A Look Back At…

Given the fact that this will most likely be my last post before the end of 2018, I wanted to do something that totally wasn’t inspired by the weird little “Your Year in Review” video thing that has been going around for like the past week or so on Facebook.  At the beginning of this year I published a post entitled “An Agenda” and kind of gave a vague breakdown of what I wanted to do this year.  I am going to use this post to give an update on some of the stuff I talked about in that post and a few other things that I have managed to accomplish this year.

Where do I start?  Well, let’s start with the big thing and something that has happened in the past two months.  I have mentioned in numerous posts prior to this one that I have always wanted to go to college.  I think in one post last year I may have even outlined my current plans for college at that time.  Since then those plans have changed.  “How much?”, you may wonder.  I was originally wanting to go into a Communications major but now I have changed that to Business Administration.  The other school I was looking at going to did offer a degree program in business administration, but I did a bit more searching and found one that had cheaper tuition rates.  This was a plus because it also put into consideration the fact I could start now.  After that, I began the process of applying and after doing that and waiting…and waiting…and waiting, then after calling to check on my application I found out that I was accepted.  So yes, I am going to finally accomplish one thing I have been dreaming of doing since half way through high school and will be going to college.  Where at?  Well, it is going to be through eVersity which is part of the University of Arkansas system and also part of it is through the University of Arkansas-Monticello.  I’ll be starting the first full week of January and I am ready to begin that journey.  As I mentioned above, I’ve been wanting to do this since high school and there have been times where I have thought it wouldn’t be possible for me to go.  I’m equal parts excited and nervous as one would expect, but I think the closer I get towards the start date the more the needle leans towards the excited side.  If you were using some sort of measuring device that has a needle and two equally divided sides to it that is…  I also haven’t entirely given up on the idea of doing something history/museum related.  It has been relegated to the back burner/possible dream pile, but not completely forgotten.

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“A Settlement Needs Your Help…”

Yes, that means I am playing Fallout 4 again.  The hype of Fallout 76 got to me to say the least and I’m sure the fact that a few days before I started playing again I went down a YouTube rabbit hole of “Things to do in Fallout 4 after you beat the main storyline” didn’t help either.  In my defense though, there are a lot of things I didn’t know you could do in the game.  Instead of talking mostly about what I want to play as I did in my previous post, I am actually going to be talking about what I have been playing…and maybe some other random stuff thrown in too.

First, I want to start with some of that random stuff.  Back in March I recounted the experience I had with the first month or so of being a new member within the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA).  It’s been about five, almost six, months since I first joined and I am still enjoying it.  I haven’t been able to attend any other events other than the one mentioned in the previously linked post, but there was one thing I was able to do in the time since then.  What was that thing you might be wondering?  Well that was to get authorized as a rapier fighter.  Doing so allows me to participate in tournaments at events if they have any, or if my local group needs fighters for a demo they are doing I can volunteer for that.  In order to authorize I had to go to a regional practice that was being held a couple hours away, because the authorizing marshals cannot be from your local group.  The rest of the authorization consisted of me answering a few questions about the rules and a few bouts to show I knew enough about the techniques to do them safely and properly.  I’m not going to lie and say that I wasn’t nervous about doing all of this because it was something I never had done before and despite having trained and practiced with the other fighters in my local Shire, I had little confidence in my own ability.  That all said, the actual authorization was rather easy in my opinion…the worst part was hoping my mask would pass inspection since it was on the bigger side…and no, I don’t have a big head either…though that might depend on who you ask.

In the time since I have started practicing and even more so after getting authorized, I have really enjoyed fighting.  Which isn’t something I ever expected to say, or type…  Since I am someone who enjoys learning new things I obviously have enjoyed learning the techniques used in Italian style rapier.  What has also been just as enjoyable has been the rabbit hole that has been YouTube, various Facebook pages and groups all related to the discussion of fighting techniques.  While reading the conversations and watching the varying YouTube videos I quickly learned that, yes there is a proper way to do a specific technique, but yet people have found variations of that technique as well.  I know, it’s weird but I find it really interesting how there are so many different ideas on how far one should actually lunge forward.  So yes, to say I have really enjoyed this might very well be an understatement.

Post E3-pocalypse

I know, I know…E3-pocalypse isn’t really a thing.  However, two weeks ago marked the time of year when the Electronic Entertainment Expo (appropriately abbreviated as, well, E3) happens.  During that time lots of stuff happens in terms of game announcements, reveals for plans for currently released games, and there has even been a console or two shown off in the past.  It gets everyone who watches it and plays video games a bunch of cool new things to look forward to for about the next year.  I have always enjoyed this time of year and I was even enjoying it more when I would be tasked with covering what I could of it for Inside View Gaming.  It was crazy, both in terms of how busy myself and the rest of the team would be, but also how fun and exciting it was getting to see what all of the awesome game developers were creating for us next.  This year was no different.

I’ll start by briefly saying this might be a semi-lengthy post because I’m going to give you my thoughts on some of the things that I am most excited for that was announced at E3 this year.  I will most likely go in the order of which conference I saw first…sadly skipping EA’s since I didn’t know it was on Saturday…  So essentially I’ll be starting with Microsoft’s, then over to Bethesda’s, then Ubisoft and their shenanigans, finally capping it off with the trailers I saw from Sony because I couldn’t watch their stream.

“What about Nintendo?”

Well, I’m going to be honest, I’m not a huge fan of Nintendo.  I may briefly talk about a few things that have piqued my interest but I will be focusing on mostly what I actually have seen myself and what I am most excited for.  I am also withholding from making a blatantly obvious “Nintedon’t” joke here.  It’s been a while since I have done any sort of long form writing related to E3 and the full day of rapid fire tweets I typically do during each conference don’t count.  This should be fun, so let’s get to it.

Quit Horsing Around

There is a hilarious back story for the title of this post…or at least it is hilarious to me, but either way I will divulge into the details of it like I always do.  It hasn’t quite been a month since my last post, especially when you consider the fact that we are still in the month of March, but a fair amount of stuff has happened in that time as well.  I’ve picked up two new games, Kingdom Come: Deliverance and Far Cry 5 and have managed to play them both a little.  Last week, some stranger by the name of FranticJ3 decided to show up at my house and stay for a week.  Magic and Borderlands shenanigans happened during this time.  A few other things have happened since my last post where I recount my experiences as a new person in the world of the SCA.  Like the fact I levelled up in real life.

To start, you will most likely see more of my nonsensical (at times) ramblings over here again.  Why is that?  Near the start of the month, the decision was made that Frantic Talks would be shutting down.  I must admit that it is sad to see it go, but the reasoning behind the decision is completely understandable in my mind.  If you do not look forward to doing something that is a hobby, then it is no longer a hobby anymore.  So with that said, any and all thoughts I have on a topic will now be posted here.  This also led me to do some thinking of my own and I have decided that, for a little while at least, I think I am going to just keep my writing to this place.  No, I am not going to be giving it up entirely; I just realized that while having a schedule to keep to for publishing stuff is nice, I enjoy writing at my own free will (obligatory Rush reference goes here) much more than I thought I did.  Plus it allows me to be more relaxed with my style and I can put in subtle (Read: stupid) references like the previous one that is a nod to the band Rush.  I have already started bringing back some of the more serious in tone posts with a topic in regards to my thoughts on homeschooling and I already have a few other things I want to talk about in a more serious manner.  The time I spent doing things for Frantic Talks was definitely fun and I enjoyed it.  It kept my writing skills from getting too rusty and it gave me the opportunity to do something I didn’t think I would ever do, host a podcast.

The Experiences of a New SCAdian

Now that I have fought with autocorrect and have forced it to quit changing “SCAdian” to “Scandinavian”…what exactly does that mysterious sounding word mean?  Before we get into that, I think some backstory is required in case you forgot or don’t follow me on the whole two social media sites I am on to understand exactly what I’m going on about.  In a post entitled “An Agenda” I discussed a few of the plans I have in store for new hobbies or interests I am picking up and a couple of other things to boot.  Near the end of the post I reference how I want to pick up sword fighting / HEMA and start learning how to actually do some of it.  I also mention how I was kicking around the idea of checking out my local group of the SCA.

The Scenic Route: “Glorious Dust Fit For Royalty”

See, didn’t I tell you I’d make sure this series continued on?  I finally got the chance to take some screenshots from Nessus in Destiny 2 a few weeks ago and am just now getting the chance to truly kick off this series.  But first, before I continue and start amazing* you with some cool screenshots, let’s briefly recap a few things.  I’ve been playing some games lately, mostly Skyrim, Destiny 2, and Assassin’s Creed: Origins.  Those have been a ton of fun to play and I’m sure I’ll have some more in-depth thoughts on some of them soon.  I’ve been continuing the writing and co-podcasting for Frantic Talks, this is where I say you should go check out the stuff we have over there…well, you should.  I was also able to finish one of my more serious posts and I’d like to draw your attention to it briefly.  It was about a topic that is “near and dear” to me for many reasons, and I have to admit that I quite enjoyed taking a minute to write about something in a serious tone.  Lastly, there are a few other things that I have hinted at that I plan on enacting upon soon.

*Disclaimer: Screenshots may or may not be amazing.  That is up to you to decide.

Alright, so let’s get on to the pretty pictures.  According to the folder I have all of these screenshots saved in, there are currently 49 files in said folder.  That should be enough, right?  When taking these shots, it was a different experience for me while playing Destiny and one I quite enjoyed.  To find the screenshots, I simply turned off the heads up display in the games’ settings menu and just started roaming through the game world.  It was kind of interesting when enemies started attacking me, but luckily I have the habit of always aiming down the sight to shoot at something so it wasn’t terribly difficult to overcome.  Dregs are scary, yo.  As I roamed through the game world, there was a lot more detail that I was noticing that I typically didn’t notice when playing through normally.  Why is that?  I have no idea really, if I had to guess it might be due to the fact that I’m more focused on going from objective to objective that I just simply don’t notice it.  Man, I should take my own advice.  However, that’s sort of the why I started this series; is to showcase some of the art that is present in the games we play on a regular basis but yet don’t notice so much.  Ok, now let’s get into the images.

The Homefront

It has been a while since I have put aside the chatter related to gaming and just simply talked about something…well, not related to gaming.  Of course, that is mainly due to a few reasons with the biggest being that in some of those posts of old I seemed to have come off as an angry person when giving my thoughts.  Instead of coming off as someone who is angry and rants 90% of the time, I decided to put the real world topics away and go back to talking about strictly gaming related topics.  By doing so, I typically couldn’t offend anyone.  Well…I could technically but it would take way more effort than I would have actually cared for.  It has also been a while since I have started a post with “It has been a while”.  Something else I did often in Ye Olden Days.

Anyways, with that introduction done, let me get to an important point before diving into my main point for this.  The first being that, while I know I said that I hate talking about myself in a more recent post (it’s still true for the most part) there is part of me that enjoys sharing more about the person behind the online moniker.  As I mentioned in some post somewhere there are real people behind these names.  So in some weird, mashup of a point of view; I don’t like talking about myself because it makes me feel like a self-centered person.  Yet, at the same time I’m perfectly ok with giving out a few scraps of info on how I think or some sneak peek into my life outside of games.