fromthedragonsdesk

[fromthedragonsdesk]

Reflections on the United States, Fourth of July Edition

I spent this past 4th of July reflecting on everything I've seen and heard over the past weeks, and I find myself flummoxed.

I live in the United States of America, and have done so my entire life. I have been fortunate enough to travel and see various lifestyles across Mexico, Germany, France, Canada, and Japan, as well as various locations across the US itself in the forms of Maine, Georgia, Vermont, California, Florida, North Carolina, New York, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Delaware, Tennessee, and Missouri.

I grew up in the northeast area of the US and elected to go to college in the southeast; I was really done with snow and mosquitoes for the most part.

I remember growing up financially secure, but probably lower-middle class if I had to judge now, looking back at things. My father worked full-time, commuting to a nearby state as there were no reasonable technology sector jobs in our state of residence, and my mother stayed at home to look after the house, myself, and my brother. We took one vacation week for the summer, visiting a small rental room at a local lake. The rest of the time we were at home, maybe not having the newest or nicest things, but we ate well, saw doctors regularly, and never really worried about keeping the roof over our heads or the bills not getting paid. That said, I mean, I was told 'no' plenty of times, and we never really ordered food out beyond the occasional pizza or some such. I distinctly recall performing a technology leap from the basic Nintendo Entertainment System to the Nintendo 64, for frame of reference.

I look at the world now and I do not think such a lifestyle is remotely feasible anymore.

I remember growing up hearing about the holes in the ozone layer, chlorofluorocarbons, and acid rain. Society had agreed that these were serious problems; laws and regulations were established to restrict usage of deleterious emissions and encourage conservation, as well as renewable energy resources.

I look at the world now and I do not think such events and change are remotely feasible anymore.

I remember growing up and slowly learning more about politics, about the various parties present in the United States and the ostensible tentpoles on which they were established. While it seemed like there was often arguments and disagreement across the aisle, it appeared that problems could be identified and agreed upon, though the corrective actions or proposed solutions often differed, sometimes drastically.

I look at the world now, and I do not believe that the structures of power represent views of progress or societal development.

What I see now is a country that has wholly bought the comfortable lie that existing for own personal welfare at the expense of others is acceptable, much less encouraged. I see the gears of power completely seized by monetary forces, using the survival of others as part of financial hostage negotiations with government bodies. We live in the shitty cyberpunk dystopian future, but without any of the interesting side effects of the resurgence of magic or the fascinating technological advances. We are dealing with multinational corporations who have enough money to throw around that they are able to squeeze profit-friendly laws into existence (if not outright writing the entire bill to be rubber-stamped by bought-and-paid-for politicians).

I see homes being constructed that are completely unaffordable for anyone in the vicinity to actually live in, businesses creating positions that are unfillable due to wanting unicorns that fit the job description perfectly. I see people losing their jobs; their work just getting permanently migrated to other employees and their position never existing again. Salaries are frozen, seniority and loyalty are not rewarded or encouraged, and people are worked to the bone all for the sake of appearances.

I remember the COVID shutdown - we were able to find the money to pay people to survive, to allow people to work from home, to trust them when they said they were sick and encouraged them to stay home as a matter of precaution. People had time on their hands to explore weird rabbit holes of information, to tinker and experiment while researchers, doctors, and nurses toiled away racing to find a vaccination and treatment protocol.

But that's not good for the bottom line, is it? What will the investors think? Where's the payout? The line didn't go up as much this quarter, so something has to change.

Back to work. Back to 'normal'. Back to pretending that everyone is fine, or faking their problems, or not really sick, or not really hurt. Get back in the box and make the numbers go up. Do whatever it takes to make the quarter numbers better, sustainability and burnout be damned. Keep bending the rules, scorching the planet, turning people against one another all for the easy, almighty dollar.

Humanity as a whole has the resources, the means, and the intelligence to solve the problems we are all facing. Unfortunately, those WITH the means have decided that solving these problems isn't profitable. So now we scratch, scrabble, and scrape together whatever meager means of survival and sanity maintenance possible, all while selfish, boorish adult-children play with the world like it is but a marionette for them to manipulate.

I do not think we can sustain this for long - I do not know what to do, though, given the immensely poisoned well of knowledge being pushed in the form of toxic social media, LLMs such as ChatGPT and Grok being tweaked and adjusted to simply amplify the loudest voices instead of those from qualified individuals such as researchers and academics in a given field. Social media and news encourage the loudest voices, not actual representations of truth. Anything is debatable and nothing has meaning when we destroy the definition of terms and always present "both sides" when there is a definitive right and wrong. We as a people are being reduced to a number by the great financial forces in power; our value only meaningful so long as we can keep giving them money and god forbid the average person ever want anything back. The human being has become a speedbump between the corporation and the wallet.

At the same time, on the small scale, I see people sacrificing their energy, their time, their lives all trying to make the lives of those less fortunate better. On the local level, people still care and want to help one another; artificial boogeymen are propped up and presented as fear sells, stress sells, and panicked individuals are not able to make good decisions.

We as a people need to resist however we may be able. Get involved - politics in the US are overflowing with those who are actively ossifying in their position of power. Get involved - people around you need help, and sometimes even knowing the smallest thing about technology, art, science, or literature can help those who are trying to improve the lives of others.

We all lift together.

[fromthedragonsdesk]

I vote that the day after Thanksgiving hereby be known as the the Thanksgiving Refractory Period, because no one is really up to cooking another whole set of meals to feed themselves normally that day.

[fromthedragonsdesk]

That alien feeling when you might be the only person on the internet who seems to enjoy the "Smart Shuffle" feature on Spotify as a means of lazily discovering new music.

[fromthedragonsdesk]

An associate of mine wanted to piggyback on Ao3 after I mentioned I had put up a short story there. It definitely falls under the 'adult' category.

[fromthedragonsdesk]

A Cyclical Realization

I thought for a little bit today, wondering how I could stop myself from wanting so many things in so many directions. Constantly something new, something to work on, something to address, wishing for things to make me better, or more productive, or just more.

The more I circle the topic the more I believe the core problem is that I'm just tired of having to do any one thing. Tired of the day-to-day, wishing for the ability to just wake up when I want, work on what feels good that day, and just not be "on" for just a little bit.

I get those moments of "off" time, but then it makes me feel like a junkie. It's never long enough, relaxing enough, productive enough, fulfilling enough.

How do we go about breaking this cycle when the world seems determined to keep you trapped in a loop?

[fromthedragonsdesk]

Social(ly anxious) creatures

[fromthedragonsdesk]

Reflections

I sit here with Dragon's Milk in one hand and antidepressants in the other and consider for a moment how my life is portrayed in such a microcosm.

[fromthedragonsdesk]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Original Work Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Original Characters, Original Male Character(s) Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Alternate Universe - Fae, Slice of Life, Alternate Universe - Werewolves Are Known, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Urban Fantasy Series: Part 1 of Courier's Curiosities Summary:

What would happen if magic and technology developed side-by-side? We have the opportunity to watch how a world such as this might operate through the eyes of William Stephenson, a courier of parts and parcels on the world of Erdmun. Explore a world where the legends of modern-era are true, the magicians of yore existed, and the flow of magic has come to be reasonably understood!

In this introductory short story, you'll have the chance to see Will's first day on the job as what should have been a normal delivery job quickly spirals out of control.

[fromthedragonsdesk]

Personal Projects

Maybe I'm good at this... I'll have to keep going.

[fromthedragonsdesk]

On Memories

It's strange. Even five or six years later, I find myself unable to touch a few games or albums because of the memories that I've attached to them. Not because they're bad memories, either - they're almost *too* good that even attempting to relive them or experience something similar feels like it would cheapen the effect.

Too many memories of simpler times, different times. Times before growing apart, times before _time itself_ became difficult to manage and parcel out. Living with friends but having responsibilities that ended at 5 PM. The biggest worry being what we would need to feed ourselves next.

I can't say part of me doesn't yearn for those times, but... I don't think I'd be willing to lose the pieces of my life I have now. I miss playing games all night with friends, and shooting the shit with each other over a late-night drink. I miss being able to just fall asleep on a couch because it didn't really matter where I was. I miss being able to say 'screw it, i don't feel like cooking. guess I'm eating crackers for dinner' and that being OKAY because others weren't counting on me.

But at the end of the day I probably miss those things because they're all representative of having less to worry about on a day-to-day basis. I've got a family who is counting on me now and I have to keep putting aside my feelings and desires because that's part of the gig, to an extent.

It's hard not to feel like I'm working for a better tomorrow that never comes. It seems like each day goes by and we just see progressively more awful things happening in the world around us, as the veil of decency is just plain shredded and all the ugly tumors and buboes that have been festering under the surface are exposed for all to see. I feel a special twang of insanity when I'm sitting talking to my daughter, explaining how the rules exist for a reason and it's not fair to break the rules just because you want to do something, especially if everyone else is following the rules - and then I look at the news and watch people twenty times her age doing just that and reveling in it, with no sense of justice or karmic retribution in sight.

How do we take the memories and ideas which we cling to as important and are the very elements of our personal foundation and move on ahead with them, without getting mired in the wishes for bygone days? How do we try to make a better world when the world we live in seems so determined to make us shut down and retreat to our old comfortable concepts? How do we cling to the people, the places, the ideals we hold dear when it feels like we're all ready to get thrown off the ride?

[fromthedragonsdesk]

It's probably not good to have 10 different ideas of 10 different possible projects you could work on, but then elect to do none of them.

[fromthedragonsdesk]

Hah, yes, you see I am indeed blessed as a multifaceted individual. Unfortunately, that has just given me more means in which to be defective.

[fromthedragonsdesk]

On Living in Between

It's 4 AM and I've woken up. It's too early to do anything, because everyone else is asleep. It's getting close to having to get ready for the day, but not soon enough to warrant getting fully dressed and risk getting messy. What do I do. I blink a few times and find myself drifting back to sleep.

5:20 rolls around and I'm jolted away as I hear babbling coming from the crib. I guess someone else decided it was time to wake up. May as well get up now; didn't want to take a shower last night so I better do it now. Be quiet a little longer, kiddo, and I can feed you. The water starts running and the crying starts ramping. I check the clock; 5:30. I need to get in and out of the bathroom quickly before she gets louder and shriller.

5:40. My ears burn from hearing shrieking throughout the entire shower, reminding me that someone else is getting hungrier and doesn't know how to handle it. My mind itches, but I can't scratch it because that sound just keeps going. Need to get dressed to get a bottle ready. Need to find clothing I can wear. My ears start ringing and my focus starts shattering. Can't find a matching sock. Can't find a pair of underwear. 5:45. Time's passing. My tension is rising. Can't keep searching for the right clothes. Settle for the undershirt and bathrobe.

5:47. Bottle is filled and put into the warmer. 5:55 seconds, the display reads. Cries punctuate the back of my mind. There's nothing I can do here but wait. Going back to the source would only make stress levels rise. Those cookies on the counter look tasty. What can I eat to placate the rising stress levels and dull the background pain.

Nothing. Stop myself from reaching out for the cookies. Waver for a moment. Grab the jar of peanuts. Grab something, anything to serve as a distraction. Remember that you're out of shape. Remember that you're eating too much. Remember that you're stress eating and you should not be doing this. Look at the clock. 5:52 AM. Warm enough. Get the bottle. Back into the breach.

Console the source of the cries. Hunger hurts. I understand this. All is quiet again. I close my eyes. I hear sounds of shuffling feet and high pitched questions being asked. I'm not where I usually am and that's confusing, evidently. 6:01. Everyone else is awake. I announce myself that I'm fine and everything's fine. I hear others start their day. I close my eyes. 6:07. My turn. I deposit one child with the other, who is already working on the breakfast that has been set before them. Chattering fills the room, but I can't recall what's there. I have bottles to fill to ready for the rest of the day before I have to get on the road.

Like reflex, grab the bottles and line them up. 1. 2. 3. 4. 4 ounces. 4 ounces. 3 ounces? Need to thaw more. 4 ounces and change, top off the low one. Done. Seal them, label them, order them, pack them. It's second nature; I've done this plenty of times before. 6:25. I need to get moving. Throw clothes on, they don't matter. Throw last night's dinner into my bag, it doesn't really matter. Pour coffee into a travel mug, splash of milk. It matters. Give my hugs, my goodbyes, and my well wishes and walk out the door.

It's humid, but the light from the rising sun has already filled the sky. Get in the car, get the music going, get the directions pulled up. 1 hour; it's the best I can hope for in a trip. The drive happens. 10 mph over the speed limit in the slow lane and I'm still not driving fast enough for people. I sip coffee to keep my focus. The same drive for the same years, it all blends into the background noise of life.

7:30. The office. Same monday, same faces. The motions are gone through, the check-ins are made. I sit at my desk, trying to solve last week's problems before this week gives me new ones. I relish the peace and quiet for a moment. 8:00. Another cup of coffee. I'm still not awake, or, at the very least, don't want to be awake. Meetings are on the horizon.

Meetings zip by me, again bleeding into the patchwork background noise of work. Things in progress are still in progress, and things that are broken are still broken because we can't fix them for the same reasons we couldn't fix them before. It's 10:15 and my experiments have failed. I'm hungry. It's 10:45. It's close enough to eat lunch.

10:50. Lunch is in the microwave, some people are still trickling in eating late breakfasts or getting mid morning coffee. 10:54. Lunch is out of the microwave and people are gone, again. But that's okay. I usually eat at my desk anyway, because things usually go wrong when I'm not easily findable.

Lunch is done. It's 11:05. It's been 4 hours already and I feel useless. I know what I have to do, there's plenty of things to do if I'm roadblocked on one topic. But why. It feels like for every problem I solve I just get handed two new ones with even less support, or with the same answers that prevent us from effectively resolving them. I push forward and try to make progress on some lower-priority tasks. It's 12:45 PM. I'm editing documents.

It's 1:30. I'm tracing incidents in crash logs.

It's 2:10. Code fails to compile again. Do I need to start from scratch again with a different approach?

It's 2:45. I can't do this anymore. I'm tired.

It's 3:00. Can I go home yet? It's a long drive home.

It's 3:15. It's almost time.

It's 3:25. It's close enough.

It's 3:30. I'm in the car again. The music and directions are pulled up again. An hour to drive, not bad. About the best I could hope for given the traffic.

It's 4:00. There's a lot of cars here... why?

It's 4:05. The direction updates say to stay the course. It will be 15 minutes in traffic to get through the bottleneck.

It's 4:10. The direction updates say to stay the course. It will be 14 minutes in traffic to breach the bottleneck.

It's 4:18. The direction updates say to stay the course. It will be 14 minutes in traffic to breach the bottleneck. I start to thrash impotently. There's no way on or off this stretch of highway at this point.

It's 4:20. I call the missus in an attempt to vent and at least get dinner plans sorted out. She empathizes with my frustrations, but dinner is a harder story. Dinner plan 1, shot down. Suggested meal option 2 is shot down upon suggestion. I attempt a hail mary with suggestion meal option 3, and it lands. We say our goodbyes and I check the map again. It's 4:25, and it will be 10 minutes in traffic to get past the bottleneck.

5:05 I walk in the door. The cat runs screaming to the front of the house and immediately attaches himself to my legs, the same as every other work day. I start laundry and scoop a litterbox and feed a needy feline. The missus surprises me by preparing dinner in my stead. It's 5:15 and I sit to write a post, reflecting on how the day just evaporates while I wait for the next responsibility to manage.

It's 5:48. Time to get the kids. It will be 6:20, time for us to eat dinner. It will be 7:00, time for bedtime for #2 and playtime for #1. It will be 7:30, time to start bedtime routines for #1. It will be 8:00, teeth and bathroom will be done. Time for pajamas and a hand-off. It will be 8:30, and tuck-ins will happen. It will be 8:45 and I will sit back down at this computer, the thing I've waited all day to do. It will be 9:00 and I will feel like there is a spark of life again. It will be 10:30, and maybe #2 is hungry. It will be 11:30 and I will drag myself to bed. It will be 11:45 when I look at my phone idly. It will be 11:55 when I set it down and roll over.

It will be 5:30 and I will wake up again.

[fromthedragonsdesk]

I made a thing and I'm proud of it.

As a side task, I tried to find various ways to update my Twitch streaming avatar; it was basically a stop-motion animation of a Heroforge model that I brute-forced into a PNGTuber sort of format. However, that was a very slow process and it was nearly impossible to keep it consistent from work-instance to work-instance, as I couldn't easily set frames or scales accurately.

I'd wanted to replace it forever, but never felt like it was worth spending money on what's essentially a side-hobby to have something professionally made, nor did I think I had the artistic capabilities of rendering it myself. I tried learning how to use digital drawing tablets, picture editing software such as GIMP, the whole nine yards, and nothing really worked.

Then, a while after I had played a little game called Dinoblits, it came to me. The little portraits of the dinosaurs in the game were exactly the type of expressive-yet-simple artstyles that I had wanted to emulate - see for yourselves:

That little guy is freakin' adorable!

So, I tried another round of designs, quite honestly aping the models used here. I even got in touch with the developers and asked them their design process for the sprite work; the most valuable lesson I learned from them was that their designs started small and were then scaled up. So, with that clue in tow and rudimentary work in Paint.NET and GIMP, I give you my next generation of avatar:

Yup. Anticlimactic. But it's something I made with the drawing tools available to me and without tracing. I made each frame and piped them all into GIMP to make the GIF, and have the opportunity to keep making more variants as I go!

It's not much in the grand scheme of things. But for someone who doesn't really have formal training in art techniques and digital art, I feel satisfied with what is essentially mashing three different art styles into one abomination to which I can call my own.

If you'd like to see it in action, you can find me using it here at https://www.twitch.tv/rtgamut

[fromthedragonsdesk]

Smash competitive is so fucking funny. Yeah i love this game i play it all the time with 95% of its features turned off, 3 out of a total 32 characters, and only one out of 90 stages.

[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.

[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.