Grues, Games, and Gainful Employment

So I now have requests in to several individuals to allow me to use them as professional references when I attempt to get a job this summer, and I'm just waiting to hear back before I start filling out online applications.

Seems like the old "sidle up to the place of employment with the classified ad clutched in hand" method of job-hunting seems to have fallen by the wayside. On the one hand I'm a bit disappointed by that, but on the other I'm glad to be saved the trouble.

In any case, I've got two projects that will also be keeping my attention for the rest of the summer, along with (hopefully) my job. The first of them is a bit of interactive fiction that I started last summer, but put on hiatus when school started kicking my ass. I picked it back up again yesterday and added a few more rooms on to it, along with at least one instant game over for the player.

In my experience, IF enthusiasts seem to like those. At least, the third or fourth time I was strangled by the janitor in The Lurking Horror, that was the conclusion that I drew. Strangely enough, it had to be the time I went to try to catch the snippet of the game where you realize he didn't blink the entire bloody game that I figured out how to beat him. Go figure.

The other project is (at the suggestion of a friend) to write my own role-playing game. I've been working on the opening fluff since yesterday, and I've got a good solid four pages or so of it (single-spaced, at that). I'm liking it. It's going to have some nice layers to it, I think. Or at least as many layers as Western steampunk fantasy can have. After I'm done writing this I'm going to post a chunk of the fluff on Literary Bushido, just for the hell of it.

So between those two and the job I'll (optimistically) get, it seems I'll have a fairly productive summer. And hey, one of my reference hopefuls just emailed me and said that he would. Just one more to go before I start putting in applications.

Then I will be gainfully employed. How about that?

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It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.

...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.

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Sing from your VAGINA!

Finals Week Cometh

And I suppose I could make a joke about having to clean up after it, but that would require effort on my part.

In any case, here I am, a mere three days away from being a fully-fledged graduate from a state university--and I'm oddly calm about the whole business. I mean, sure I have two finals that will involve summat like two hours of solid writing each, and I still have to finish my final project for Stage Costume (only three more renderings to go!), but otherwise I'm feeling pretty good about the world.

I spent a chunk of the morning yesterday relearning how to play Magic: The Gathering by watching the videos concerning the topic that Wizards of the Coast has posted on YouTube. The acting is subpar and the humor is eye-rollingly painful, but they weren't a bad primer. If you want to have a chuckle at a guy who loves gesturing more than life itself, you should take a look.

Now, you're probably wondering, "PS, you handsome devil you, didn't you shrug off the old addiction to cardboard crack some years ago? What's got you peering into the depths of the black abyss of collectible card games again?" And that's a perfectly valid question, particularly when phrased in that precise manner. The answer is simple.

I got to reading a book called Gaming as Culture, a more or less scholarly look at tabletop RPGs, computer RPGs, collectible games, and the subculture associated with it all. It was an interesting read, one which I agreed with on some occasions (like when it asserted that there can be as real a sense of community in something like World of Warcraft as there can in meatspace) and disagreed with on other occasions (like when one essayist basically suggested that all roleplaying games are hypermasculinized powertrips engaged in by males who have been desexualized or feminized by society and in which women are at best marginalized and at worst openly degraded), but the articles on collectible games reminded me of something that I had never really gotten around to: Magic tournaments.

I'd never engaged in tournaments because my deck basically took cards from just about every set ever released, except maybe the first two, and tournaments are very picky about what they allow in terms of cards. But I discovered with this book that there are sealed-deck tournaments, in which you show up, pay your entry fee, get a tournament pack and a couple of boosters, and proceed to build your deck on site. So its playability (insofar as being legal) is basically guaranteed. It also means that nobody gets an undue advantage by slinging money around and picking up the best cards to stick in their decks. You get what you get, and that's it. There's a certain bourgeois appeal to the whole business.

So Friday after next, I'm going to attend my first ever Magic: The Gathering tournament. I'm hoping it'll be as fun playing as I remember it being.

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I'm gonna rip yer face off.