Climax

Yeah. That cover-story? Mine. The column with the cool cartoon cat over there? Mine. In fact, that entire section of the magazine is mine. For somebody who debuted with a humble one-pager about La Tale, this is a pretty big deal.

Please don't misunderstand. The message here isn't, "HEY, CHECK OUT HOW FUCKING INCREDIBLE I AM!1one" It's more among the lines of "OMFGWTFISHAPPENING?!"
Being allowed to write about TESO is a privilege. A friend and fellow freelancer of mine asked for the job. I didn't. In fact, I refused when they offered it to me, because I knew nothing about the game and I didn't think I could do a good job. They wanted me, anyway. I won't lie to you, I'm pretty damn sure I only got it because the fulltime-editor, who was originally supposed to do it, had to cancel, god bless him. But someone at the magazine must have wanted me to do it - or why would they give the job to me instead of the guy who asked to do it in the first place? Again, big deal!
Somebody must have thought I could do it, even though I wasn't really sure I could. This is so fucking cool!

The whole thing seems unreal. I don't wanna bore you with the whole having to refuse extra work instead of having to beg for it, free Xbox One, free hardware, being worried I might have to go back to an office job one day crap all over again. Let's enjoy it while it lasts, every day is a gift and all that. See where it will go. I'm also gonna start over with my novel, which I'm going to put up on here in irregular updates. On here. I'll open up an extra blog section right here when I'm ready.
It's something I just wanna do before I die. I'm not dying at the moment (as far as I'm aware), no worries. But I wanna publish a novel. Just one. Doesn't matter if it's the shittiest book on the planet, if nobody is gonna fucking read it, but I wanna get started while I'm on a high. I have a basic idea of what I want and I'll let the whole thing write itself as I get started. Pretty much how I do with all of my work. And if you wanna rip me off and write a better, cooler, more popular version of what I want to do before I get a chance to finish mine, here's the basic idea of what I want to do:

The whole thing is set in what's your generic, overused high fantasy world. I want to use every fucking cliché we're all sick and tired of. Good versus evil, a hero from an ancient prophecy, the chosen one, all of that stupid old crap. Here's the twist: The main character is a gaming nerd. He can't cast any spells, he doesn't know how to swing a fucking sword, he doesn't know how to move around in heavy armor - and honestly, he couldn't give two shits about that generic fantasy world he's destined to save. But he knows his D&D lore. He's beaten every RPG from Bard's Tale to Skyrim. He knows his MMOs, his 8bit console JRPGs and everything in between. He survives his journey through gamer-knowledge alone.

His rag-tag group of fellow adventurers might contain a large-breasted cat girl with a stupid Japanese name. She might turn out to sport a penis, because lost of people playing cat girls in fantasy games do. Ultimately, all characters should be deep and interesting and not just one-dimensional clichés of themselves, but fantasy clichés will be one of the major themes in the book. And, well, the basic idea is "what if...?"
Come on now. We're all gamers here. Which one of you has never sat down and wondered what life would be like if you were inside one of those games? If you were the Dragonborn, Shepard, the Bhaalspawn? And then most of us probably picture ourselves wielding that awesome power our virtual alter egos have got, being all indestructible and super tough and gifted with the power of a quicksave-hotkey.

But if we're being honest, most of us aren't very skilled swordsmen or wizards. We're fat, old couch-potatoes. But do we pick up any skills when we play games? Any knowledge at all? And could that be enough to survive for more than twenty minutes in your average high fantasy world? I think it's an interesting subject and I wanna see what I can do with it.

In unrelated news, I keep having strange dreams about my family. I had this dream where my grandparents have been raised as zombies. They were conscious and mostly functional, they were okay with it and happier to be alive in their weird state than, well, not. They still bumped into walls and failed basic coordination a lot, but at least they were there. Some might perceive this as cynical and fucked up, but I genuinely miss them. My brain just has a very special way of showing it.
I also had a weird dream where my parents were back together and - Jeezus - lived in my old apartment. Tiny, crappy little thing, but affordable. And they were happy! Made the best of the little place and were just happy to have each other. Funny. They were miserable when they lived in a palace and still wanted more. Makes me wonder where that dream is coming from. Perhaps they could have been happier if money had not played the most important role in their lives. Hmm.

Also, Skyrim. Again. Still. All the time. I've turned my game into an art project of sorts, which barely resembles the game it was once based upon. Behold!

Videos hardly do the real thing justice. I'm currently converting and uploading a brand new one, which shows all the latest updates and improvements I've added, but in the meanwhile, this clip is relatively recent one, which comes close to what my game does right now - I might update this entry tonight or tomorrow with more up to date footage.
By now I'm probably somewhere past the 300 mod mark (counting graphical improvements, scripts and modifications, which don't consist of .esm files).

-Cat