether to add the same iconic characters - though some slight nods to "the Baker Street detective" or "the Hyde Incident" might weave their way in. What do you think, would that be cool? 

Outside of that, I'm trying to focus on Dark Fantasy, and to develop Markov and Elna's worlds into deep, and well rounded worlds that can be used for longer pieces. I already have ideas for a novel set in the Talons' world, which I don't think Markov's world could necessarily carry. Both settings are being geared towards something darker with perhaps some touches of gothic and fairy tale to make them more interesting. The other thing I want to do with Markov's world is double down on the environmental aspect. Part of the inspiration for his adventures came from Princess Mononoke, and as Green politics are important to me, I do want to put the state of the natural world at the heart of his stories. This is another reason why I'm making his world darker, because the more I discover about the events that ended the era of magitech the more I think the upheaval would have left serious problems and the physical world would be buckled, broken, and bent into strange and terrifying landscapes. 

In comparison, dealing with the giggling sadists within the Mists in Torvenland, (in Elna's world) seems prosaic. When Shadows of the Past has been published, I'll do a deep dive into the setting and what I want to achieve with it (which is mostly "tell amazing stories" to be honest). 

To focus on writing more, I took a break from gaming over the summer and now plan to pick up Vampire the Dark Ages in a few weeks' time. I've missed interacting with my gamers, but in some respects, I haven't missed running a dice rolling part of the game very much, which may be confirmation that the social outlet and the story is the important thing to me.  Still, it will be fun to get back to the Omen War and watch what my players decide their characters are doing. 

On the personal life front, I'm starting to look for a new job and to try and find something new to do, as I don't think I want to stay in the Admissions world. I know every job has stressful periods but I'd like to get to the point where August and September aren't just panic stations because there's so much to do and not enough people to do it. I'd also like to feel like I don't have to act up to cover things my manager's forgotten or doesn't see the value in. I'm still going to therapy, and finding it beneficial, and waiting for my autism assessment. I suspect that once I know if I'm autistic that may shape my future career plans but I mostly want to be assessed to make more sense of myself. 

Not dating - and haven't been on any dates since just after Easter, just because I've been trying to work myself out and I feel like that's something I need to do alone. After all, most people spend their time telling you who they think you are, rather than letting you work that out for yourself. I do worry I'm just too feral for a relationship these days, and I like my peace and quiet too much to spend much time with a significant other. That means I return to the "just get a pet" option, but still need to buy somewhere before I can get a kitty. 

So that's where I am. I hope it was helpful, illuminating, and so on. I'll try to blog again soon (with something that's not just pointing you to the next part of Shadows, or advertising another piece either). 

Stay well, blessed be.