White Trash Mint Julep

• Drop peppermint candy in glass.
• Pour bottom-shelf bourbon over candy.
• Marvel at the candy's complete failure to dissolve.
• Drink the appallingly un-minty bourbon anyway, while thinking about the choices that brought you to this point in your life.

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2024(-ish): More Than I Thought

A while back, I lamented that it had taken me nine years to write 55,000 (now closer to 60) words of The Nameless Way, and I still had a long way to go. I was thinking about how that happened. I don't much feel like recapping 2024, at least not in public, but the New Year seems to be a good time to look back on the stuff I've been doing since I started this novel in 2015.

I committed to the book as my main project in June of 2015, and started writing the draft (except for the prologue, which I wrote in 1999 or 2000 or so) in August or September. The first chapter was based on the adventure I started the original campaign with. Getting that down was the most fun I had had writing in a long time. I think the second chapter was pretty easy too, although it was an almost entirely new story to explain some stuff from a segment I couldn't use. That's a topic for another blog, though. 

I think it was 2016 when other stuff started eating into my progress. I don't mean the usual stuff. I don't mean the dayjob, or gaming, or conventions, or eBay, or even random crises like bouts of depression. Those are all issues, but not issues worth commenting on. That's just life. The delays I'm looking at now are the side projects. 

Some of those projects were things I felt committed to because I had already done most of the creative part and just never shared it. Some of them were things I thought would make me some money to keep me going while I finished The Nameless Way. On that second purpose, it's worth noting that none of them succeeded. In retrospect, it's almost like I was being scolded for straying from The Plan. 

So, the first thing was Qalidar. I had already given up on my original vision for a Qalidar Role-Playing Game, partly because my soul was crushed in mid-stream by personal shit, but also because I had been thinking for a while that designing games was never going to keep my demons fed. So I settled on a less ambitious way to finish what I started. I made a "basic" book with an adventure and introductory rules. This was before I started on The Nameless Way. Rather than making a book of complete rules or something like that, I decided that I would follow the basic book with supplements, which would eventually expand it to a more complete game. Less satisfying and, obviously, less marketable, but honest. 

I published Supplement 1: The Fire Within, in 2016. The original idea was that each supplement would highlight a particular culture/race/whatever. This got fudged right at the start, though, because my real goal for the first supplement was to make sure the game worked all the way to the standard d20 level cap of twenty, to finish the rules for organizations, and to cover any missing equipment and stuff like that from the basic book. Ultimately, it was obvious to even a casual reader that the cultural focus on the Stardust was just an afterthought. I already knew there would be no more culture-focused books when I finished this one. I was just paying lip service to that plan. 

In another year, there was Supplement 2, the Qalidar Qritter Qatalog. As before, this was something I felt I owed to the two or three people who had actually played or purchased Qalidar. Also, part of the main artist's pay was a cut of PDF sales, so, having already delivered some amazing work, he deserved at least a little effort on my part. By this time, I knew I was never going to go on with the culture-focused supplements. I did have a bunch of creatures I could share, though, and I knew the game wouldn't be complete without them. It was just a matter of formatting it all. And of course formatting takes time. 

Because of its weird production history, the Qalidar game is a little awkward if you want to put it all together and dive right in to the full game. It still works well, I think, if you play the intro scenario and move on to the rest from there. I still enjoy playing it. Well, running it. I'm the only GM, so that's all I can do. Every once in a while, I think I'd like to put it all together into one book like a normal RPG. I know I shouldn't. 

There was a little bit of ghostwriting. Four projects, scattered across the time I was doing this other work. That actually did pay, but not nearly enough to justify the time it ate. And yes, that's all I'm going to say about it.

HOGZILLA! HOGZILLA! HOGZILLA! Or TerrorHog. Whatever. The Hogzilla episode of The Last Drive-In was lots of fun. Not long after that, we had planned one of our "hoot" get-togethers. I started putting together a Hogzilla Crawlspace scenario to run at that event, complete with insanity rules and a drinking game. However, most of our gaming friends in Ohio had become unreliable, so that hoot never happened. 

Anyway, Tom convinced me that I should put it together for publication, because that would be easy. There's a big difference between my convention-event notes and an intelligible scenario that someone else could run. Like, seriously, I'll go to Gen Con with only some pre-gens, a vague idea, and some names scribbled down. If I had to actually prepare for the games I ran at conventions, I would never run games at conventions. 

Thinking I might reach a new audience, I dove into the rabbit hole and made TerrorHog, the Hogzilla game. Joe Bob Briggs held the book up on TV in his goofy Biedermeir/pimp costume, Shudder tweeted about it on their official account, and still nobody bought it. To paraphrase Joe Bob's introduction of the movie, I did all that work, only to find that the world was not clamoring for Hogzilla role-playing games. Another cosmic rebuke for my infidelity.  

The next thing was that Amazon announced this new feature for publishing serials in 2020. I immediately thought of Blackridge, which had originally been patterned after serial format stuff. I had just moved and, obviously, lost my job, so I thought this could help. It inspired me to start a second serial on a different platform, just to, you know, feel out the market. This stuff actually overlapped the Hogzilla thing, by the way.

The first one was the Blackridge serial on Amazon. I still feel that it's a great story. I like the characters and it had a great plot. Unfortunately, the episodes I published were some of the worst writing I've ever done. Well, the worst since college, anyway. It was more like the Cliff's Notes of a story than an actual story. 

At the same time, I also tried to serialize the Komar novel I had been outlining, the sort-of sequel to Losing Lanterns, starring Aradoc, with characters from my high school D&D group as the sociopathic treasure hunters he gets stuck in the desert with. The stuff I wrote for this was better, but also rushed. As before, I was cranking it out for all the wrong reasons. It was very much a story worth telling. It's still a story I want to tell, but it wasn't the right time. I also think the weird proprietary token buy-in thing Amazon and this other platform were pushing was stupid, but that doesn't redeem my infidelity. 

Part of the plan for TerrorHog was to make it a complete game, since we couldn't assume that the audience we were trying to reach would have any interest in investing in a new game on top of the pig monster book. To make it easier to get into, I made a customized version of Crawlspace, made only for the one-shot with the pre-generated characters. That being the case, we thought it might be nice to have a version of those rules that could stand on its own with character generation and stuff like that. So I put Crawlspace: 21 & Over together for that. 

I collaborated on a novella with a friend. She had already written most of it. All I did was go back through to insert some weird stuff about nephilim and write the end. As it happens, both of us had done much better work on our own projects. Her part was probably the better of the two, but I did enjoy sinking Columbus and a lot of southern Ohio into a giant magma pit. 

After all that, there's another edition of Stars, Specters, and Super-Powers. The first edition had a terrible cover, and I had omitted a story that should have been in it. I also added some background stuff and art Mike did for the comic book plot that led to "The Man Comes Around." Having this book and Losing Lanterns out there and looking good when The Nameless Way finally drops, has been part of The Plan for a long time, so that was unquestionably worth doing. 

So, why blather on about all this? Mostly as a reminder to myself. Memory plays tricks on you. I keep coming back to, "What have I been doing all this time? What's the point if this is all I've got after nine years?" I sometimes wonder if it was all like the past couple of weeks, during which I've hardly written anything because I've been buried in life garbage and it messes with my head even when it's not stealing my time. I can look at this, though, and remind myself that I wasn't just staring at the wall the whole time. 

And I guess it's also a reminder that the time side projects take up isn't free. 

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Iron Fist and Individuality

Here's something you might have missed while you were smugly denouncing the first season of Iron Fist. It deftly illustrates what happens when you identify with groups and societies instead of yourself. 

Danny: The role he dedicated his life to winning was an empty honor. Everything he tried to glom onto was a disappointment. His company was corrupt. The school his girlfriend introduced him to was a cult. His dad's business partner was an asshole. He spends the whole season desperately trying to identify with some group, and is disappointed every time.

Joy: The father she missed came back from the grave and was a monster. The company she dedicated her life to was a sham (even more so than most corporations). 

Colleen: She dedicated her life to a group that seemed to be all about helping people but was really just a bunch of megalomaniac vampires. 

Davos: He dedicated his life to serving his people, and they gave their highest honor to an alien brat who threw it away the first chance he got. Davos vented his rage on Danny, but it was really his own homeland that betrayed him. 

Ward's the only one who gets it from the start. He follows but, like anyone who goes through life with his eyes open, he does it because he knows that, until the right opening comes along, he has no choice. He hates his master, as we all should. He seems like the asshole at first, but he's really the heart of the show. 
 

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Joker Joker

I was curious about the second Joker movie, partly because it made some people angry for silly reasons, so I thought I'd use my temporary Max pass to check it out. I didn't remember the first one very well, so I watched that too. 

That was one bland, depressing evening! Ugh. The first one had a few moments. It kind of worked for me, and the shots of the city were great. The second, just, ugh. The singing parts are painful to watch. Not-Harley Quinn was kind of an interesting character, but not enough to carry the sack of dead manatees that was the plot. 

I never cared much about loyalty to the DC characters, but even I feel like the Joker isn't the Joker unless he's brilliant and over-the-top crazy. This Joker is barely average, and his mental illnesses are difficult to distinguish from just being stupid. 

Please, for the love of God, don't make the same mistake I did. 

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What I Know Now

Sure, we all wish we knew what we know now when we were younger, but have you ever considered what kind of power you're tampering with? 

Think about it. In the present time, everything you know is sent to your younger self, who continues to learn from that point. When your younger self reaches the present time, the same thing happens, sending everything you started with, plus everything your new, improved, younger self has learned, back again. When her younger self, reaches the present, it happens again, and again, and again, until... 

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The Latest Commuting Books

I mentioned before that I had been digging into Tolkien for my commute book lately. So yeah, I finished Lord of the Rings (including the Appendices this time, which I'm not sure I've ever read straight through before), Unfinished Tales, The Hobbit, and The Silmarillion, I was especially fond of the narration by Martin Shaw on the last two.

I had always been curious about Polidori's The Vampyre, as one of the first stories with the modern version of a vampire. It's really short, and, unlike Frankenstein, is told exactly the way you'd expect, considering its origin. It sounds like someone just telling a campfire story out loud. I guess it had its moments, but, like I said, there's not much to it.

So now I'm listening to The Stand. Figured it was time to stick with Halloween themes, although this monster of a book will probably last well beyond. He hasn't even finished introducing the characters yet. The only other Stephen King book I've read is It, and that was a long time ago. Having seen two screen adaptations of this one, I figured it was about time I found out what the real story was. Like I said, though, I don't think I'm anywhere near the real story so far.

And, no, the picture doesn't have anything to do with any of this. I just wanted to have some kind of picture and there was my Nilbog being adorable. 

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Eldest

Random thoughts on S2E4 in no particular order. And yes, there are spoilers.

Galadriel's status continues to nag me. It's not about her fighting and being hot-tempered. She probably would be past that phase by the Second Age, but I don't really care. It's that she's a subordinate in someone else's army. Tolkien has her settling in various places, but never answering to a king. But whatever. The story is the story.

What the hell is Tom Bombadil doing in Rhun? I'm so happy to see him finally get some screen time that I don't even care. That guy's accent was all over the place, though.

Galadriel talks about how she's starting to see into the otherworld after she gets her ring. Gil-Galad mentions prophetic visions. Elves, especially the older ones and the ones who've been to Valinor (Galadriel definitely yes, but I think Gil-Galad was born late in the First Age, in Beleriand, like Elrond) can already do those things. I guess they just want to give the rings as many non-visible elf powers as they can. 

The developing hobbit origins are fun to see. 

Galadriel and Elrond's route to Eregion doesn't make much sense to me. I'm pretty sure the road through Bree and the (future) Shire was already there by then. They seem to plan on crossing the Baranduin (yep, good old Brandywine) by an elf bridge somewhere north of the Shire, then decide to go south when they see that it's been destroyed. Crossing at any point that would take them through the Barrow Downs would mean using the bridge on the road they should have taken in the first place, or taking some kind of ferry. If you cross at Sarn Ford, you don't need to go anywhere near the Barrow Downs.

And okay, the Barrow Downs. Those barrows were Third Age graves left by Arnor. They wouldn't be there yet. I mean, sure, that ground could always have been cursed before the Witch King sent evil spirits there, but you wouldn't think the Dunedain would build even more barrows on a used (and cursed) graveyard. But hey, who (other than Peter Jackson) doesn't love seeing barrow wights? Weird thing, that "using their own weapons" rule, but I get not wanting it to be too easy for the elves to clobber them. 

Update: Apparently I was at least partially wrong. I just read elsewhere that the ancestors of the Edain also built barrows at Tyrn Gorthad back in the First Age and the later Dunedain revered them, which is why they buried their lords there. As far as I know, though, there's still no reason to think the ground was cursed before the Witch King sent evil spirits into it. I guess Sauron could have pulled the same stunt in the Second Age, as they sort of implied. 

That mud worm thing was pretty cool. 

Hey, an entwife! I can't remember when Tolkien said they left, but he did say they went east. I'm also not sure where exactly Arondir and Isildur are supposed to be when they meet the ents. 

In case you wondered, Tolkien did say, "the number is unknown" about the Istari, before talking about the five who came to the Grey Havens. So the Stranger doesn't have to be any of those. I hope he's not, since those definitely didn't arrive in a fireball and didn't show up until the Third Age. It also means that there's no reason the bad guy in Rhun couldn't be there. Interestingly enough, Tolkien did suggest that maybe the Blue Wizards founded magical traditions in the far east.   

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