Step 1: Find Your Cousin
On the top of my desk calendar, there is a note written in pencil. I wrote this back in January, or maybe December, when I just got this calendar, and was setting it up for work, adding in meetings (yes, some were planned that many months ahead), and astrological movements to take note of. This note is one of the latter, for the Libra/Aries eclipse. My note just said, Keep the Peace.
I guess it's also a note for the impending Aries season. And the eclipses. There's that Libra eclipse coming up, and then a solar one in early April. These can bring changes, and I don't usually do well with those, so a little heads up is always nice.
The thing about Aries is that, yeah a lot of my friends are Aries, and it's definitely one of those opposites attract things, and this sign is refreshing because it's very individualistic and always on the move. But it also sees everyone a an enemy and is all about domination and conflict, and I don't need that energy harshing my vibe right now?
I don't feel like confronting my shadows right now, so Aries season, please, come and go quickly and in peace.
Speaking of which, why is it already March, and why am I feeling so unwell? Well, besides the extreme heat. And the fact that I’ve been so lacking in rest I couldn’t deal with my period cramps (it’s so bad I’m not even thinking about my usually feelings of dysphoria around this time of the month) I had to take a medical leave and was actually on bed rest for two days and I’m STILL feeling drained and exhausted and like if I let myself just stop working on something for a couple of minutes, I’m going to conk out. But I’m not letting this feeling win because I have so many things to do T_T
It's kind of funny though, because this pain and exhaustion is making me so grumpy and hateful sometimes I feel like come Aries season I'm just going to give in to it.
Books
MAGICIANS OF CAPRONA.
I recently finished rereading Diana Wynne Jones’ The Magicians of Caprona with Patricia, and I think I really recommend reading books out loud to one another, and also Diana Wynne Jones’ books can be hard to read aloud? This book has so much latin in it. (We also struggle with the Greek and Latin in Rick Riordan’s The Lost Hero, which we are still reading.)
Caprona is such a Ghibli movie of a book with the setting and the characters - I can so easily see a Ghibli version of the Montanas arguing over spells and Aunt Gina dramatically complaining about Benvenuto stealing from her kitchen or the children being sent to help Rinaldo instead of her and Lucia’s spell messing everything up. And it had the flying iron griffins which would fit in so well in a Ghibli film, and the surreal horror of being turned into Punch and Judy puppets, and the cats! I feel like if this was a Ghibli film the kids would’ve been allowed to ride the cats.
Rereading Caprona also made me realise how much parts of it really stuck in my head without realising it, because of course this was why I had the Starklings and Fizzlebangs be the way they were in my Galileo campaign.
PRISONER'S THRONE.
I also finished Holly Black’s The Prisoner’s Throne which is excellent but if I could give it 4.85 stars instead of 5 I probably would, only because of the overly romantic nature of the POV character. That made me miss Jude a little.
Although, I kind of love how fucking cozy this whole deranged murderous family is. And I like this world and would like to read more Folk of the Air books please.
FALLBACKS
I'm two-thirds in The Fallbacks by Jaleigh Johnson. It's a licensed D&D book set in the Forgotten Realms, and Jaleigh Johnson also wrote the tie-in novel prequel to the D&D movie last year, as well as many other D&D books during 3e/3.5e. So far, it's a lot of fun?
As a D&D fan I'm paying close attention to the lore and how game mechanics play out in fiction, and it's one of the reasons why I enjoyed it so much. Like, I can tell moments that happened because characters failed their saves, and in this book in particular, I love how bard and cleric magic are portrayed. And the Waterdeep / Candlekeep setting is really appreciated - I loved seeing these places come to life.
COMICS
I just finished reading volume five of Frieren and I can't wait to get to this part in the anime. Yesterday, I was catching up to the latest issue of Deviant (James Tynion IV/Joshua Hixson) and I'm still not over the feels. Is JT4 okay? I really want to ask him this. Some of the stuff felt so personal, and hit so close to home. There are a few other authors too, but sometimes I feel like James Tynion IV has been singlehandedly changing my mind about horror.
Screen
Over the last month, Pat and I have also been watching an episode of Frieren every Monday night, and Dungeon Meshi every Tuesday night. We watched the Percy Jackson series on Wednesdays, and when that was over we replaced it with reading (and last week, an episode of Little Witch Academia which isn’t as D&D-related but is kind of very Worst Witch like in the beginning, and that’s one of the inspirations of our current game), and Fantasy High: Junior Year on Thursday nights. (We have games on Fridays and Saturdays.)
Honestly, with how exhausted I’ve been lately - I think only a small part of it is regular exhaustion, the rest is burnout from “acting neurotypical” at work and with other people catching up with me - being able to look forward to things related to my special interests every day really help. Like, some days it’s the only thing preventing me from going into total shutdown.
Last night, we saw the first episode of X-Men '97! I knew the main starting cast from my news feed, but I was so pleasantly surprised to see Berto (Sunspot) in this episode. Also, I checked out the cast list to see if any other New Mutants will appear (doesn't seem to be so), and have a kind of idea of what stories this season will be telling based on the characters. Like, maybe we will get X-Cutioner's Song (not keen but okay), or Lifedeath (one of the best X-Men stories that I thought I would never get to see adapted!).
Of course, we shall see how things go. I barely remember the original series and don't think I've watched the later seasons because our local tv mainly played the same reruns over and over, so maybe some of these stories were adapted then and I never saw it.
Magic
Every now and then I worry that another of my special interests would make a comeback, fading D&D into the background, because I really hope I can play out all four years of this campaign, at the very least. (I do have grand plans for post-graduation stories that may or may not involve huge wars or multiverse-hopping and god-killing, and it would be sad if they just remain ideas.)
And it's starting to happen a bit, although this new old special interest stemmed from D&D, so I can always use D&D to engage with it too.
It's Magic: The Gathering.
I learned to play MtG around the same time I first joined my brother's D&D group, so this was probably anywhere from 2004-2006. I know I was really into it and would not miss our Friday night games - anytime the DM was too busy to prep, we played MtG instead. And on D&D nights, we played during breaks, while waiting for other members to arrive, and so on. When I started work at Kino in 2006, I brought my cards to work to build decks during my break time sometimes. One of my colleagues asked me to teach her to play, and then she got hooked, too.
She started dating another guy at work, who's already plays MtG (he quit Kino a few years after this, but I've seen him on the local D&D forums so I guess he's a ttrpg-er too), so we soon spent a lot of lunch breaks playing against one another.
The two of them joined local tournaments and stuff, so they got really competitive, and I think that was around when I played less, because that isn't my scene. Around this time, our D&D games were also slowing down because of the transition from 3.5e to 4e and the fact that everyone in the group except me and my cousin were unhappy with 4e.
[Side note: 4e was ahead of its time. Pathfinder 2e, that so many ttrpg gamers are raving about now, is basically 4e.]
So, we played less MtG, and less D&D... until at some point we just stopped. And while we've tried to restart a D&D group every couple of years since, I think we didn't go back to MtG (with the exception of my cousin, who still plays now and is teaching his kids to play.)
And then I started DM-ing a Strixhaven game. Strixhaven is one of the settings in MtG's Arcavios plane, and the longer I play in this setting, the more I read up on all the MtG lore I've missed since I stopped playing.
Around the second half of last year, I bought Strixhaven cards with zero intention of playing again. I just liked the art, and love them as collectibles. Then a friend gave me some cards from his Forgotten Realms set. Earlier this year, I met with a rep from Wizards of the Coast (who ghosted us after, ugh) about bringing D&D and MTG to our store, and I said "I'm collecting again, but I don't want to play anymore."
Then - remember last newsletter, when I talked about listening to Asians Represent? Well, I listened to another episode where they did a critique on the Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty set, and they talked about playing MtG again, and... it made me want to build a deck. I already have enough cards for one deck - I just needed some lands maybe!
Last week I ordered a bundle of random commons and uncommons, and I've been spending last weekend (yes, while being in incredible pain from period cramps) sorting them into categories before I can start deck building. And... I guess this is my life now, again. In a way, it feels nice to circle back to MtG which always did come hand-in-hand with D&D to me a long time ago. I do regret giving away all of my old cards - I thought I was done with MtG, but I think now that I was just done with hyper competitive MtG. Rather than building decks to win, these days I'm drawn to it to build decks to explore imaginary characters' stories within the MtG worlds.
As someone obsessed with lore, MtG lore is just too good for me to leave it behind.
The title is from a Magic: the Gathering flavor text (the italicized text on the bottom of many cards that give information or background on the world, but has no effect on gameplay) for the card Fodder Cannon, which goes:
Step 1: Find your cousin.
Step 2: Get your cousin in the cannon.
Step 3: Find another cousin.
Drink more water!