Reading goals

Well, I haven't actually read more than a few chapters of books that I was already reading when the year ended. Over a month, and nothing finished. That's bad. Thanks, SWTOR, and me getting back into it.

However, shortly, I'll have some work travel. My goals are as follows:

• Finish the novel I'm reading before I go. (Dweller in the Deep by Graham McNeill)
• Finish the Kindle novel I'm reading before I go. (Rise of the Seventh Moon by Rich Wulf)
• Finish the physical gamebook that I'm reading before I go. Monster Manual II)

I've got some other books in my backpack already, which is probably enough to get me through the trip, including a few Pathfinder books, and the Solomon Kane collection by Robert E. Howard. I think that'll do for my trip. I would, however, like to read at least a few pdfs on my list before February is over. If February doesn't end up being a great month for reading, I at least don't want it to be as completely useless as January. Maybe I'll even load them on my tablet and bring them along on my trip. Shortlist of pdfs to read include Cults of Freeport, the next in that trawl, as well as the back half of the Curse of the Crimson Throne adventure path, so "A History of Ashes," "Skeletons of Scarwall" and "Crown of Fangs." To break that up, maybe The Rise of Tiamat from my 5e crawl, and maybe Shadowfell: Gloomwrought and Beyond from 4e. I've actually read that before, maybe five years or so ago, but I remember quite liking it, and thinking that the Shadowfell is an interesting adventuring location. Ben Wooten did a piece of art for it that I've always really liked, and have used copies of with many posts in the past. I actually described at a high level that picture to ChatGPT, and it generated an image that is... well, it's not really very similar other than that it's got a similar vibe, I suppose.

I'm not really a huge fan of extraplanar jaunting anymore, after flirting for a little while with the high concept of Planescape. But the Shadowfell is kind of the exception to that. It, or something like it (I fell in love first with its predecessor, the 3e Plane of Shadow. It's gotten around. Both the Wheel of Time and even Stranger Things with the Upside-down had similar extradimensional words.

Oh, and I asked ChatGPT to make a foggier version of that, just for the heckuvit.

I'm not actually sure that it looks like the Plane of Shadow, or the Shadowfell, or if it just looks like a dark fantasy dungeonpunk city, like the one in the old video game Thief. Whatever. It's still a pair of pretty cool images that I can certainly use. Some kind of Shadowy alternate plane is the only non-normal world that the Old Night setting has officially "endorsed" although of course, it does lead to even stranger and more exotic alternate worlds if you travel through them, including Hells where daemons come from, and more. Like the Plane of Shadow and like the Upside Down, the main purpose of it is not to be a location in its own right, although it is indeed that, but you find out that it's really a gateway to get to ...somewhere else. Somewhere worse, most likely.

On a completely different note, my wife asked me to watch most of The Big Bang Theory with her. I'd actually seen a lot episodes here and there from the earlier seasons previously, but she wanted to start when the girlfriends/wives started showing up, because she thought that the relationships made the show more interesting. She's probably right, and I've enjoyed it well enough. With the exception of a three month break we took from doing it while she was out of town with the twins being born and all that, we've trawled through almost six seasons in the last few months, and only have two and a half seasons left to go. The show started way back in 2007 and ran until 2019... kinda sorta coinciding with Peak Geek Chic, if you will, and probably not by coincidence. When the show started, the characters were meant to be quite ridiculous. If they had cringy behavior, that was because they were super nerdy geeky characters, and they were supposed to. As the show became more mainstream, this aspect was somewhat toned down... somewhat, and the characters became more normal and relatable, with their geeky hobbies and habits being softened to try and make them more endearing rather than cringy.

I'm surprised to find that what I thought of the show is that while it got less deliberately cringy, in at least one aspect, it got more unconsciously cringy. It simply isn't realistic or believable that these really nerdy and kind of useless characters start having reasonably attractive, or even genuinely beautiful in some cases, women throw themselves at them, unless the girls themselves are incredibly flawed or broken in some way. Since they weren't, the whole show started to take on wish fulfillment fantasy vibes of the writers' room, which is pretty cringe. It was one thing when it was "straight man" Leonard getting hit on by Alex, but when Sheldon was getting hit on by Dr. Norawki, or whatever her name was, that's when it was a bridge too far. And honestly, all of Raj's white girlfriends were absurd from the get-go.

I enjoy the show well enough, but nothing like it will ever be made again. Because we're long past Peak Geek Chic, nobody will likely greenlight a show about geek chic like this ever again. And even if they do, and even if it's as good, it won't be as popular. The audience itself has moved on from having a fond appreciation of geek chic pursuits. Geek hobbies still have some inertia in the mainstream, but it's fading fast, and they'll go back to being geek hobbies once again, to the extent that they haven't already. Hobby tourism in geek hobbies is going to dry up, probably for the best, honestly. Those that remain will be more committed. That doesn't mean that it will look like it did before the tourists came along, but it'll be more like that than when things like D&D and Marvel Comics characters are considered mainstream.

Professional asshole Wil Wheaton had a recurring self-deprecating role as himself on the show. He probably appreciated it and it may well have been a bigger deal than his actual Star Trek role as Wesley Crusher, but nothing like that will come along for him again either. Which is probably good for the rest of us.