measi's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- gaming's relevance to life in general Okay, I feel a bit more calm than yesterday. Still a bit upset, but I'm hoping that releasing some of the steam will help me be able to get a bit more perspective on things. All of the stress and such this weekend has repaid me with utter confusion on Where-to-Go-From-Here on Kestra. It's also given me a nasty big cold sore threatening to pop at any moment on my upper lip. Let's hear it for Stress-Induced Herpes. Yaah! *sigh* Still, between talking to JT, Tan, [erich] and [ade], I seem to be the only one completely befuddled by my character. Maybe I'm over-reacting on this. Maybe it's just a character that will come into her own late in the game, much as Tanya did. As JT pointed out to me over IM yesterday, Tanya was really just beginning to shine as we stopped Innburners stuff for Legacy. And yeah, I'm a bit worried about losing the momentum on her. She's 12th or 13th level now... I forget, since I haven't looked at her sheet. The weird thing is that Kestra's not far behind her. Kestra's 10th level now. By this time, I should have a grasp on the character. Perhaps I'm just extremely frustrated since Naya, my character in LGM's Sideport game, was an instant "This is Who She Is" type of character. Easy to flesh out. Kestra is: 1) a 14-year-old girl 2) Has lots of family background conflict 3) Went in a totally different direction than when I first envisioned her. I am sick of playing clerics. With the exception of Naya, that's all I've played in D&D. Granted, both clerics are completely different types. Tanya's become very much the front-line battle priest, whereas Kestra's background is a rogue. One way or another, I'll probably play a figher of some sort next time around. I just want to cleave things and play "hack an orc" for a little while. Get involved in the action. Try learning how to plan strategy, that sort of thing. The one thing though that helped me (after I calmed down last night) with all of this was Erich on the way home from the game on Saturday night. Even though I was biting my lip to keep from crying in frustration, he commented (not in these exact words) that he wasn't going to blow this off as no-big-deal because gaming was so important to both of us. It sounds cheesy, but it really is. And I hated how I was blown off by LGM and various other gamers in the original Boston crew when I'd have problems for it being "just a game." It is, but it isn't. It's my escape for a few hours to get over the social anxiety and to involve myself with other people with relatively little fear of retribution. It's a sort of self-induced therapy to get myself a bit more confident in social situations. I'm fine with folks one-on-one. I despise groups of three or more because I start feeling wiggy. Plus, I need to create. My mental blocks against fiction writing have been so frustrating since I left college, and this is the current outlet for that need. Creating characters, developing backgrounds... for some reason once I get the pen to paper, or my fingers on the screen, I get stumped on anything that is fictional. Maybe it's fears about bad feedback that are blocking me, but for some reason, I can't seem to get past it. So doing everything mentally with no real fear of continual badgering seems to help. I've managed to write out a few character backgrounds. It's a start. So yeah, gaming is important to me. It's keeping my creativity from going the disaster way of The Beast. I'm hanging in there. I'll probably be much better by Saturday when we play again. And I'll most likely hang in there with Kestra since bringing in a 2nd level fighter at this point would be hellish in and of itself. In the meantime, I'd probably better go get some lunch and get some of this work done. I want to have a relatively clear desk by 5 when I start working on Journal 777 tonight with the nifty new quill and ink bottle set I bought at Pearl Art Supply. :) --Mel. 11:30 a.m. - 5 March 2002 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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