Haven’t taken a crack at this one in a while. So here goes.
I’m a nonjoiner. I just don’t join things. The very idea of subsuming my identity into a larger group identity makes me feel like I’m going to break out in hives. My blood runs cold as does the sweat on the back of my neck. I want to run run run away.
I’ve been like this for as long as I can remember. But why?
There’s various levels of explanation possible, so I will start with the least helpful one.
I could claim that I am some kind of fiercely rugged individualist dedicated to the ideals of freedom and democracy and unwilling to kowtow to any group or leader who demands my obedience because I refuse to dilute my innate awesomeness and this is making me sick.
I can’t go there. If I try, my finely honed sense of irony kicks in and tells me how full of shit I am and that’s where it ends.
On paper, I have more than enough reasons to think highly of myself. And on some levels I do.
But I could never go down that bullshit libertarian route.
Because I know deep down that it would at best be me trying to make a virtue of necessity because the truth is that it’s not a choice.
I couldn’t be a joiner even if I wanted to be. I have an extremely strong need for autonomy and an equally strong drive to obtain it, and it makes joining anything that will make am overriding claim on my actions or identity impossible.
And the real reason “why” is that I am broken.
I’m that monkey raised in isolation who shrieks in terror and rage when other monkeys come near. Missing kindergarten meant I missed a vital developmental window where I would have learned to get along and fit in with the other kiddies, and that means I will be one fucked up little monkey till the day I die.
And it hurts. It hurts to be so fucked up and it hurts to know it. I can feel the cold dark empty space where connection to others should be and it fills me with grief for the happy little boy that never was.
Sorry kid. Wish I could fix this. for both of us. But I don’t know how. All I can do is keep trying to wake myself up inside, and hope for the best.
Once more, I find myself wanting to just walk away. Cut all ties to this life of mine and go somewhere where nobody knows me and I can reinvent myself.
And this time, do my best to fit in, do what everyone else is doing, lead a normal type life, and hope that this will repair some of my deep and deadly social damage.
It might work. The right social milieu might activate long dormant parts of my psyche and repair my busted social antenna and let me really connect with humanity for the first time in my life.
Or maybe it would all end in flaming ruin when I found I simply could not live like that, and had to go back to being an isolated loner again.
But at least I’d know. Either way.
More after the break.
Rimming the Sky : Spells and Sneakiness edition
So here is what has been happening in what passes for my life.
For a particular definition of fun, I decided that in Skyrim, I was going to take another crack at a famously difficult mod called Undeath.
It lets you become a lich. For the uninitiated, a lich is a wizard who. while alive. performed a complicated ritual that lets his body die while his mind stays alive to animate its freshly killed corpse.
The short version : a lich is a zombie mage. Very powerful. The sort of thing young necromancers dream about. Transcending mortality entirely in order to become far more powerful than you could possibly be in life.
It’s pretty gosh darn neato.
But it’s a lot of work, too. You have to reach level 30. You have to gather a ton of obscure ingredients. And you have to max out your Enchanting skill.
That was the part I forgot. I remembered the list of obscure ingredients and grabbed them when I saw them as I built up to Level 30. but I misremembered the skill I had to get to 100 as being Conjuring.
Oops. Fuck,. When I realized this, my Enchanting skill was only at level 52. And true, I could have just done a fuckton of actual Enchanting of various bits of gear in order to get those extra 48 levels, but that sounded boring AF and I don’t play games in order to be bored AF.
Luckily. I remembered that there was a perk that gave you a small but constant amount of Enchanting experience when you fought using a magic staff, and that sounded way more fun, so I took the perk and got my staff and gathered up my skeletal warriors and went off adventuring.
And eventually that got me to Enchanting 100. It was less than optimally fun, because staffs suuuuuck. They are never powerful enough to be useful, even when you make them yourself, and so I often said to hell it and used my spells instead.
But I got there. And I could finally mix all the ingredients and perform the ritual and cast the spell to loosen my soul from my body then drink the deadly toxin that would kill my body and then my soul would be absorbed into my phylacety (big black ball) and I would finally be a lich.
And let me tell you, the animation of your soul getting sucked into your Locnar was totally boss. Everything I could have hoped for. A plus plus, would die again.
And then I fell to the floor and got stuck there. Disembodied. Could move around and that was it. Motherfucker.
Turns out it’s a well known glitch that for some reason has no fix. It can be caused by mods that modify the Dragon Priest skeleton, but removing those mods does not necessarily fix it.
So I did all that work and never actually got to be a lich.
So after a rather pissed off grieving period, I said fuck it, and started a new character. I had made my goal of Level 40 and 400 exhibits in my LEgacy of the Dragonborn museum, so I started a new character.
And I did so knowing that meant I was giving up on my would be lich.
Oh well. C’est la vie. I am enjoying life as my new character, an Argonian thief, and when I am done with the main Thieve’s Guild plotline, I have a new mod to play called Carved Brink that I am looking forward to.
And that’s life chez moi right now.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.