In Her Absence

In an instant, everything changed.

She pleaded to stay, to no avail.

And just like that, she was gone. Yves was alone with the two boys and nothing but his memories of how lovely she had been.

His last sculpture, a wine rack, a gift for her, sat unfinished in his studio.

Jean's grief made visible.

Jean, the eldest son, took it especially hard. He painted this, a tombstone with a single flower, the day after she died. Instead of selling it to supplement their very short income, Yves kept it and hung it in the bedroom he once shared with Cora. It was a painful reminder, and more than once I saw him standing weakly before it, crying softly.

Jean even dreamed of the fire.

Yves, mourning in the midst of her garden.

The empty chair where she used to sit.

The finished wine rack.

 Eventually, he finished the rack. What had been intended as a gift for her was now sold. The struggling family needed money more than sentimentality. That being said, there was actually very little time for him to work, for the house still needed managing, and there was Rickard the toddler, who thankfully was too young to understand what had happened, or why his father and older brother were miserable.

Her beloved garden fell into ruin

 Despite his best efforts, Yves didn't have the skill with the earth his wife had, and her garden withered and died. Ironically, Life Plants, laden with fruit, sat unharvested, a painful reminder of what had been snatched from the home. Not that they could've saved her. I like to imagine, though, that they could.

His mother?

Much like his father, Jean threw himself into his work, painting almost tirelessly in between school and homework. His skill advanced quickly, and soon he became the primary source of (albeit meager) income for the family, as Yves was still too grief-stricken to do much more other than care for Rickard and perform the most basic of survival functions.

So, Jean painted.

And painted. I'd like to think the greenery was homage to Cora.

And painted. He was getting better.

Much better.

Incredibly better. Yves kept this one instead of selling it.

Yves noticing his son's talent. Not sure if that's admiration or jealousy on his face.

Rickard's birthday celebration

Letting the professionals handle it.

 

Rickard aged up, a quiet affair, a chair for Cora conspicuously empty. It was one of the most mirthless birthdays I'd ever witnessed.

The dishwasher broke again, but this time I stepped in and called a repairman. I was not leaving these two boys complete orphans.

Was this his representation of his wife?

 

Life went on, and fall moved into winter. Yves gradually found time for sculpting, but his grief still consumed him. He began sculpting the same statue, over and over again, no matter what material. I watched, partly in horror, partly in sadness, but mostly in morbid curiosity. When I play Sims I make a few decisions for them, but for the most part I leave them to their own devices to see what they'll do.  I didn't let him keep any of these statues, though. I was not about to let his grief cripple his ability to provide for his family.

The house, quiet, lonely, buried in snow.

Jean's work continued to mature as he aged.

 Because Yves was a workaholic, his lack of progress and income began to seriously gnaw at him. He had just aged from young adult to full adult, and with that came the Mid-life Crisis that plagues some sims, particularly those who aren't feeling particularly fulfilled.

His older son Jean had just aged into a teen, and although Jean was doing most of the heavy lifting in regards to keeping the family afloat financially, Yves had a crazy idea, and per my policy of letting them do their thing, I let him do his thing. Was this his attempt at regaining some semblance of control over his life? Was he trying to free himself of other responsibilities so he could focus on his work? Was he trying to give the boys a better environment so he could heal himself for a while? I don't know. I just watched while he did it, and I might've been a little sad. I don't know what his reasons were, I just know this was a very sad, lonely little family.

Placing the call in the bathroom like a coward.

He sent them to boarding school.  I don't know if he didn't want the boys to hear what he was planning, or if maybe he just didn't want to see their faces, but he placed the calls in the bathroom. I watched, wanting to stop but knowing this was their story.

The taxis arrived one cold winter's morning, early. The boys didn't even have time to finish their breakfast before they were whisked away to separate schools. He wasn't even allowing them to go to the same one, to have each other. I began to wonder if he was some kind of villain, if he was not the romantic artist I'd first taken him for. Or had the loss of Cora simply ruined his vision of the world?

Jean's room, now empty.

Yves, dining alone at that sad little table.

 He threw himself into his work, now without any 'distractions' or responsibilities. I had never seen a sim work so hard without complaining. He made, over the next two weeks, probably twelve or thirteen different sculptures. He sold them all, the household finances were finally in order. He furnished the upstairs, finally, filling out all the blank spaces he and Cora had intended to fill together. The boys occasionally called or sent letters; he never called back.

And quietly, just as the money improved, so did his 'lifetime happiness.' Normally I use the points to purchase something that will benefit their careers or make life easier, but this time, he had way more points than they usually did. I didn't even know what to do with them, so I picked a reward I'd never used before: the Dusty Old Lamp.

I don't know which expansion it's attached to, I guess you could google it if you're curious. All I know is it appeared in his inventory, and I set it on a side table for several days before I had the courage to get him to inspect the thing.

He did, a genie appeared, and I don't even recall what was on the rest of the list, because all I saw was one thing - one thing that would surely put everything back the way it needed to be. The one thing that would heal this poor broken family.

And so it was, in the middle of winter, Yves' cold, broken heart, finally healed.

And just like that, she was back.

The End of It All

My Sims Legacy game is irreparably glitched. Weird things keep happening, and I feel I am moments away from a corrupted save message. I am just going to end it here, as much as that pains me.

And yes, just like that, it's over.

Maybe one day I will pick up where I left off, with some family in a sort of pseudo-resemblance to the current generation (13? 15? I lost count) and pretend nothing bad happened.

The Problem with Color

Playing with color groupings. Also a horse.

I don't normally feel my age. When you've been playing a video game for years, especially if it's one that updates and improves continuously, then it's hard sometimes to feel the age of the game, either.

I'd been saying for years now that stained glass was high on my wishlist for Minecraft. It was something I was sure would take my Masterwork, my cathedral, to the next level.

Random colors hooray!

He wanted Avengers windows.

Now that I finally have it, I'm not quite sure what to do with it. I flew to my cathedral, eager to redo the existing windows and add new ones to the unfinished portions. Too bad I can't make little strips and maybe make a more intricate window on a smaller scale. Maybe that would solve my dilemma. The huge color blocks end up either looking gaudy or childish to me.

A friend and I played around with color groups and patterns, and we could figure out something that would work - or so we thought.  In the end, I wasn't happy with any of it.

Turns out patterning color is much much harder than just patterning windows with clear glass. At least with clear glass all you have to figure out is what shapes you want. Now - it's - I don't know how to put it, other than I feel like some film director during the transition from black and white films to technicolor. What once did not matter much (if at all) now matters a lot. 

I proceeded to Google screenshots of others' Minecraft creations, to get ideas. Well, as it turns out, the good news is that it is perfectly reasonable to be able to produce beautifully patterned windows. The bad news? To get a decent look, your window needs to be about 100 blocks high. Not gonna happen with this one. My large rose window at the entrance of the church doesn't even approach that height, I don't think. Honestly, I never really counted. 

I'm beginning to think I like the cathedral as it is, with just the clear glass, or else with just a smattering of color (which you can barely make out on the rose window at the far end of the room in the bottom screenie). It's funny how long I wanted it, asked for it, and now that I have it, I don't know what to do with it.

It's coming along, at least.

An RP Experiment: One Lonely Burglar, Seeking Companionship

This is Gonff. Aside from being my first male character in an mmo (heck, in any game where I had a choice), he is something of an experiment for me. I will be rp-ing this poor fellow as hardcore as I can. That means a few very distinct things:

1. He will walk everywhere, unless he has a justified reason to run.

2. If he manages to acquire a horse, he will probably walk the horse for the most part, as you can't run a horse like a race car. It'll collapse.

3. He will only do his adventuring during the day, unless his activities necessitate nocturnal behavior.

4. If, in the course of his adventures, he dies, then he is dead. Honestly, this is the one that scares me the most. I kind of want to run to my friends and see if I can wrangle up a pocket healer, but I don't know how that would fit into his character.

5. He must eat something at least once a day, and I don't mean while standing in front of an orc. He has to sit down, make a camp, and eat. While we are on the subject of making camp, let's talk about resting. He has to rest once at least every couple of in-game days - whether at night or during the day, it does not matter, but for an acceptable length of time. Enough to correlate with several hours sleep in the real world.

6. No use of global chat channels. He doesn't have a palantir, y'all.

7. No transferring of equipment or gold between existing characters on the same account.

8. No knowing things he doesn't know. He doesn't know people's names until they introduce themselves, there are no levels, etc.

9. In-game dialogue must be short and to the point, much like normal conversation. No rambling monologues or story-telling (unless he is asked to tell a story, of course).

10. ALWAYS STAY IN CHARACTER. No brackets, no OOC clarification, nothing.  If it's not in character, it does not come out of his mouth.

This character is going to need a lot of patience. Probably a good bit of planning and a quick hand on the HIPS skill if he's to survive. It'd be great to have a buddy on this adventure, one willing to RP it out with me. Any takers? He's on Landroval.  Send me a message and let's get going!

An Update on the Masterwork

I've been working more lately on the cathedral I started ages ago in Minecraft, and I'm finally making some definable progress after months of nothing. Kind of like writer's block, only with, well, pixelated blocks. I tried to take this screenshot from the same location as the original shot in one of my earlier posts when I first came up with the idea for the cathedral, but I've since torn that platform down so it was more of a guesstimate.

You can see I've started to define the roof, and although it's hard to tell, a lot of progress has been made on the walls in the nave and aisles, and I put in a huge rose window at the front entrance. It's actually kind of hard to tell the scale of this thing from this screenshot, but I wish you could see it in person and walk around in it. It's so much more inspiring now that it's so much closer to being finished, I feel more and more motivated to press onward the more I add to it. Hands down it's the most ambitious project in Minecraft I've ever taken on before. The wall defining the border of the kingdom was huge, I'll admit, but it was, well, just a wall. It's not that challenging. This though, this is taking thought and planning and trial and error and a little bit of math even. Not my strongest suit.

The project at sunrise.

The above picture is purely to attempt to give you a sense of scale, but then I suppose if you know anything at all about Minecraft you'll be able to see how huge it is. Granted, it's not the greatest or most impressive thing out there, especially if you do a youtube search with choice phrases such as 'epic minecraft cathedral' but I'm still pretty proud of it. Maybe once I finish it, it won't be such an eyesore and Squid won't have a reason to complain about the half-finished building on the edge of her backyard.

I also lost the link to whatever real-life cathedral I was modeling this after, so it's completely out of my head at this point. +5 to creativity, please? One thing that really pleases me about building this is how I've come up with some new ideas and even stolen some building techniques from watching the videos of others on youtube. Did you know you could place stairs upside down? I do know, and I'm thoroughly exploiting the technique in my flying buttresses. I still wish we could put stained glass in our windows, but as I was talking with a friend the other day, the tech to implement that would be huge, and probably not something Notch would want to add, since Minecraft can be a demanding program to run anyways, at least on my machine.

Hrmmm, after going back and looking at older posts, I was apparently modeling this thing after the Metz. Mine looks nothing like it. Oh well. I'll keep trudging merrily along. /whistleahappytune

Deed-mongerer

Yes, I know he's not emoting in this shot.

So if any of you have been reading this for a long time, and I pity you if you have, you may remember a post about the new meta-deed mounts. There were three deeds, and the other day, I finally finished all three of them. I have my Angmar meta-deed done, my Moria one, and just now, my Lothlorien one. So now, I has a shiny white goat as a reward. Oh, and I treated myself and bought one of the mounted emotes from the store.

Of course, it took me so long to finish all three that by now they have other meta-deeds out. One for a Mirkwood horse, one for an Ost Dunhoth horse, and I think there's an Isengard one as well. Oh well. Something else to keep me on the perpetual grind, I suppose.

Thing 75: Genetic Musings of the Desultory Kind.

As part of the Day Zero Project, one of the things on my list is to play through a family on Sims 3 ... but through 20 generations. Most of my progress with the DZP will be tracked through my other blog,  The Desultory Housewife, but as this was a goal concerning games I felt it was more fitting to post about it here.

But back to the goal. 20 generations. That is a lot of game time in the Sims 3. My record is only eight generations, and even that was trying my patience. For the record, I am keeping their lifespans set to normal, with only slight extensions on the sliders for adulthood. I am not a point keeper for legacy challenges, and I am not using any cheats. The family I've chosen for the challenge, so far, hasn't reached that boring point, but that's probably only because everyone is diverse enough that I'm able to keep my interest up and not get bored.

 The founder, Duncan Polk, started with a big empty lot, no money, a nothing but a dream. His temporary wife (who broke his heart and left him with two small children) almost broke that dream, but he pulled through, becoming a great scientist and thinker, and has now passed the torch on to his son and heir so that he can rest peacefully in that great neighborhood in the sky.

Meebo, gen2

His son Meebo is a fantastic gardener, and most of the family's income is derived from the sale of his produce. I realized while playing this sim that the gardener career becomes exponentially more and more difficult to level, because each level requires you to pretty much reach what you've made cumulatively in sales already.  50k worth of vegetables is a lot of times spent in the dirt.

Lana, gen2

Here is Meebo's sister, Lana. She's a writer and a painter, and I'm debating moving her out of the house as it's getting a bit full. Turns out royalties from books are a great way to make money, so between the seven or so books she's written and the occasional painting, she proves to be a good asset to the family's bank account, which in a house as large as theirs, is a very very good thing. There's always something broken or something that needs remodeling. Yes, I said it. NEEDS remodeling. Because, you know, that wall just has to go.

Kesha, gen2; and Pascal, gen3

Next are Meebo's wife and son-in-law, Kesha and Pascal. Kesha was Meebo's highschool sweetheart, and I was thrilled when I was able to get them to agree to marriage. Pascal came over from France, and while he's in the military now, his dream is to one day have a thriving nectary. They both enjoy pursuits of the mind, so they often play chess together on fine summer days (which, coincidentally enough, it is always a fine summer day in Appaloosa).

Mio, gen3

Meebo has two daughters. The eldest, Mio, is married to Pascal, and is a great equestrian. Her two horses, Cameo, and Cascade's First Cameo, are both prize winners, and she spends every day training them to be better racers and jumpers. Here we see her with Cascade's First when she was just a little filly.  It's actually kind of a good thing that the house is full right now and Mio can't have any children with Pascal, because the horses are a handful! One of the interesting things I noticed with Mio is that genetic traits in the Sims 3 can skip a generation. I gave Duncan yellow eyes as a genetic marker, just to see how it was passed down, and while it skipped Meebo, Mio has them. It looks like my Sims are doomed to be blondes though, as Meebo got his mother's blonde hair, and Kesha is blonde, and Mio and Satele are both blonde as well. Pascal is a brunette, so maybe there is hope yet for some darker hair, but I'm pretty sure Duncan's spitfire red hair, which only Lana seems to have inherited, will be lost forever. Mio will be the next heir, and the family name also changed to Morel with her marriage to Pascal. No more Polk :(

Satele, gen3

Meebo's younger daughter is Satele. She's only in grade school right now, but one day she hopes to be a great martial artist and athlete. Here we see her doing her homework under the watchful gaze of her grandfather's portrait. She is a dedicated student, and if I'm able to keep her in the house and not move her out to make room for heirs I'll probably send her on adventures overseas to participate in martial arts tournaments and collect rare treasures. Maybe. Don't know. She's kind of whiny right now, so she's getting on my nerves.

They also have a dog and a cat, Tiffany the beagle and Gilbert the cat. Gilbert is getting pretty up there in age, and I think he might go to be with Duncan soon. Tiffany is a proud hunter, and brings home jewels and bones and rare stones every day.

I will probably post an update once I get to generation 6 or something like that. Hopefully my save won't corrupt or anything.

You mean I actually have to work for it?

I'd forgotten how much work a festival in lotro can be, if you are as obsessive about collecting everything as I am.

Wait, let me back up.

A year or so ago, I decided to get both my Inn League and Ale Association standings to kindred. Getting both to kindred takes a good deal more work than just doing one or the other, as doing one will give you negative rep with the other. It was only through a delicate balancing act and several weeks of grinding dedication that I managed it.

By the time I was there, I had a couple stacks of the barter tokens for each faction. At first they seemed useless, but as Indy is unable to throw anything away, I shoved them in the vault and forgot about them. Until, that is, at the next festival, when I saw that these tokens could be traded on a 1:3 ratio for any festival token of your choice.

Suddenly, acquiring all those festival cosmetics and mounts was a piece of cake. I no longer had to grind out the quests and deeds to get tokens. Festival's started today? Okay, go to the vault, pull out a few Inn League or Ale Association tokens, turn them in for the appropriate festival tokens, aquire goods, done. That was it. I could usually accomplish all my festing in the space of five minutes, unless there was a new deed I wanted to finish.

Well, the Yulefest started last week, but due to the release of SW:TOR, I've been distracted. I just decided to log onto lotro today, and what would you know, but I'm all out of those IL and AA tokens.

So now, to acquire my new Yulehorse, I had to actually run quests, which isn't all bad since I still hadn't finished my Feast-beast title from last year, and there is a new snowman building quest/deed thingie. Thank goodness the festival will run until Jan 30th, because it'll probably take several days for me to get all the other cosmetics.

At least the new Yulehorse isn't that bad looking. Don't know what's on his head, but the rest of it looks good.

Anti-climactic

  I am going to start out with a warning: This Follows No Logical Order. If you are looking for a coherent post, do not even attempt to read this.

So here it is folks, the 100th post. I've been putting it off for a while, because I couldn't find something worthy enough of what I thought, in my own little head, the 100th post should be. Should I post about LotRO? Sims 3? Prince of Persia? Some other game I've never posted about? What about D&D? That made a promising couple of appearances, right? I even took some screenshots of a few games in preparation of this momentous post in preparation (I was trying to map out my post, but it never panned out. I could throw them all at you, without any context. In fact, I'll do that, to confuse those readers who only scan).

In all fairness, I suppose I'm having a hard time coming up with something to post because, in a way, I've been reconsidering my gaming habits as of late. Most of you mature people, especially my father, will probably rejoice at that statement. Its not that games have lost any of their appeal. Quite the opposite. They still intrigue me, but with work and becoming an 'adult' (blech, as if anyone ever wants to be one of those), my free hours are becoming increasingly precious, and when the choice comes between gaming and taking care of housework (because, newsflash, owning a house takes much more sweat equity than an apartment), unfortunately, housework has been winning as of late. Except today, when the weed-eater wouldn't start, so no yardwork for me today yay!


I'm also finding that my eyesight is getting older at a frustratingly exponential rate, and reading a book is much less stressful than raiding. I am the last member of my immediate blood family who does not have some sort of corrective eye wear, and the stubborn part of me refuses to get my eyes checked out of the fear that I might need something and my bastion of perfect eyesight will crumble away. Not sure if bastion was the right word there. 

 There's also the whole, unspoken but totally felt every day, nagging guilty feeling known as, I-was-an-English-major-so-I'm-obligated-to-read-books thing. I am running out of unread books on my shelf. This is a good thing? That, and it's NaNoWriMo. Not that November's ever helped before. Haven't finished a thing yet. Yes, I am writing a book. Slowly. Every year I promise I will have a book done by the next Christmas. It never happens. I am a liar, I suppose. Not that anyone cares. If anyone's still reading at this point I applaud you for for your persistence, and mourn the thought that if this is entertaining to you, you are more starved than I.

Thunderpig!

Regardless, I am still a gamer, there is no doubt about that (or there might be, and perhaps this post, this very blog, is nothing but my own attempt to self-validate a worthless, time-consuming and destructive habit). It is the nature of life, I suppose, to move away from things, to change and grow and move forward. Am I becoming one of those gasp! casual gamers? Stars above forbid. Heaven knows I'd be healthier if I wasn't convincing myself that sitting before a computer for multiple hours a day was a good thing. My rear end is testament to that, if nothing else gave it away before now. I have gained twenty pounds since my wedding day, and looking back, I know exactly what did it. Heck, I knew what was doing it as it was happening. I was knowingly being self-destructive. While I may not be any heavier than I have ever been (I am at my top weight, but I've been here lots of times), the thought that I can do better, I'm just not, is frustrating.

However, with Sims 3 taking up more of my gaming time as of late than the dungeons of LotRO, and with DnD relegated to a once-a-month-if-that thing, and with console gaming pretty much non-existent out of courtesy to my husband, and Lore-mastering with Squid dropping dramatically due to her college schedule, I find myself with little other than casual games left to fill the tiny gaps in free time that beg for entertainment. Especially since the book I'm struggling through at the moment keeps putting me to sleep. Why is it always the fifth book in a series that is the most boring???

Thoughts of starting a family are beginning to loom on the horizon, and with those thoughts come conflicting reports. Most people with children agree that with babies comes absolutely zero time for video-games, but a few have said that nap-time and nursing make for the perfect time to raid. Erm, who is right? Picturing myself breast-feeding while raiding is awkward.

I have always wanted to picture myself, my future self, as some sort of bohemian earth-mother with a lush garden in a wild, woodsy setting and naked children romping about in the yard, chasing each other with sticks. That dream doesn't leave much room for any type of video games, whether raider or casual. Honestly, how many women could get up in the morning, practice some yoga, indulge in a quiet cup of tea, cook breakfast for the family, spend time each day taking care of them and the house (which includes the never-ending mountain of laundry, which has a daily respawn), and then end each day with 3+ hours of gaming? I don't believe there are enough hours in the day. Something has to give. I just wish it wasn't this.

Perhaps that's why coming to grips with starting a family is beginning to wear on me. I want children, I believe God put me on this earth to be a mother, (now for the inevitable-) but, I also enjoy gaming far too much to simply drop it. Is it an addiction? I know many games are developed and marketed for their addictiveness, usually because continuing to play them also requires that you continue to pay for them.



Maybe this is me learning to deal with my stupid sense of leet-ness. For a long time, I was a casual gamer in full, and the thought of stepping into a raid was some lofty, unattainable thing. Then I was introduced into raiding by a very dear friend, and became aware of how much of the game I was missing. I also, as a by-product, learned my class better. Then, over time, I found myself looking down on people who did not raid. "Look at them, ewww. The soloers. The casuals. The non-raiders." (S'funny, I never said "Eww, the rp-ers.") Now I find myself without time, even without children, and I am being forced back into solo/casual mmo-ing. I am what I once was, and what I, more recently, placed myself above. Is this being put in my place?

I am ending my hundredth post here. No climax, no point, no solid ending. Sorry to disappoint.

Also sorry that you were expecting something in the first place.


 

Spring Steed and giant flowers

That is all.

A Day with the Loremasters: Horse Envy and Menial Labor

So Squid and I began work on Volume III the other day, and it didn't exactly begin as epicly as the other volumes had. It was all menial labor - as in the screenie to the right, where I am toting pumpkins for Butterbur. Silly innkeeper can tote his own pumpkins for all I care. We were also required to tote various other produce, but I didn't feel the need to record each and every step of the way, as soon after I finished playing carry-all, I met up with sis in the common room of the Pony for a pint before we headed out.
Silly elf was finding Barliman's benches way too comfortable and refused to move for a while. I felt the need to scold her while she took an inordinately long afk. I took this time to notice, as if for the first time, the messy state of the Pony. You'd think that all that time I spent carrying vegetables that the proprietor could at least wipe down a table or right a stool or something. Anything. But no, it's all a mess, and it's been a mess, and it will always be a mess, and all Butterbur will do is stand there saying "So much to do!". You're telling me. Go do some of it, you lazy innkeeper bum.



After Squid finally decided to move, we set off for the northern edge of Bree, where we had to fight off a ruffian who had been insulting Squid's sabercat, Ronon. Ronon took great joy in beating the tar out of this ruffian, as did Squid. Except she called down fire and lightning, like Taborlin the Great (sorry, had to put that in there) and he ran off squealing, much like a little piglet. Excuse my big head in this screenie, but I was awestruck by how awesome Lightning Storm looks when seen from the third person. I usually don't get that sort of view.

Then, Squid decided she needed to show off her newest horse, the Steed of Night. She managed to acquire it the day before it left the Lotro Store (forever?) and made no attempt at hiding the fact that she had a horse I did not. I have to admit, it's a nice looking horse, moreso when I don't have one myself. Le sigh.

One day I will have the most amazing horse in the game. I just need to decide which horse that is first.