fromthedragonsdesk

[fromthedragonsdesk]

Hi! I stum8led onto your 8log through the Mice Tea tag and read your post a8out MT and Changeling Tale. I just wanted to tell you thanks, I think I need to read Changeling Tale now. I feel like I’m stalling out at only 25 years old 8ecause I have a cushy-enough jo8 that pays ok (70k USD in a major US city is a lot, 8ut not enough through student loans to make impulse spending not make me feel like shit), 8ut this jo8 isn’t somewhere I’m comforta8le 8eing me as a trans person.

I want to 8e a piercing artist, 8ut it’s so easy to give up on that dream when I can just shut up, stop thinking a8out it, and go to work.

So, uh… thank you. <3

Thank you for reaching out - you're actually the first person to drop a message in my inbox!

It sucks to not fit in and feel like you can be yourself. I know I've had it far better than most people considered I lucked into the comparatively easy mode life of being a heterosexual white male, so the most I've ever felt ostracized for were for things that I liked or enjoyed. I do hope that you're able to find a place where you can be free to be yourself around those who love you for who you are and what you do, rather than a perception of you.

#belonging #support

[fromthedragonsdesk]

On Personality Tests

I'm not usually the sort of person who takes personality tests, character quizzes, that whole thing. On a lark, I saw a "What Dungeons and Dragons class are you?!" and couldn't quite resist. So, I filled out the 60 or so questions on a standard Strongly Disagree - Strongly Agree scale, and let the mystical algorithm do its tricks. Then this got belched out:

I can't say i was surprised, I guess. For something on the order of a decade my friends jokingly referred to me as the most paladin person to ever paladin, despite never having actually rolled a paladin in Dungeons in Dragons. I hated how they were forced into Lawful Good alignments in earlier editions and generally had this perception that they were always hardass, uncompromising sorts who always put the letter of the law over any amount of common sense or reason.

Sure, things did change over time and Paladins got shifted into adhering to a code rather than an explicit set of laws, but then I think I also reflected more on the frustration I felt with being lumped in with these sorts of killjoys. I then thought a little bit longer about the situation and realized that they weren't entirely wrong about the assessment.

I have always judged others rather harshly, but felt that it was fair because I held myself to the same standards. I prided myself on working hard and trying to work my way through the rules that are set in place and such. I'm the sort of person who stops at a stop light instead of cutting through a gas station to save time, I'll drive 5 miles over the speed limit only, things like that.

But I also try to help people when i see them in trouble. I've spent a chunk of my adult life involved in food assistance and outreach programs to help those in need. I still hand over food to panhandlers and such when I have extra food or water on me. I've bent the rules when I've seen people need help, or covered a cost for someone when they needed it. At my core, I believe my assessments of right and wrong are good and valid, and that I WANT to make things better around me.

When my friends are making jokes that I'm a goddamn paladin, that's not a negative attack on me - I think it's actually a compliment to a good degree. I might be stubborn, but it's because I want the best for people and I want to do my best for them as well.

#responsibility #dungeons and dragons #paladin #character test #personality test #reflection

[fromthedragonsdesk]

inspired by boop day, reblog this post if its ok for people to send you random asks and interact on your posts with no judgement. i want to talk to people.

[fromthedragonsdesk]

On the Future

This can't be the way every day has to go.

Get up, get things ready, travel for work.

Work.

Travel for home.

Prepare dinner in a tizzy.

Eat.

Hold still for 15 minutes.

Kid 2 goes to bed.

Hold still for 15 minutes.

Kid 1 starts getting ready for bed.

Juggle cleaning and kid until bedtime proper.

Story time.

Breathe for an hour.

Realize it's 10:00 PM.

Choose doing literally anything other than going to bed or doing chores.

It's 11:14.

Drag self to bed. Stare at phone for 30 minutes to try to stall tomorrow from coming.

Repeat.

Where the hell is living supposed to fit in around 'surviving'?

#responsibility #reflection #quiet #quiet panic #adulthood #late stage capitalism

[fromthedragonsdesk]

On Conventions

Nothing like the thought of trying to actually go to something like Furry Weekend Atlanta completely incognito just out of morbid curiosity.

I'd almost want to just be a reporter or otherwise invisible just to see what's going on; I'd be otherwise mortified of having meatspace-me identified or otherwise correlated to digital-me in a picture or something.

Even thinking about the topic automatically puts me on the defensive. I do not exactly consider myself one for "the scene" as it were, so part of me thinks that I shouldn't even be there. That sort of thing never stopped me from going to something like DragonCon or Momocon, though, with friends. I guess I feel like there's a lot more baggage in terms of social payload and personal guilt with something like a furry convention.

I also wonder if part of me is jealous that people are out and able to enjoy themselves so freely without getting stuck in their heads.

How does a person who has a family to take care of disappear for an entire day without sharing what they're doing? "Yes, honey, please take care of the kids today because I'm going to go into town completely covered up so I can't be identified so I can look and see where I fall on the relative weirdness scale. Oh and I spent like $300 on stuff to cover up with and I'm bringing $200 in cash because I have no idea of what I might find at a merch table byeeeeeeeeeeeeee"

Preposterous.

But I still want to be there just to see, and maybe to be seen.

#scalie #fwa #convention #responsibility #finding confidence #lifestyle envy #abandoning responsibility #missed opportunity #did i miss my chance

[fromthedragonsdesk]

Video game delays, no matter how small, have such a stigma that publishers are loath to move anything around which has led to them just putting games out there to die regularly. Like over in film they casually move movies up or down a couple weeks to avoid directly competing with another movie they know will do better but in gaming they'll drop a worse game in the same genre as a bigger game within a couple weeks of that bigger game and then be flabbergasted that it fails

I'm sure there's some Business Strategy underlying it but like. They're not even trying to counter-program. Like, you can release Doom and Animal Crossing in the same day, that's fine. But they're releasing games into months dense with other games that are similar, but more famous. Like what's the business strategy behind "release a worse action RPG opposite Elden Ring"

There's a story today about how single-player games are DEAD (the way there is every time a single-player game flops, bc one flop proves everything & multiple successes somehow never prove anything) and anyway if you look it up it was a AAA game with way less cachet than Baldur's Gate III and Starfield dropped right in between Baldur's Gate III and Starfield. What did they think was going to happen

[fromthedragonsdesk]

Pacifiers

Hello, yes, Johnson and Johnson customer support? Yes, I believe I've somehow obtained one of your Infuriators instead of Pacifiers. Yes, yes, I read the packaging and I'm giving it to my infant properly Yes, it's in the right end. Yeah, I'm doing everything right but my kid just gets angrier every time I give it to her. No, wait- please don't transfer me - no no no okay I'll hold.

#dad jokes #irony #parenthood #responsibility

[fromthedragonsdesk]

Petty Hexes

Had the realization today that the most inconvenient but arguably harmless curse to place on someone would be that, whenever they spoke aloud, they would simultaneously hear the theme song to Buck Bumble play in their head.

#petty #curse #buck bumble #now it's stuck in your head too #wizardposting #RIGHT ABOUT NOW IT'S TIME TO ROCK WITH THE BIGGITY BUCK BUMBLE

[fromthedragonsdesk]

On Guilt

One of these days I'll find a way to not feel like a failure of an adult when buying fast food for my family when we still have plenty of food in the fridge; I'm just too tired to cook that food that night.

#responsibility #tired #guilt #beating yourself up #too hard on yourself #parenting #reflection

[fromthedragonsdesk]

Wishes for My Newborn

To my youngest, who is only three weeks old:

I wish for you to grow well and healthy, and that you are able to avoid the worst illnesses and injuries this world has to offer.

I wish for you to be the best you possible.

I wish for you to be weird and wonderful, so long as your are being yourself.

I wish that you will understand that I am trying my best as your father and that there are some things I just won't be able to grok.

I wish that you will be happy in your life, with whatever you find yourself doing.

But I wish most of all that you would just please stop screaming into my ear seriously I can't comfort you any more please just drink your milk and get to sleep for the love of all that is holy it's 3 AM please stop screaming and crying I'm so tired.

#fatherhood #newborn #exhaustion #i need sleep #responsibility #hopes and dreams #wishes

[fromthedragonsdesk]

Shower Thought

I made a comment to a friend of mine a few days ago, chuckling at the possible outward ironic appearance of a person with a little dragon profile picture denouncing the evils of unregulated capitalism and corporate greed.

It did make me wonder, though, that perhaps we all have different types of metaphorical hoards. As I see my wife and children all in the living room today, a strange sense of satisfaction and happiness washed over me in between my sense of exhaustion and exasperation.

Perhaps love is indeed the greatest treasure to possess after all.

#love #family #reflection #happiness #quiet

[fromthedragonsdesk]

In your expert opinion, why do video games suck so much?

not enough grappling hooks

[fromthedragonsdesk]

On Visual Novels and Catharsis

I never had a high opinion of Visual Novels. In my mind, they always seemed to boil down to the most basic wish fulfillment tripe that we'd collectively assign to the isekai genre these days, I'd wager. To me it was a waste of time or energy trying to interact with them (as an aside, I'm well aware that the Phoenix Wright series is arguably a visual novel, but I missed that boat by not having DS-era device). Even today, with a glance over most of games tagged 'visual novel' on Steam, you'll see what could be generously described as fetish pornography. So, seeing all this, I reinforced my belief that visual novels were for people who wanted some plot with their porn, and never thought much of it.

To my surprise, Steam insisted on recommending visual novels to me. I usually just tossed them aside from the recommendation queue, until I got two recommended almost back-to-back: Mice Tea and Changeling Tale.

Mice Tea had generally positive reviews, and many of them cited that the game's writing and characterization were generally humorous and appealing. So, given that it was on sale during the Steam Winter Sale, I figured it was worth a shot. Then, after basically binging on the game for 20 hours, I walked away thinking that I might have misjudged the genre on some levels.

I wouldn't say I was entirely surprised by Mice Tea - the reviews did it justice in terms of you, as the reader, wanting to root for the main cast to succeed. Most of the conflict didn't necessarily arise from an outside force, but rather internalized conflicts and the struggle to essentially be honest with yourself and those around you, risking vulnerability, essentially. At its core, I still felt like it was wish fulfillment to a significant degree, but the implausibilities were generally smoothed over enough to allow for suspension of disbelief to ride along with the story. And yeah, there... was a fair amount of catering to various fetishes and such worked in, but all in a fairly world-consistent sort-of perspective? At its core, the story was light, cheerful with moments of self-reflection and introspection, and wrapped up in a generally nice bow all in the end.

But what Mice Tea ended up doing for me, personally, was allowing me to lower my defenses during a particularly stressful point in my life, staying present in my mind when I then read over the reviews and such for Changeling Tale. I brushed off the emotion reviews, thinking that they were likely being dramatic.

I could not have been more wrong.

While set in a backdrop of old Scottish fantasy, I continually found myself impressed at how grounded Changeling Tale managed to make itself felt. I believe this is because the main character / player character of Changeling Tale (hereafter referred to as "Malcolm") is primarily reacting to the supernatural events occurring around him, rather than necessarily driving them by his own volition. Malcolm is thrust into a world that he already feels disconnected from due to his service in the military, and it cracks further open as fae magic begins seeping into the world around him.

That said, no one in the backwater town in which Malcolm has returned to handles the public appearance of fae magic particularly well, much less the three parallel storylines available to the reader between Jessie, Marion, and Grace. If anything, the most unreasonable reactions come from the player themselves, in how flippant or otherwise easygoing they handle changes happening to the people around them. That said, many decisions have a snowballing / weighted effect that can change plot directions far later on than one might expect, leading to fallings-out with friends and family, or worse.

But then something strange happened to me, as a reader, while working my way through these split storylines. Core messages seemed to stick out to me, interwoven among the stories. But they cut me straight to the core as a person; after finishing all 3 major storylines I was left shaking and bleary-eyed, wishing events could have turned out differently, desperately trying to reject the messages that had been suggested despite knowing deep-down that they were right.

"Be the best you that you can be."

"Encourage people to chase their dreams, but make sure you're pursuing your dream too."

"Sometimes peoples' dreams are irreconcilable with one another. That doesn't mean the love is gone, it just means that it isn't fair to either person."

"The size of the dream does not diminish its value; the holder of the dream determines its value."

(I intentionally omitted the storyline associations I would make)

When I held all of these thoughts together, an emotional dam burst in my heart. For years I never considered myself as having dreams or goals. For years I felt kind of confused and wondering if what I was doing mattered, or had worth. But somehow, a visual novel about fae shenanigans that dances alongside a transformation kink broadsides me with the realization that I AM where I want to be, doing what I am doing. I have a family who l love and loves me back. I am not pursuing a dream; rather, I am cultivating and maintaining a dream I have already attained. I am doing what is important to me and my family, and even if I'm not changing the world around me and leaving a name in the history books, I know that I am here and directly affecting the lives of those around me, and I'm not sure what more I could want for at this very moment.

And for the first time in quite a while, I feel content and satisfied.

#visual novel #changeling tale #catharsis #mice tea #scalie #furry #visual novel review

[fromthedragonsdesk]

Motivations

I find myself asking these questions quite often - "Am I actually good at what I'm doing, or have I just convinced myself that it's good?", "Can I do this?", and so on. I understand the whole concept of Impostor Syndrome and all that, and it's not surprising that it extends to hobbies too, but... where does the line get drawn between appropriate pride and a need for external validation?

Writing these thoughts down are a perfect example. I've never considered myself a particularly talented writer, nor have I considered anything I have worth saying that hasn't already been said by others. Is the act of writing this down in a public forum a giant navel-gazey, self-aggrandizing schlock the very same sort of thing I chuckled and rolled my eyes about in high school?

And so I'd punt on starting writing, or sharing thoughts, or things like that because I didn't feel like I was contributing anything useful to a discussion, or topic, or what-have-you. But so many things change over the years and perhaps it's fair to change along with it. I cannot deny the feeling that this is a self-serving endeavor, but I can accept that the purpose of writing these sorts of thoughts and reflections are for the writer themself, I think.

I'm not here with the goal of lecturing, or preaching, or converting people (I realize the irony of this, having just made the aforementioned declarative statement). I'm here to get my thoughts out of my head. To say that I did something, somewhere, and here's a trace of me there to prove it. And doing this all in a place where I can write these thoughts, these feelings, the issues I'm grappling with behind a safe veneer known only to a few people in meatspace... that's refreshing. And I'd be lying if I said the appeal did not exist wherein someone completely unknown to me, completely voluntarily states "Hey, that's cool, man - that's a good idea / a good way of thinking about things".

It's a quandary - how can you be simultaneously proud of something and want to show it off to people, but then be worried and hesitant about showing it off because you don't want to make them feel bad because what you consider dreck or frittered-away time is something different that they could make under the same conditions? How do you handle essentially wanting to scream to be heard, to be paid attention to, and to want validation while feeling ashamed at how childish such desires feel? How can you want the limelight at the same time you don't want to be seen?

I don't have an answer. I don't have a reason why it exists this way. All I know is that I'm of two minds, desperately trying to make the connection between the two. But at least there's a way to do it, a path I see forward. I liked sharing video games with people, so I started streaming. I opened up to a few people I could trust about some proclivities of mine, and (as far as I can tell) they're still there by my side. I started writing all of this to try to put it all together, to maybe begin linking thoughts and ideas, and maybe offer some of my ideology out there where I think it can do some good.

The first step was just to try, and it's still scary after all these years.

#scalie #introspection #self validation #confidence #writing #essay #why #connections

[fromthedragonsdesk]

Inaugural Tumblr Posting

So, uh, hi there, internet. I've not really used Tumblr or anything like it before, but I wanted to have a place to write down my thoughts and ideas and maybe even share them with others if people found them interesting.

As I've grown older, I've found it harder and harder to actually talk to people about my interests and stay connected to those around me. You grow up, go through college, get married, have kids, and all that time and energy you thought you never had, you now realize is expended on making it through a given day. There's chores to do, money to earn, and survival techniques to utilize to just make it to the blessed few hours that remain in a day with your own thoughts.

You want to reach out to those around you, but then you realize it's not as easy as it used to be. They're not next door, or down the hall, or across the street anymore. They're hours away, potentially countries away from you now, and they're living their lives just as you are, with their families, their friends, and their hobbies. You're still a part of their lives (as much as both parties agree to), but things are just harder.

And that's all before things like therapy, counseling, and what-have-you. Isolation breeds depression, introspection, getting trapped in your own mind. But there's ways through it all, I suppose. And when you're faced with having only scant hours to work on what's special to you, you start pondering what that all means to you in the end.

So you think. You hypothesize. You wonder about the 'what ifs', the 'I could do this...', and the 'But no, who would want that?'s. And after enough of those thoughts, and getting gentle nudges from people around you, you decide it's worth a shot because the person who wants it is you.

But it's scary to be you out there. You don't want to be who others already see you as. So, you make yourself a nice mask to wear, a safety, an escape hatch. You tell yourself it's simply a container into which you can place into your shames and regrets into without it reflecting on the "you" everyone else already knows.

But then time goes by and you realize that the mask you created and hide behind hasn't been used for ill, or things to be ashamed of; it's just another aspect of you. An aspect that can be used to do the things you've wanted to try for a while, but were always afraid of doing because of either failing yourself, or failing other people. So you tell people about it, just a little bit. And you find that the parts of you that scared you, that brought shame unto you... don't really matter to those close to you as much as you thought they would.

So you try going a little further. You have a shield from the world now, in this other aspect of yourself, so, why not try some things out?

And that's how, in some strange, weird way, on this strange blue marble of a planet we all call home, you end up with a guy with a silly little dragon portrait (that is somehow giving him the courage to actually write out his thoughts) throwing a message in a bottle out onto the internet with no idea where things are going from here.

The world's a big, scary place. But if I can make one person somehow feel a little less scared, a little entertained, or even smile just a little bit, I feel like I'll have done something for the good of us all.

#scalie #responsibility #reflection #introductory post #tumblr milestone #hope