I’ve been meaning to get this done for a few weeks but I’ve been having rough time.  I know, everyone has.  It’s hard for me to get up and do the silly stuff I want to right now with everything going on.  I will, though.  I’m getting there.  I’m working up plans and schedules to get things done.  I got another job finally.  It’s not paying what I need right now so, I’m still looking for other possibilities to supplement my circumstance.  Last week I won twenty-eight dollars in the Lottery…it’s a start.  I’ve gotten a couple acting gigs under my belt.  As I write this I’m heading home from one.  Real quick I’m going to write about the not great things I’ve been going through.  Then maybe after that I’ll try and be funny or something.

     So, I didn’t get to practice my 12/31 tradition.  Some of you may be familiar, my dad died on the thirty-first of December.  I honor his memory by getting In-N-Out Burger.  I know, he died from a heart attack and that said, he’d be joining me for a Double-Double and a shake regardless.  I was out of money and couldn’t.  I just got my first paycheck from this new job and I’m thinking I’ll grab some In-N-Out when I get back in the Valley.  Aside from that or concurrent with that, my depressive episode got bad.  I’ve been more than ready to kill myself for the last two months.  Truth be told, the only reason I didn’t is because I still haven’t found a certain video clip to tag what will ultimately be my Note.  Rest assured, when I do get that clip, I am so dead.

     Ok now.  I’ve been going through the Marvel Multiverse RPG Discord, and all the books, and such.  I’ve been writing NPCs, and thinking up game stories.  I’m going to start up the podcast again discussing various topics and I’m thinking I’ll start with character creation for the upcoming episode.  I still need to come up with the following topics.  If anyone has thoughts to that point, feel free to throw at me any suggestions.  Also, I’m going to cover topics on Numenera, World of Darkness, MSHRPG, and any other games we’ve played on the show.

     I’ve been having a lot of fun working on this set the last couple days.  Who knows?  Maybe I’ll actually be able to swing this more professionally.  At any rate, I need to wrap this up and get going with other things.  Until next time, True Believers!

So, I’ve been going through a time rougher than usual.  I’ve been spiraling pretty hard the last couple months.  I still don’t have a job again, things are getting shut off on me, and I’m out of money.  That last job I had for about four months wasn’t paying me what I earned so I left.  I’ve had a few interviews but some of them I couldn’t take because of my car situation and the others I just didn’t get.  Here I am now, my least favorite time of year and I can’t even get myself a cheeseburger to properly grieve.  I mean, I can get one but I’m hanging onto my last fifteen dollars for ‘Plan B’.  Probably this weekend.  When I lose my internet I won’t be able to communicate let alone look for work.  So, yeah, sometime this next week I’ll likely take a walk to In-N-Out, eat my last meal, and then go home to finish things.  I never got to have the few life things I’ve always wanted and now I can’t even get a job so as to barely survive.  I’m very tired and there just isn’t much reason to keep going on.  The simple truth is that in my experience people typically look for reasons to live, many spend their existence looking for reasons to not die, lately I can’t find any reason to not kill myself.  These are important distinctions that most people don’t consider.

     Really the only problem I’m having with this decision is logistical.  It’s a terrible waste for these useful organs to just die and wind up as ash or as practice for dissection.  But seeing as I’ve never died before I know how to time things so I’m found soon enough to maintain viability for transplant.  There’s a fifty percent chance of compatibility so, my organs would be pretty handy to transplant.  At any rate, if anyone wants to lend me about four thousand dollars, that’ll buy me another better still, if anyone can put me in touch with Martin Gero, I have a pitch for the new Stargate series.  I have a way to tie in all the previous series AND move forward without getting hung up on all the established lore but still respecting it.  A couple broad strokes: The real reason behind inventing the human-form replicators and a rogue faction of the Alterans fleeing to other galaxies.  There, just a taste to hopefully pique Martin Gero’s interest.  So, go, now and get this in front of him so I can maybe get a job writing for my third or second favorite thing of all time.

     In any case, thanks for being there and humoring me all you have.  Excelsior and all that.

Well, still looking for a new job.  Otherwise, not much new going on here.  I’ve been watching The Walking Dead again lately.  Yesterday I got to the episode What Happened and What’s Going On.  That’s the episode where Tyreese dies.  And I’ve been in an unusually receptive state lately, probably because I’ve been in bit of a down-swing the last few weeks.  I noticed some things about this episode that I hadn’t really focused on before.  It was always interesting to me how they used hallucinations of specific people to walk through his experiences, the ‘life flashing before the eyes’ thing.  I’ve thought a lot about death for most of my life.  Pretty much my whole existence I’ve had chronic and severe depression aside from a myriad of undiagnosed mental illness.  Among them, some obsessive compulsive and ADHD tendencies, like reliving events and conversations repeatedly.  I’ve relived countless lifetimes on an almost daily basis for decades.  Perhaps one could argue that my life has been flashing before my eyes over and over again just in case I ever manage to kill myself.  Oh yeah, that’s been another recurring theme for me.  I spent my teenage years trying to open my wrists every night.  It seems I could never find a blade sharp enough to break the skin.  Once or twice I tried to hang myself.  Full disclosure, that might have worked but there was no way in hell I’d be caught dead in utah.  Joe Hill was another smart man.  Back to my first thought on here.  This whole episode is something I’ve always related to.  I didn’t fully get why until this time but I think it’s because this portrayal of dying feels very close to my own experience.  I guess it makes sense a little bit.  The only times I got a break from life were when I was trying to die.  I think that may conclude the death talking portion of this post, let’s see.

     There are some interesting technical things done in this episode.  The lighting and cinematography kept oversaturating color and off-centering the image while gradually framing the next subject.  And then, the people he’s seeing.  All of them characters who had already died rather recent in the timeline but people who are significant to Tyreese.  Mostly people representing what he views to be personal failures.  The two girls he protected from the fall of the prison and then couldn’t protect them from themselves.  The kid he didn’t kill who came back later and was killed by Tyreese’s sister.  The leader he followed and turned out to be the villain.  And then his final failure of not following through, as he views it, following through on the final wish of someone he respects and honors.  Again, from my experience people like Tyreese and me, even when we’re not ‘depressed’.  Even when we’re finally getting that last break and finding any moment of genuine peace, we default to dwelling on our failures.

     See what I mean?  I was starting to discuss this from a technical perspective and then right back to the death talk.  Anyway, aside from looking for a job again, tomorrow I’m going to possibly live stream on twitch.  I have to get going with these things and I keep shitting the bed.  I’m working out scheduling these things so, the plan right now is that tomorrow I’m going to post something other than one of these things.

HUZZAHS! are in order.  Bottle Cap wrapped up his special training!  Now he’s four stars!  He only needs four more power ups to be completely topped up.  And he needs to mega evolve twenty-three more times and he’ll be maxed out with his mega evolution benefits.  And he’s already a five heart buddy.  To recap: we started this around June twenty-eighth and his stats were Attack thirteen, Defense zero, and HP nine.  And the training is one research task for each point in each stat.  So, we had two tasks to complete for Attack, fifteen for Defense, and six for HP.  You have one year or three-hundred and sixty-five days to complete the Hyper-training and when we finished it on November first, we had two-hundred and thirty-nine days left so it took us one-hundred and twenty-six days to finish this.  Not bad to get me a shiny, four star Charizard after nine years.  I have to say, this whole really is superbly well designed to in that it creates a pretty good real world equivalent of the pokémon games’ kind of ‘casual’ quest style and translate that into the AR game model.  And they started actively adding into the game the various features that drew in all of us to the original Game Boy games, it’s no surprise that Pokémon GO has lasted this whole time.  Seriously, next July sixth will be a full decade for this game.  Anyone else still playing consistently and enjoying it like me?  Feel free to share your stories here.  I can always use more material to keep this thing consistent.

In other gaming news, I finally finished updating the resources I’ve been making for the Marvel Multiverse Role Playing Game.  You’ll find the resources in the page titled Tabletop Gaming Resources on this very website.  There’s a tab for this game specifically and within that tab you’ll find all the information to create new, original characters for this game and everything else you’ll need to run your own games using the d616 system.  Soon I’m going to put together another page on here for original material and other content for MMVRPG.  Some things I’m putting together are characters, ships, and such based on the Stargate franchise.  I’ve already run a game using henchmen based on Jaffa soldiers and one of the players even took on one of the symbiotes and melded with it.  A very ‘Tim’ thing to do in such a game and I’ll admit, I didn’t totally expect someone who isn’t me to have done it.  It was a fun game with all first-time players.  I’m going to making new material and if anyone has ideas and wants to workshop concepts and designs for this or other games, again, feel free to write me here and we can figure some things as a group.

     I’m working on some employment issues right now and then I’m going to finish up some podcast things and post content from LA Comic Con.  I can’t wait for LACC next year!  It’s going to be so much fun!

Here I am, behind schedule still and/or again.  It was a long week being in Lancaster but I’m home again, had a day of lounging and laundry before work today and here I am.  I have nothing in particular to write about today.  Bottle Cap is still moving right along.  We’re up to 1,253 Pokémon caught which means just 247 more and Bottle Cap is 4*!  I can’t wait!  But until then, I’ll write a little more about the Avengers Expansion for the Marvel Multiverse RPG.  A part of the Iconic Item update in this book is the Battlesuit supplement.

     Battlesuits like Iron Man’s various armors are treated much like Iconic Items in their creation and use in this game.  For good measure they even made a character sheet for Tony Stark without any armor so, you can more efficiently use that character between armors.  The math is the same as for Iconic Items, number of powers minus restrictions and that’s the Power Value of the armor.  Also, if you try to integrate an Iconic Item into the battlesuit, the Power Value of the item is added to that of the battlesuit.  Likely increasing the Power Value of the battlesuit.  And again, the Power Value of such items represent the power picks available to the character to take that item at character creation.  After character creation, using these items requires the selection of powers to which the character loses access in exchange for the powers of the items.  It’s suggested to create the character sheet for the normal character without the items.  I’ll touch on that more next time.  I’ll write up something on the Alternate Forms section of the Avengers Expansion.  That section uses the Hulks principally for example of the redesign for alternate forms but the whole section is equally useful for characters like Spirits of Vengeance, second-stage mutants, and magic beings who maybe take on the spirit of a mythical or divine being.  Even if perhaps, two players want to create a gestalt character like…well, I can think of nor find an appropriate example so, looking to the Distinguished Competition, F.I.R.E.S.T.O.R.M is the best example of a gestalt character.  Two distinct being who fuse together to forge a new, third individual.  So, next time.

     One last thing.  I’m working to do a quick little video.  I’m thinking now that it’ll be of a first date of two individuals.  Ya know, my style of absurd and/or dark humor but the characters will be represented by pipe cleaner people.  I have some idea of what it’ll be but I need to script it out and then record a few different things for it.  When I pull it off it’ll be fun…at least for a few people.  Beyond that, we’ll have to wait and see.