A Short Ponderable

(Short Update: My oldest's surgery was a success, and she's recovering.)

Anyway, before I return to my regular blogging, something I've noticed about language the past couple of years is the prevalence of the word "super" in descriptions. 

Such as this: "I'm super excited to be here talking to you all today..."

Now, I remember when "like" was the trendy word, as in "Should I do the thing? Well, like, I guess so," so I suppose that "super" has replaced "like" among people in general. And I do mean everyone, because I've heard people my age or older use it when speaking in meetings.

It's one of those things where once I realized just how often it was said did I start noticing it everywhere.

Back when I first began writing in high school and at university, I was told to avoid colloquialisms such as "like" or "gag me with a spoon"* when writing, unless you're writing fiction and that's what the narrative voice or the person in question would say. But "like" and now "super" seem to have become so prevalent that I feel that I'm the anachronism.

Between the usage of "super" and "do the needful", I've become the Old Man Yells at Cloud person...

From Know Your Meme.
And The Simpsons.

#Blaugust2023

*Valley Girl stuff, you know.

Where's Red, The "I'm Not in Trouble This Time" Edition

By the time this post drops, I'll be at one of the local hospitals.

Oh, not for me --I'm fine at the moment, thanks for asking-- but for the oldest mini-Red. She's getting her tonsils out today. 

I'm not saying that aliens make 'em
big, but.... aliens.
From makeameme.org.

Yes, she's almost 25. 

And yes, from all I've heard, getting your tonsils out as an adult absolutely sucks. The poor kid already had her wisdom teeth out earlier a couple of months ago, so this makes a nice bookend to her Summer. /sarcasm

I'm the driver and head clown of this circus*, so I'll be making sure she gets there on time and can make sure she doesn't throw up all over the car on the way back. And then, once I get her back home, I have to get back to work because I have some paperwork due today that won't wait. (I'm not kidding, either.)

*My wife occasionally lets me be in charge; to give me a feeling of empowerment, I suppose.

Just Who ARE You, Really? Part 3 of... Okay, 4 (but that's it!)

I suppose I've put off my WoW toons long enough. Now, a few ground rules: I'm only going to talk about a few of them, since not that many have much in the way of background or narrative. After all, that Warlock I leveled using battlegrounds is just a WoW toon, nothing more and nothing less. 

Now, I did debate over what to cover here, given that two of my toons date back to 2009, but I decided that WoW Classic through Wrath Classic would make for a good range. Besides, I've given the most thought to my WoW toons in a Classic world, so I figure that I might as well stick with what I know best.

I decided to break this final post into two, because I could easily see how long this post could get, even if I severely edited these bios.

***

Azshandra, the PC that started it all in Classic, starts it off here.

She gets around.

Azshandra has a family name, yet she never shares it. She doesn't speak much of her youth, as it was spent in Zin-Azshari, the capital of the Kaldorei Empire. She was the child of Highborne parents, and she was "all arms and legs" as she describes it. Fellow Highborne children teased her about her looks, yet she took solace in the pride of station, as she was named in honor of Queen Azshara.

Then the demons came.

Most of the Highborne followed the lead of their queen, yet Azshandra's parents saw the darkness growing at the heart of the Kaldorei Empire and joined the Resistance. The were eventually captured and executed by order of one of Azshara's handmaidens. Az witnessed her parents' deaths and fled, the laughter of Azshara's handmaiden ringing in her ears.

Azshandra escaped Zin-Azshari and eventually found her way to what became Northwestern Kalimdor, which ultimately saved her life when the Great Sundering came. She learned to live off the land, hunting from the shadows, grieving for both her parents and all that she knew. She avoided other Kaldorei for a long time, fearing capture and being turned over to Azshara's handmaidens.

She may have become expert at hiding, but it was inevitable that she eventually was caught. She was captured stealing some food from a baker not too far from the ruins of Bashal'Aran and sent before Tyrande Whisperwind for judgement. It was then that she learned of the fate of Azshara and the rest of the Highborne, and of the sundering of the Kaldorei and Queldorei. Azshandra further learned to her amazement that she lived much longer than even she guessed, due to the gift of immortality granted to her race by the Dragon Aspects. Tyrande took pity on Azshandra and spared her life, allowing her to integrate into Kaldorei society once more under guidance of a detachment of Sentinels.

While that was the plan, Az and Kaldorei society don't quite see eye to eye. The Sentinels allow Azshandra to go her own way so long as she doesn't cause trouble, and Azshandra for her part lent her skills to the Sentinel force on an occasional basis. Following his mate's lead, Malfurion Stormrage has accepted Az into Kaldorei society, but Fandral Staghelm has not. He argued vociferously for Az's imprisonment, and Azshandra has neither forgotten nor forgiven him. Druid society has largely remained neutral concerning Az, as the Druids do not want to be seen taking sides between the two Archdruids. Az, for her part, is more comfortable among the Tauren followers of the Cenarion Circle than those of her kin.

Azshandra encountered the Naga in her travels, and from the moment she saw them slithering among the Kaldorei ruins she began to have awful suspicions about these sea creatures. Her suspicions were confirmed when a sea witch discovered her spying on them on the shores west of Ashenvale and called to her by name. Enraged that some of the Highborne who murdered her parents still lived, she slew the Naga she found and swore vengeance against the Handmaiden of Azhsara who ordered her parents' execution.

When the Dark Portal opened, those who crossed over returned with tales of one of those Handmaidens in league with Malfurion's exiled brother. Azshandra took an immediate interest in these stories and resolved to pursue them herself. She crossed over into Outland and promptly vanished from sight.

Despite vigorous searches by her friends and compatriots, Azshandra remains stubbornly hidden. Once in a while, the bodies of several Naga are discovered with her distinctive mark carved on their foreheads, which leads Azshandra's friends to believe that she is still out there, hunting. 

***

Cardwyn Songshine is up next, the mouthy WoW PC herself.

She calls it like she sees it.

Cardwyn is the youngest of the four Songshine children. The oldest, Kira, fell in love with baking and joined the Goldshire Bakers Guild, of which she is a Journeywoman. The second oldest, Jas (short for Jasper), is married to Karyn with two daughters (Carys and Starlys) and a son (Lewys). The third sibling, Linnawyn, took the Oaths and became a Knight of the Silver Hand.

Card's parents, Daryn and Mona, are veterans of the Second War and own one of the easternmost farms in Elwynn Forest. Mona suffers from severe PTSD as a result of her activity during the war, yet the details of what happened to her have never been shared with Card or her siblings. All they are aware of is that Mona was part of SI:7's predecessor organization, and that something happened to her on her last mission, which broke her.

Card and her siblings were taught by Evelyn Aldcock, a family friend and travelling teacher who traversed the length of Elwynn and as far away as Lakeshire. Early on, Evelyn identified Card as having a talent for the Arcane, and unbeknownst to Car began laying the groundwork for a lifetime of magical study.

Despite all this, Cardwyn (and Linnawyn) would have likely remained on the family farm until one day the Defias Brotherhood came, demanding all of the family's metal. Rather than giving it to them, the Songshines and their farmhands decided to fight when the Defias returned the next day. In a stroke of luck, Evelyn happened to be visiting at precisely that moment, and she took Cardwyn under her wing to travel to Stormwind and find some help. Evelyn was revealed to be not merely a family friend but also a fellow veteran of the Second War and a (retired) Mage from Dalaran.

The fight with the Defias ended in triumph, and as a result Cardwyn embraced tutelage in the Arcane, so she could protect those who couldn't protect themselves. Card also harbored a significant amount of rage at the Defias for attempting to destroy her family, so she set forth on a path that eventually took her to Westfall and the Deadmines. 

The Westfall Affair, as it became known, resulted in the toppling of the Defias leadership and the freeing of Westfall from domination by the Brotherhood. For Cardwyn, however, there would be no peace, as she blamed herself for the loss of friends in that final assault. She learned a bit about what it must have been like for her mom, going undercover, and having to make terrible choices to finish the job.

Still, Cardwyn pressed on, accepting an apprenticeship under Elsharin Dawnweaver, a Queldorei in exile in Stormwind. In Elsharin, she found a kindred spirit: Elsharin thirsted for revenge against the Scourge for the destruction of her homeland and slaughter of her house. Over the years, Card and Elsharin grew close, and Elsharin made her an honorary Dawnweaver by tattooing the family crest on Card's shoulder. 

Cardwyn became a weapon under the Elf's tutelage, and when the time came and Kel'Thuzad returned to Stratholme with the dread citadel Naxxramas, she was ready. 

That time she spent as part of the brigade that assaulted Naxxramas still haunts Card to this day. Some days when they returned to Light's Hope Chapel to rest, Card would drink herself into oblivion, as her sister Linna watched with concern. Other times she would take out her frustration by picking up her Mageblade and hacking a practice dummy to pieces. As she explained to Linna, they spent hours trying to fight their way through the rooms and corridors, only to have the slain rise once more. Even Kel'Thuzad's lieutenants simply would not remain dead; the only endgame was to kill the lich himself to put an end to his reign of terror. 

On a Spring evening the strike team finally brought Kel'Thuzad down, but only after a gruesome fight in which Card lost some of her longest and closest friends. That fight became Card's breaking point as well, as she returned to the farm and buried herself in mundane work, hoping her nightmares and visions would go away.

When the Dark Portal opened, Cardwyn stayed behind at the farm. "There is no reason for me to go; my part is over," she told Linna before her sister rode off to join the rest of the Argent Dawn in securing the Portal from the demons. 

And that was that.

The nightmares slowly faded and Cardwyn got on with life. She recognized the same Arcane talent she had in her nephew, Lewys, and she resolved to do for him what her old teacher, Evelyn, had done for her: gently guide his interests, not forcing him to a specific path. 

That was how things would have remained had she not received a missive from an old friend informing her that somehow Kel'Thuzad was back, floating above Northrend in his rebuilt fortress of Naxxramas. Cardwyn resolved to go north to find out what happened and put an end to Arthas' most loyal servant once more.

#Blaugust2023

Meme Monday: Tiefling Memes

In honor of both Baldur's Gate 3 and this particular YouTube video 

He did kind of dance around the obvious reason:

because Tieflings push that "edgy and sexy" button

that vampires and Drow also push.

that I found perusing the internet for RPG material --yes, I went down the rabbit hole for an hour or two-- so I now give you some memes concerning everybody's favorite angsty character race, Tieflings.

From me.me.

Oh, I'd love a mug like that, but
I'm at the point where we have don't have
space for more mugs. From Pinterest.

Well, that explains a lot.
From imgflip.com.

Yeah, that'll do.
From the Facebook dmdmemes group.

#Blaugust2023

No King Leaves Forever

I mean, even Arthas keeps coming back into the WoWverse for some strange ungodly reason.

But in this case, I mean everybody's favorite monotonal YouTuber, Madseasonshow.

Welcome back, Mad. Return of the Hardcore... 

(And no, I don't mean that other definition of hardcore.)

(No, not THAT definition either. Sheesh.)

#Blaugust2023

How Do We Understand the Past?

This is more of a "placeholder" post than anything else, because I want to follow up on this but don't want this to necessarily linger too long. Basically, my thought process went to time travelling --courtesy of Star Trek, pick an episode, any episode-- and just how far back a time traveler could go before they could no longer understand what is being said to them.

As this Reddit thread indicates, this is not a new question. However, listening to people and understanding the words as well as the slang are one thing, but understanding the culture enough to fit in is quite another. 

After all, just look at the generation gap we see between parents and their children, much less great grandparents and their descendants. 

Yes, I'm quite aware that the pace of change has accelerated quite a bit since the industrial revolution, but that doesn't make my question less valid. I'm not going to post the invented quote attributed to Socrates about the decay of youth so as to prevent the spread of misinformation, but given that parents and grandparents of my generation --and yes, the Boomers before us-- thought the same thing, it wouldn't surprise me if this attitude about how the youth are different from their elders stretches back to antiquity.

Why is this relevant to gaming, you may ask?

Because we, as people living in the 21st century, will put anachronisms into our various forms of fiction to make it easier for us to relate to. 

Just look at the humble tavern.

The often mocked "you all meet at an inn" starting point for many an RPG campaign arose because people could relate to meeting at a pub or a bar or an inn. Yes, I'm aware that Chaucer started his Canterbury Tales that way, but that doesn't mean that taverns operated in a way that we 21st century inhabitants of the world can understand. We just assume it does so we have a common point of reference.

So.... What about it?

As I've said more than once, I believe this will involve some research on my part to get to a better understanding. And no, it doesn't mean I'm going to be visiting a lot of taverns and drinking the beer/ale/mead --my health issues would kick my ass if I tried with abandonment-- but I should investigate this further. I'm aware of the book The Past is a Foreign Country, so maybe I should start there.

We'll see.

#Blaugust2023

An Unexpected Set of Feels

NOTE: This post has absolutely nothing to do with gaming. Sorry about that.

The other day I came across a book of school and sport photos that my mom had given me over the winter, and since I'd not seen any of these photos in what has been well over a decade or two, I sat down and perused them.

That was probably not the smartest decision I've ever made. Why, you may ask? 

I wasn't prepared for the emotions that they stirred within me.

It's not as if I've never seen pictures of myself as a kid before. On the contrary, my mom has plenty of them around and every so often she likes to pull them out to show "younger me" off to the mini-Reds.  When they were younger, that was cute, but now that they're grown, it's kind of awkward.

But still, those photos are of us on vacation, at home, things like that.

These were the formal class photos and sports team photos that I had as part of the baseball and basketball teams I played on. All my elementary school photos were there, up through middle school. No high school pics here at all.

The guilty party.

When I sat down to peruse the photos, I was struck by the changes from black and white to color photos. My Kindergarten and First Grade photos were in color, but when I changed schools to my Catholic grade school for Second Grade up through Eighth Grade, we reverted to black and white. It was only in Fourth Grade that the class photo returned to color, as if the school couldn't afford color until then.*

The second thing were the outfits.

Oh Lord, the outfits.

My elementary school years stretched from the Fall of 1974 to Spring of 1983, and that wide swath of the 70s was reflected in the loud outfits of the day, such as corduroy jackets and pants.

Yikes. And they come in "Husky Sizes" too!
From the 1975 Sears Fall/Winter
Catalogue, page 418.
From christmas.musetechnical.com.

My first two years of school were at the local public school, because the Catholic school only went from 2nd through 8th Grade, but despite the latter's uniform requirements our formal photos looked a lot like those found in the public school. So... the same loud clothing.

Despite the loud clothing, I had a hard time wrapping my head around these photos. My own kids are all adults now, so this feels like multiple lifetimes ago. Still, as I perused them, I remembered aspects of my life that I'd buried under decades of daily work.

Such as how I looked when I got glasses in Sixth Grade. My glasses came after our school photos, so I was glasses-free for my class photo, but in Seventh Grade... Between the bad plastic frames and the awkward horizontally striped shirt, I don't know how that photo could look worse. I also began having dandruff issues (thanks for the genetics, Dad), so if you want to talk middle-school awkward, that Seventh Grade photo was it. 

In Eighth Grade, I got a new prescription which included new glasses with metal frames, and they looked a lot better. I may have looked more confident in the school photo, but I certainly was that awkward kid with the hormones who couldn't dance to save their life. (That was on display at the Eighth Grade Graduation Dance, although the most memorable part of that dance was the one kid who thought it would be funny to walk around with his pants down. The chaperones escorted him out.)

***

My classmates generated a large share of the memories of my youth, both good and bad.

Like the kid who became good friends with me in Kindergarten, to the point where we exchanged telephone numbers to try to get together during the Summer. But when I called him up, the woman on the other end of the line said "nobody of with that name lives here". And that Fall, he wasn't at school. It was as if he'd up and vanished.

There was the girl in Third Grade who loved to read as much as I did, and we had a semester's long competition as to who could read the most books. I kept pace with her for a while, but she ended up beating the pants off me in both quantity and quality of books**. I found her interesting and funny and vexing all at once, but at the end of the school year she told me that her family was moving, and I never saw her again after that Spring.

Oh man, I'd almost forgotten about the kid in Third Grade who never did his homework. And I do mean never. He'd get in trouble for that, but then one day when he came to Math class he told the teacher he'd done his homework, she was happy... until we were supposed to open our math workbooks to show we did our homework. Oh, those blank pages he presented did not go over well. "DON'T YOU LIE TO ME!!!" the teacher yelled and grabbed the kid by the arm, yanking him out into the hallway. There was an impromptu meeting among all of the other Third Grade teachers and the Principal, with the kid in tow, which dragged on for over 20 minutes. (I know, because I was watching the clock in total silence, along with the rest of my class.) I don't know the end result of all this, but the kid was never in class again.

In Fourth Grade, I absolutely loved my homeroom teacher; she was patient yet demanding, encouraging and calm, and she pushed my academic interests far more than the nuns ever did. But more than anything else she was tall. She was easily the tallest woman I'd ever known at that point --I want to say she was at least 5' 10"-- and I found out later that she was the daughter of a local doctor who played basketball back in the day. In what I now identify as a trend, she left the school at the end of the school year because she could make more money being a secretary for her dad's office than she could as a teacher.***

I discovered girls in the Fifth Grade, but looking at these photos now I'm having a hard time viewing the girls and trying to remember what I found attractive in them. I mean, they look so young, and my vantage point is a mid-50s man who looks at women in their early 20s and think that they look far too youthful for my taste.

There was the "love triangle" in the Sixth Grade between one boy and two girls that everybody seemed to think was absolutely cute, including the two girls involved, but the boy seemed very embarrassed by the whole thing. I was simply baffled, because I thought that if I were caught that way between two girls, it would make my head hurt.

A boy who was only there for Sixth Grade --his family moved to West Germany after the school year, so it's likely his was a military family-- taught everybody the "Diarrhea" song. He was constantly in trouble, and it was widely rumored he was in and out of juvenile detention. 

In Eighth Grade, I had to deal with constant bullying from a girl who would get into my face and yell "WE HATE YOU!!" I've been bullied before and since, but that was probably the worst. I hated her with a passion, but the teachers did nothing and I decided I wasn't going to respond to her directly. But oh, I dreamed about hauling off and slugging her for that.

***

All that was well and good, until I reflected on what happened to some of the kids when they grew up.

There was one girl I crushed on --not my original crush, but one that people knew about in grade school-- who was very smart and attractive, but she got pregnant and she ended up marrying her boyfriend and dropping out of college. I think she may have eventually gotten her college degree, but I have no idea if she remained married. 

A similar fate befell the kid who dropped his pants at the Eighth Grade Dance; he finished within a hair of being Salutatorian at high school and had a sports scholarship to a Division I university lined up, but his girlfriend got pregnant and... that was that.

The girl who bullied me in Eighth Grade? She developed an eating disorder in high school. I have no idea what became of her after that.

One classmate spent time in prison for embezzling funds, but I believe he's out now. 

In a "no surprise" event, one of my classmates died when a drug deal went bad. He was a constant thorn in my side, and despite his small stature he was a bully. When I was in high school he was caught by the police slashing tires in the parking lot of our elementary school, which I was no real surprise.

Another classmate committed suicide by jumping off of the tallest building in town. I still have a hard time wrapping my head around that one, 30 years after I first heard it. He was the class clown type, and from what I've read about comics and depression I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but it still hurt.

Not all was doom and gloom, however. A few people married their high school sweethearts and remain married today (or at least as far as a couple of years ago). Others survived the bullying gauntlet and became successful in life. And still others are, well, doing their thing, I guess. If they're like me, they don't respond to correspondence about school reunions or things like that, because they prefer to forget their experiences in grade/middle school. 

***

Admittedly, this reflection wasn't what I expected it would be, as when I began perusing the photos I didn't expect to be reminded of all of these events. I could have just shoved it aside and buried it deep in my psyche, but I felt it was important to let this stuff come out. There's a lot more stories I could tell from my grade school years, but I'm not exactly sure how to tell them. 

My grade school was, well, kind of fucked up in its focus. I don't know if it's the case in other parts of the country, but here in Ohio the Catholic grade schools emphasize athletics to an inordinate degree. As in "far beyond the healthy levels" of emphasis. For example, my school's priorities were in full display on our annual "yearbook" that we were given out for free at the end of the year. My kids' yearbooks growing up included a lot of photos of the various classes and the kids doing all sorts of activities; my own only included the formal pictures of the sports teams that the school sponsored, as if sports were all that mattered at the school. (In some ways, it kind of did.)

However, there were at least a few pages for autographs and other comments, so there was that at least. And like a lot of kids, I got some signatures from people I knew.

This was in my Seventh Grade yearbook.
Names have been removed for privacy's sake.
And before you ask, no, we never dated.

Again, this is from Seventh Grade. The guy
who wrote this is, well, respectable these days.
I think that blows my mind more than anything else.

In perusing the autographs, I don't think I had an "bad" autographs, but that kind of went without saying. After all, you're not likely to ask someone you didn't like to sign your yearbook. Still, I can tell the years I felt more isolated than others by the (lack of) autographs in my yearbook.

But I do wonder about how much the petty drama drove so much shit at school. Probably 95% of it, if I'm being honest with myself.

***

Okay, I have to put all of this aside for now. I'm glad I got to put some of this down on pixels, because it feels rather cathartic to bring all of this out every so often. Maybe it's just me that I'm surprised that as many kids in my class of 90-100 eventually turned out to be as well adjusted adults as there were, but then again maybe the churn of shit below the surface is quite normal for any school. Who knows?

#Blaugust2023

*That wasn't the case; it was more the fault of the Pastor being a cheapskate. That particular priest was a stereotypical cigar smoking, hard drinking asshole in his mid-50s who always found something to dislike in whatever you were doing. His fingerprints were all over what high schools were welcome to recruit at the school as well; he went to the high school I eventually attended, and because of that he refused to let the local Jesuit high school recruit students. The same thing went for the girls' high school: the girls' school right next to my high school was welcome, the other, more prestigious ones were not.

**She was reading middle school level books by the end of the school year, and just cruising through them.

***I saw her years later when I broke my collarbone in Eighth Grade; she certainly remembered me, which was both gratifying and embarrassing to a 13 year old kid that his Fourth Grade teacher remembered him. Of course, I now know that isn't so unusual, but back then I certainly thought it was.