After we spent a couple of days in the city, it was time for me to head out for my “hunting trip.” It uh.. Yeah it was rough. Lonely and cold and.. whatever. I was away from people and I ran and ran and tasted blood and ran some more. I didn’t wanna remember nothin’ while transformed. I didn’t.. I was scared I’d done somethin’ unseemly. I dunno.

The third time I’d transformed, I followed a blue light to some kinda ruin. A temple, I guess, lookin’ back. I walked inside and suddenly I felt so, so tired. Sunrise wasn’t far off, and I was fed, so I plopped down somewhere and dreamed. I dunno if I oughta talk about it too much, I mean, it’s all mostly over now, so I don’t see why I couldn’t. It was a vision from Nylak. He showed me a lotta things, most of it’s already happened now. All the literal stuff anyhow. It felt like a dream, where suddenly I was in the forest, next I was back home, next I was in the ocean during a storm, next I was in Ptolonox, and a hundred other places. I saw you, and Ol’ Mav, and Kai. Nylak spoke through y’all, tellin’ me somethin’ bad was gonna happen and I needed to be in the right place at the right time to collect… treasure.

On my way back to Camino I found Big Clyde had discovered magic. Lookin’ back I really shouldn’t’ve been surprised. But he made a window between himself and some grains from a nearby homestead and I watched him devour all of it. It flowed outta the portal like a waterfall and he didn’t miss a drop of it. Or, a grain of it. He ate all of it is what I’m sayin’. Vebradu had somehow chanced his way into winnin’ a beautiful stallion. Strong, fast, stubborn as all hell. There wasn’t much I wouldn’t have given to bring him back home, but he was more worth to us sellin’. Got some pretty gold coins from that.

While the rest of us was exploring the city, Vidar had been busy starting up his mercenary group. He hired some fellas in the fields with aspirations and nothin’ better to do than pretend they’re heroes to help him kill some spider bug critters, and apparently they was successful enough they wanted to keep marchin’ under Vidar’s banner. A banner he made with Femur Frank’s stupid skull. He attached it to the end of a stick and displayed it all pompous and proud like. Until he woke up and saw the skull had up and disappeared. He was runnin’ around, frantic and heated. Anybody who looked at him funny he interrogated, tryin’ to figure out who stole the skull. Luckily Vebradu, Sledge, and I was able to bring him to his senses. Femur Frank’s a necromancer. The skull probably grew legs and walked out on its own. Or teleported or somethin’. Some kinda recall thing. Who the hell’d wanna steal a skull besides the fella the skull belonged to?

Vidar thought Larry might know a thing or two about how to track the skull down. We found him at a tavern nearby, but when we walked in, I recognized the whole place from my dream. I saw somebody sneak some vial of somethin’ into his beer, so without thinkin’ I drank all of it. Nearly knocked me on my ass, but at least I knew it was comin’. I tried to get everyone out as quick as I could, without drawin’ too much attention. I know I failed because that was when the bartender jumped across the counter with a knife out. When we came in she was a sweet ol’ lady, but when she attacked she didn’t move like one and her - his voice got deep.

He knew Larry and was aimin’ right for him. Luckily we still had our wits about us, I punched the guy in the face while Vidar tried disarmin’ him. The bartender had some kinda spell or smoke bomb or somethin’, I’m not sure how but the room filled with smoke and it got hard to see. Luckily Vebradu had some air magic and was able to sweep it all away. Once he did, I realized that the bartender was a changeling and he uh. Stole my face. He attacked Larry, stabbing him in the stomach. None of us took too kindly to that. Me least of all. Well, I mean, Larry least of all, but I wasn’t happy about it either.

Big Clyde gave him a good bite, and he tried makin’ his escape. He turned invisible, but Vebradu was able to spot the magic he was using and Vidar charged where Vebradu pointed. One big slash, and the bastard was down on the ground, bleeding blue. He said a few things, made it clear that he knew Larry from somewhere. Then he turned to flowers and grass on the ground. Vebradu guessed we had at least a week before the changeling could reform and come back after us. We made sure the actual bartender was alright, then we got the hell outta there. Grabbed our stuff real quick and didn’t look back to Camino. Not for awhile anyway.

Once we felt safe, I told everyone about my dreams. Kinda. At the time it didn’t seem like a good idea to tell them the whole truth, so I just said that we really, really needed to go to Ptolonox. And that I knew Larry’s drink was poisoned before we even saw him. I said that if I act weird and ask them to do somethin’ weird, to go along with it. We also set up a code word, in case any of us ever got our faces stolen. Larry told us a bit about the changeling. They used to work together, a long time ago. Their boss wasn’t happy Larry cut n’ run and she ain’t the kinda lady you make unhappy. It was a pretty bad situation. The second night we made camp on the roads toward Ptolonox, we realized we was bein’ followed. They kept their distance. They wanted to watch, not ambush. We figured they probably already knew we was gonna go north anyway. The Lady’s territory was mostly in the south, so once we crossed the border, we figured they’d let us go. For a time anyhow. Ol’ Mav said she had a friend in Halmsmill who could help us, and I figured it’d be a good place for us to lie low in case the thugs got too close.

If I’m honest, I’m hesitant to share the diagnosis. I want to because I find this is a really good medium for me to express myself. I feel like having a blog where I mostly talk about myself, my life, and how I think, I’m able to be vulnerable in a safe way that allows people to have a better understanding of me. However, this disorder is genuinely one of the most misunderstood disorders ever. It’s common, and you’ve heard of it, but more than likely, most people reading this have no idea how the disorder works or what it looks like. I don’t blame anyone for not knowing, the stereotypical pop culture version of it is incredibly pervasive.

I think more than almost anything else, I am most terrified of being misunderstood or not taken seriously. So much so that I’ll go to extreme lengths to avoid those things. Such as learning HTML and buying a website domain to build a website and put my every thought and opinion on it. I’m terrified that by sharing an aspect of myself, it will only lead to more misunderstandings. But unfortunately, it’s for this exact reason why I should share it.

I have OCD. I was diagnosed with it fairly recently, but now that I know the symptoms better, I can remember showing signs of it as early as 5 or 6 years old. But before I talk about my own personal experience with the disorder, I want to explain how it actually works so there’s no confusion. Obviously I’m not a doctor. I’m going to oversimplify everything I’m talking about in order to make a nice, digestible blog post that any layperson could read in one sitting. If you’ve somehow stumbled here looking for genuine, in depth research and analysis into OCD then… I cannot stress enough how wrong of a place you’re in. I’m a graphic designer who reads Wikipedia articles as a hobby. This isn’t health advice, check my sources, and take everything I say with a grain of salt.

Symptoms

OCD is not perfectionism, a love of symmetry, or excessive cleanliness. It’s an anxiety disorder characterized by intense intrusive thoughts and the immense lengths sufferers go to avoid those thoughts becoming reality. “Intrusive thoughts” are another aspect of the disorder that is entirely misunderstood by most people. Intrusive thoughts don’t mean impulsivity, or making bad decisions. Normally whenever I see or hear people talking about intrusive thoughts, it’s about how they dyed their hair on a whim or ate 3 donuts when they felt full after 2. Intrusive thoughts are a lot more intense than that. They cause distress and tend to be disturbing or graphic. If you’ve ever been standing in a high place and had the sudden urge to jump, or to push someone else, that’s an example of an intrusive thought. Everyone experiences these to some degree, they’re distressing thoughts that don’t align with your personality or moral values.

The primary thing that distinguishes normal intrusive thoughts versus OCD is the reaction to these thoughts. If you’re able to shrug off a distressing mental image after a few moments, congratulations, you (probably) do not have OCD. If these thoughts do control and dictate several aspects of your life, however, it stops being “normal thoughts” and starts becoming an obsession. Hence the O in OCD. I think about an obsession probably once every few minutes. Most of the time when I start thinking about my obsessions, it’s extremely difficult to stop. That is, unless I do something about them. That’s the C in OCD, compulsions. I don’t want to talk too in depth about my own obsessions, but let’s say that I’m obsessed with getting rid of germs. My compulsion might be to wash my hands. But because obsessions don’t go away for long, in order to keep those at bay, I might find myself washing my hands 10 times in a row and still feeling unclean.

I sometimes spend anywhere between 2 to 12 hours on any given day dealing with my obsessions. They rule my life in ways that almost certainly sound unbelievable, and sometimes even silly, but nonetheless are extremely distressing and make my life far more difficult than it needs to be. My obsessions control the way I walk, how I eat, the way I communicate with others, how I cook, clean, and take care of myself, how I perform at work, how I dress and present myself, the hobbies/media I engage with, and so much more. There isn’t a facet of my life that’s not touched by OCD in some way. But… why? Going back to the handwashing example, why wouldn’t I eventually start to feel more clean after a 2nd or 3rd time washing?

The same reason a person with depression doesn’t stop being depressed after a couple of good days. And the same reason an autistic person doesn’t understand social cues after a couple good social interactions. And the same reason a narcoleptic person doesn’t stop having narcolepsy after a couple good nights of sleep. It’s a disorder. The brain isn’t working properly and is overcompensating in ways that are detrimental to the livelihood of the person suffering with it.

Why OCD Happens

Unfortunately, research into OCD is fairly recent. The how’s and why’s are unclear because research is still being done. I’m going to present a theory that makes the most sense to me, but understand that it is still a (game) theory. OCD is called a network-based disorder, meaning that it isn’t the summation of symptoms, environmental factors, and behavior, but also has biological components. For example, a person might experience depression due to the loss of a loved one. But a person chronic depression likely has issues processing chemicals in the brain like dopamine or serotonin in addition to those other factors. Except with OCD, we wouldn’t say someone is “experiencing OCD,” we’d probably call it “overthinking.” The major difference between OCD and overthinking comes from the CSTC loop, or the cortico-striato-thalamo-cortical loop.

The CSTC loop has several functions and is way too complicated for me to explain here. What you need to know is that when information is being taken in and your brain needs to make a decision, the process begins in your prefrontal cortex, then moves to a bunch of other locations in your brain, then goes back to the prefrontal cortex. It gets really complicated and impacts most parts of the brain, but for my purposes today, all you need to know is the prefrontal cortex is responsible for information gathering and decision making, and everything else is responsible for movement, planning, learning, motivation, and rewards. If you have ADHD, you should be familiar with this system! Yours doesn’t work either! Hence the whole issue with delayed gratification and inability to start/transition tasks. OCD uses the same formula, but gets drastically different results. In the CSTC loop, there is a direct and indirect pathway through the brain. The direct pathway is all about starting actions/behaviors, while the indirect pathway is all about preventing action. If you have Turret’s, you should also be familiar with this system! Yours doesn’t work either! This is why tics happen, the indirect pathway is dysfunctional.

So how does the CSTC loop work in the case of people with OCD? Well, in short, it doesn’t. At least, not well. The direct pathway is hyperactive resulting in the sufferer being repeatedly told by their brain that in order to solve their problems they must take increasingly distressing or laborious tasks. In a healthy person’s mind, the CSTC loop looks like:

I am hungry. > Food would make me feel full. > I want to eat food. > I am going to eat food. > The loop closes, the brain is satisfied, and the problem is resolved.

But in the brain of someone with OCD, it might look more like this:

I am hungry. > Food would make me feel full. > Wait, is the food safe? > I should check the best by date to make sure it’s safe. > The best by date says it’s fine, but how do I know someone didn’t tamper with it? > I live alone, so I know it wasn’t me. > But how do I know someone didn’t break in? > I should check my security camera. > Nothing’s shown up, so I must’ve done it myself and forgot. > I should research how amnesia works, maybe check my carbon monoxide alarm. > Ad infinitum. The loop never closes, the brain feels all out of sorts because it can’t solve the problem, and the sufferer is unable to feel safe enough to eat despite all evidence.

The loop is never able to close and the sufferer is never able to reach a conclusion. Every time they reach the natural, logical conclusion to their thoughts their brain sends them on another, deeper spiral. In this example, a person without OCD would end their loop after checking the food label if they have doubts. But because our brains are so certain in the danger present in making a “wrong” choice, it will never feel satisfied. It will convince us that we have false memories, that we’re being tricked somehow and we can’t trust reality or our own judgement. The only thing that supplies an immediate feeling of “rightness” or “completeness” or “goodness” is engaging in our compulsions. In this example, the compulsions would be checking food date, checking for intruders, researching amnesia, and overthinking. For a few brief seconds after engaging in compulsions, the brain feels like the loop is closed. But not forever. Within another few seconds, the loop begins again, this time stronger.

Treatment

It’s like itching a mosquito bite. The more you scratch, the itchier it gets. The only way to prevent the itchiness from getting worse is to not scratch it at all. OCD works much in the same way. We can’t avoid the CSTC loop, it’s a necessary function of our brains. Without it, we would be unable to make decisions at all. What we have to do is ignore our brain and choose the indirect loop. We have to reject our compulsions and the thought spirals.

This is unbelievably difficult. It is so impossible to tell when an action is a compulsion or entirely reasonable. Our brain categorizes them in the same way. Similar to how a person with motion sickness can’t reason their brain out of being motion sick, a person with OCD can’t reason their brain out of the loop. Only encourage it to refocus its attention to something else. For the last few weeks, I’ve been working with my therapist to use exposure and response prevention (ERP) therapy, which is tantamount to psychological torture. I’m being facetious, but I genuinely cannot imagine a worse feeling than how using it makes me feel.

But that’s the thing. Compulsions provide extremely short term relief in exchange for a lifetime of being unable to use the indirect pathways for basic tasks. I don’t obsess over food contamination personally, but if I did, the solution would be to eat food I’m convinced is going to make me sick. Even if I understand on a logical level that the food won’t hurt me, the second I have a normal experience like getting food poisoning, having diarrhea, throwing up, or otherwise feeling ill, my brain is going to convince me that the reason I feel that way is because I ate food that was tampered with. I’ll have to overcome these thoughts by living with uncertainty. I would have to be okay with the fact that I’ll never have definitive proof of knowing with 100% certainty that my food hasn’t been tampered with. Nothing will ever be good enough in my brain. I’ll have to be okay with the uncertainty and discomfort.

Let me put it this way. I imagine that since you’re reading my blog, you have some form of neurodivergence or mental health condition. What if the most effective form of treatment for your condition was to just pretend like you don’t have that condition. If you have ADHD, just stop procrastinating! Just, stop being impulsive! Just stop hyperfixating. If you have depression, just stop feeling depressed. Just pull a lust for life out of your ass. Just enjoy stuff and ignore anhedonia. If you have autism, just understand social cues. Just know what people mean when they’re vague and indirect without having to clarify. Stop caring about uncomfortable textures, and ignore the need to stim forever.

The idea is ridiculous. Obviously those aren’t going to work for any of the conditions I listed. But genuinely imagine the pit in your stomach that would form after a trusted mental health advisor told you that the most effective treatment method is to ignore your condition. Imagine how you would even begin to navigate life surrounding that during the best of times. Now imagine how you’d be able to cope when something stressful happens. When someone passes away, when you suddenly lose a job, when a long term partner breaks up with you, when your car breaks down and you can’t afford a fix.

And yet, in the case of OCD, this works!!! It works insanely well! Annoyingly well! Infuriatingly well!

My Personal Experience

It’s been a month since I’ve started working with my therapist on dealing with my OCD. My life has improved drastically. I want to back up a bit and talk about the road to me getting a diagnosis, because I don’t think it’s at all typical. I’ve mentioned before that I can trace symptoms of OCD as far back as when I was 5 or 6 years old. I specifically remember a period of a few months where every day I would imagine a swear word in my head and I would pray to Jesus asking for forgiveness. Every time I read a swear word, every time I heard one on TV, and every time one would randomly appear in my head without my internal dialogue intentionally saying it. I remember my fear and anxiety got so debilitating and it became difficult to play or talk to my friends because I was so busy praying for forgiveness. I remember feeling so convinced I was destined for Hell. Eventually, I stopped praying every time I heard/thought of/saw a bad word. And slowly, but surely, I stopped randomly imagining swear words.

This kind of thing would happen a lot throughout my life. I would have an obsession, spend a horrible few months suffering with it, intuit my way out of the obsession, and eventually, my life would return back to normal. I would still have obsessions, but they would be much more manageable and were easier to ignore. Honestly, a lot of my obsessions were also things that were entirely reasonable to be worried about. I would obsess over my academic performance, on my quality as a partner and friend, on my hobbies and art. And most of my compulsions weren’t too unreasonable, I was just going absurdly over the top with them. I would brag about my near 15 hour work days in college as if that was a normal and good thing to aspire to, and not me being obsessed.

My Personal Experience (The Sad Stuff)

Since I started therapy in December last year, I hadn’t experienced a flare up in obsessions in some time. Or at least my obsessions were easier to hide. I’ve always had an interest in psychology and had a decent enough grasp on OCD before doing more research, but before my therapist brought it up, I had never genuinely considered it was a thing I had. That was until a really intense event in January occurred where I was incredibly destabilized. A big dramatic blow up happened and my worst fears were “confirmed” true (in the same way they would be “confirmed” true in the food example if I were to get sick.. which is to say, I felt as if my fears were confirmed, when it was really just an unrelated bad thing). I think it unwise to go into detail discussing the worst of my obsessions in a place that’s viewable to any random stranger on the internet. But the worst of my obsessions revolve around how I’m perceived in relationships. I don’t want to be a bad partner or friend. Obviously no one wants to be bad, but I don’t think I can go into more detail than that. There are very specific aspects to relationships I want to get perfect and I stop at nothing to make sure I do everything right.

Except, nothing I did worked. I obeyed my every compulsion and took every thought I had at face value. And when that event happened, it cemented to me that no matter what I do, I’m everything I hate about myself. And not only that, but everyone else knows it. Everyone knows the deep depravity of my soul and I’ll never be good, or clean, or kind. Redemption is impossible because I’ve already made my bed. The only thing that will bring me close to goodness again is agonizing over how corrupted and evil I am. Not true, obviously, but that’s what I felt.

It’s now been 5 months since then and all my current, biggest obsessions directly center the event. Not in obvious ways, but in ways that are so niche and abstract it’s genuinely laughable. Everything stems back to this. And it was directly because all my obsessions stem from the same place that my therapist was able to identify a pattern. Every session I would walk in and rehash the same events, but never directly. I would talk about some other stressor I was experiencing, and eventually, relate it back to the January situation. It didn’t set off alarm bells initially to my therapist because it was a genuinely really big life change that would have affected anyone greatly. But it wasn’t until I started experiencing “weird panic attacks” that she connected it to OCD.

I’ve had panic attacks before. But about 2 months ago I started experiencing what felt like a panic attack’s meaner, more intense older brother that lasted until I physically exhausted myself enough to pass out. They definitely would start out as panic attacks, but they were always triggered by an obsession. I would have an intense spike in anxiety triggered by overthinking, and next thing I knew, I would be awake at 3 in the morning curled up on the floor sobbing for 12 hours straight. Once they started, there was nothing I could do to stop them. I would lay awake thinking in the same unhealthy loops that never ended. Not until I was too tired to think. Throughout these I would engage in every healthy and unhealthy coping mechanism I had at my disposal. I would try everything from venting to friends to self harm to journaling to getting so drunk/high I couldn’t move to make it all go away. By the time I was diagnosed, I was experiencing them up to 3 times a week.

My Personal Experience (The Happy Stuff)

Things got really bad and they weren’t getting better. Until my therapist diagnosed me with OCD and we began ERP.

Despite how much shit I talked it earlier, I think it has been genuinely instrumental in saving my life. I feel a lot more peace, generally speaking. I still spend WAY too much time obsessing than I’d like. Most days I just don’t have it in me to ignore every compulsion. I’m picking my battles, only tackling a few at a time. I don’t exactly keep a numbered list of my obsessions, and they change day to day, but there’s probably a few dozen of them. Some of my darkest, most deep rooted ones I really don’t have the capacity to handle.

But the smaller ones? Those I can handle. And the more I do, the less the bigger ones bother me. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a daily battle that starts from the second I wake up and doesn’t end until I fall asleep. ERP is a lot of things, but “easy” is probably the most antithetical word to describe it with. But it is getting easier.

Part of it has also been being able to identify obsessions when they show up at all. There’s so many aspects to myself I thought important, but are actually obsessions. Like actually posting here every month. I don’t think it ever came across, but I would feel more dread than I could possibly describe whenever I wasn’t able to get a Dal Report out by the end of the month. I felt like a bad person when I didn’t post. The way I used to GM my previous campaign was also 100% an obsession. I was, frankly, insane with how I planned it. The lengths I went to immerse my players were unnecessary, unrealistic, rightfully unappreciated (because I was insane and unreasonable) and lead to me getting so burned out, I have no idea when I’ll be GMing again. I don’t think my feelings were ever really externalized to my players, luckily, but the pure hatred and contempt I held for myself if I flubbed a line of dialogue, forgot to set moody lighting, or miscalculated a roll was astronomical.

But, it’s getting better. Therapy is going really good for me and I’m honestly proud of myself and the progress I’ve made these last few weeks. You’ll see a lot more of me again here. Except this time, I’m not going to be promising any upload schedule or consistent topics/themes. I’ll write what I want, when I want, and it’ll be posted here. Read it or don’t.

Sources

https://www.healthline.com/health/ocd/ocd-brain

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK553162/

https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/obsessivecompulsive-disorder-ocd

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5187454/

My cousin is terrified of eating red velvet cake. When we were kids, he ate too much of it at a birthday party and when he threw up and saw red vomit, it terrified him. For most of our lives he claimed to be allergic to the red food coloring or the specific combination of Betty Crocker cake mix and Pillsbury frosting. To this day, he still refuses to eat it, even as a fully grown adult who knows it won’t hurt him. This is a form of trauma, and I hope it better explains what I’m saying about myself and my own personal experiences. Me and my brain are separate entities and we often disagree. I don’t think the inciting incident should have had this result and I don’t blame anyone or anything for creating the situation itself. But my brain disagrees and now I’m unable to do things I used to be able to do before. I feel the desire to be much more private than I used to be. I want to be extremely selective with the people I talk about my life with. I really want this to be temporary as one of my favorite things about myself used to be my vulnerability and expressiveness. But charging through the defenses my brain has built up doesn’t help in the long term. I have to work with it to dismantle these walls brick by brick.

Thanks to everyone who’s kept with the blog. I’ll be back to writing my life updates as soon as it’s healthy.

Things are actively getting better. I know they are. I think I’ll be alright in a few more months. I haven’t been able to participate in therapy like normal. The practice I see my therapist through suddenly collapsed and they’ve been forced to move to a different practice. I’m still waiting to hear if my insurance will be compatible with the new place. As soon as I can I’m going back in. Worst case scenario I begin the hunt for a therapist again. I’m not looking forward to that possibility, but it’s necessary. I don’t want to live like this forever. I’ve never been more convinced there’s something deeply and profoundly wrong with me than I am now. It’s not possible that my brain is working as intended and these are how emotions are supposed to feel. I need a lot more help than I know how to ask for.

Thanks to Cass, Evan, Michaela, and Sam for keeping me distracted and sane. And even though I know they’ll never see this, a very special thanks to Ari and Hank from Crisis Text Line for getting me through my darkest moments. I need to keep reminding myself that things are getting better. All I need to do is stay the course. Thanks for reading.

Various Wrapped Things

One of the coolest parts about the end of year is when it’s time to look at what all my friends have been up to in the last year. I think it’s really fucking cool to see what everyone’s been listening to or watching. Here’s what I’ve been up to, starting with Spotify.

Pretty standard stuff and no surprises really. I’ve been loving Negative Spaces by Poppy so I’ve been listening to that a bunch, and I also discovered Jazmin Bean’s Traumatic Livelihood which took over my life once I listened for the first time. Other than that, it’s just been some pretty solid artists and songs that I think are really fun. There were a couple of albums I thought might make an appearance this year, but they released too late. Specifically Flesh Stays Together by Dying Wish and Do Not Disturb by Creep-p, which might be my own personal pick for AOTY.

YouTube also had a wrapped thing? It was weird. I’ve been using YouTube pretty strangely for the last couple years, whenever I’m on mobile I used it in browser version on the Brave app, which has a built in ad blocker. And since I also used it in the browser, I could use the picture-in-picture mode and turn my phone off with the audio still playing. There were some strange quirks with this set up, it was prone to glitches and weird happenings. But I had mostly grown used to it. Until my recommendation page got limited to 3 videos at a time. Most of which repeated whenever I refreshed. So I was unable to use my recommendations feed and I went back to the subscriptions tab like the old days, but now it’s filled with shorts on top of shorts! So eventually, I caved. I’m now a YouTube Premium subscriber and use the app. Like a fucking scrub. It brings me more shame to say I use YouTube Premium than it does to say I use Discord Nitro. Discord’s cringe but at least it isn’t Google. Anyway, I wrote that entire preamble because I suspect that most of my YouTube history wasn’t actually counted. Because these are NOT my interests!!

Speaking of Discord Nitro, Discord also had a wrapped thing. I hated it. I’ve been too embarrassed to share mine because I haven’t seen a singular person send more messages than me. I don’t even think this should be a thing I’m embarrassed of, but alas, I am. I also got this ugly orange duck that completely clashes with my current vibe on Discord so. That’s cool I guess.

Wake Up Dead Man

Wake Up Dead Man is the third movie in a series of Benoit Blanc lead mysteries sprouting from Knives Out. And it is potentially the best one. Cass and I went to see it in theaters with our friend Zack and it is such an amazing fucking movie. It’s one that’s going to be rightfully glazed until the end of time. I don’t really have words that can fully capture how it feels. Everyone should watch it. Everyone is invited to my place for a movie night anytime. pleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleaseplease

Art Stuff

I believe I touched a bit on this in The November Dal Report, but Procreate released some newer and better brushes for painting and shading. I made Big Clyde’s portrait using the new brushes, and so now I’m going back through and redoing the shading on all the previous portraits! I can’t explain why because I know this doesn’t really matter, but I feel like I can’t move onward to continuing Vidar’s portrait until these are all finished so… Yeah, sorry Carver.

It was also while redoing the shading on Larry I realized I don’t draw him and Javier enough so. Back on my bullshit again.

I’ve also been painting more minis this month! I finally got myself my own primer so I don’t have to run every new mini I get through Michaela to prime for me anymore. Definitely not as fancy as their airbrush, but it’s fine. I got some terrain pieces for Christmas so I’ve been working on those before the next session I’ll be GMing.

Christmas

I had a very nice Christmas! But also a very busy one. If I’m being completely honest, probably too busy. Multiple times I felt burned out on just being around anyone who wasn’t Cass. My parents got an Airbnb in the area and we were able to visit whenever Cass and I weren’t doing stuff with her family. It was a lot of fun hanging out and stuff, but after a week and a half of continuous visits and different family members and long drives….. I wanted to explode. But I did have a lot of fun, I gave some gifts I was excited to give and got some things I’m really happy with. I got my brother a hat that said “PBR Golf Club” because he loves cheap beer and golfing. He laughed and tried it on pretty quickly, so I’m happy with that. Me, my mom, and my brother’s girlfriend all ended up giving each other the same exact candle. We all agreed it was our favorite scent - Yankee Candle Christmas Cookie btw. I also got Cass a really cute skirt I’m excited for her to wear when it warms up more.

I got some fun minis and things, some of which I talked about in the previous section. I got a really nice water bottle which I’ve been so excited for because I’ve been using a random aluminum bottle I found under our sink that leaked a lot and didn’t keep my water cold very well. I got a few LEGO sets I’m excited to put together the second we have a place to put them. With some of the money I also received, I bought some storage things to keep our place a lot more tidy. The big shelf I’m most excited for has yet to arrive, but I’ll finally have a place to put all my miniatures and ttrpg related combat things in one convenient location.

Therapy Arc

Ya boy finally has health insurance, so I’m back in therapy again. It’s been going really well so far! I’ve only had two sessions at this point, but my therapist really gets me so far. We make jokes and laugh while they poke holes in my sense of self. But like, in a good way. It makes me feel good to have a place where I can vent and see my blind spots in judgement. She’s spent time pointing out obvious things to me, like part of being reliable means you have to show up and be reliable for yourself too, and that not everyone values the same things I do, even if it’s to their detriment. It’s also been an interesting way for me to see where my values are. I didn’t realize I talk about my friends so much, but the bulk of my sessions have been me talking about my friends and about how I don’t feel I do enough to show up for them. I don’t think it’s true, but it feels that way. But that’s what my therapist is probably going to have me working on.

I’m also pursuing an autism assessment! She wants to have a few more sessions with me before referring me out to get assessed, so within a few months I hope to have some kind of diagnosis. Unless I’m just kinda like this, which would suck a lot to hear because there is simply no way I’m normal.

Furniture Moving

So there’s been something about the condo that has pissed me off from the moment I stepped foot in it more or less. It’s hard to explain and I don’t really have any photos of it, but if you’ve been over, you know Cass and I have a giant white rug in the middle of the living room. The point of it was mostly to hide some errant cables and things leading back to our desks behind the couch, but when Cass first placed it down six years ago, she didn’t know where these desks would eventually go exactly. Just that they’d be behind the couch. Once there were desks behind the couch, she came to a horrible realization. The rug prevented the office chairs from being able to get fully underneath the desks. You couldn’t pull the wheels over the rug easily and it has driven me insane for years. So a few weekends ago, I broke. I moved all the furniture, the giant bookshelf, the couch, the coffee table stuffed full of board games, the side tables, both of our desks. And fixed it. Finally.

Cupcake found the whole thing pretty amusing. She liked “riding” on the desks while I pushed them around. She had a fun time of exploring the more barren living room as well.

Moving everything didn’t take near as long as Cass and I feared it would. We put off moving it for ages because we were afraid of how much effort and time it would take. Turns out, it only took about 3 hours. Probably would’ve been less if I wasn’t doing it alone and didn’t have a little rat following me around sniffing everything.

Conclusion

So yeah! That’s it for 2025!! Later in January I’ll probably have my regular reflection and resolutions post, but I’m feeling good with how everything is now! Nothing more to really say, thanks for reading. here’s the photo dump.

Holy shit! I’ve been doing this blogging thing for a full year!!! What the fuck?? I even completely missed the exact anniversary of my first post because it really creeped up on me. I knew it was coming up, but not this soon. So much of my life has changed in ways I’m forever grateful for. It’s been awesome having a place to be able to share with others what I spend most of my evenings doing. I’ve stopped posting my own campaign notes, given attempting to balance a full time job, with planning and running a campaign, with writing for 1-2 different campaigns, with also having a life outside of those things has been difficult. But having a place where all the lore of Terrafirma lives in one convenient place, as well as session notes for other campaigns, has honestly been really cool. It’s a low stakes environment where I can practice my writing on a semi-weekly basis. It’s done wonders for my ability to follow through with something. It feels really fucking good to start a project and finish it.

The Dal Reports have also been great. It’s been such a fun way to reflect on what I’ve been up to and have gratitude for where I’m at. It’ll also be really cool to be able to look back and see how much things have changed. Last year was extremely rough for me and I’m very proud of myself for the improvements I’ve made to my life. The only place I think I’ve come up short is the lack of posts where I just reflect on shit. Previously, those have been my favorite articles I’ve written, but I haven’t written anything like On Discipline or Some People That I Used To Know since last December. I’ve started some things, but decided last second they were better fits for my diary than a public article I should share with people. But there are some things I’d like to write, particularly one inspired by my friend Rachel’s own blogpost, which you can read here - and I strongly suggest you do because I’ve been off and on working on my own post inspired by it.

Thanks to everyone who’s been reading since the beginning! Here’s to another Malicious year of posting.

Anyway, so what else have I been up to this month?

Friendsgiving

Cass and I hosted Thanksgiving for the very first time by having our friends over for a night filled with way too much food and fun. It was the first time I had ever made that much food at once, but I prepped as much as I could the day before and I had already scheduled when everything would need to start cooking. We ate on the leftovers for nearly two weeks after, which made our refrigerator a living hell to navigate, but was pretty convenient when it came to meals. It did also put a pretty big pause on my weight loss, but I haven’t gained since I’ve started so that’s still a win in my book!

Tennessee

We visited Pigeon Forge for a long weekend in a cute cabin in the mountains. Truthfully, I don’t remember the bulk of it as I spent the majority of the time drunk or asleep. For some reason, the cabin owner thought it was a good idea to have a GIANT WINDOW without curtains in Cass and I’s room, so until I got an eye mask from Walmart, I woke up at the crack of dawn with the birds. Which was not great considering my parents are my biggest enablers to drink and was therefore hungover every morning. Our room was in general really strange, complete with a door on the ceiling and a mystery hallway leading to a locked room. Another strange aspect of the cabin was the real life incarnation of Joe Dirt who showed up at 10pm with a pistol openly on his belt to help us fix the air hockey table. He was actually a very nice guy, but it was mildly alarming for the platonic ideal of a hillbilly to knock on our door at night in an unfamiliar area. Anyway, he fixed the air hockey table by finding the two dozen pucks that had gotten stuck inside.

I love being in Pigeon Forge, the forest and mountains are where I feel my absolute best and happiest. It was pretty cold out, but I sat out on our back porch as often as I could. One night I was even able to catch a lightning strike behind the mountains!!!

We also did a Scooby-Doo themed escape room, which was a mild let down for me? I love Scooby-Doo and the vibes were immaculate, but hints were kind of baked into the room itself. So you’d solve one puzzle, and immediately get a hint for the next. It felt kind of hand hold-y to me, but also I’m bad at escape rooms so maybe I should just take the win without complaining. While we were out and about in Pigeon Forge, we also went to Margaritaville and a nearby ice cream shop. The margarita was decent, the burger I got with it was mediocre, and the ice cream was great.

We spent a lot of time in the cabin just talking and playing a new card game I picked up after watching Smosh play it. It’s called Flip 7 and it’s all gambling and it’s so fucking fun. Basically, the goal of the game is to draw 7 cards into your hand, the cards are numbered 1-12 and you can’t have duplicates. So if you draw two 12 cards, you’re out for the round. You get points for the numbers written on the cards, so an 8 card is worth 8 points, a 3 card is worth 3, etc. But some cards are more common than others, which makes looking for big numbers like 11 or 12 risky. It’s a lot of fun and super easy to learn. I also recommend anyone watch the Smosh video because inexplicably they are a special interest and I think the video is funny and I regularly rewatch it.

Also before we left for home, we stopped at Cracker Barrel and I won the peg game. I am The Pegger.

Art and Other Shit

I’ve been trying to make drawing more of a priority again recently. Finally got one step closer to finishing the party portraits for The Southlander Chronicles! All that’s left is Carver’s character, Vidar, then I’m finished!… kind of. I’m redoing the shading because Procreate (the name of my drawing app, not the act of reproducing) added some new painting brushes that I finally really love! So goodbye cell shading, we’re painting now. Unfortunately I’m slightly too slow at drawing and this change came at the tail end of me finishing this project up, but I’m slowly redoing the other portraits already. It only takes an hour or so, so it isn’t the biggest setback in the world.

I also did some mini painting! This was my first time experimenting with washes and I LOVE how it came out.

Other Small Stuff

YouTube Videos I Liked

Some of my favorite YouTubers have finally come out of hibernation to post again and I’m incredibly happy. Syonide is a really funny commentary channel who spent four hours going through his first reactions to watching all the Star Wars movies for the first time with his sister. It’s incredible seeing someone be able to get into the franchise so incredibly blind and simultaneously fall in love and in hate with it.

The Outdoor Boys also came back for a few videos!!! This was huge for me as Luke is one of my favorite creators of all time, I love watching camping and bushcraft videos and the amount of knowledge he has about Alaskan flora and fauna is incredible and makes him super entertaining to watch. He sprinkles in some dad jokes and silly moments to keep videos as entertaining as they are educational. He made the (probably correct) decision earlier this year to retire from content creation as it was beginning to affect his family in a negative way. His kids often come with him on these trips, and while they’re not the main focus of the channel, being featured in 20-50 million view videos probably isn’t the best for their development. Luke, who runs the channel had a decision to make. Keep making thousands from one of his favorite hobbies while being unable to experience it with his sons, or get a real job and keep their connection. Ultimately, he chose to prioritize his family. He said he had a few videos he was holding onto that he’d post later in the year, and now he’s posted them! It’s unlikely we’ll ever get more videos again, but these are certainly up there as some of his best work.

Record Store Day

RSD is an event that happens about twice a year where artists will release limited edition versions of albums and singles that can only be found at local participating record stores. The idea is to encourage people to shop local and not online and it’s a super cool thing. I lined up in the freezing cold for some Black Friday shopping around 7am. It wasn’t so bad. At the specific store I went to, they gave us free hot chocolate and coffee while we waited to warm us up. I wasn’t able to get all the exclusives I wanted unfortunately, but I was only there for two of them. I wanted the Chappell Roan 7in and a Good Kid compilation that combined all their EPs into one album. The Chappell Roan single was sold out, but I got Good Kid!

The record store also had a sale one everything else in store that weren’t RSD exclusives, so I picked up some other things for my collection.

Conclusion

Okay, yeah yeah, I’m late again. Later than I’ve ever been, and I don’t even have a good excuse! I think from now on just assume all Dal Reports are going to be a week or so late given the jobs and hobbies I’m working on. The days of these coming out on the last day of the month, or the first day of the following month, are long behind us. In the future I’m going to try and prevent them coming out this late again by working on them throughout the month rather than all at once at the end, so hopefully I’ll keep on track for that. I’ll blame the busy month and all the holiday celebrations for now.

Anyway, here’s the photo dump.

The EVIL Work Situation

Okay, I talked a bit about the evil work situation that happened late September early October in last month’s report. However, I am now excited to finally say its resolved! Basically, to summarize what had happened. My job is to create a logo, animations, t-shirt designs, and a whole host of other shit for a tech conference that changes its theme every year. There is a large group of projects that needed to be finished by mid-October, the most important of which was the logo, since I couldn’t start working on anything else until AFTER that was finished. So even though the hard deadline was set for mid-October, I decided for myself it should be finished by early-mid September. It was right when I was finished with the logo concept I had thus created that suddenly I was told to completely pivot into another direction from a team of people who are not my superiors and have no say over what I do and have no graphic design experience. Our superiors though sided with them and not me, despite the concerns I raised for the new direction.

I have to be careful with how much I say about the details on this as I don’t want to dox myself, but if you know me feel free to reach out to see what I’m talking about in more detail. But basically, the new logo concept they wanted me to move forward with basically had nothing to do with the brand identity we had built up up to that point. We had all worked together to create a short list of concepts and ideals that the logo should represent. This new logo represented literally none of them. When I asked how the new logo represented the brand as we had defined it, I was given no answer. I asked several times in very direct ways but it just straight up didn’t embody anything we had talked about up to that point. I fought for the old logo that I had finished because I genuinely believed it was a better fit in every way, but being able to keep this job as a good reference and as a reoccurring gig mattered more than being right.

The whole thing was a bummer because I took the change more personally than I should. But it didn’t help that I wasn’t listened to and none of my concerns have been addressed, even now. The logo is worse in every way and I think its so plain and boring and corporate looking. No one will ever wear a t-shirt with this design because they think it looks good. But, a job’s a job and no one has to listen to me if they don’t want to. The new logo is finished and the other projects were technically finished on time. I say technically because I’m planning on going back and fixing one of the other projects. It was absolutely positively needed before the logo was even finished so I had to throw something together that didn’t contain the logo but still somehow represented it. The result isn’t great because of that, obviously. But I just needed something to exist, not to be good. But! The worst part is over now! I no longer will spend my evenings sobbing because of stress because the other team isn’t causing me to be over a month late!!!

Red vs. Blue

Michaela held me and Evan at gunpoint and forced us to watch 13 seasons of the best worst show I’ve ever seen. We wrapped up the show a couple of weeks ago after a few weeks of watching it season by season and it is definitely one of the most interestingly good-bad shows ever. I can’t recommend it, not if I’m being honest with myself. But it has so many high points that its genuinely insane. It’s simultaneously far too long and far too short, but it balances comedy and serious plot weirdly well?? Most of the characters are really well written, but the ones that aren’t have almost no personality traits besides “stupid” or “asshole” but usually both. But also it contains one of the best representations of characters with dissociative identity disorder than I’ve ever seen. Like, it’s actually good. It isn’t botched at all, a character just actually has alters and it’s really fucking good. When this was revealed I waited for a punchline at his expense, or some horrible mischaracterization of the disorder, but it just never happened. But then the show goes on to make a joke about OCD being the “really really clean disorder”????

THIS SHOW BAFFLES ME!!!!!!!!! IT’S SO CLOSE TO BEING GOOD!!!!!!!!!!!! AND IN MANY WAYS IT IS, BUT IN JUST AS MANY WAYS ITS KINDA GODAWFUL!!!!!!!!!!!

If there was any niche TV show with a cult following and extremely dedicated fandom that deserved a reboot to have the entire plot fully rewritten with hindsight, it’s this show. If the plot was actually planned from the beginning and the bulk of blood gulch was cut it would genuinely be one of my favorite shows ever.

Twin Peaks: The Return

I have officially finished the last of Twin Peaks television. Basically, the show originally aired in the early 90s and only had the original two seasons. Due to some studio fuckery, David Lynch and Mark Frost, the creators, writers, and directors of the show, couldn’t continue with the show and it got cancelled. They were pushed into revealing the answer to the show’s main mystery, which more or less killed their original vision. After that, it had nowhere else to go and kind of meandered until it ended with an insane cliffhanger. Besides the movie, Fire Walk With Me, there hasn’t been any more Twin Peaks on television. That isn’t to say there hasn’t been more Twin Peaks media as there’s several books (I’m reading through The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer now!!) but there wasn’t anything else.

Until, Twin Peaks: The Return!!! Or as fans call it, Twin Peaks season 3. And it is just as good, if not better, than the original run of the show. It captures the same exact vibe without answering too many questions. Despite being a mystery show, it isn’t really about solving mysteries It’s about Twin Peaks. It’s about the people within Twin Peaks. It’s about forces that are larger than people. I don’t want to talk too much about it as I would love other people to jump down the Twin Peaks rabbit hole with me. I know the ship has probably sailed at this point, anyone who would’ve had any interest in getting into it would have by now given how much I can’t shut up about it. But The Return has some of my most favorite moments and has moved me so deeply. So far, the final episodes are the only thing that made me feel the same way I did after watching Fire Walk With Me - which probably doesn’t say much given I only watched FWWM for the first time like two months ago, but its still incredible.

Well, that’s not totally true. The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer has made me feel worse than FWWM. I didn’t think that was entirely possible, but the only thing worse than the events of Fire Walk With Me is knowing exactly what Laura was thinking during the years leading up to it. I’m about halfway through The Secret Diary and I’ve had to take a couple weeks break from it because it’s just so miserable. It’s beautifully well written, but it’s miserable.

“It’s Me, Ringo Starr, From The Beatles!”

This month has been awesome for goofing off in ttrpgs. Which is kinda funny, given I haven’t been able to GM anything in awhile. First for Cass was dying reasons, then for I was dying at work reasons, and now it’s just a matter of already having pre-made plans on Fridays that took precedent over my campaign. But that’s irrelevant, what’s actually important here is the sheer amount of time I’ve spent laughing around a table with my friends.

First, Kalyn’s campaign The Southlander Chronicles has been on a short hiatus while he prepares the next leg of our adventure. In the meantime, we’ve been having lowkey game nights and random one shot adventures on the same night we normally play his campaign through. The first one shot we had was Carver’s character, Vidar, going on a mercenary job with some oddball cannon fodder characters meant to be his meat shields. Kalyn instructed us to create characters that we would grow attached to that we could use as backup characters for adventures our main characters wouldn’t be interested in going on. I had other plans. I didn’t want a backup character. I wanted to make 5 really shitty joke characters that would do nothing but make my friends laugh. I made insane Hero Forges that Michaela actually printed, which I think permanently tainted his resin printer, because it had to produce Fred Durst, Ringo Starr, Shakira, Pitbull, and Barak Obama as miniatures. And now I own them forever and will (theoretically) paint them one day.

We also had another session, this time hosted by Carver in the Cities Without Number system. I didn’t go as zany this time of course, but the entire party is made up of shitty New Yorker mobsters who are all middle aged dads who are really into truck nuts, PBR, and Marlboro reds. This session was so much fun my face hurt from smiling after. While it is fun to play serious campaigns with a character you can really get into, it is just as fun to play a murder hobo who only wants to kill people in the dumbest ways possible. In this instance, I was rammed at a building while holing up in a dumpster and shooting through the lid blindly. It was fucking awesome!!

Finally, Michaela and I also did some side adventures without characters, Larry and Javier. I’m not going to talk as much about it here as I should probably save it for Javier’s recollection, but it was fun and I love those two little freaks. The hardest part of having drawn so much art of them and written so many short stories is having to let the slow burn burn slowly. Anyway, here’s a non-canon doodle of them. We joked that Larry realized he was attracted to Javier only after Javi was able to actually bathe and groom himself to look nice. That, and also he borrowed his brothers clothes which of course were just a few sizes too small. This is important to the plot!!

Halloween Party

That’s more or less all I wanted to talk about! But there’s also a handful of other things! Such as the Radio Tower Halloween party. Rachel came down and stayed with us and we got extremely drunk! I don’t super remember the bulk of our activities, but we played board games, ate tacos, and I forced a LOT of people into hugs and conversations about how much I love them. And Michaela went on a sidequest with me to see the penis fountain.

Conclusion

That’s basically it! Well, and one more thing that technically happened in November, but I’m posting it here because it just came in last night and I’m so excited, but WE FINALLY GOT AN UPDATE ON THE LARRY AND JAVIER COMMISSION!!!!!!!! The artist was having some personal issues so communication stopped, but he’s still working on it and I’m so happy with it so far!!! And this still isn’t the finished result, it’s going so well. He can take years and years if he needs to I don’t care.

Anyway, yeah. Sorry this post is also late, but it’s better than the last one! Still in the swing of figuring out how to fit in all my hobbies and things into my new work schedule. Not sure if I’ve mentioned it before or not, but I’m actually working 4 days a week now! I have 10 hour shifts from Monday to Thursday. I absolutely love it, but I don’t really have energy for anything after work other than to make dinner and watch a movie. I tend to not plan my weekends as much, but I think I’ll have to commit myself to working on hobbies and things through them more. While I do like bumming around and doing a chore or two, it would feel nicer to be more creatively productive. But yeah! Here’s the link to the photo dump!

Tetrio

I made one of my New Year’s resolutions this year to get a sub :45 sprint on Tetrio. Not only did I basically smash that pretty quickly in February, but I’ve steadily been whittling it down from my :44.847 time. And just a few weeks ago I managed a :40.480 sprint!! The grind from :45 to :40 has been insane and has taken several months. I’ve learned a lot about how I play Tetris and it’s been stuff I’ve been trying to keep in mind as I play so I can keep playing to my best ability. But before that, here’s a video of my run!

First of all, I’ve found that I play best when I use my laptop’s keyboard. Not sure if it’s because there’s less input delay, or because my fingers don’t have to move as far as they do with my mechanical keyboard, but there is a considerable difference. Reading what I just wrote probably sounds insane, but every teeny tiny fraction of a second counts when getting a low time. But my own hands and brain matter more than just hardware. You have to get into a very specific kind of headspace to do well in Tetris. I find that I play my very best when I don’t think about what it is I’m doing. After roughly a combined 300 hours of playing Tetris on different platforms, I know where pieces should go on a board. Whenever I second guess myself or make a last second decision it’s almost always the objectively incorrect one. Playing at these speeds I find that my best strategy is to just trust my instincts and restart when I don’t like the pieces I’m given. But not only that, I do my very best at playing when Tetris isn’t even my main focus. I’ve been playing during SotDL while listening to Kalyn GMing or the other player characters doing their own thing. Since these rounds are always less than a minute, It’s never a big deal if I zone out for 30 seconds.

I’ve been loving Tetris a lot this month! I haven’t been playing as much as I used to, not only because I’m spending 40 hours of my week out of the house now, but also because my wrists get tired more. My job is pretty physical so I’m constantly using my hands for typing or designing or threading needles. Taking breaks is just as important as keeping the rust off my skills.

Poppy Pt. 2

I saw Poppy in concert with Kumo 99 earlier this year for my birthday and it was one of the most amazing nights of my life. So when she announced that not only would she be expanding her tour for another leg, but that she’d be in Cincinnati I just had to go. The months leading up to the show I was so scared that I wouldn’t be able to make it. She announced this extra leg in April and I was still unemployed at that point submitting 30 job applications a day. Despite how much I wanted to, there was just no way I was going to be able to secure the tickets at that point.

And then the second I got the acceptance email for my current position, I bought those damn tickets!! Cass and I went together and I wish I could say it was another life changing night, but unfortunately it wasn’t. The venue was packed and people were overheating. I nearly got trapped at the front of the venue when I felt like I was going to pass out. I don’t think this was anyone’s fault really, it’s just a risk you take when you go to a sold out show. It was still fun though! The opening acts, MSPAINT and Dying Wish were fucking killer and I had a great time nearly breaking my glasses in the pit. But then I made the mistake of going to the bar for water and I couldn’t get back to the pit for the beginning of Poppy’s set. I got stuck near the wall, which is the absolute last place I want to be. I’m honestly still mad at myself, because during Dying Wish’s set I was right next to the fucking speakers but no I just HAD to get water and I COULDN’T have bought a bottle the second I walked in.. but whatever.

But I bought some cool merch! MS Paint if you’re reading this please fire whoever you had to sit at your merch table because I checked there three separate times and no one was there despite how badly I wanted to buy your merch.

I highly recommend checking out Poppy (obviously I love her) but the opening acts deserve some love as well, Dying Wish has genuinely grown to one of my favorite artists right now. MSPAINT would also have that spot if they had released more than an EP. But I would recommend “Revenge In Carnage” by Dying Wish from their newest LP, “Flesh Stays Together” and “Surveillance” by MSPAINT. Dying Wish is a metalcore band that contains almost 99% screaming. The vocalist is fucking insane, I was genuinely shocked to learn they have a female lead! But in my defense, they have two male vocalists who help with screaming, so I kind of just assumed they had one very versatile male vocalist before I saw them live. MSPAINT is a punk rapping group and they’re sick as hell. Their vocalist performed like crazy live, he had a really good energy.

Mini Painting

Evan and Michaela have finally persuaded me to give mini painting a try. I haven’t kept up with it as much due to life getting a bit in the way, but I painted a few minis that I’m proud of! I’m still learning and figuring it out as I go so nothing too impressive yet. I’m planning on buying some darker washes soon so I can have nicer looking shadows without as much effort, as well as some other random colors as I go. I’m having fun just goofing around with paint. This scratches an itch that was previously only satiated by paint by numbers and coloring books, but doesn’t feel anywhere near as childish and embarrassing despite effectively being the same thing.

Cass’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week

I think everyone who keeps up with this blog knows what happened, and even though this affected me it’s not totally my story to tell, so I’ll keep this section brief. But for about a week, Cass was in the hospital treating a skin infection near her eye. She’s all good now, finishing up the last of her antibiotics and has no pain or discomfort. But the week she was hospital and the days leading up to it were really bad. Her eye had swollen so much she couldn’t open it and she was constantly in pain. The infection itself wasn’t too bad, I mean it wasn’t good, but normally it wouldn’t have necessitated that long of a hospital stay. But the doctors were being cautious given its location to monitor it and make sure the infection doesn’t spread into her eye itself. Obviously that’s the smart decision, but at the risk of making this all about me (this is my blog after all) it made the entire process incredibly stressful for me. I hated seeing the love of my life barely conscious in a hospital gown surrounded by nurses. I hated having to leave the hospital at 8pm each night after getting there in the morning. I hated knowing how much pain she was in and how little anyone else around her could do.

It’s all better now, she’s been back home for a few weeks and feels 100% again. But I hug her a little bit tighter now.

Oh Yeah, Bigger Fish Released!

I almost forgot! Cass and I’s Minecraft mod, There’s Always A Bigger Fish, has officially released! We’re still missing some features, the fishing minigame hasn’t been implemented and fish don’t have models yet, but once work stuff for me calms down (probably not until February lol) I want to begin making the textures. Here’s the Modrinth link!

https://modrinth.com/mod/always-a-bigger-fish

Conclusion?

This last month has been a bit all over the place. To get into some more detail on why this took me so long to write, it was a mix of things. My part time gig doing graphic design for an event hit a really big snag a few weeks ago. Basically due to a lot of miscommunication, I had to almost entirely start over all the progress I had made. I don’t want to go into too much detail on it because I’m frankly still really angry about it. But the experience of desperately sending emails to correct things while explaining why their decision was objectively wrong in every imaginable way and then being ignored was extremely frustrating. It put me in a really bad funk. I had to redo all the progress I’d made in the last two months, but in a shorter time frame to make an end product that I think reflects poorly on myself and the brand. But my bosses are happy so that’s all that matters. I want to keep this as a reoccurring position more than I want to be right, but the whole thing still sucked. Combined with Cass’s hospital stay, I was already so stressed I didn’t feel like a person anymore. But I’m okay now. It probably doesn’t super sound like it, but I’ll get into how I’m doing current day during the October Dal Report.

Anyway, here’s the photo dump and Guppy and a few new friends.

“Hold up, wait a sec!” Javier’s slow drawl put Larry at ease, just enough to keep his feet underneath him and not hide or run away. After working his way through some brush, Javier joined Larry in the small section of woods, just a few hundred feet away from camp. “Shoot, you know Vidar’d wring your neck if he caught you sneaking off alone.”

“Yeah, stay in pairs. It’s fine I just have to piss, nothing’s out here anyway.” Larry scoffed and turned away from his companion facing into a nearby bush.

“Well that’s what you think. We’re heading into griffon territory.” Javier looked suspiciously at the trees above them, eyes darting from branch to branch and examining the spaces of empty sky between them. Larry quickly followed his gaze, his face suddenly reading full of concern.

“Wait, are you serious?”

“Yeah, could be anywhere now. They hunt at dusk, are attracted to campfire smoke and all. Wouldn’t be surprised if one was nearby right now..” Suddenly, Larry felt two large paws clawing at his shoulders with a guttural growl roaring from behind him. He yelped and dropped as quickly as he could. He crawled through the brambles, ignoring the dozens of sharp cuts on his cheeks. He heard the sound of crashing branches and the cries of birds fleeing the area. His ears filled with the deep thud of something heavy meeting earth. His eyes focused solely on the path he had plotted out just moments before through a thicket and back towards camp. Only then did he remember he’d left Javier behind and hazarded a quick glance despite his fear. He turned around and through the leaves and thorns saw Javier doubled over laughing.

Larry slowly stood up in the brush. “That’s not fucking funny.” He spat as he said it, but seeing the tears from Javier’s eyes and just how far he crawled in such a short period of time made the corners of his lips rise into a smile in spite of himself. “It’s not very nice to scare someone who you know has a full bladder.”

“You’re right, I’m sorry.” With a wide toothed grin Javier held his hand out to pull Larry out of the brambles he trapped himself in. “But you should’ve seen your face.”

“Whatever. Just make sure no owlbears or drakes sneak up on me.” Larry turned from Javier, finally able to relieve himself while Javier watched his back.

“Nah, there ain’t nothing out here. Griffons ain’t this far south. Owlbears and drakes stay by the mountains as close they can. Just your average bears we gotta worry about. Well, and crazy cowboys. Or 20 foot tall iron men. Or rogue horizonbacks.”

“Yeah I get the idea.”

“Or bloodthirsty giants. Or wizards that’ll knock you off your feet with so much as a word.”

“Yep.”

“Or cityslickers with soft hands.”

A beat passed. Then another. Larry finished his business and slowly turned back around to Javier, still facing the opposite direction. “Now what in the hell do you mean by that?”

“Oh, it wasn’t no insult or nothing. I just never noticed ‘til I had to help you outta that bush.”

“Soft. Hands.”

“Yup. You get thick skin working. You don’t seem like you done a lot of that.”

Larry pushed passed him towards the direction of camp. “I’ve worked plenty. Just not your kind of work.”

Big Clyde took another large chunk out of the wide tree trunk before him. Only two bites in and the tree was already leaning ready to fall. As Big Clyde chewed the splinters in his large maw, Vidar pulled the ropes tied near the center of the tree, pulling it away from Big Clyde and the camp itself. With a grunt and a loud crash, the tree fell right where they had planned in a small clearing.

“Your jaw is formidable, beast. Even with my own axe this tree would have taken much greater effort to fell were it not for you.” Vidar didn’t look at Big Clyde, instead cutting the large branches from the trunk and placing them in a small pile.

“Mmmmm.” Big Clyde growled, pleased with his work and his dinner. There didn’t seem to be much Big Clyde wasn’t happy with eating, no matter how supposedly “edible” it was.

“Before dawn tomorrow we will return to the trunk and segment it so we may carry it with us to our next camp. For tonight I believe the branches themselves will suffice for warmth and our dinner.” He used the ropes and a blanket borrowed by the cowboy to create an makeshift sledge with which to haul the fire wood, tying it around Big Clyde’s shell. He didn’t seem to mind as he growled with contentment once again.

Until, for just a moment, Vidar could have sworn he heard a gravelly, ancient sounding voice repeat. “Dinner…”

He looked at Big Clyde, who had stopped chewing for the moment, though was standing still awaiting the signal to return to camp. Vidar mulled over the many things he had seen and heard of through his travels. Talking animals weren’t an impossibility, though the only way he knew this was possible was through a spell cast by a wizard and it only lasted a short period of time. Surely their wizard wouldn’t frivolously cast this, if he would even know this spell to begin with. Though it did strike him as odd how intelligent Big Clyde seemed to be. He’d met many well trained war beasts, but none that could understand abstract concepts and could act accordingly like this horizonback. Surely this wasn’t true of all horizonbacks? Maybe the goblins were onto something after all. Maybe the cowboy was a better animal trainer than Vidar gave him credit. Maybe this turtle had more going on beneath its thick shell. Maybe it wasn’t worth asking too many questions.

He should know the limits of this creature’s intelligence, however. He could be a valuable asset to their next contract with his mighty jaw and thick hide if he can understand the basics of combat strategy. Especially when put next to the frustratingly paradoxical pacifist warforged and stubbornly weaponless cowboy. Not to mention the coward and his disappearing acts. Vidar sighed. “We have our work cut out for us, beast.”

Sledge dug a small hole in the center of the clearing. Roughly 2.4 feet in diameter and 6 inches deep. His large metallic hands working slowly but efficiently through the sandy dirt. “Is this size fit for a fire?”

Vebradu looked up from his grimoire and assessed the hole. “Hm, yes, I do believe it will be suitable. Admittedly I don’t have much experience with these things, so we’ll double check with Javier when he returns.”

Sledge stood to his full height and looked at the tree line where Javier had followed Larry into the woods just moments before. “Why must we dig a hole for fire? I do not recall doing this in Jaimelgar.”

“I don’t think we have to. It prevents fires from spreading out of hand if the area is too dry. But I’m not sure when dry is too dry. It doesn’t seem like it’s rained here recently so I think it best to be safe than sorry.”

“Ah, and it was raining in Jaimelgar. This makes sense.” A soft buzzing emanated from Sledge’s head, a gentle whirring of calculations. “My hygrometer indicates a humidity of 84%, though this only measures the air. There is no telling what the wood is like now though I believe it would be safe to assume a wildfire is not of concern.”

“Interesting. We should consider this tomorrow night, save you the effort.”

The two sat in silence for a moment as Vebradu returned to writing. The sounds of the woods surrounded them. They could hear the crash of a tree falling and the squawks of birds leaving the area fearfully. The faint notes of conversation carried on the wind from where Javier and Larry entered the forest. While unable to feel the breeze or smell the pine needles, there was still a certain kind of peace that came with returning to the wilds. While Arkannon was where Sledge was created, it seemed much less like home than living with the druids did. Besides, over the years many memories from this time had been written over or corrupted from his years of disrepair. Sledge suddenly became aware of the damage he had taken in previous days and began working through his daily maintenance. He ran internal tests ensuring everything was working correctly, that his ocular prisms were calibrated properly and his various joints were clear of debris. While going through his list of diagnostics to run, he almost missed Vebradu speaking in a hushed whisper.

“Hey, before everyone else gets back, do you mind if I check on my orb?” He leaned in close to Sledge and eyed the tree line.

“Certainly.” Sledge opened his chest compartment and found the small #347CCE sphere. He grabbed it to present to Vebradu, but he stopped him before he could do so.

“No, no, I just wanted to see it. I’d rather not brandish it needlessly.”

“Understood.” Sledge closed his compartment hiding the orb once again. “Though if you don’t mind my asking, why should this remain such a secret?”

“It.. isn’t a secret. It’s just a magical item that could.. be used in very destructive ways if in the wrong hands. It’s best to not risk anything.”

Sledge nodded. “Better safe than sorry.”

So after Frankie gave us his whole speech, we uh.. well we clobbered him. It wasn’t a fight it was a slaughter. He had a whole buncha the undead goblins, but they wasn’t tough. I just felt bad for those poor folks, even in undeath they probably didn’t wanna be fighting. But they would die to a strong gust of wind, which was probably great for everybody but ol’ Frank. We seen Luca’s parents, we knew it was them because there was four corpses missing from the graves downstairs and we seen two men fighting our living goblin buddies outside. So Vebradu and Sledge ran up and tried talking to them to snap them out of whatever stupor Frank had ‘em under. Larry used the last of the potion we got from the witch to turn himself invisible and start messing with Frank. He had a bunch of summoning circles and pentagrams and such and Larry just waltzed right up and started scraping the paint off. Meanwhile, me, Big Clyde, Vidar, and our cleric buddy was dealing with the goblins.

There was a whole bunch of ‘em, so we wanted to deal with them first before advancing further. But that didn’t turn out to be the best strategy, they didn’t harm us much. The real problem was stupid Frank, he had a whole buncha spells. I dunno if I can.. make this… make any sense. But, if you ever get out adventuring - which I do not recommend - this’ll be something that might make sense. Whenever you’re fighting a mage or wizard of some kind, there’s usually three types. One is a healer who’s surrounded by a buncha stronger fellas. Another is a lone wizard who knows a bunch and’s got thirty spells that can flay your skin in thirty different ways depending on their mood. The last one is a stupid, stupid maniac who thinks he’s better ‘n you and has only got spells to make killing him annoying. Nothing that’ll kill you, nothing that’ll heal him, nothing that’ll turn a prince to a frog or make gold outta iron, just stuff that makes it take too damn long to kill him! He put these stupid.. you ain’t gonna believe me, he summoned skeleton hands out of the ground to grab our ankles.

Why would I know where they came from? No, just straight outta the ground. Probably hundreds of hands, I dunno, I wasn’t really counting. But Vidar, Big Clyde, Vebradu, and our cleric buddy got stuck in ‘em, I just barely avoided it because Frank is stupid and has bad aim. Oh, I shoulda mentioned, we found those hostages from town. The blacksmith and the guard boy. They was tied up in the back of the summoning circles. By the time I’d killed probably.. I dunno, 30 or so goblins?

Well how would you know how many I killed, you was busy looking at dusty skulls. Okay, maybe it was like.. 20. But it was still a lot. More than you.

That don’t matter, I killed a whole buncha goblins. And then I realized that the dang ritual was about to happen and Frank was probably gonna kill ‘em. Vebradu and I made a plan, he has this spell that.. well I don’t know how it works, but its like a lil dart that always hits exactly where he wants it to. He fired one off onto the blacksmith’s restraints, and I hopped on Big Clyde to get over the stupid skeleton pit to run over to the boy with my knife. I untied him, but the mommas was right next to me and Vebradu and Sledge hadn’t been able to get them out of whatever spell Frank had ‘em under. They seemed more aware of what was going on, it was just hard for them to find the strength. I know it hurt a whole lot, because right after I helped the kid out of his ropes, Frank put some kinda spell on me. It hurt like hell. My bones and muscles didn’t want to move with what I was telling them to do, they wanted to listen to the damn necromancer. It was alright, though, by then he realized the jig was up. I ran over and punched his smug self in the face, his minions was slowly turning on him, his ritual circles was broken, and his sacrifices was out of his reach. There wasn’t nothing more he could do but grab our ankles some more.

He turned into a bunch of bats and started flying to the window, but he was too damn stupid to fly out of the window. He turned into bats to fly about.. 10 paces? Then turned back into a man, in order to announce that he was leaving. He’s so stupid. Obviously Sledge and Vidar and me ran up and ganged up on him. They did most of the work, Vidar had dislocated his jaw and Sledge was bashing his head in the wall. I just kicked him in the stomach a lot. But it felt good. It really did.

I don’t really know how to explain what happened after. It was weird. Okay, so you know how some wizard folk have themselves a little critter that follows them around? Frank had one too, a crow of some kind. The crow watched us from some hanging lights but didn’t do a whole lot. It was wearing a funny looking necklace with a rat head on it. But after we killed Frank the skull started.. talking. In Frank’s voice. He started spouting on about how he hates us so much and we ruined all his plans and this would take months to set back up again. We shut him up after. Sledge just crushed the rat head in his hands. Thank goodness.

After that we helped the living goblins go back home. They was real happy to have their buddies on the way back. Town was also real happy that all their problems was over and done with. They didn’t have much more to give us in return for everything. Well, Vidar turned in his bounty, which I hear fetched him a pretty penny. Then we picked up Enrique and made our way to Camino. Which was real bad timing for me.