Life update – 16-07-2021

Hello, my pretties! How are you all? Doing well, I hope! I’m still alive and kicking, even though I haven’t been posting nearly as much as I’d like. To combat that, I’m putting in the effort to post a life update every Friday or Saturday, and touch on some random theme while I’m at it, since who wants to just hear me talk about my boring life? :) I must share my boring opinion as well!

On the life side: managed to get my flu shot (it’s winter here) yesterday. No reactions, except for a really sore arm, so I’ve got that going for me. Covid vaccines here in my city are still 42 years old and up, so it’s going to take a while until I can get it. I have to wait two weeks in between vaccines anyway, so nothing left to do. Still feeling really burned out with work and everything, and needing to get a vacation – or staycation – some time soon. Maybe that’ll get the creative juices flowing again, or so one would hope.

The theme today: the sacralization of the act of giving birth. Notice that I’m not talking about motherhood, which is a very involved and life-long process of raising a child and still providing emotional support and friendship as the child morphs into an adult. I’m talking about simply having given birth to a child they may or may not be raising and acting as though that makes such person a special being worthy of all reverence. In my opinion, excuse my French, this is a steaming pile of bullshit. The situation that made me think of this was a thread on Reddit (which I won’t link here) where a lady who had given up her biological son for adoption was proclaiming her right to disregard the adoptive parents’ request that she did not take pictures of the child and post them on social media during the visits they allowed her to have with the boy. Her answer as to why she felt that she had this right was “I am his mother”. And the overwhelming answer was “no, you are not. The person who adopted him, is raising him, living with him and paying for his every expense is his mother”. I tend to agree with that. I’m not going to demonize people who give up their biological child for adoption. I believe that, in a place where abortions are illegal or very hard to get (such as my country) or if the person has moral objections to abortions but feels that she can’t raise the child, adopting the child out to someone who can is a very responsible decision. But… you are no longer the mother after the child is adopted.

I would love to hear your opinions on the matter.

Have a nice day and see you on the next post!

Random picture for the day – July 09, 2021

Hello, everyone! I should write a longer post at some point, but today was a long day and I’m dead tired, so I’ll just share a picture and a little bit of context. Today is a holiday for me, so the parents and I took a drive out of town for some fresh air and a change of scenery. We stopped at a town called Praia do Forte (Fort Beach), and I decided to snap a picture of the fishing boats. I hope you like it! I’ve been working on getting a blog in Portuguese off the ground (again), so if you notice I’ve been posting just a little less, that’s why! I’ll do my best to keep up with both blogs!

See you on the next!

Fandango’s Provocative Question #124 – Death

Hello, my pretties! How are you all doing? Well, I hope!

I’m doing just fine, though life’s been busy and I haven’t really had the time to post as often as I wish to!

Still, I’m here today because a post on another blog inspired me to write a little!

Fandango’s Provocative Question #124 asks:

Would you want to know before hand the date, time, and circumstances of your death, or would you rather not know when and how it will happen?

And I answer:

I would like to know when it will happen, so I could sort out my affairs before that. Instead of having to leave an inheritance (though I don’t own much), I could just give away whatever I want other people to have before dying and they wouldn’t have to worry about a will, lawyers and all that mess that happens when someone passes away unexpectedly.

As for how… I’m actually torn on that. I believe death is as inevitable as birth, and I don’t think constantly worrying about knowing what will end my days on Earth would be very productive. So yes, I guess that’s my answer:

I would like to know when, but not how. What about you?

See you on the next post!

How do you support other bloggers?

Hey, everyone! How are you all doing? Well, I hope!

I’m… alive. Life has been chaotic this year, more and more work piled on me, and I’ve been feeling sort of burned out, but such is life. I think everyone’s struggling at the moment.

Speaking of struggles, I thought I’d talk about those in a more general way.

This weird and wonderful group of people called bloggers, you know – like me, and probably you reading this post – has been struggling as well. We’re tired, we’re isolated (if not physically locked at home, we’re probably still struggling with socialization), we’re scared – just like everyone else. Some of us – I’m definitely guilty of that – haven’t been posting or interacting as much as we used to.

So, here’s what I’m here for – to ask a question: how can I support you? I have to admit my energy has been limited lately, but I want to support my fellow bloggers in any way I can. So, share it with me in the comments, and I’ll do my best to help!

Love you all, take care!

PSA: Check your followed blogs

Hello, everyone! How are you all doing? I’m alright, and I hope you all are too!

I just stopped by for a really quick PSA: please check if your followed blogs are still showing on your Reader!

Earlier today, I was wondering why Tony, from The Tony Burgess Blog, hadn’t been posting lately. Lo and behold, not only was I not following his blog anymore, I also couldn’t follow it from the “Follow” button at the bottom right (on desktop). I had to go to the WordPress Reader, find Tony’s blog there and follow it this way.

So, if one of your favorite regular posting bloggers has been strangely quiet, please check if you’re still following them!

See you all soon!

If you love your job, you’ll never work a day in your life… Bullshit!

Hello, my pretties! How are you all doing? Well, I hope! I’m doing well enough… a little ashamed of how long I have left the blog without a post, but I’ll try to do better! Nothing really happened! I’ve just been stuck with some writer’s block and also got sidetracked starting a new project, but now that the foundations are set, I should have the time to show up here more often!

Work has been keeping me pretty busy as well, and that’s why I ended up thinking of the theme for this post!

How many times have you read or heard someone say “if you love your job, you won’t work a day in your life”? I have to admit I feel that I have heard it way too many times. More than enough that I hope I’ll never hear it for the rest of my days.

Why? Because this is such bullshit. Work is work. You may love to work, you may love the things said work allows you to have – money, stability, something to do -, but it’s still work. You still have to do it whether or not you want to (provided you work for someone else, self-employment is a different beast most of the time). You can still be fired and unable to provide for yourself if you don’t do it to (insert person paying you here)’s satisfaction.

Why am I saying this today? Who knows, maybe I’m just tired of another meeting in which nothing really changed. Or I’m tired because it’s Friday. Or I’m jealous of people who don’t need to work anymore (I totally am). There’s no single reason for it. It’s just a random rant.

I think I’ve spoken too much already, so it’s your turn now. What do you think when you hear the words that motivated me to waste your time with this drivel? Share your thoughts in the comments!

See you on the next post! (Hopefully in a shorter interval than between the last one and this one!)

Just a little thing I forgot…

Because I have a worse memory than Finding Nemo‘s Dory, I had to forget to add a little something to my latest post. Of course.

If you want to read some posts from an actual Game/Dungeon Master, pay Scott’s blog a visit and check out his Game Night posts! You won’t regret it! Or maybe you will because you’ll get addicted to them!

I claim no responsibility if you do! See you on the next post!

How does roleplaying work?

Hello, my pretties! How are you all? Doing well, I hope! I’m doing well… a bit bored of being home and waiting for my turn to be vaccinated to come (we’re still working on the elderly population here, so I need to be patient). How is vaccination going where you all are? I’m curious!

Pleasantries aside, I came here to talk about roleplaying today. Again. First things first, I want to add the disclaimer that this is not about anything sexual. That’s better left for another blogger, I suppose.

This is about the game or collaborative writing kind of roleplay. I do mention it here often, so I thought I’d talk about it in more general terms just so we’re all on the same page

We’re going to talk about two kinds of roleplaying here: roleplaying games and the kind of roleplaying I do, which has very little of the “game” aspect and a lot of the “roleplaying” aspect.

Role-playing games, or RPGs, are something a lot of people has probably heard of. If you have ever heard of Dungeons and Dragons, you have heard of RPGs. There are other systems as well, of course – such as GURPS, the World of Darkness (old and new), and others. If someone can remember others, please comment on them, I’m sure I’m forgetting something important!

Roleplaying, without the gaming element, is what I usually mean when I post here. It’s simply when a group or pair of people come together, choose a setting, create characters, and start creating a story together, by playing their main characters and several other side characters (those would be the NPCs on role-playing games) to craft a plot until completion, or until everyone involved gets bored.

This second kind is much more flexible, in my opinion. You get to choose the venue – face to face, via some voice chatting system, email, discord, forums, or pretty much any kind of communication system you choose. When it’s a one-on-one relationship, you get even more flexible, as you don’t have to worry about turns. When you have a group, you need a little more work on making things organized, storing character sheets, recording the important info, whatever it happens to be, etc. In my case, I tend to store everything in a Google Doc or shared folder, so everyone involved can have access to the important info in one place, or, if everyone is in agreement, create forums to store all of it within the same site we’re writing our stories. If the roleplay involves a group, I usually also create some house rules to deal with chance, establishing what we dice roll for and what each result means. I do try to keep the roleplays dice mechanics-light, though, as I don’t usually do combat-heavy plots.

Well… I’m thinking of more things about how I deal with roleplays, but I can’t really think of much more to say, as I currently only have a few one-on-one stories happening on Discord, and those are with a close friend and my girlfriend, so we have much more leeway to do things as we please!

I might come back to this in the future, if there’s any more to say! Do you have questions, opinions, or anything to add that I might have forgotten? Talk to me in the comments!

See you on the next post!

The roleplay story I dropped

Hello, my pretties! How are you all? Well, I hope!

I’m doing well-ish, let’s say. My wisdom tooth decided to bother me, but such is life. It happens every now and then, because screw me, that’s why! It’ll pass soon, so let us move on and try to ignore it, shall we?

In the comments of the latest post, there was some mention of the roleplay idea I had tried to start and ended up dropping, and some curiosity about what it is. It’s nothing big or really overly original (note: I believe there are very few fully original ideas, and what ends up making a difference is the execution), but it was something I was really looking forward to.

So, here goes nothing: The original idea was loosely based on the TV show The Tudors, and sort of a do-over to another roleplay we had already done in the past. The story had been put on the shelf when the old forum where it was happening closed down. I have to confess stopping it at that moment was sort of refreshing, as it was already getting tiring due to some of the core characters (all written by the same person) interacting only with each other, even with attempts to get them to break the group and interact with others, which was necessary for the plot to actually work.

After a new site was opened, I decided to try the do-over, with less characters and a simple rule: if you have more than one character, they can’t be spouses or lovers (which had been part of the undoing of the latest attempt).

Of course, that didn’t really work out, did it? The person who had those three characters – and who is an admin on the forum – said they wanted to claim those three again, even though it would put them on the wrong side of this specific rule. I have to confess I didn’t see any reason to try and fight it, so I withdrew the pitch. Back to the drawing board, I guess. Maybe I can look for another group who’s into courtly intrigues and wants to branch out and interact with a diverse cast of characters, who knows? I’m learning from my mistakes, as I tend to be too lenient and let people do whatever they want to keep the peace. That’s 100% on me.

Fellow roleplayers and game masters, how about you share a big mistake you have made in the past with me? Just to make me feel better?

See you all on the next post!

Not sure what to do with this blog…

Hello, my pretties! How are you all? Doing well, I hope!

I’m… alright, though I feel a bit meh about some things. Including this blog. Not really meh, just… I feel like there isn’t much more to say here? Not if I stick to what I have been doing, and keeping this blog strictly personal. I don’t know. I keep thinking about what I can do, or what I should do. I also keep thinking about what I could put here. Maybe my brain’s just getting lazy.

I will not delete the blog, that’s for sure. Even if I eventually stop posting here, I won’t want to lose everything I have ever written here, and all the contacts I’ve made through this blog, and all the blogs I follow with this account.

I’ll just have to think about what I will be doing and what I will be posting here in the future. While I work on that, if there’s anything you’d like to see here, please share it with me in the comments! I’ll be happy to oblige!

See you on the next post… whenever that happens!