Reading and gaming

So, I am still pretty occupied with SWTOR, but I've also made some pretty good progress on Dweller in the Deep, the Dark Waters trilogy final book that I've been reading. I'm now down to about 40-45 pages left. I might finish it today, but tomorrow is more likely. I'm also doing fairly well with Rise of the Seventh Moon, the final book in the Heirs of Ash trilogy, although whether I finish it before leaving town, or finish it on the flights I have to take (three legs on Monday) is TBD. I'm quite sure that I'll at least finish it on the flight if I don't before. But like I said, I've got plenty of other things that I'm set to read while traveling. It's been kind of nice to get back into reading just a bit after a good two month break where I didn't read much of anything because I was either out of town and busy, or playing SWTOR. I wonder how much of SWTOR I'm going to play "this time around"; will I re-up when it expires again in late March or early April, or will I have played enough by then to feel fine letting it go for a little while? Either way, I can't spend almost all of my free time on it every evening anymore. I'm already feeling a little bit burned out on that. I presume a new Galactic Seasons run will start before too long, though. We're starting the last week of the current season today. We'll see if I can get to the +200 cartel coins or not before the week is over. If I do, I'll almost certainly be able to get two characters in early March when the cartel coins for security key and subscription drop. I've got four planned characters that aren't built because I don't have a slot for them. Of course, if I decide to delete Embric Stane (and maybe re-purpose the name!) then I can get three of them built quickly. Whether I can actually play them or not remains to be seen, of course...

That honestly may be the best use of Embric Stane. I don't care about him as a character, and I don't really want to play him, but I've been reluctant to just delete him. But maybe I should, so I can play someone else that I'm more interested in playing in his slot. Next character to create, just based on how my doc is sorted, would be a trooper using the Operative class. Of course, I already have a trooper that I haven't started actually playing yet, so maybe he's not the best choice. I dunno. We'll see. I still haven't decided to delete Embric yet anyway.

So, Dweller in the Deep is an Arkham Horror novel, technically, but of course that just means that it's a 1920s Arkham Lovecraft pastiche; there's very little if anything that's specific to Arkham Horror that isn't already present in Lovecraft's own writings, or that of his contemporary "Lovecraft Circle" of writers. And I'm coming much more over the years around to the idea that the "correct" way to do Lovecraft pastiche isn't to use Lovecraftian elements, but rather to write stories with all new entities but which explore the same themes and ideas. That makes it less like pastiche and more like... just similar, in some ways. But that's probably for the best. The fact that Warhammer stuff is in some ways one of the best explorations of Lovecraftian themes isn't true because it was so true to a pure Lovecraftian aesthetic, but rather because it took the same ideas and did something new and different with them, in a new context.

Which is also the fun—sometimes—of seeing Lovecraft-like ideas in D&D. Although they normally do it wrong and just stick shoggoths or mi-go directly into the game. Zargon, in spite of his corny, hoaky name, is a good example of doing it right. Especially, and I kind of hate to say this, but it's true, with the 5e version of his art. Although I doubt anything else about the 5e iteration is the correct level of Lovecraftian.

Heirs of Ash, on the other hand, is an Eberron novel trilogy, and yeah; I'm almost done with that series too; should finish on my upcoming work trip, if not before. There's a little bit of Lovecraftian vibes here, with the myserious, unknowable Draconic Prophecy and those who pursue it, the mystery of the Mournland and what caused it, and the mysterious ancient, eldritch whatever stuff that's going on here and there. It's much more subtle, but it works, again, precisely because of that. The Lovecraftian pastiche that's really in your face starts to feel as if DisneyWorld created a LovecraftLand amusement park attraction, and the shoggoths and mi-gos are just animatronic features to entertain you, not have a genuine horrific vibe. 

Mi-go outside Akeley's farmhouse

Frankly, mi-go aren't even part of the Cthulhu Mythos proper anyway. Like "The Colour Out of Space", it's really more of a science fiction pulp story with horror-like vibes. But maybe that's the way Lovecraftiana outta be. Science fiction or fantasy with horror elements is like how Lovecraft himself often did it, and how Robert E. Howard did it, or Clark Ashton Smith, etc. 1920s rural New England is a strange place to keep as an iconic setting for Lovecraftiana anyway. 

I'll also finish Monster Manual II (the 3e version) and then I have at least two Pathfinder 1e setting books in my backpack to read while I'm at it. If it looks like I'm ahead on MM2, or even if I can finish it before I go, I'll load up a couple other books just to have more in my backpack to handle. And I'll load a few pdfs on my tablet and pack it in too. Not only will I be able to read while on the plane, specifically, but that's pretty much the only thing I can do other than fart around on YouTube and Reddit or whatever in the evenings in the hotel. No doubt, my supplier that I'm visiting would be happy to take me partying in the evening, but I don't really want to do that; after spending a whole day traveling or a whole day at their site, either one, I kind of want a quiet evening after with a nice dinner by myself, a phone call home to my wife, a nice hot shower, and a quiet evening in bed with my books until I fall asleep. That should mean that I get plenty of reading done.

I'd really like to read Cults of Freeport and even all three of the remaining Curse of the Crimson Throne modules before the month is over as well as the books I'm reading now, as well as whatever I read on my trip, but we'll see. I'd have to forego a lot of SWTOR to pull that off, I think. Which maybe isn't the worst thing for me to do anyway...