To my former drawing teacher: I tried to push the values! I only had a #2 pencil to work with. D:
Not going to do a full-on accountability check-in this week, just a general review of the week. I figure I’ll do the nuts-and-bolts accountability thing once a month, which strikes me as a good pace while still allowing me to write about other things.
I thought I’d talk about what I was playing, reading, and otherwise doing this week.
Playing
I’ve been getting close to finishing Horizon: Zero Dawn, so of course I got distracted and went off to play Bioshock 2 after reading enough TV Tropes about the series to want to play it. It’s been sucking up way too much of my time, but thankfully for its eating of my hours I believe the game is rather short. I’m about 10 or so hours into it and I think I’ve passed the halfway point of the single-player. I plan on playing the Minerva’s Den DLC, too, as I apparently bought it at some point. I think that’s only supposed to be 6 hours long, something like that.
I’d like to try a full review of it once I’m done, but so far Bioshock 2 is…fine. I’m enjoying myself well enough, and I do like Rapture as a setting. However this game isn’t as impressive as the first one, and doesn’t immerse me as well in the world. Many spaces feel more cramped than the original Bioshock, and Rapture loses its feeling of grandiosity as a result. The characters also aren’t quite as compelling. There’s been a few times where I can tell I’m supposed to feel betrayed, angry, etc. by a given character, but because it’s all based on backstory I only half-know about from the in-game sources, there’s not enough context there for the emotion to spark. The difficulty is also out of whack for me. I think I’m getting better, but TV Tropes is like “it’s a breeze” and that has…not been the case for me. It doesn’t help that stealth doesn’t work well as a playstyle, which makes sense given I’m playing a Big Daddy stomping around in an enormous diving suit but deprives me of the sorts of tactics I tend to be the best at.
Watching
I’ve gotten sucked into the X-Files, of all things. It’s a bit of a problem because I’ll keep watching when I should be doing other things. The writing seems to take a dive whenever psychic powers come up, but overall it’s solid and very enjoyable to watch. I can see why everyone was so hung up on the Scully/Mulder chemistry, because daaaaamn.
The guest stars are a treat, too. From a baby Seth Green to Don S. Davis to Bradley Whitford, it’s something of a constant “hey, it’s that guy!” for people I’ve seen in other 90s-00s shows.
I find the now-dated technology very charming. Tape-based answering machines, people not having cell phones, faxes, old MS-DOS (or Win 3.1) computers, all that good stuff. Makes me nostalgic for a world before constant emails, internet access, and always having a phone in your pocket. Especially because I never had the potential downside of being eaten by a mutant because I didn’t have my phone to call for help.
Reading
I finished The Narrow Road Between Desires by Patrick Rothfuss this week. Well, except for the author’s note. I’ll try to get through that tonight.
It’s very charming. I love Bast as a character in the other Kingkiller Chronicles books and getting some more insight into his day-to-day and the town as a whole made the world feel more real. Getting more details about what a creature such as him gets up to in a small town gave him depth, and Rothfuss being able to make real dramatic stakes that tap into Bast’s abilities while keeping the scope so limited was impressive.
I’m almost positive I read the original story, The Lightning Tree, a zillion years ago, but reading this I clearly didn’t remember any of the details so the overarching plot was novel and fresh. So that was nice, after reading the apologetic foreword where Rothfuss explains that it’s “just’ a rewrite of that short story and not something new.
The art by Nate Taylor is gorgeous, too. Great pen work.
Other
Other stuff! Let’s see here.
New habits/resolutions didn’t go well this week. My cough has stuck around, though it finally seems to be improving. I did test it and it isn’t covid, so that’s good. I also think I exacerbated it by going on a walk on a cold night to get my steps in, though. Oops. I’m ready for it to be over. It messed up my ability to work out, though I got a few in. It also made me rest overmuch, I think. Too much of an excuse to not do things I probably should have done anyway (albeit going slower to account for the cough).
Mental health wasn’t in a great spot, either, and I ended up feeling very directionless. I definitely wasted some days and many many hours on distractions. I need to figure out how to self-structure better. It’s been a struggle all throughout my unemployed time and it seems to be getting worse, which is incredibly frustrating.
I did talk to a few recruiters this last week, and I hear back from an interview in the next few days, so fingers crossed.
I managed some decent-ish art, too, as you can see above. I’m really much much better working from reference, my other sketch pages are embarrassingly bad. I can’t seem to make the jump yet to drawing what’s in my head. I know it’s a skill I need to build, but it’s frustrating all the same.
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That’s it for this week. I’m hoping the upcoming week will be better. Maybe I’ll even get the blog post in before Sunday! An enby can dream.
