Assignment for AEG is due in a week. I've been buckling down more on it, but there's a bit of a hump I can't seem to get over. It's not so much writing block as a writer's... slog. I know what needs to be written and how to write it, it just somehow feels excruciating to do so. I guess this is what technical work is like.
Plans for GenCon are pretty much finalized. Scott, Monica, and Nikki will be driving up to Indy with Kim and me on the Tuesday before. It's not going to be the most comfortable trip ever, but as the man in Lock, Stock says, "don't knock it, it's cheap." I'm interested to see how Scott and Mon manage the con, since they're definitely interested in the stuff overall, but they don't have a particular hook like Kim and I do. I don't imagine I'll be spending as much time in the card hall this year, but I didn't plan on doing so last year either. Since this trip comes at the cost of delaying our new windows even further, I'm goddamned certain I will have a good time. If I am not enjoying myself, I will start feeding anime cat-girls to the bloated Klingon cosplayers until something amuses me.
Last night was Abby and Rachel's X-Men themed murder mystery party, and it went off surprisingly well. I say "surprising" not because I had a lack of faith in those two, but because from my personal experience, wedging that many people in to a small space and giving them conflicts to resolve (fictional or not) ends ... dramatically. Things were pretty calm, though, despite the 80-degree-and-hey-did-we-all-wear-multi-layered-costumes heat in the house. There were a few people who were sore that they couldn't finish their objectives, but overall everyone seemed pretty happy about it.
I got to play Gambit, which was neat and a little intimidating to me. One, since he's such a Goddamned flirt, I always worry about people taking it a little too seriously and getting creeped out. Two, my Cajun accent is horrible. So hopefully no one would mind I was just going to talk like me. And Wade Wilson. See, I had originally decided to play Gambit as a slow-talking, sly man of few words like in the comics, but we were given backstories and told, effectively, "Look we had to sort've fuck with some histories here to make the game work, please use this information and don't argue with us about comic book canon." Which I totally understood. You had to pull some logical strings to get some of those folks into the field together, and you also had to have connections and goals that worked as a unit.
So, after reading Gambit's history, I decided that he didn't really sound like Remy from the comics. No, he came off, to me, as more of a quick talking dude like the blonde guy from Community. So I went with it. Gambit was pretty much half Gambit, half Deadpool, and a lot. Of. Words. I spent the whole night running around poking and prodding people about what they were up to and trying to get them to move in directions that I cared about. Considering the main thrust of the plot was that someone murdered Erik, and Remy wouldn't have really cared about that, I really focused on about 1/3rd of the group. But hooo boy, watching shit happen after I knocked one person one way and another person some other way was hilarious. Things didn't always go to plan (and it blew up on me a couple times), but that was pretty fun, too.
Also, Dawn and I were a pretty interesting duo. With her as Rogue and the both of us pretty much trading off on helping each other out, it was hilarious. All it takes for us to really bond and hold hands and work together is a fictional superpowered tyrant dying. Who would have thought it'd be so easy?
The costume was my only real regret. On one hand, I'm sad I couldn't find a nice brown trench, but, again - 80 degrees indoors. I also bought a pair of black jeans to wear which turned out to be some weird hipster skinny shit with a faux tribal art stitch on the back. Wayyyyy too douchebag for me, and even too douchebaggy for the newly-smarmy Gambit. Hopefully I can return them today.
