Blog Post #15: A Perfect Day

Th. 2/6/2025

Ok let’s see. 

Immediate thoughts.

I had a dream Tuesday morning, including me playing Eternal Strands, which I hadn’t played. So when I woke up, I promptly bought and downloaded it.

That day, I stayed up really late (well, not compared to before, but still), working on Studio and Seminar projects. I woke up early before Seminar just to finish my slideshow. I had very little to show, but I still gave a good presentation. Oddly good, in fact. And in Studio, that day, I worked really hard on making Mercutio’s hair more feasibly created. Ezra suggested working with hair particles in Blender, but what I learned about them didn’t allow for solidifying nor for extrapolating— Ezra said that it’s because those hairs are just edges, and solidifying and extrapolating works only with faces. He gave me a strategy that looked alarmingly complex. I’ll work on that tomorrow.

Oh also! In my Seminar presentation, I talked about playing in a oneshot for the Magnus Archives TTRPG. I extolled its prioritization of roleplay, with light, intuitive rules— unlike more rule-heavy systems like D&D. It reminded me of Monster of the Week, in both narrative premise and mechanical strategies. And get this— I was talking with someone from that oneshot more, and they told me that they’re in a D&D game with the same GM/DM. And I must’ve really done a decent job playing/roleplaying in the Magnus Archives game, because they accepted me into the campaign!

I quit my previous D&D campaign due to a realization of standards on my part: if the group is not comprised of people with whom I want to hang out outside of game, I shouldn’t be devoting hours and countless units of energy to their campaign. But this new group— well, I only know two of them— but they seem like really cool people, with similar goals when it comes to TTRPGs. And the DM has a completely homebrew setting, with homebrew races that seem dope. I’ll be playing a Masked Imp known as Baker Gyld. He uses one of my subclasses, the Martyr warlock. The party apparently needs a healer, and just healing is overdone, so instead, I’ll be alternating between creating healing food and healing the party with self-sacrificial blood magic. I’m very excited.

I appreciated in the Magnus Archives system how immersive it was. And I can learn from that, in terms of digital game design. For Pareidolia: Unbound, I will not be using numerical stats— instead, I’ll be using a “tag” system (like “poison”, for example) tied to the material components of gear; the only limit to the player character’s abilities is how strategically they can organize their rucksack— which will have a representative visual interface, where they will be able to physically rearrange the contents to fit more. And that’s all for the sake of immersion. We, as humans, are not defined by numbers— so why should our characters be?

And Monday, god ok— I went to an improv comedy club here on campus for the first time. I had so much fun, and I did so well. At the beginning of the meeting, the president asked us newcomers about any relevant experience we have in improv, and when they got to me, I told them that I’ve been doing improv for ten years, and that I trained and performed with the National Comedy Theatre, the longest-running comedy show in San Diego. The whole point of this club, they told me, was that it is designed for amateurs— and jokingly almost implied that I should leave. I’m glad I stayed. A good performer is someone who lifts up their scene mates, and in every scene I was in, I did that well. It was weird feeling so experienced in something— I guess, since moving here for school, I have primarily felt a sense of inadequacy and inexperience. 

And I think that that improv practice elevated my performance skills— reminding me of all of the component parts that construct an engaging presentation— which, I think, was at least partially responsible for my successful, if largely devoid, Seminar presentation. 

But I’m getting better. I’m working more on schoolwork. Which is good, because I had begun entering another depressive episode that constricted my productivity. I’m still really tired, but I did something today instead of sleeping— since sleeping during the day will only hurt me. I sat down, and I played an hour of Eternal Strands (2025). I took some notes.

“Brynn seems like a newcomer, but she’s still knowledgeable enough to feel wowed by being in the Enclave. It kind of breaks immersion, because the player is incapable of resonating with her experience. If she were either fully ignorant, or fully aware, it’d be easier to empathize with her. But her character mixes those two options in an unsettling manner.

“And the dialogue with the rest of the band presupposes her past experience— that she’s worthy of taking on the role of point (or even, what that role’s significance is)— but the player has nothing other than words [spoken] to back up that assumption.”

I’m going to continue playing it, but I don’t really like the FX style, or the weird cartoon cutscenes, or the dialogue featuring largely static character portraits. I do appreciate, however, the setting. Just running through that forest, with its giant fungus, exploding flowers (I learned the hard way), and bioluminescent plants— it feels similar to how I want the Wyrdwoods of Pareidolia to feel. The Wyrdwoods will be denser, more overgrown, and wetter, but the whimsy of Eternal Strands’ setting is similar in vibe. 

Also, Dahm is just Mollymauk Tealeaf from Critical Role. I’m quite disappointed that they didn’t get Taliesin Jaffe to voice him. 

This vista at the end of my play sesh was particularly epic.

Anyway, I’m done eating for the day, and it’s only 6:19pm, so I’m going to work on my Udemy Blueprints course a bit. I had intended to finish that course for this past Milestone, but I didn’t. I do feel comfortable enough, however, to start the Viewfinder replication tutorials. I plan to do that this Milestone (as written), while devoting some time regularly to working on the course. It will take longer to finish the course, but I’ve learned a lot already, and I do want to stay on track for the rest of my Seminar project. 

F. 2/7/2025

Didn’t do much today. Kinda got up late. Stayed up late last night. Watched a bit of Fallout and Cracow Monsters. In the latter, they speak Old Church Slavonic pretty frequently. It inspired me to start researching and learning ancient languages again. When I was in undergrad— doing my Linguistics degree— I did that a lot. Mostly in class, though some extracurricularly. In one of my more memorable courses, Historical Linguistics, we studied Latin, Gothic, and Old English, among others. But Old Church Slavonic was one that I’d never even heard of. 

For Pareidolia: Unbound, the narrative premise is that the player character finds himself in an afterlife of sorts, where the spirits of humans coexist in concert with the characters of their own fairy tales. “In concert” used loosely; it’s a chaotic and violent realm. I started studying German again (I studied it in high school and undergrad) because of Grimm’s fairy tales— I figured that I’d be able to read the original versions auf Deutsch, and be able to use the characters’ German names in the game. But, in the grand scheme of folk tales, if I want this game to feel original, Grimm’s characters are a bit overdone, and aren’t representative of the broader realm of fairy tales. Cracow Monsters shows this. It’s set in Poland, and is about the ancient pantheon of that place. It’s kind of ironic that they use Old Church Slavonic, because that came after the pantheon.

Aside from the “pareidolias”— monstrous enemies that appear when the player character’s perspective aligns so that humanoid forms are formed by the environment’s colors, shadows, and shapes— I want each Folk NPC to be unique. It will be a lot of work, and something that I intend to focus on during this summer— 3D modeling them— and I think it’d be pretty disappointing to do all that work— even just for the vertical slice— and have the vanilla characters like Snow White, for example, be included. 

So I did some research.

I have a book on Latin, and Duolingo has Latin— but, unless I’m referencing pre-Jesus Roman mythology (which I don’t want to do; thank you, Rick Riordan), it won’t be helpful with this pursuit and research. And the thing about dead languages is, well, there’s not a lot out there to help people learn them. But the University of Texas has a whole website dedicated to just that. They have a section with tons of information just on Old Church Slavonic, with lessons and excerpts from Cyril and Methodius’ translations of the Bible. And this website was created by linguists for the only people who really, broadly, care about dead languages: linguists— which means that it’s efficient and informative, without, frankly, the bullshit that modern language-learning apps use to teach the common masses. Which is perfect for me! Especially since Old Church Slavonic uses the Glagolitic version of the Cyrillic alphabet (I think— I still need to go through that lesson). And once I’m proficient in Old Church Slavonic, I will be able to more easily access the kind of folklore that Poland, for example, so richly has documented.

And Old Church Slavonic is merely the start! The same website has sections for Old English, Old French, Old Irish, Old Norse, Old Russian, and Sanskrit, among others. And that’s exciting not only for Pareidolia; if I learn Sanskrit, for example, I’ll be able to read Vedic literature in its original language— which would be sick. 

Researching this topic made me feel as I felt while reading Babel, by R.F. Kuang— the joy and passion of holding the key to a door that most people don’t even know exists. Because language is both a key and a door— and language is one primary lens through which we view the world, think about the world, and shape the world. When I was in high school, running the memberless Masters of Today club, following my first TBI, I focused on that belief. And looking back on that, it makes sense why linguistics has fascinated me for so long. 

Let’s see, what else?

Oh, I read through the SRD of Elegy, the cooperative/PVP trading card TTRPG that I made for some of my grad school applications. It had been so long since I’d read it, but it really is quite extensive and quite good. It has solid rules— complex, but not unnecessarily so— great lore— involving the four stats (Mortal, Social, Ghostly, and Occult) and the components required for certain cards’ use (aether, daemon blood, and concoctions, among others)— and some quite thorough d100 tables for Loremasters (GMs) to create the kind of whimsy, horror, and intrigue that I love running in games. Also, it has rules— so stupid, saying it like that; I wrote it— I wrote rules for creating custom weapons. That rule set has a lot of similarities with a similar mechanic for creating custom weapons that my new in-person DM has in her homebrew documents. All about modifying the damage dice based on tags related to the weapon.

I’d love to expand the rules of Elegy— for example, what happens if you gain the dead condition?— and run a campaign in it. Another alternative would be running a shorter mini-campaign, then organizing PVP tournament play— because you have to have participated in story mode before entering tournament play, so you can acquire Talent cards. But alas, who has the time for that?

Or, maybe, I need to fill my life with more time commitments to really avoid days like today. This weekend, I have some days set up with more stuff to do. 

I feel like I just need one good, really productive day to start a streak of others similar. One day when I wake up early, take some caffeine and L-theanine at the prescribed time and dosage to avoid dependency, and get to work— then just continue the momentum. I did that a bit last semester, before my depressive episode started, before my nocturnalism— and that kind of creative productivity was really addictive. I looked forward to the next morning. I woke up before my alarm clock rang. 

I just need one day like that.

How about tomorrow?