The Exalted writing is obviously taking up the bulk of the writing here for a few days, leaving out any of the normal stuff I'd talk about. Having posted part 2, I figured I'd come back to jot down a few things. The time off from school has done me some good, and my academic mode is kind of coming back online, which feels good. I'll probably be doing some planning for what direction I initially think my thesis is going to take which is almost certainly going to change dramatically between then and now, but it's basically first steps. If I'm feeling it, I'll do the same thing basically clairifying some of my Inquisition concepts as they pertain to gaming at large. I feel like comparing Inquisition (and the Dragon Age francise) to the Mass Effect trilogy is helpful in a few key ways. Talking about how games do and don't function as literature is another. These are going to be long form academic style notes as opposed to writings directly informing a thesis. I've been extremely underwhelmed by writing on video games in academia so far. I have a friend who's been working in the field, and I'll certainly ask her before too long.
I've been reading Malcom X for what feels like a really long time, now. Marable's writing isn't dull, exactly, but the book is very substantial and it's not really written in a narrative style. It's pretty dry. So, I read a chapter or part of one every few days and it gets set down because my interest is being applied elsewhere. I finished Haggard's She, which I bought because I had to for a class only to have the class itself cancelled a week before they started. It had its moments - chiefly at the beginning - and otherwise I'd say it's not to my tastes. Setting aside questions of Haggard's misogyny, racism, and classism - none of which are exception for when it was written - it honestly just started to drag horribly past the middle. Since I figure I'll finish Malcom X in a few days, I pulled a Foucault text we didn't get to in my 502 last semester and Gibson's Neuromancer, figuring I can probably use the refresher since I'm going to be getting into Pattern Recognition, Spook Country, and Zero History pretty damn soon.
I'll probably also finish up the Exalted posts tomorrow, since part 3 is the fun bit. Getting into the pitfalls of the XP trap is kind of interesting since I hadn't actually ever done the numbers for the BP/XP split like that even though I suspected they were about like they were. It seems like once you know what to avoid, it's easy to make an okay character, but I kind of screwed the pooch in terms of making good choices with my latest one. In the campaign I'm playing, though, it's not that important for the most part; my guy dodges okay and has a lightsaber, so when push comes to shove things are alright. I should have paid a little more attention, but the first character you make in a set is usually pretty messed up in places that make you roll your eyes later.
The best bit, though, is probably me writing up a solar bolt Lore Charm. I don't think Crypt Bolt exists in Lore for Abyssals in 2E, either, so you could make a case for it being out of flavor. The information's there to make it, though, and probably make it more interesting than it was in 1E with the errata from the Dragon-Blooded Elemental Bolt. So, I'll drop the stats at the end of the writeup tomorrow.
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