Storyteller

Storytelling Enthusiast. They/them. "I have no idea what they do here, but they're great in conversation." - A Coworker

[literarywizard]

So Long, But Hopefully Only "See You Later"

This is it. At least as far I've got planned. Who KNOWS what the future will bring... Well, until further notice, the future will bring my blog posts via manual sharing on Facebook, no more sharing on Tumblr, and, as always, forever at broken-words.com.

I don’t know how many of you will follow me to my new home (which is located at Broken-Words.com because I own that domain and went through an exhausting and stressful week and a half to get it transferred to and then set up at my new home), so I want to say goodbye. I know how difficult it can be to commit to following something when we don’t have ready access to information that it has updated…

[literarywizard]

The Only Constant In Life Is Change

This is the second to last or possibly last I'll be making from WordPress .com. You might even notice that the URL has changed in preparation for what is to come in the next few days. I'll be taking some time away from posting to get all that work done.

This post is going up a little late and largely unedited because I ran into a few hiccups during my blog transfer process. Well, technically it is the Domain transfer that ran into issues, but I spent six hours on Saturday doing the whole blog transfer thing and there were plenty of hiccups in that process, so I’m comfortable generalizing. The thing is, since I own the domain broken-words.com, I…

[literarywizard]

My Website And I Are Both Travelling This Holiday Week

This is my last post for the week, on account of the holidays, and I've hopefully got my blog set up to be on a new host so I can stop giving any money to WordPress .com or Automattic since those jerks tried to sell their users' blogs to an LLM company.

Well, I’m finally on the verge of getting four whole blog posts ahead [well, I was close… this week’s cleaning has crashed into my exhaustion, so I’ve done little beyond making my apartment nice and clean so far]. I’ve managed to slowly build up a three-post buffer (this post is maintaining that, not building on it, but I’ve got a topic and everything picked out for the next one and enough time…

[literarywizard]

Passing Time With TCG Card Shop Simulator

I'm not normally one for Simulator games, but I gotta admit that TCG Card Shop Simulator is working for me. I have booted it up twice now and been entirely distracted from my life by it each time! What more could you want from a game like that these days?

A week ago today (the day you’re reading this and six days after I’m writing this), I stopped resisting my desire to buy any kind of new game to help me get over Dragon Age: The Veilguard and bought a game I’ve had my eye on for a few weeks now. I’d thought to buy it last month, but I was busy with Dragon Age: Inquisition and couldn’t afford any distractions. I was already distracted enough,…

[literarywizard]

The Magical Millennium Plays Dodgeball

We've had another full session of The Magical Millennium and while we got through perhaps more time than we've covered before in the Lock-In, not a whole lot of stuff happened. Lots of little things did, but not a lot of big things.

Another weekend down, another session of The Magical Millennium in the bag! As we have been for the last few sessions, we’re still in the middle of the Lock-In at school. This past session covered almost two hours of time, which would mean we’re actually picking up the pace if it weren’t for the fact that we weren’t able to finish up the final match of the dodgeball tournament and so didn’t…

[literarywizard]

What's Actually Next Now That I've Finished Veilguard

After yesterday's much more expansive "what do I do with my life now that I've finished my Dragon Age franchise replay and Veilguard" post, I've decided to narrow my focus a bit and write about what games I'm thinking about post-Veilguard.

Every so often, I decide to watch something on Twitch. It’s usually Friends at the Table streaming something because, if I’m being honest, I don’t much care for watching one person play a video game. If it’s a group of people, or one person is playing but there’s multiple voices involved, I enjoy it more, but I still don’t generally enjoy watching people play games. Friends at the Table is…

[literarywizard]

What's Next Now That My Dragon Age Playthrough Is In The Review Mirror?

The day I wrote this, I had a small realization in the shower that I can do basically nothing about right now. I might be able to do something with it someday, but that would take a level of planning I've been unable to do since late last year...

Please, if you know the answer, tell me. I’m desperate. As of writing this, it has been almost a week since I finished this momentous task, this three hundred forty hour undertaking, and nothing compares to the soaring highs and wonderful emotional lows (that were also soaring highs, let’s be real, because I love a tear-jerker) of Veilguard. I’ve tried playing other video games, things I set…

[literarywizard]

Should You Play Dragon Age: The Veilguard?

If you haven't played Dragon Age: The Veilguard and are on the fence about it, you should definitely play it. If you're not on the fence about it and haven't played it, you should read my review of it and think carefully about the choice you've made.

The short answer is yes. If you trust me and my reviews, feel free to bounce right now and go enjoy yourself. If you still need convincing, then I’m sure I can manage that. The game doesn’t do a great job of selling itself unless you’re already on the Dragon Age train and looking for your next destination. After all, most trailers for it showcase grand, sweeping events that are mostly exciting as…

[literarywizard]

Wrapping Up Worldbuilding For "The Rotten"

Once again proving that I'm bad at predicting how long a game will take, we just barely finished up our game of The Quiet Year in time to do a little bit of final preparation for our next session of The Rotten campaign, where we'll officially start D&D.

In one final session that took three hours (which is two more than I hoped it would take and one more than I expected it to take), we wrapped up our game of The Quiet Year with a much more detailed map than we started with and an idea of what the world looked like after that year of relative peace. We’ve got a fully underground society, a mysterious Labyrinth that defies mapping and contains…

[literarywizard]

The Only Good Thing About Social Media Today

It was a weird day on social media, the day I wrote this. Started off alright, got super great briefly, and then has been largely disappointing ever since. Which is sort of just how social media is, these days: briefly good and then nigh-perpetually bad.

I’ve been trying to take it easy on the news front lately. I’ve been super busy at work and don’t have the emotional resiliency to wallow in online misery like I did back in 2016. Plus, the last place I go online for social media, bsky.app, has been struggling all day every day this week as it gets flooded by new users who are either clogging the servers, attempting to remake the existing culture…

[literarywizard]

Spoiler-Filled Thoughts On Veilguard Right After Beating The Game

This entire blog post is spoilers for how Dragon Age: The Veilguard ends, with the exception of the first paragraph which is long enough that no spoilers will show up in link previews. Anyway, I beat the game three nights ago and here's my thoughts.

In case the title wasn’t clue enough, this post is going to contain spoilers for the end of Dragon Age: The Veilguard pretty much throughout the entire thing. This little preamble paragraph won’t have any (nor will the full game review I’ll be posting next week), but you continuing to read this before bailing out to avoid spoilers is REALLY risking it. You’re playing with fire here. Just head out…

[literarywizard]

Spoiler-Free Thoughts On Veilguard Right Before I Beat The Game

I think it's funny that the best endorsement of a game I can give right now is that, for the 1st time in years, it has held my attention so well that I've never felt the need to turn on music or a podcast while I've been playing Dragon Age: The Veilguard.

I’ve almost finished Dragon Age: The Veilguard. I’ve explored every map, found every chest (well, the ones included in the counts for each map since I’m positive I missed a few of the chests from the special areas you can only access during certain quests), completed all of my companion quests, gotten all of them up to level nine (saving Harding, my Rook’s partner, who is level ten because I take…

[literarywizard]

An Exchange Of Beliefs To Reflect This Upcoming Political Era

I've been struggling, lately, but maybe not for the reasons you think. I mean, it's definitely related all the bullshit going on these days, as we head toward the 2nd Trump era, but that's not what I'm struggling with right now...

Content warning for discussion of childhood abuse and the lingering effects of that trauma. Continue reading An Exchange Of Beliefs To Reflect This Upcoming Political Era

[literarywizard]

I’m Tired and Sad, So Let’s Talk About The Legend of Zelda: Episode 31

This episode of I'm Tired and Sad is sort of about Majora's Mask but also about old coping mechanisms and survival habits suddenly becoming relevant again. What is this all, if not a cycle I seem doomed to repeat?

I’m out of blog posts, exhausted, and super depressed about everything going on in the world (which is why I’m out of blog posts, but I’ll write about that later). So, rather than try to kick my ass into gear in order to pretend that I’m still writing these a week ahead of time, I’m going to fully admit that I’m writing this on the eleventh, that I’m probably going to have to edit this after it…

[literarywizard]

November Without A Writing Project

I'm writing this (or at least starting it) on the first day of November and I don't even have a non-NaNoWriMo writing challenge for myself. I've been too tired, busy, and burned out to even think about it, let alone process this change...

Today is the first day of November. The eighth, as you’re reading this, I guess [it got bumped due to election bullshit]. Normally, I’d be deep in my feelings about my writing challenge for the year or how I had to set it aside due to personal issues happening in my life. This year, though, is different. I’ve already written about how National Novel Writing Month has compromised their integrity…

[literarywizard]

November Without A Writing Project

I'm writing this (or at least starting it) on the first day of November and I don't even have a non-NaNoWriMo writing challenge for myself. I've been too tired, busy, and burned out to even think about it, let alone process this change...

Today is the first day of November. The eighth, as you’re reading this, I guess [it got bumped due to election bullshit]. Normally, I’d be deep in my feelings about my writing challenge for the year or how I had to set it aside due to personal issues happening in my life. This year, though, is different. I’ve already written about how National Novel Writing Month has compromised their integrity…

[literarywizard]

A Bunch Of People Are Either Pro-Fascist Or Really Fucking Stupid. Or Both.

I needed a day to process my feelings a bit, but now it's here. My blog post rant about the election results and what I'm the most upset about. Because there's a lot going on in this election and I don't think any of it is good.

The last couple days have been rough. Rough enough that I’ve not only failed to fix my post buffer but let it entirely disappear. Sure, I’ve got drafts aplenty, but most of them are ideas from a week ago or from earlier this week, back when the world looked different. More anxiety-inducing, sure, but better. I’ve never handled uncertainty well because there’s really not much you can do about…