Storm Ciara fails to destroy me

Up to Manchester and back for a funeral this weekend (my better half's older grandmother, who'd been on the way out for a couple of years; still deeply sad but in many ways a relief). Deeply odd to be surrounded by her cousins from that side. It's been eleven years and the last time I was feeling profoundly awkward because I met them all at a party and, forgive me, if there ain't games at a party I struggle to people at them. With all those years between us I thought it'd be hella awkward but everyone seems to have aged into this contented "nice to all be together again, even for a shit reason." Despite everyone tearing up at the service, the pub afterwards was convivial. Every time I was about to tap out someone put a Jameson's in my hand and, of course, it'd be rude not to... so I stayed 'til close of play and you know, had quite a nice time actually.

Now we lumber back on a train running at normal speed (not the 5 hour slot of the mid-storm run up from Wales) across lakes that weren't there last week, and probably won't be there next; fleeting waves across a darkling plain, or something like that.

Bereft of gaming PC I've done a lot of reading this week: Bring Up The Bodies (ahead of The Mirror and the Light coming out and a sales position needing to be formed, because I'm not having it stick around like The Testaments did); Watership Down (my father-in-law has the edition I was scared of and threw up over as a kid and I like to remind it who's boss) and now Viper (possible teen book club book for next month, assuming any teens show up). The brain now refuses to take on any more Literature, so I'm reduced to blogging like it's 2002 again, trying to free up some brain tape and get back into the habit of talking about my actual life on the Tubes.

I'm hoping to wean myself off the Socials, see, off the hot takes and the discourse and the flood of callout posts for people I've never heard of. I miss the kind of Internet that DW and AO3 and Neocities embody and since all those things exist, why not retrain the brain to seek its idle pleasures and good chemicals here, in a Better Place?

So. What else is going on? I've commissioned the cover for Bloodspell volume 2 and have an idea of the contents (all the nice to haves, the things I didn't want to present as integral but still want to present). A couple of my ideas for a fantasy RPG have turned around and completed each other, and A Thousand Lifetimes is a good title for something, don't you think? I'll be releasing a little preview of that #soon, I hope, assuming the next Roleplayer's Guide goes smoothly. Should probably write that up properly tbh.

And there's a couple of other things, titles with concepts hanging off them, experiences in search of a rubric: If Looks Could Kill (a natural Short Games Digest contribution?) and Moriendi/Morituri, which is SOMETHING to do with what my thesis is about. And may be a better medium through which to pursue those ideas. The more time I spend off-PhD the less I want to go back. I like academic work, mind: the conference round, the occasional book chapter, even the games-as-research-praxis. I just don't like being wedded to this huge theoretical project for the next five years. I may have to talk about going practice based when or if I go back; making games and talking about influences rather than analysing, analysing, laying everything out in terms of what who said about wherefore.

An inconclusive entry, this. But we've just arrived at Hereford and that means we're nearly home; just twenty minutes and a cab ride to go.