Pastelbat @pastelbat@awoo.space

I played my first game of Age of Sigmar today! It was a learning game against another newbie I'd never met before, and we both had a good time.

I zapped some evil mounted knights in the butt with my electric eels, my Swole Elves failed to defend a pile of treasure from their footslogging mates. My wizard rolled abysmally and ended up just harmlessly sprinkling water at people, and then the enemy boss charged in on a dinosaur and killed prettymuch everybody by himself.

This pleased his gods, so much so they kept trying to mutate him into random things. By the time his dino-pal finally gobbled up my cowardly wizard, he'd been turned into a demon and had all his meat replaced with metal. What a champ.

I lost in a fun way? Which sums up all the best wargaming experiences imo.

I am very excite

It's one of the few series to really grab me and make me have lots of new thoughts and theories about it long after actually-reading it

I mean, it combines ambiguous magical ontology for me to chew on, book within a book, historical narratives as a central theme, spectacularly flawed + untrustworthy narrator/s, AI (sphinxes!!), an Ant Nerd character, and ridiculous edgelords being gay and doing (awful) crimes

So that's a lotta my boxes ticked

But it's also a work where the ways I disagree with the author on it are mostly the "that's interesting and I'd love to argue the toss about it for hours over coffee" variety.

(Also she's a distinguished professor in most of the stuff I'd disagree with her about, lol..)

Caveat that uhh this is mostly me fan rambly, cuz if I were actively recommending it I'd include a *metric tonne* of CWs that I can't usefully list this late at night/with my memory stuff. But it is Capital-D Dark at times and overall heavy content/themes.

Herein lies the reason spent my late teens reading a tonne of Kafka/Camus/Foucault

"Oh! This. This is exactly what I'm experiencing, yes. Well described."

Franz Kafka's Gender Affirmation Castle

Going through a uk trans survey and

"Have you ever tried to access any gender affirming medical services?"

I mean, I'm assuming they mean GICs (& private doctors)

but I would not call GICs 'gender affirming' by any stretch (in social role or individual-level function/experience)

The Agender Flag looks delicious

​

Maybe I'm just sleepy still

(I mean, I am)

But can I nibble it a little

I beat Untitled Goose Game & Slay The Spire in the last week, so I've officially defeated 2019 now

Regularly getting off on a tangent during storytime atm

Because of this one lady with one spell that folds protection magic all around her against her skin, and blocks any attempt at attacking her, or targeting her with a spell, and reports it (so if it's a spell, it'll usually tell her the words used to cast it) with things like

"How does it know what's harmful, though? Does it predict what will happen if it doesn't block something, or does it detect intent?"
"It can't be blocking air, but will it block harmful air pollution or a smoke grenade?"
"Why didn't her barrier say [SWORD, SWORD, SWORD]?"
"If someone said something really hurtful to her, would her barrier block the soundwaves?"
"..Would it stop her eating poison? What about junk food?"

The moral of this story is: Never let me be the editor for anything

I did like the epilogue of Soul Wars revealing Archon's scheme was "keep Nagash & Sigmar from killing each other, and get them talking again so eventually they realise they need each other to survive"

So the God of Death's scheming vizier saves the world by sabotaging his own god's schemes, because at the end of the day Nagash & Sigmar are both squabbling toddlers with divine power.

Idk, maybe I just like "Necromancer saves the world, because losing the world would mess with all his plans" plots. The Johannes Cabal series does that very well.

Other highlights:
- birbdogs are good puppers
- birbhorsedogs are also good puppers
- The shy, bookish Stormcast Lord finally got his cute bonding VN-cutscene with Sigmar-senpai
- The plot hinging on a Goddess of Cats going wherever the heck she wants, even if you've just locked the door

Like, the books don't hit the point where I'd recommend them to people who aren't Warhammer nerds, but they're a lot of fun.

̶H̶e̶d̶o̶n̶i̶t̶e̶s̶ Heffalumps of Slaanesh

100% same energy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znQbXIRChns (melancholy/sad/ymmv but "mind your head" seems appropriate)

The Old Revolution is an amazing song for many reasons

But "To all of my architects, let me be traitor" is such a powerful line that sticks with me every time

I need to find a singleplayer game to entertain myself with that isn't action clicky/pad-intensive but isn't a 4X either

Disco Elysium is a bit too Sadman In Sadtown for me at the moment, but much as I love Total Warhammer 2, there's only so much Total Warring a body can take (..and still be this bad at it).

I should dive into Age of Wonders Planetfall a bit more. A lot of the new mechanics are really neat, but I guess it also feels very familiar in the "yep that's a 4X" kinda way

Also I did *not* expect Stormcast Eternals (read: Golden Reincarnated Space Knights) to be so catty to each other

There's like a whole chapter of Soul Wars with these towering golden god-infused warriors sniping at each other in the most petty ways, it's wild

And then Sigmar turns up, and istg

The main Stormcast has a full-on "Senpai remembered my name?! Uwu.." moment

This is probably because Sigmar exudes *maximum* Daddy Energy from the moment he enters the scene

Burly knights going "Mmm I know he said to stand.. B-But gosh I wanna kneel at his feet real bad tho"

And the air literally ripples around him with divine.. Uhhh.. Daddy-vibe?

(I'm gonna go with that, they don't make it entirely clear what's causing the ripple thing)

I mean, I'm not as hot for Odin as the Stormcast Eternals are (I'm not sure anyone could be)

but as a group they're way more entertainingly written than I expected. 🍿

I'm listening to Age of Sigmar books and

So far the two I've listened to are.. Not bad? (Court of the Blind King, Soul Wars)

Also wow the Black Library (publishing wing) narrators go *to the hilt* on character voices, jeez. They have 0 time for any impartial narrator voice nonsense! You do the voice or you do your best attempt at it anyway!!!

Which makes the rapid transition of perspective characters from

"I AM THE GREATEST GOD OF DEATH
THE REST OF THE GODS WILL SOON RECOGNISE MY GREATNESS
AND STOP PUTTING RATS IN MY PYRAMIDS"

to

"I'm an 8yr old girl who's a street urchin. I like cats!"

in the space of a chapter break just uh,

Yeah that's some impressive narration whiplash

Morning nerds

Have some tea 🍵

(or not, you do you. but I'm having tea)

I think overcoming "my creativity must be productive, it must help others somehow" has been good for me

Like, I learn plenty about art from mini painting as much as I do from drawing/etc, and it's cross-applicable, but I still have an internal "it's not really valid tho" brainweasel.

It's also what my brain can focus on happily as well, and doesn't do in my wrists like drawing for the same amount of time can. Like, focus stuff is really annoying (doing more music! I'd like that not to be hugely effortful to get my brain to focus on. but it is :| ), but having something that isn't "ugh this is so much effort why" for my brain at all is something I'm grateful for.

Kinda wary of if I burn out on it, but I know myself well enough by now to know that won't be permanent.

If that happens, doubtless I'll bounce over to sewing or drawing or gamedev or something again for a bit, then bounce back to it in a year or two. 🤷 In the meantime, enjoy it.

In light of that, I should be less self-conscious about posting stuff here. So here's some playing with paints n skin tones on the Peak Conan Aesthetic gang from WarCry.