Redwolf's Journal (continued)

Ah, what to say? I seem to be suffering a seasonally-enhanced melancholy. Less daylight has an effect. So do the holidays. As much as I am an introvert and find gatherings of people to be wearying, I have to acknowledge there's a sort of validation to it. Without interaction with others, life rapidly starts to feel pointless - or at least not rewarding. It's difficult to feel connected and involved in anything when you have trouble finding someone to even share thoughts and experiences with. And while holiday visits are often burdensome in my experience, they are enjoyable at the time and make such days feel special. And I do seem to have some psychological expectation for certain days being "special" in some way. When they aren't, even if they aren't bad , it makes them incredibly disappointing. That sucks. My WoW play has tapered off some, though I still like Legion and I'm occasionally surprised by the new Suramar content being released every week,

Living Story update! Yay! Total redirect from Primodus to Jormag! Okay... Braham being a bull-headed dick! Uhh... Taimi being Taimi! Yay! New Shiverpeaks zone! Okay, though not nearly as interesting as Bloodstone Fen was. Orca quaggan! I'm down with that, sure. So, the play experience is okay in general. I'm not a huge fan of the zone's torch-carrying mechanics. It's nowhere near as interesting as Bloodstone's gliding, and is a little annoying as a hotbar-replacing skill set that has limited uses. The story doubles down on elements of the dragon mythos that I'm not fond of, but that's to be expected at this point. It's painful to see Braham in a headlong rush, still mourning Eir. Aurene is cute, and provides some levity during the training missions at the beginning (though that slime maze gets a little annoying). For all that, what stands out most is the last instance. I get breaking up a walk through the caves with combat, but a couple waves of

I started, but never finished Pillars of Eternity , probably mostly because of how there's not enough motivation for the main struggle for most of the length of the game I had played. Tyranny , another game of very similar mechanical style, had a much stronger grip on me for all my initial play-through. The game style is still "old but functional." It looks good for what it is, at least, and sounds good with a decent amount of voiced lines, but still lotsof text. Where it truly shines, though, is in building up the setting. The world has been virtually conquered by Kyros' forces, with the last little region falling under official control in the prelude that helps define your character's history and establish ties with that corner of the world. Kyros him/herself is never on-screen, and even if you ask people Kyros' gender, you get evasive non-answers. The Overlord is a force in the background, not a character in the game. And that's fine. So, under this t

I don't particularly like talking politics, it's too inflammatory, but sometimes you have to say something... I don't know if writing/rambling some of this will help me get it out of my head or not. I'd really like to reduce the amount of headspace taken up by politics currently. I felt overdosed on it for the 2016 election cycle perhaps a year ago. It's just been so much, and everywhere. Yesterday, I felt a bit shell-shocked by the election. Now I'm moving on to acceptance. I'm only a little surprised, honestly - and only that because just about every poll source was off. Polls aside, though, it was at least 12 years ago that it became clear to me the USA is very polarized about some things, particularly presidents. And it was back in high school (when our student council president won after giving a speech that entirely consisted of referencing a Nintendo commercial of the time, as his name was Mario) that I decided politics was largely a popularity ga

Well... That was a thing that happened.

Marvel's done a real excellent job when I can look at a new movie of theirs and say it was enjoyable and without and major flaws, but not all that revolutionary within their cinematic universe. It does cement magic in a way that Thor danced around a few years ago (with him saying something like "I come from a realm where things you call magic and science are one"). Dr. Strange himself is sort of like a less over-the-top Tony Stark - snarky, self-centered, rich, and gifted, but not quite as inhumanly so. He doesn't have the same level of charisma that RDJ's Stark does, but is still fairly fun to root for and if the end of the movie is anything to go by, he might be undergoing transformation that Stark never really did. The visuals are good, though a little overdone in some cases. Note to self: Go back to watching 2D movies. I think the last 3D one I watched was Avatar, before I got glasses. With 3D glasses over those, some of the foreground/background stuff got d