today was one of those days where simultaneously everything went wrong AND everything went right. Despite (and because of) construction impacting all the buses, and missing a connection for an hourly one, I initially waved off from my primary viewing spot.

I then decided I was up for biking the whole distance from where I missed my connection, but that I'd do so in a way that ran moo past a fallback spot, so I could evaluate from there.

the angle at the fallback spot was damn near perfect so I waved off primary for good. turned out that was for the best, the road I needed to take to get there from the fallback spot was closed for road work!

in more "task failed successfully," both buses to get me back were exactly late in just the right way to sync up so I could make my connection.

now I'm just vibing at the museum while they're closing down for the evening, touching up these photos.

I love Delta. I got to really hang out with Wayward (my departed roommate) for the first time because of Delta. it's probably my favorite EELV but don't tell Atlas. And that's it. that was the last one. into the clouds forevermore.

curse of strahd sucks so bad but i could fix it. i could make it good

is that it's an isekai story without permanence. on the rare occasion that isekais are effective they function because the outworlder protagonist(s) can't—or won't—leave. they are going to live the rest of their life in the new world, and the bonds they make there are as lifelong as any other. that's their life, not just a weird three-month adventure; the consequences of what they might do are permanent, at least in theory. (practically the permanent negative consequences are sabotaged by the godlike-powers aspect of many of these shows, but even in those cases the positive ones remain)

curse of strahd, on the other hand, has the characters start the adventure by entering strahd's tiny little pocket-transylvania and end it by leaving the place. their memories are the only lasting consequences of the whole affair, which would be fine for like a One Fucked Up Night-type story (cf. one night strahd) but leaves a campaign that can take 50 hours feeling entirely too hollow. plus it's just narratively incoherent that this chick strahd's hunting is going to get bailed out by four random strangers who have no connection to this place or anything happening here. on top of that the party is also dramatically cut off from their pasts, meaning nothing from those times can ever crop up to haunt them physically, it's all emotional and memory-based. you can get away with this for one character, maybe two, but you start to lose drama after that point. backstories should matter!

so: how do we fix this?

I made this last year based on a dream I had but didn't post it here because my cohost didn't exist yet. There was more to the dream but this was basically what happened in it lol

Lowkey I think the most difficult one of these is the tower, because with almost every other Arcana finding something static will do you just fine, but to capture the true essence of the tower something needs to be actively and violently falling apart, like trying to catch a lightning bolt or something accidentally collapsing on at least a moderate scale