If money were no object, I’d outfit my room with a new desk and chair, plus get some serious electronics to go with them.

First, I would like a gaming rig because they’re easy to use for audio/video production. I love my computer now, but I need to see if it will support an external GPU and not run like a three-legged dog……. or whether I would be better off getting a new motherboard so I can add a PCI graphics card…. but then I’d need a new chip, a new everything. It’s a lot, and the graphics card I’d want to put in it would be at least a thousand dollars. Going that high end would also allow me to have an income stream, because I’d try my hand at mining crypto or something equally lucrative in distributed computing.

If I had an unlimited amount of dollars at Amazon, I’d be able to build a computer that would serve me for more than a few years at a time. It’s expensive not to have money for things like that, because you end up replacing them so often. The iMac I had at the Bob White House in Houston is still viable in 2024. I am absolutely kicking myself for not bringing it to DC. That’s because the hardware was plenty fast enough all on its own, and upgradable back then. It was also an Intel Mac, so it could have run Windows 10/11 flawlessly. I’m an idiot who doesn’t think things through, with both UNIX and Windows in the palm of my hand and I let it go.

That’s because they don’t make an M version of Windows. Any Mac I got now wouldn’t run it on bare metal, there would be a translation layer. It would make a $4,000 (or whatever) laptop seem like it was 2015, so forget about Triple A titles….. which I probably wouldn’t even play because I’ve been playing Skyrim for 10 years and I haven’t even finished a quarter of it.

With mods, I haven’t been through a tenth of it.

So, regardless of how we all feel about JK Rowling, we’ve all read the books (or at least, a majority across the world has so this will be universal). Returning to Skyrim over and over is returning to the comfort of Hogwarts. Getting to know characters you love rather than constantly changing books. I have, in effect, been reading the same story over and over, which explains a lot about my blog, I think…….

There become lines you will not cross because you love characters. I will not kill Alduin AND Paarthurnax. Paarthurnax has been sitting on top of a mountain for a thousand years or something like that. He’s constantly been alone for a thousand years. That’s punishment enough for his war crimes…. again, a thousand years ago when he already sacrificed of himself and gave the mortals a shout that would kill dragons. He is the Christ figure in the story, not the villain.

I will not let the Stormcloaks win the Civil War, because they’re racist bastards. I play Dunmer (Dark Elf, which doesn’t mean nefarious, just better at magic than a Nord without practicing). However, even if I was a Nord I would think they were full of shit. Other people run on pure emotion. They replace Jarl Balgruuf when they win the Civil War and instantly regret it. They get a huge “fuck around and find out” tax, but them’s the brakes, kid.

Or, in the words of Will Hunting, “how ya like them apples?”

I learned all this from reading reddit posts on the story, not by watching it play out in front of my eyes. I’ve watched so many people regret their poor decisions and reload a previous save.

By now, I’m head of the Thieves Guild, the Dark Brotherhood, and the Dragonborn. That’s three quest lines out of about a thousand. I also find it calming as a gardening and beekeeping simulation, because potions I create from my garden are quite valuable, just like I’d be very wealthy if I sold pain medication, essentially.

In Skyrim, you have to go to traders yourself all the time. With mods, you can set it up so that your employees do all that stuff, you just get the money. I have a home called Silverstead that sells everything, because I’ve expanded it into a whole town. There’s even an inn with a bard. I wish it had full game integration, so I’d see the people I normally see in my own pub. But that’s harder to do with a mod, so they normally only integrate the guards’ dialog.

Which often results in funny things.

Like, even in my own house, where I’m basically a laird, I hear, “SPEAK, elf.”

However, it does have follower barracks, so they all live with me and makes the town look a lot bigger. It’s more like bringing home with me than home being a specific place by now. I used a mod to marry Serana so I get all the perks that come with being married as well as a follower marked essential so she can’t die. The only thing the mod doesn’t do is give you a wedding at the Temple of Mara. It’s a very wise trade, because Serana is a powerful magician.

It’s especially important if you’re on a tank playthrough, or archery (bashing and cutting everyone, or shooting them with an arrow while obnoxiously overpowered). I try to get followers who can do everything, but start out with the basics. For instance, Lucien was a swordsman, and as I taught him more spells, he began to prefer magic. So, I added Lydia. She began to prefer staffs. So, I tend to have this affect on people, guiding them toward the light, literally. Spells are amazing in caves where it’s dark.

It’s also nice to have a vampire on the team, as Serana is. I get to live vicariously through her rather than having that type of magic myself. I’ve let her bite me before, and it sucked. Even when you drink blood potions, your eyes still burn in the sun and my eyes cannot take it. I’m not speaking figuratively. The screen goes very blurry and it stuns me as much as the character.

I have never become a werewolf because being a vampire lord was difficult on PC and I couldn’t figure it out. I have put off doing The Companions storyline because the vampire lord thing was so difficult that I thought, “I’m not sure I’d like playing as a werewolf any better.” So, mostly I keep doing the main storylines, but adding different followers so the dialogue stays fresh.

If you outfit Inigo in dragonbone armor, he will run out in front of enemies, yelling “I am wearing the remains of a giant lizard!” Although my favorite line is actually from Serana in her quest line. She says something about the Falmer being able to build better traps than bridges, and it cracked me up to the point of tears because I thought, “that’s probably because they’re blind, Serana….” I do what I can to add to the humor.

Lucien is written very posh and shits on himself all the time because his character is not built to progress in confidence as he gets better. So, after a battle, you’ll hear, “WE killed a dragon! Yup. because that’s exactly what happened!” He pretends like he’s been hiding the whole time.

The game is much better with followers that have contextual dialogue, so if there are vanilla players that have dialogue overhauls among the mods, I always add them. For instance, Lydia’s dialogue makes it clear that she is not so trusting of Serana because she doesn’t want a vampire on our team at first, for obvious reasons. Serana could kill us in the middle of the night, or turn us into vampires as well.

So, there are multi-layers to work through instead of just the surface.

I do not like The Blades, because they mettle in affairs they can barely understand. I am ashamed to lead them, so they stay in their little temple, seething that I won’t kill Paarthurnax.

Dude is probably my great grandfather or something.

People spend money on graphics cards to make everything more lifelike, more immersive. I don’t because to me, it looks immersive enough.

My primary goal in a media machine is to be able to edit audio and video. But it’s not a bad thing to make the game more realistic when I needed the resources, anyway. I’m not really a gamer, I just like spending time with characters I’ve known for years.

I like story building, not tearing it down. I want it to be more interesting. I do not want anyone else to be the villain. Yet people are shocked when I write them that way, because I don’t make shit up. You want a better review, compromise with me. I’ll go back to treating you like you earned it in text. What I won’t do is kowtow to people who love my writing….. but only when they look perfect and I don’t.

Probably one of the reasons it’s easy to get lost in the game. I have to have a reprieve. A way to get away from everything like my sister watches “Below Deck.” It’s absolute trash. But it gets her mind of her job. I respect that. It’s what she likes.

I like intelligence and computers. She’s starting to get into intelligence because I like it…. the stories of women who do incredible things. But even if she never picked something to like that I do, it wouldn’t matter. I will watch Below Deck and get interested in it for the amount of time she has to spend.

She’ll talk to me about the Mendez lecture even though my brain is spilling over with information and it’s all I want to talk about. It’s a balance. But mostly because Lindsay was also a political science major, so it’s not like I’m telling her stories that would be uninteresting to her, anyway. I like reality trash TV, just not as much as her. She doesn’t have to like intelligence and Skyrim as much as I do.

Which she doesn’t.

Probably because my brother in law got me into it.

Although I’ve never asked him what race he plays, his play style, etc. I was just watching him play one day (Xbox vs. PC) and thought, “that looks fun.” It’s years later. It’s still fun.

It’s something that makes my autistic brain play, when I’m used to hearing “God, Leslie. Chill!” I think that should give comfort to her and many people.

We have let our relationship grow to accommodate both of us. Even coming to DC is not leaving everything she knows. She works here a lot of the time. So, wanting to move here is not unlikely or unreasonable in the grand scheme of things, because she could end up with a job here literally tomorrow. I don’t think she’s looking, but what I do know is that in Austin, Houston, and DC she is a motherfucking badass and that’s why so many people want her. It’s not that she’s looking, it’s that she attracts energy to her and people ask her to work for them a lot of the time when she doesn’t see it coming. A lot of the time she does and refuses to be poached.

But honestly, wanting her to move here has nothing to do with anything except feeling protective of her. I have wanted her to move here for years, but it’s not because I’m trying to derail her life at all. Her life is also built here, so it doesn’t matter which city she lives in, really, as long as she stays in politics. I am not offended by “nope. I’m happy where I am.”

But even she agrees that it wouldn’t be impossible given her job choices. It would have to be a lucrative offer, like working in The White House. You don’t make much money there, but it’s on your CV your whole life.

It’s what I thought gave Kal Penn the edge on “The Daily Show,” but they didn’t go his direction. Hassan Minaj had it in the bag until that exposé came out about him. Then, Hassan and Roy left at the same time.

Jon came back to right the ship, I’m sure of it. However, I thought Leslie Jones should have gotten it. I have never laughed harder.

Back to my sister. I don’t want to be pushy by any means, but I’m also her older sister and we don’t have a mom. We’re our own moms now, and that’s not the easiest position to be in with a younger sister, especially with 5 and a half years between us. I go instant mom face at everything she says….. and mom face is “come here, let me fix everything.”

The problem is that I can’t, so I play Skyrim.