Found-Family Feud and Caring for Spirits

Est. Read Time: 29min

Why, hello, everyone! Coming in under the wire yet again. Like, MAJORLY under the wire! I was visiting my mom the past three days (note on that at the end of the post), and time to go online to finish and publish this post has been very limited. On top of that, due to massive construction traffic made worse by Independence Day traffic, Hubby and I didn't make it home until nearly 10pm tonight! So... while you probably won't see this post until July 1st, know that it WAS published before midnight on the 30th. Still counts as my 1 blog post per month.... right???

 

 

I'm still way burnt out, and just haven't really written anything. So I didn't really have much to talk about again (or, so I thought...). I kept pushing back working on this post in hopes that SOMETHING would come up. Nothing ever did. It just hasn't been a very conducive month for writing or any sort of major creativity.

My first struggle was me still recovering from having bronchitis. Then, it was trying to breathe through the Canadian wildfire smoke finally making its way down to my area.

This was June 6th, at the local laundromat, with no filter. In fact, the sky seemed even MORE yellow to my eye than it shows in these pics.

These were taken at 2pm! Even with us wearing our masks - a practice we never gave up since covid hit - my husband, who is allergic to most trees, could barely breathe. As soon as you opened the front door you were hit with the intense smell of a campfire. It smelled good to me, since I adore the smell of campfires. For someone who can't breathe around trees, however???? Yeah, he was coughing almost as soon as he stepped out the door.

Even when we were inside a grocery store for an hour, and on the opposite end from the doors so the smoke shouldn't be wafting in far enough to hinder his breathing, he was wheezing. Turned out, just standing outside for less than three minutes - between walking to the car from the house, to the laundromat from the car, back to the car, and then from the car to inside the grocery store - was enough for our masks to be caked with smoke. Not enough to be visible, especially on his black mask, but enough to leave visible traces of soot on the paper towel he used to clean off his mask before heading back to the car! And yet we had neighbors that were just chilling on their front porch in this - no mask - for the two hours we were gone!

The haze wasn't as bad the next day, but it was still bad enough to keep affecting Hubby's breathing, and mine a touch since I had just recovered from a lung infection.

Screenshot from AirNow.gov

June 8th wasn't much better, but at least it wasn't as bad as it was down by my mom and sister. They were in the purple and even maroon! Thankfully, the air was finally back down the yellow "moderate" by June 9th, and green "good" by the 10th.

Now, here we are again, with Hubby still trying to recover from last time, and we're back in the red due to the wildfire smoke! Also, it's apparently wafted all the way to Portugal now!?

If you are somewhere still dealing with this smoke, or dealing with similar wildfire smoke, PLEASE be careful.

Jumping to June 20th, I made a point to have a one-on-one hangout with my niece (much to my nephew's dismay, but he'll have a one-on-one hangout with me in July). Then I worked 4 days straight with the coworker that rarely stops talking, so trying to focus and concentrate on writing wasn't going to happen at work.

This month also brought us ever closer to the conclusion of Miraculous season 5. We only have the two-part finale left! And that should be airing internationally in just a few HOURS from when I published this! I won't give any spoilers, but I'll continue to rage that this season somehow simultaneously has some of the best writing and worst writing of the series. Even within the same episode! The other day I watched a couple of episodes with Wolfhearted, and pointed out the parallels with an earlier episode, and how amazing the writing is for including those parallels. Only to then rage a few minutes later that the whole plot of the episode doesn't make sense and that character reactions felt out-of-character. Only to then turn around and enjoy some of the more significant character developments and arc advancements within that same episode I had just been complaining about!

Tanuki Facebook sticker
by Yanare Ku

The season has taken forever, but has also sprinted by. It's hard to remember all the episodes that happened this season, because early-season episodes feel soooooo long ago now (I mean, they DID start airing in September, but that's not much longer than cartoon seasons used to be in the 90s). I can't imagine how they can wrap things up in just two more 30-minute episodes, and I'm nervous, but also super excited????

It's inspiring me to write more, but it's also exhausting me to the point that I have no energy to work on my WIPs, but also also... I want to write fix-it fics (stories that "fixes" the canon story)... which also means not touching my WIPs. So.... yeah...

It's a little bit of a whirlwind of emotions for me right now. Makes me a little glad I didn't join the one event last month. Over on Tumblr, there was an event being promoted. A way to give people accountability to push through and finish their dang WIP. You had until the end of April to sign up. You then had until the end of August, I think, to finish your WIP and publish it online. Between May 1 and Aug 31, you had check-ins you had to hit. Submitting a summary of your story, then submitting sample scenes, and then checking in with half your story complete, etc. As mentioned, these check-ins were supposed to add accountability so people are more likely to push through their doubt and writers block in order to just get the story done. The next-level push, though? Each writer would be paired with an artist. The story summaries would be provided to the artists so they can pick the story that best resonates with them. Then the scene samples are bits you'd want the artist to possibly create fanart for. Now, to clarify, the artists aren't specifically ones that draw art. They could be crafters as well, or AMV editors, or actors/directors/animators, or musicians. The fanart of your work could be the traditional drawing, but it could also be a fiber craft, or an animatic, or a song, etc. Either way, it's real cool! A great motivator to know you're GUARANTEED fanart of your work by the time you're done.

It was suuuuuuper tempting to sign up. Really give me the push I needed to at least finish Seduce With Caution before hitting that 2yr mark. However, I felt so drained and burnt out that I knew having those deadlines would be less motivational and more stress-inducing. Especially when it means I'd be holding someone else (the artist) up. Also, I wasn't sure even what scenes I'd WANT fanart of out of my story. I'd find it so hard to pick. On top of that, while it's cool to HAVE the fanart of my story, the fact that someone made it because they signed up for an event instead of being inspired enough from reading it to feel compelled to create fanart.... I dunno. Hits different. Even if they are still getting inspired based on what you've provided....

In the end, I felt like it would be more overwhelming than anything else, so I opted out of the event. I'm kind of glad now. I just haven't been feeling WRITING anything lately, sadly.

Doesn't mean I'm not still CONSUMING content though. For starters, the Raymond Romanov vs Lang Buddha saga is still going strong over on NoPixel (Well, actually, it may have finally wrapped up this week, but I'm a few days behind sooooo). I was going to recap what else happened between those two characters, but my first draft ended up being 11 pages long for just this recap section!

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Cropped by LycoRogue

So... uh... yeah... let's see if I can condense that recap any further. A lot of details and nuance will be removed, but if you're truly that interested in the story you can look it up yourself. A lot of the highlights are on Ray__C's YouTube channel. You can also check out Ray__C's, Buddha's, or AnthonyZ's Twitch channels to get a bit more of the story.

Okay, to recap what I told you last month:

• Ray__C's character Raymond Romanov was a sworn brother of Buddha's character Lang Buddha. Raymond was a member of Lang's gang the CLeanbois (CB), and the two of them - along with fellow members Harry, Tony, Yuno, and Jean Paul - pooled finances to buy an in-game mansion dubbed the CLean Manor.
• Lang then created The Guild, a shadow organization, and Cerberus, a legitimate parent company for all of his many businesses; much like how Lex Luthor and Wilson Fisk (Marvel's Kingpin) also have legitimate companies to hide their criminal activities. Raymond and Tony jointly created the street racing gang Redline, a group that Tony now mostly runs by himself with Raymond being a silent partner, as it were. And Raymond created the gang Raymond's Unfortunate Scuff Team, aka RUST.
• Raymond made a key rule for all RUST members: Lang and the other CLeanbois were off limits. They were Raymond's found family and all RUST members are to treat them as such. The city also knows of Lang's golden rule: you do not cause trouble on his property; you do not give the cops a reason to come uninvited.
• Earlier in the year, the RUST member G Baby was arrested after his truck filled with gun parts was found parked at Lang's prized business: The Rooster's Rest, a restaurant and the first legitimate business he owned. Lang's golden rule was broken, but Raymond convinced Lang to let G Baby live; banishing him from the city instead. This was probably what caused the rift in their relationship.
• Early May, while Ray__C was away at a music festival for the weekend, four RUST members unintentionally caused problems at Rooster's Rest again. Raymond's in-game adopted son Maxine called for backup when a customer Elfy started talking shit about RUST and threatening to not only kill Raymond but also get away with it, because she could just hide behind Lang and she knew no one from RUST would touch her. Irritated with the woman's disrespect, newest RUST member Kate kidnapped Elfy, but accidentally did so while still on Rooster's property: the lower parking lot. Lang's golden rule is broken a 2nd time in only 2 or 3 months.
• Raymond had a meeting with Lang, Lang's right hand man Harry, and the CEO of Rooster's Rest Penny. Due to Penny twisting the events of the kidnapping, Lang and Harry wanted blood, but Raymond protected Maxine and Kate.
• A couple of days later, Lang requested Raymond bring Maxine to CLean Manor for a parley. Raymond reluctantly agreed, but was betrayed by Lang and Harry. They had hidden Speedy - Lang's oldest friend and probably the only person he truly thinks of as a brother - in a secret passage. Then the three of them ambushed Raymond, tranquilized him, handcuffed both him and Maxine, and then kidnapped Maxine with the intent to torture and execute him.
• Reminder that on NoPixel characters don't actually stay dead after "executions" unless the player wants to permanently kill off the character. Regardless, the threat is still very much roleplayed with the appropriate gravitas as if it were a permeant death.
• There was a huge shoot-out at CLean Manor as RUST members broke in to rescue Raymond and Maxine. Everyone that was at the Manor was shot down, but neither Raymond nor Lang actually shot at each other (they had their friends do the "honors" instead).
• Lang called Raymond and basically told him the two of them were through. The rivalry was now official.

Now, to get into what has happened since my last post!

• Despite Lang declaring the two of them no longer brothers, Raymond no longer a CLeanboi, and that the Manor was no longer Raymond's home, Raymond still didn't want to fully betray Lang. He refused to shoot him, told the RUST members that they were to only defend themselves and not actively hunt for Lang, Harry, or Speedy, and Raymond still wasn't willing to work with cop character Brian Knight in getting enough dirt on Lang to officially lock him up for good. Raymond isn't a snitch, after all.
• Wanting to retaliate, but wanting to do so legally so the law would be on their side, RUST set up a free food truck event on the street (public property) right outside of Rooster's Rest where RUST gave away free food from all of the competitor restaurants in the city. This caused Penny to close down Rooster's for the day.
• The next day Lang, Harry, and Speedy all decided to retaliate. They first tried using a Cargobob, a military-like helicopter capable of picking up and transporting vehicles. While Harry and Speedy were on rooftops across the street and shooting at the food truck workers, Lang scooped up one of the food trucks with the Cargobob. Unfortunately, Buddha, Lang's player, is known for his game glitching out (our Scuff Lord!), and right on cue, the Cargobob glitched and crashed shortly after picking up the truck, blowing up both the helicopter and truck. Harry and Speedy were able to sneak Lang to medical care before getting caught, but his blood was still at the scene of the explosion. Later that same day, the trio got fellow CB member Denzel to join them in dropping helicopters onto the food truck event.
• RUST was able to track Lang, Harry, Speedy, and Denzel down, and kidnap Speedy. There was a shoot-out, and RUST member MacGregor chased after Lang and Harry against orders from Raymond. MacGregor was able to take down Lang, but was shot by Harry in the process. Raymond got to them just as MacGregor went down. Raymond took out Harry, and then piled everyone into his car to get off-the-record medical attention.
• While the game's mechanics does allow any character to revive any other character under certain circumstances*, Ray likes to stay in-character as much as possible and leads the roleplay to follow suit. Meaning, if your character doesn't have the medical background to be able to save someone IRL, then they aren't medically trained enough to revive a character in-game.
• *those circumstances are (1) that your character is an on-call doctor or EMT, or (2) that the character that needs to be revived is in a designated "medical" spot. These "medical" spots includes the hospitals, an ambulance, or "grandma's" and "grandpa's" - two off-grid makeshift "criminal hospitals" a la mob doctor offices.
• Despite Lang yelling that Raymond is dead to him and Raymond should leave him, Harry, and Speedy on the side of the road somewhere because he doesn't want Raymond's help, Raymond still tried to revive them. He called up the doctor who did the toxicology report on him after getting tranquilized at the Manor and begged her to come help. Cops found them at Grandma's before the doctor could get there, so they ran to Grandpa's. Only for the cops to find them there first again. They moved a 3rd time and Raymond accused the doctor of working with the cops. Meanwhile, RUST member Bruno was screaming that MacGregor was dying and they needed to leave Lang and his group to the cops. Raymond finally agreed after Bruno held the doctor at gunpoint to make sure she saved MacGregor first. In the end, all RUST members got caught and jailed for kidnapping the mayor, the doctor, and the doctor's in-game husband and sister who were with her. MacGregor and Bruno nearly left the gang; either on their own or by being forced out for insubordination.
• Seeking revenge - but still following Raymond's rule to not harm anyone unless it's in self-defense - a few RUST members went to Cerberus to blow up people's cars. Somehow Harry's adoptive son Zaceed caught wind and hid in one of the trunks in the parking garage. When he caught RUST pouring gasoline on the cars he popped out of the trunk and started shooting. Nancy, one of Lang's deputy mayors and a higher-up at Cerberus, called the cops before joining in on the shoot-out against RUST. Despite RUST telling cops they were the ones getting shot at, the cops still saw them as the aggressors and arrested them.
• RUST broke out of their handcuffs and started a police chase. During which, Lang got into his one-of-a-kind (as far as I know) armored car with mini-guns hidden in the headlights, and started hunting down RUST members that got away from the cops. By the time Raymond found out what was happening and was able to catch up with the chase, there was only 1 RUST car left (out of the initial 3 or 4 that went to Cerberus?). Raymond drove beside the cops yelling that his boys couldn't pull over and surrender because "that armored car is shooting at them!" (he still wouldn't call out Lang specifically). The cops told Raymond "we don't care" and spiked his tires despite him not doing anything to impede the chase aside from yelling to the cops that his boys needed protection. All members involved were jailed yet again.
• With things escalating, his boys getting killed or arrested, RUST taking a bunch of losses vs Lang, and Lang being able to plant seeds of doubt in the ears of members like MacGregor and Bruno, Raymond asked for another parley. He was instantly uneased because Lang would only meet in the same Manor office that Raymond and Maxine were ambushed in. Harry was also purposefully antagonistic, and every time Raymond verbally defended himself Lang would yell to not disrespect Harry in his own house. Knowing he wasn't going to get anywhere, Raymond left without having the meeting. He simply vaguely threatened that Lang should keep a close eye on those he cares about. To which, Lang tried to call his bluff. This just pushed Raymond to unleash his gang.
• As Raymond left the CLean Manor, he gave the go-ahead for his second-in-command Chem (short for his streetname: The Chemist) to follow through with his "Dark Knight" plan. Basically, it's the Joker's ploy in The Dark Knight to try to break Batman: kidnap two people Lang cares about, threaten then both, and tell Lang to choose which one lives. The twist is that RUST would kill the one Lang decided to save, but make sure the other saw that Lang didn't choose them. They were originally going to kidnap Nancy and Penny, as revenge for their parts in this war, but Penny wasn't "awake" (logged onto her character). So they grabbed the two deputy mayors instead: Nancy and Eve... despite Raymond actually liking Eve and having no qualms with her.
• RUST didn't get a chance to follow through with Plan: Dark Knight. Nancy was serendipitously on the phone with Lang when RUST kidnapped her. Lang and Harry were instantly on the hunt for her and had the police out in full-force. There was a BANANAS police chase, that ended with a Last Stand fire-fight on a highway overpass, which included Raymond unknowingly shooting down Lang! Raymond and one of his high command Kiwi were the last two still standing before the shoot-out ended (by the two of them being downed almost at the same time). The fire fight ended up taking down something like 8 members (??) of RUST - including Raymond and Kiwi - along with their opposition: Nancy, Eve, Harry, Lang, and 20 out of the 22 cop characters that were logged on at the time!!!
• Link to the highlight reel of Raymond's failed parley, the kidnapping of Eve and Nancy, and the fire-fight.

  

  The Triage post-fire-fight
  (after some of the initially downed cops were revived)

• Four out of the six RUST High Command (including Raymond) were jailed and put on HUT (Hold Until Trial). Considering this is a roleplay server and the judges aren't guaranteed to work a normal 9-5 Monday-Friday schedule, HUT is usually a multiple-day jail sentence. For these RUST members it ended up being about a week.
• While most players will consider their jail sentence a "time out" and will either play another character or another game entirely, Ray__C decided to roleplay his time in jail. He and his fellow HUT RUST members could plot and plan in jail. Also, instead of leaving them to gather evidence and build a case on their own, Raymond could interact with his three lawyers - James Haze (whom he keeps on retailer), Grace Daniels (Haze's former paralegal, now Jr. Attorney), and Maya Mahmoud (honestly, I don't really know how she got involved...) - giving them good roleplay content as well.
• Most of the RUST members were able to get out early on bail, but even that was a struggle. The cops and Lang had tried to taint the judge pool so there wouldn't be an uncompromised judge available for the bail hearing, let along the actual trial. The DOJ also horribly screwed up filing evidence, hid evidence, never took statements from RUST about Lang and company being the aggressors but took Lang's statements against RUST every time, never gathered evidence of Lang's involvement (such as the blood at the cargobob explosion, despite cops straight up stating that they found it there), and the prosecutor kept editing the official case filing on the docket without noting what was edited.
• The reason I said "most" members got bail is because poor Perez - the MVP during the Manor shoot-out - was incorrectly processed. He was only given something like 3 days jail time instead of being put on HUT. So, when his time was up, he left jail. Since he was SUPPOSED to be on HUT, and it's hard to roleplay a game mechanic releasing him when he shouldn't be released - narratively speaking - the cops instead roleplayed it as a jail break to seek revenge against Lang, Harry, and CB member Tony. So he was thrown back in jail, confirmed he was placed under HUT this time, and wasn't given a bail hearing option.
• The reason Perez wanted to hunt down Tony was because Perez's girlfriend (as in, the character's gf) Cassie was shot down by Harry. While RUST was awaiting a bail hearing, the unjailed RUST members and friends would spend nearly all day in the visitation room at the prison; keeping the HUT members company and making sure they were safe from Lang and company (who was indeed trying to break into the jail to kill Raymond). Despite Tony promising Raymond that he didn't want anything to do with the war between him and Lang and that he (Tony) would stay neutral, he also quickly agreed to plant a camera in the visitation room for Lang. So he went in under the guise of looking for Redline 2nd in command Goofy, and "just happened" upon Raymond. The two had a little chat while Tony secretly planted the hidden camera, and then Tony went back to meet up with Lang. Thing is, RUST hang-around and prospective member Nana caught Lang staking out the prison, so he had to move before she could get backup. In an attempt to get Tony's attention to show him where Lang moved to, Harry stupidly threw a smoke grenade at him. Ray__C has superhuman hearing or something, and so Raymond was able to hear the grenade go off from inside the visitation room. He sprinted out to check on things and to try and find guards to protect RUST's visitors, which consisted of Nana, Cassie, and 2 of Raymond's lawyers Maya and Grace. While Raymond was away, Lang and Harry checked the camera Tony placed, and Tony informed them that the lawyers were there because RUST was getting their bail hearing in 20min. Harry went full SBS*, basically said, "oh HELL no", grabbed an automatic rifle from Lang's car, raced into the visitation room without hiding his identity, asked the ladies where Raymond was, and then shot them all down. Outside the visitation building, Raymond and Perez heard the gunshots and sprinted back in, only to see the four ladies bleeding out on the ground (Harry had already went back outside).
• *SBS is short for "small brain syndrome". I'm not entirely sure where the term originated. I also don't know how widely spread it is among gamers/streamers or the greater internet slang lexicon. It could very well be a strictly NoPixel term, or even one just used by a small group of people who are friends with Buddha and Ray__C, since those two definitely use the term. Basically, it refers to people who can't think of the big picture or the consequences of their actions (such as throwing a smoke grenade to get someone's attention or shooting up civilian characters without hiding one's identity); situations that are dumb for the sake of being silly, goofy, and dumb/entertaining; or the inability to keep up with a semi-complicated conversation/plot.
• Since Perez saw Tony in the visitation room, knew he was a founding member of the CLeanbois with Lang, and Perez's girlfriend got shot moments after Tony left... he tied the two instances together and felt Tony was at fault. So he called up Tony in a rage and told him, "You f***** up! Run!" Which.... didn't make things easier on Raymond later when he called Tony (after giving a statement to the cops) to try to see what happened and ask if Tony was somehow involved.
• The timing of everything really screwed over Perez, since his prison time ended when the cops were there for the shooting anyway. Him leaving when he technically - based on the narrative - shouldn't have been able to, and ESPECIALLY with him raging about his girlfriend being shot... well? It was easy for the cops already there to catch him and roleplay that it was a prison break. Whoops.
• With 2 out of his 3 lawyers recovering in the hospital and his 4th one not "awake" (logged on), Raymond had to postpone his bail hearing. Once his lawyers could be present, Raymond and the other HUT RUST members (excluding Perez) were given a long police escort to the courthouse.

Ooof! This "abridged" version is STILL taking forever! And I still have over 2 weeks of content to recap! I think I'm going to pause it here. If you don't want to wait for me to catch you up next month, you can see the highlights on Ray__C's channel.

But I'm sure you can all see why this improv drama is so captivating to me and Hubby! I also appreciate how much everyone involved - Ray__C, Buddha, Harry's player Harry, AnthonyZ, Brian Knight's player dasMEHDI - has complimented the roleplay of the other players, talked about how fun the storyline has been, and has done their best to make sure this in-character conflict doesn't become toxic IRL; they're all still friends. Ray__C even puts in the effort to stress that the CLeanbois (referring to the actual players) are still very much great friends who will still play together, even if the in-game CB is falling apart.

I also appreciate how much Ray__C tries to bring roleplay to as many people as possible. He doesn't just have one lawyer, he has 3. He doesn't just play a different character or game while Raymond is in jail, he makes a point of still roleplaying with those lawyers, and RUST members, and even other jailed characters that he might not otherwise have interacted with. He brought in a bunch of "civilian" characters by way of the food truck event, assuming it would also be a bunch of SBS, and then getting surprised with Lang escalated to the point of straight up attacking the event and the characters involved. The players for Nancy and Eve even thanked Ray__C and the RUST players for coming up with the whole Dark Knight plan, as well as trying to bomb the cars at the Cerberus parking lot, because it brought them into this intense RP, and they were having a lot of fun getting involved.

Hubby and I really don't get why such a relatively small streamer (Ray__C averages about 3000 subscribers) gets soooooo much hate from the viewers and chat when nearly every streamer who has ever interacted with him has sung his praises. They all talk about how much fun he is to play with, how hard he works with his roleplay, how he puts in that effort to include as many people as possible in RP, and how he's just genuinely a nice guy.

I'm not entirely sure how this turned into a Ray__C stan blog, but... I'm cool with it.

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The other main bit of content I have been consuming is the game Spiritfarer. The long-and-short of the game is that you play as Stella, the new spiritfarer (a psychopomp), taking over the ferrying-to-the-afterlife duties from Charon. You're then tasked to find lost souls and care for them as they come to terms with their death and prepare for their passage into the afterlife.

The game play is in the same vein as most other management games. You have to gather and manage resources (although, once you've unlocked a resource it's not too hard to maintain a steady flow of what you need); manage the happiness of the spirit passengers by way of feeding them - but they do have different dietary restrictions, which you need to sort out - completing the tasks they ask of you, and giving them hugs... lots and lots of hugs; and manage the space on your ship as you add new buildings and expand your ship size. The game is chill and filled with tons of different minigames for every task you need to complete: fetch-quests to recruit new spirit passengers, harvesting various resource types, processing said resources in forges or kitchens or on looms, etc, and helping your passengers come to terms with how they lived their life and how they died.

There is a lot of heart, and the passengers each have distinct personalities. Some you will connect with greatly. Others, maybe it won't hurt as much to say goodbye. I know that it hurt when I had to ferry my first spirit through the Everdoor, the passage to the afterlife. It also hurt when I had to say goodbye to Summer and Alice. I also know it will hurt when I have to say goodbye to the jolly and playful Atul. Especially because, as my passengers currently stand, I'll be stuck with a BUNCH of characters that I may find amusing, but I am not emotionally invested in. Astrid is alright, but a bit blunt and brazen. Giovanni is a cad who thinks he's so smooth that he'll never get in trouble for his womanizing. Bruce and Mickey are cartoonishly 1920s mobster muscle. Beverly just seems overly demanding. The only one I might be sad to see leave - as it stands - is Gustav, the eccentric museum curator. And that's mostly because he reminds me of Blathers from Animal Crossing. Gustav is even a bird of prey: taking on the form of a peregrine falcon when he joins your ship.

Oh! Yeah, I should mention, when you first meet them, all spirits are vaguely humanoid with their form hidden under cloaks. Once they join your ship, however, they transform into their "true" form: a humanoid animal in most cases (but not all. At least 2 passengers keep a purely animal form, one takes on a mythical creature's form, one is a swarm of butterflies in a vaguely humanoid form, and one takes on the form of a humanoid mushroom)

Anyway, the story of Spiritfarer is lovely. It's calm and soothing. You can go at your own pace, although, some of the passengers do get a little pushy if you haven't completed your task for them, calling out your name and then telling you "don't forget to ___". As you do help these spirits, however, you learn of their rough lives and the traumas they're trying to work through. One had a neglectful and emotionally distant father, so they picked up smoking to try to get him mad enough to pay attention... only for them to then die of lung cancer and still estranged from their father. Another speaks entirely in metaphor, but I'm pretty sure they also lost a long battle against cancer after watching their father suffer the same fate. Another suffered from dementia. While I haven't gotten far enough to know how this spirit died, I have also learned that one used to hide Jews during WWII.

As you play through the game, not only do you learn about these spirits, but you also learn why they are the first ones for you to ferry to the afterlife:

They are all connected to you somehow from back when you were all alive. They were either family, or found family, or former patients, etc. So you also get to unlock more of Stella's backstory the more you learn about your passengers.

Also, according to the notes on the Spiritfarer wiki, just about every spirit (if not every spirit) is based on a lost loved one of one of the developers. The whole game is just very chill. Very soothing. Very beautiful. But also, a lovely way to work through grief. I didn't realize when I got Spiritfarer how much of that last bit there was. Reminds me of a few years ago when I bought When the Past was Around. I thought it was a simple, gorgeous looking, point-and-click puzzle game love story that also talked about resparking a passion for a beloved hobby. The story is about that, but it's also about heartbreak and grief. Wasn't expecting that in that game either.

Anyway, if you want a vibe game that tackles the struggle of coming to terms with your mortality, and you don't mind a bunch of minigames, puzzles, platforming, and reading, I do highly recommend Spiritfarer. Added bonus? It's relatively cheap - running about $30 USD - and frequently goes on sale on top of that. It's also a relatively long game, taking an average of about 30hrs to play; longer if you're like me and get sidetracked easily doing the minigames. I'm something like 14hrs in and only about 37% done? So it averages to a $1 or less per hour of gameplay. Not too shabby, right?

Good lord. You'd think this blog post was sponsored between me gushing about Ray__C and NoPixel and me gushing about Spiritfarer... Let's move along, shall we?

Screenshot from The Muppet Movie

You may have noticed that I haven't talked about Scum and Villainy for a little bit. Yeeeeaaaaahhhhh.... About that.... My brain is just too fried to come up with more quests for the group. I feel a bit guilty that I didn't give everyone a heads up that the last session we had would be the last one for a WHILE, but... it is what it is. Add in the fact that I still feel like the character development of the crew isn't to the point where their End Game goals make sense yet (feels like I'm skipping difficulty levels). However, as far as their actual character sheets go? There's not much leveling they can still do. Unless I come up with a way to give them more things to level up, their experience points are going to cap out and mean nothing to them. So, there's a lot I need to sort through logistically with that.

In the meantime, I'd have to sort through those missions. Do I finally bring back those background story points? Is there something else they should be doing? The crew still hasn't met about half of the factions within the Procyon Sector the game takes place in. Do I start shoehorning those in???? I just couldn't sort any of it out.

So.... the crew and the game are both on hold. Instead, Hubby decided to tag in as Games Master. We haven't played Dungeons & Dragons since the pandemic hit, and we've all been itching to get back into that game. So Hubby offered to run a campaign for us. That way I can still work on SaV in the background, and I can tag us back in once I'm more prepared/Hubby is burnt out and needs a break. We can then keep tapping each other out.

As for his game, Hubby is doing a Game of Thrones-inspired homebrew. There's VERY limited magic, to the point where he rolled a percentile die to see how adapt we are with magic. Rozsavaria got something like a 94, so it's possible their character isn't even fully human. My character, on the other hand? Twenty-one.

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Yeah. She can't even handle slight-of-hand illusions. Woo! But.. since it was a 21, Hubby determined it was a lucky star, because... Black Jack! Eh. I'll take it.

Now, I had gone into character creation with two different concept ideas.

• Concept 1: reboot my gnome character Elymoxa as a human. She'd be a small (about 5ft) spitfire agent of chaos. She'd be a prankster with endless energy and would take very little seriously.
• Concept 2: the exact opposite of Moxie. She'd be larger (about 5'9") and muscular, and be basically the "mom friend" of the party. She'd be stoic and protective but will go into Mama Bear Mode if provoked enough.

I rolled to choose, and got Mama Bear. Cool. Now that I had my concept, it was time to answer Hubby's questionnaire!

He discovered this Mother of All Character Questionnaires while prepping his world build. He was able to whittle down the 383 questions to about 160 or so. Still a LOT and it still kept me about 3 hours to answer the questions. Even then, I had to skip over about 45 questions because I didn't know my character enough yet.

Fun little side note: I have decided to answer as many questions in that questionnaire as I can for each of my OCs. It will be QUITE the undertaking, but it might be fun. A way to get back into the heads of my OCs. I also didn't realize how MANY I have. I have five D&D characters: Amara, Jolene, Arianna Snow (an older character I haven't thought about in a while), Kriv (my dragonborn I played in Hubby's last game), and now my new D&D character for this campaign. Then there's the 3 X-Future girls: Lia, Willow, and Trish. Then the characters from my first attempt at NaNoWriMo: Connor and Natalie. The characters from the urban fantasy story I wrote for Ronoxym: Colton and Zetelica. Finally, my genderqueer OC that I was going to use for a couple of different RPGs, but never got around to really doing so: Artemis. This isn't including other D&D characters I've played once or twice, my vampire characters for the Vampire: The Masquerade rpg, or other such one-off characters.

Anyway, back to the D&D campaign Hubby's about to run. The concept is that we all start as NPC classes; our characters are not yet adventurers. As we roleplay he will unlock possible player classes based on how we play. The questionnaires also helped us sort out our characters and unlocked our initial class options. Based on my answers, I can either keep my character as an NPC or start her as (1) a Fighter, (2) a Cleric of the Mask (god of Death), or (3) a Cleric of the Candle (god of Life)... because "haha... the Luisa-clone gets her powers from a candle...". I debated keeping her an NPC class. The personality I gave her didn't seem to quiiiiite fit with Fighter (although I was kinda leaning that way), and Quarthix's character was already going Fighter anyway. Her biggest fear is death (specifically, a loved one's death), so being a cleric of the God of Death just didn't feel right. Not yet anyway. I may still go that route with her, but she'd need to work her way there. Cleric of the God of Life feels right, but I don't know if she'd be full-on cleric when she meets up with everyone else. Maybe she finally left home in hopes of becoming a cleric??? I'm hoping to sort that out more while building the official character sheet this weekend.

Going back to the option to be a Cleric of the Mask, and the reason why Hubby offered it in the first place. Hubby created a 9-god pantheon, and then put the name of each deity on separate index card. While we were answering our questionnaires, he had us pick two of the cards at random and choose one. I can't recall what both options were for me, but out of the two, I had decided on the God of Death because the other option wasn't even remotely close to something that could relate to my character. So... my character, who fears death, is ironically born under the Death zodiac sign, essentially. Neat. I love me my contradictory characters.

So, without further ado: my newest character.

Meet Aubrianne Zani. She's vaguely based off of Luisa Madrigal from Encanto (one of the reasons Hubby offered Cleric of the Candle... ha...), Brienne of Tarth from Game of Thrones, and the version of Link you play as in the game Twilight Princess. She's the eldest of 5 surviving children (two younger siblings died early in childhood), and took on a maternal role to help her mother with her younger siblings. She's super close with her eldest brother (the 2nd child) who also took on a paternal role with watching the younger siblings. She's stoic and extremely protective. She has no problem with killing animals for food or survival (self-defense), but hates the idea of harming a human and will attempt to do as little damage as possible to end a conflict. Also, much like Luisa and Link, she's a people pleaser and very community-oriented. So she does all she can to do odd-jobs around the town to help out the villagers. Move some logs before winter sets in? On it. Help raise a barn? No problem. Wrestle loose goats to the ground until the farmer can wrangle them? I gotchu. Knock out the highway men trying to rob the town? No need to even ask!

By the way, another fun note about Aubrianne? While prepping for character creation, I went to FantasyNameGenerators.com and grabbed 8 randomly generated names that I thought could work with my "Mom Friend" concept. The name options were:

Selray	Zephifra	Koreena
Nareen	Tavra	Zani
Lalnah	Aubrianne

I had read off my table to the other players to see which name would be easiest for them to remember and/or which one they thought best fit my character design. Quarthix picked Zani because it would be the easiest for him to remember. Rozsavaria picked either Selray or Aubrianne. Since each of those names was in a different column (as shown above), I rolled to see which column to pick from, and ended up with the second column. So, Aubrianne it was. It wasn't until I went to bed that night did I realize, "Waaaaait a minute! Aubrianne is loosely based off of Brienne of Tarth! Dangit! I basically gave her the same name!"

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Ah, well... I figured her nicknames growing up would be Bri, Aubrey, Annie, or just her last name: Zani (yeah, since it was the easiest one for Quarthix, I figured I'd just make it her surname). The players could call her any of those names, and maybe the whole Brienne of Tarth thing won't be as noticeable....

Eh. We'll see how this goes. We're hoping to get our first session in on July 3rd!

Aaaaaand this blog post is creeping up on the 30min-read mark (and it's almost midnight!!!!), so I should probably wrap things up.

No one commented on my last few posts, so I still have no exterior input on the font change. I'm giving Mali a second month in a row. I THINK I like this one the best, but I'm still unsure. I'm still very much open to input. You have Mali this month and last month, Kalam in April, and Josefin Sans back in March. Please, feel free to comment below on which font works best for you. Or, should I go back to the Coming Soon font that I have used for the past five years or so?

Finally, let's all give my mom a huge congratulations! She's up to 28years of being declared cancer free! Happy anniversary, Mom! Keep going strong!

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Edited by LycoRogue

Also, for all of my American readers, happy Independence Day!

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Alright, everyone. Until next time!

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