Derik Badman's Journal

A gray cool morning where I woke up far too early. Ended up not running the game yesterday, as ███ was feeling up for it. But I did end up starting to write down some ideas for a little adventure area, stealing some inspiration from Uncle Boonmee and The Book of the New Sun. So I'm going to keep working on that and see what comes of it. If nothing else, I can have something ready next time I need it, and if I like it and can find a good way to lay it out, I can always post it online.

Started the new Library of American collection of Ursula Le Guin's Annals of the Western Shore trilogy. I'm always impressed with how she can evoke the cultures of her worlds, making them explicable and interesting without feeling like a massive information dump. We are told much by the narrator, but also must infer a good bit from what is said and unsaid. I'm about halfway through the first book Gifts and enjoying it.

Watched the second episode of the new Star Trek: Discovery season. The first episode was all about Burnham, so it was nice when this one brought back all the other characters, it is so much more interesting when the writers can have the main characters interacting with each other, as that is such a big part of Star Trek in general. I am concerned though that they've pulled the old hoary cliché of the enemy that seems defeated at the end of a season but then really managed to survive somehow. That's mostly an inference from what they chose to show in the recap, so I'm hoping I'm wrong about it.