Well, Here I Am

I return! It's six months later, and not much has really changed. Time marches on, as does entropy. We're that much closer to the eventual heat death of the universe, and I still haven't gotten my fucking copy of CthulhuTech. But such is life, and so it goes.

I have gotten a copy of the Sailor Moon RPG put out by Guardians of Order in 1998. For, like seven dollars. Why yes, I am a huge nerd. Was there ever any question? I was actually surprised at how well-assembled it was. I got it for a chuckle, but now I'm seriously considering running a game with it.

That, though, will have to come after the Serenity one-shot I'm going to run in the next couple of weeks, and the Exalted 2e one-shot I fully intend to run sometime after that. It's been way too long since I've had an Exalted fix--since I've had a tabletop roleplaying fix of any sort, really. But that'll be rectified soon.

During my absence I've done a ridiculous amount of writing (some of it good, some of it bad, some of it poetry). My most recent endeavor has been in league with a friend of mine, and it is a webcomic called Fancy That. There's a big friendly banner for it in this blog's sidebar now, if you'd like to take a look. It updates Monday/Wednesday/Friday, like Penny Arcade, which I love so very much. Unlike PA, though, Fancy That suffers from, to borrow a phrase coined by Jerry Holkins, dreaded continuity. I hope you'll enjoy it anyway.

I'm going to try to keep this blog updated on a fairly regular basis. There are no guarantees, though the possibility of there being a post any given day will probably go up sometime in May. Just because. I'm also going to try to keep this blog closer to its stated topics. I was rather lax about that in the past, but no longer. If it's not about writing, gaming, or geekery, it will not appear in these hallowed pages.

I'm sure you'll sleep better at night knowing that.

----
I'm going to run away to the lesbian circus!

...It's Over?

So I took my last final exam as an undergraduate today. ...Last final exam? I think this may be the only case in which that phrase is not actually redundant. Anyway, I was terribly worried about it, mostly because I hadn't really gotten a chance to properly study for it, but it all seems to've turned out all right.

I won't be getting to walk for graduation this evening. I have a show to do, and it would kind of put them in a bad way if I wasn't there. Main character and all that. I'm not especially fussed about it, though. The only thing I'd miss would be the sense of closure I'd get from it. I've been at this malarkey for four years, the absolute least I should get to do is prance around in a dress^H^H^H^H^Hrobe and mortarboard for a bit and have people clap for me. But what can you do?

I'm not sure what I expected, with graduation. What I would've liked was for some sort of Highlander-styled academic Quickening to take place, with lightning jagging down from the sky and infusing my jerking body with the sublime power of a Bachelor of the Arts, but I don't think that Real Life has a budget for special effects. Which is a shame, if you think about it. But I'm not sure what I expected.

I expected to feel rather more accomplished, I guess. Don't misunderstand me, I feel accomplished, just not in any profound sort of way. Mostly I feel tired. The sort of exhaustion you get after finishing a massive project and seeing that hey, maybe you did an all right job with it after all. Which I suppose sums up my feelings about how my undergraduate education went.

I'm not looking forward to being on the low end of the graduate totem pole next fall, though, wherever I wind up at. And I'm going to miss the friends that I've made in this program, of course. There's no guarantee that I'll never see them again, and if I hang around here for my graduate schooling I more than likely will see them, but somehow I'm not sure it'll be the same. There were a lot of people who I really liked, and a few people who I was only just getting to know but whose company I enjoyed, and leaving all that behind (in a sense) is kind of distressing.

On the other hand, escape from undergraduate school means being able to move out, which is a definite plus however you cut it. I'm not sure where I'm moving to or when, but I know that it will most certainly be out. And as part of a sort of package graduation present, my parents have gone ahead and paid for my ordered copy of CthulhuTech, which is most definitely groovy.

Also, with my Saturday paycheck, I'll finally be able to pick up that PlayStation 2. So all in all, life is pretty good, I think. Things'll be a bit confused for a while, but it'll all turn out.

Things usually do.

----
Sing from your VAGINA!

Cthulhu! In! SPAAAAAACE!

Well, not exactly, but still. I'm of the opinion that only great good can come of fusing giant biomechanical robots, human were-horrors, alien fungoid insects, and HP Lovecraft's Great Old Ones themselves. And that is precisely what CthulhuTech does. It's certainly a more upbeat form of the mythos, seeing how it is actually possible for humanity to fight back...and who hasn't ever felt the pressing desire to uppercut a great and ancient evil being from beyond the veil of reality? Because I know I have.

It seems to use some toned-down variant of the Storytelling system from World of Darkness and Exalted. Everything is rolled using groups of d10's, though the success mechanic is slightly different. The major players seem to be the military, backed up by pilots of the aforementioned biomechanical Engel mecha, an underground organization whose soldiers, Tagers, have fused with otherworldly horrors and can shape-shift into them at will, and then the Bad Guys, who are a motley collection of aliens and sanity-shattering terrors that have their own complex relationships among themselves.

I think this sounds awesome. Who's with me?

----
You're naked.