Tag: teso

Pluses and minuses, February 18, 2015

– Winter is seriously depressing me. We’ve gotten more than six feet in just the past month, and it looks like Snowpiercer outside my window. (Regrettably, I don’t even get Chris Evans as a consolation prize).

– As I’ve posted elsewhere, snow canceled my trip to Boskone. Poop.

+ Melatonin seems to be working well, which means that I can actually get up at a decent hour again.

+ I reached 48,000 words on Lioness, and revealed one of the Big Reveals of the novel.

+/- Received a rejection on another G&F query/partial I had sent for #PitMad, back in December. On one hand, rejection; on the other hand, it was personal and very kind, and this after I had forgotten I even had it out there.

– In about a month, I will have been querying G&F for a year, on and off. At some point I suppose I have to give up. But at the same time, I’ve only queried like twenty agents over that time, so.

– I’m still really not getting much out of reading A Game of Thrones. Sorry, fans. If I had come to it earlier in life, I might have, but at this point I don’t want any more fantasy worlds where women are this marginalized.

It’s funny, because I LIKE the female POV characters, and they don’t lack agency, at all. I have nothing but good to say about Catelyn, Daenerys, or Arya. Even Sansa!

But then there are the bit parts for women, which seem limited to “serving wench,” and “whore.” There’s the constant use of “slut” and “whore.” There’s the constant threat of rape and child mutilation thrown around for funsies. And sure, yeah, we’re clearly SUPPOSED to have our skin crawl around Viserys, and his use of same, but… it’s just tiresome. Really fucking tiresome. I keep rolling my eyes and wishing for [SPOILER] to happen quicker.

And maybe it gets better in later novels, but… I just don’t care enough to find out? If I’m going to read gritty and grimdark, I’ll go back to reading Joe Abercrombie, because at least I’m pretty sure he’s doing trope reversal.

+ I finished listening to The Broken Kingdoms, at long last. Sorry it took me so long, but that middle section, where Oree is with the New Lights, just draaaaagged for me. That said, the ending was exciting, and the novel is a study in how to do multiple ending beats well.

And yeah, it’s utterly ridiculous that there is no audiobook for The Kingdom of the Gods. Booooo.

+ I started listening to Laini Taylor’s Daughter of Smoke and Bone yesterday, which was recommended to me by… I don’t remember who. So far, I’m enjoying it. The narrator, Khristine Hvam, is just superb.

Is this supposed to be YA? I find it hard to believe, with all the talk of dicks in the first few chapters. And yet, YA certainly is edgier than it was when I was a teen… Anyway, Karou is clearly a female wish fulfillment character, and I am totally okay with that. More than okay, actually — I think there need to be more of them, so long as they are interesting characters in their own right. And Karou is! The only weirdness is when she displays a very… external view of her physical body, describing herself like a third-party would describe her. That sort of makes me frown. But we’ll see where it’s going…

+ I have tickets — in the third row! — to see the live Night Vale show in March.

+ Writing group this Thursday. Assuming it doesn’t get snowed out…

+ I’ve gotten Falanu nearly to 50 in TESO.

34 Things Lise is No Longer Allowed to Do in ESO

  1. I will not sing “Blue Entoloma” to the tune of “Smooth Operator” whenever I come across said plant.
  2. Nor will I tell my husband to “wait just a cotton-pickin’ minute” when I come across cotton
  3. Same with “Flax! Ah-aaaa! Savior of the Universe!”
  4. Ditto “Hey Jute.”
  5. I will not refer to trickster god Rajhin as the Dickster God, even if he is.
  6. I will not yell “puppykiller!” whenever I kill a clannfear
  7. Or at random, just for the fun of it.
  8. I won’t insult the Tribunal’s ill-gotten divine powers in a Sheogorath voice.
  9. I mustn’t speculate about the sex life of Idesa and that dark elf noble, no matter how many times I visit the forge in Windhelm.
  10. Nor greet vendors with “Sauce!”
  11. Lyris is an important NPC, not an email management software.
  12. I have reached my quota on saying, “Shadowfen… I can’t believe I’m still in Shadowfen.”
  13. Should I find any Argonians in Shad Astula, I must not shout, “Yer a lizard, Harry!”
  14. Similarly, it’s probably not a good use of my time to make an Argonian sorcerer named “Scar-Like-Lightning.”
  15. Nor do I have enough time to make a metrosexual Bosmer.
  16. I will not suggest Mannimarco/Vanus Galerion slash.
  17. Even if the former IS the King of Worms.
  18. Epic Violet dye is a privilege, not a right.
  19. I will not refer to Eyes-of-Steel as Thighs-of-Steel.
  20. I will not call potency runes “prunes.”
  21. When visiting a kwama mine, I shall not sing “Kwama Chameleon.”
  22. I mustn’t be an Elder Scrolls hipster in zone chat.
  23. Especially not to speculate that cliff racers were the real cause of the disappearance of the Dwemer.
  24. The lyrics to that common tavern song are not, “Neil Diamond, Neil Diamond, the heart and soul of men.”
  25. Speculation on the qualities of one’s grotto (frigid, or fungal) is in poor taste.
  26. Same with Questionable Meat Sacks.
  27. Ditto wormwood.
  28. It is anachronistic to name my horse “Barenziah.”
  29. I will not question the humility of Ordinators — at least not in their presence.
  30. I shouldn’t use Piercing Javelin to fling mobs through the world.
  31. Especially when my husband is tanking them.
  32. Especially because “I just like the sound of it.”
  33. No matter what Ultimate I have slotted, it’s not effective against barrels.
  34. I will not refer to fishing as “PvF.”

Inspired by The 213 things Skippy is no longer allowed to do in the U.S. Army

Play TESO with me! (redux)

Last year, before The Elder Scrolls Online (TESO, or ESO) went live, I was cajoling you all to play with me. I had a lot of fun grouping with friends in the beta, but when the actual prospect of paying came up, most people I knew were not sufficiently interested.

But! As it turns out, in March it will go to the Tamriel Unlimited plan, which means it will be free to play with purchase of the base game. Very similarly to the freemium model SWTOR uses, you can still subscribe to get an ESO Plus membership that will give you bonuses like a monthly allotment of points to spend in the Crown Store for important things like guar mounts 😉

I have Thoughts about the F2P model and how it pisses me off that people expect everything to be free (and often happily accept shitty freemium models). OTOH, I also really want people to play with me! Right now Matt and I are the only ones regularly on in our guild 🙁

I admit, I go through periods where I’m not interested in playing, but I’ve been digging in again lately and having a lot of fun. After a year, I still don’t have a veteran character; my highest level is my Dunmer templar in Ebonheart Pact, Falanu Dren, at 42. With her and Matt’s Dunmer dragon knight, we just finished Eastmarch, with its many very silly quests. To give you some examples:

  1. Meeting a bunch of naked Nords bathing in a hot springs who ask you to retrieve bath salts for them. Bath salts which, it transpires, turn you into zombies.
  2. Throwing cat pee at hunters to prevent vampires from attacking them
  3. Thane Jeggi, whose condition for coming to the war council is making sure there is mead there.
  4. The sheer number of quests that involve entering homes through the window rather than the door.
  5. Glorious cultural exchange! Actually, this one starts in… Deshaan? Shadowfen? with a group of Nords who want to better understand Dunmer culture. As part of this, you dress them up in ridiculous clothes. Naturally.

Eastmarch, being in the province of Skyrim, also hearkens back to the game of the same name. The geography is vaguely similar — I remember the sulfur pools south of Windhelm, the White River, Skuldafn… And actually, the final quest of the zone, like the final quest in Skyrim, involves fighting your way through the ruin of Skuldafn and visiting Sovngarde.

We took a break with our EP characters to play our Aldmeri Dominion ones — Br’ihnassi, my Khajiit nightblade, and Matt’s Altmer dragon knight. They are both level 23 and in the middle of hell, I mean, Grahtwood. (Grahtwood is mostly hellish because it’s so hard to navigate; there are mountains and giant trees blocking your path at every turn).

I had a moment of lore squee the other night when I realized a quest involved the town of Gil-var-delle. The name sounded familiar to me, and the quest mentioned the town had been attacked by Molag Bal. “Is this the town mentioned in 2920: The Last Year of the First Era?” I wondered. I went and looked — it is! Gilverdale or Gil-var-delle is the town that a random Khajiit king made a deal with Molag Bal to destroy, because he didn’t like a bard that came from there. Since TESO is all about Molag Bal, it makes sense for it to be mentioned here.

It’s stuff like this that keeps me playing 🙂

I was trying to express to Matt how the depth of the lore, and its self-awareness, creates this amazing tapestry that I, as a writer, wish I could build into my own creations. It also provides the background radiation that makes creepypasta like this scary. (And seriously, I still long to one day write a horror story like that).

Anyway! I also have to recommend the UESP guild, which is where I get most of my socialization on these days. Good people, not your usual internet assholes. My one regret is that most of their high-level toons are Daggerfall Covenant, which I don’t even have a character in. Although there was an AD group last night doing Craglorn stuff…

(I have since made a DC character, an Imperial dragon knight, Corvus Duronius. But I haven’t started playing him yet. He has an eyepatch, which made Matt giggle and say, “Arrrr, welcome to Starbuccaneers, may I take your order?”)

So that’s that. I have no clever conclusion! Play ESO with me, and know the beautiful lore that is the Elder Scrolls!