Creative Questions S02EP3

Desiree: Welcome to Creative Questions. The podcast where we attempt to review various creative projects we ourselves are part of and, or other people’s unique creations in an attempt to celebrate the creative inspiration in all of us. I’m Desiree, silver, your host, and owner of new nerd novelties, and hashtag own your weird lifestyle brand.

Liam:And I’m your co-host Liam Hewlett back at it again.

 Desiree: I managed to do the two week. Good for us.

Liam: Yeah. Uh, don’t call it a comeback.

Desiree: No. 

Liam: So at the end of last podcast, we promised we’d talk a little bit about the time we are away and the stuff that we’ve been up to during that time, cuz it’s been a busy last few months.

A lot has changed over that time, both living situations and just in general. 

Desiree: And I wanna do the official, obviously I have to ask you how you’re doing.

Liam: Yeah.  Well getting by a little bit better than last night, last time, but still, uh, yeah, health’s up and down over the last few months, but nothing new above that.

Desiree: And I’m about the same as last time. Still exhausted. I had my fourth shot of Moderna. So I’m getting ready for markets because, uh, a lot of people in Vancouver, almost everybody I knows had COVID by now. A little bit different out here in the sticks.  Not so many people have had it, so I’ve got my fourth shot of Moderna.

It kind of made me tired and I’m still tired, but I’m working through it. Still making stuff still updating the website, still making crafts. For father’s day, I got to make Dad dinner too. So we had beef stroganoff and I beat abeef roast for about an hour.  I think I’m still tired from that. It was good though.

Liam: Yeah.

Desiree: And Liam helped and made dessert.

Liam: Yeah. I had, uh, D and D that day, but I did make some parfaits for the family before that session. So I had mine ahead of time, but everybody else, at least Mom and Dad enjoyed theirs, how about you?

Desiree: Yeah. We had ’em with with Mom and Dad and we liked them too. We were stuffed, but we still managed to shove it in.

Liam: There you go.

Desiree:, I don’t know if many people know this, but pudding itself when you buy the pudding mixes it doesn’t have lactoses it’s lactose free.   So that’s the great thing that Liam and I can have it and , I prefer pistachio, but Dad’s favorite is butterscotch.

Liam: Yeah. Also I can’t do nuts. So..

Desiree: Probably would not be good to feed you nuts.

Liam: No.

Desiree: So you can go first li I’m I’m actually curious to hear what happened on your D and D session.

Liam: Okay. Yeah. So, the guys are continuing their fight against the enduring domain, which is the lycan kingdom that they are picking away at piecemeal.

They had a pretty eventful session last time in that there were a lot of fights that went on. They conquered a region by eliminating all the patrols in it. They investigated some landmarks in the area that led them to what will possibly be a boss fight, when they want to commit to it. And then they discovered a hidden objective that would allow them to stop the patrols that have, or Scouts, as I should say, like small groups of individuals that have been harassing them in the region.

They stopped them from joining the region now. So what’s in the region is going to be mostly what they have to deal with. Now they don’t have to deal with more groups joining the region cuz they went and hunted a Lord of bats on his clifftop roost at the end of the session.

And they really enjoyed that cuz they got to bring in one of their new allies that they requested aid from a druid by the name of ver who’s a very green center, uh, in that he’s entirely green. Hmm, it took, uh, the guys over, uh, a year as something like a year and a half before they realized that vert meant green.

Desiree: VERT.

Liam: Yes. Well, that’s how it’s pronounced in French it’s Ave, right? Yeah.  So I was pretty proud of that when they did realize that his name was Vert. But yeah he’s a new ally that has joined them after they requested his support and he proved to be quite valuable in that encounter.

Desiree: Have you made a model of him?

Liam: I had a model for his granddaughter cuz I thought she may have been a larger part of the story much earlier in the campaign. And then I also just had a female Centar miniature from one of my armies before. That’s why I made her as a character.  So I’d never really made a male Centar especially not like a green one.

So I’ve been using the model for his granddaughter. He’s a druid shapeshifter and so he’s not gonna spend that much time in his original form as it is, but,

Desiree: And what about this Bat King as soon as you say bat I get interested.

Liam: Yeah.  So I use one of my miniatures from near the start of the campaign that I had painted up and only ever used once as like  a powerful goul  kind of as a pick me up.

And one of the things the guys had picked up on, though, they haven’t had the chance to explore, cuz we did go over time with our session was the fact that it wasn’t a lycan. He was actually some sort of fiend and he did like summon swarms of bats, but their new ally Vert could control elements as a druid, he’s a powerful druid.

And so he made a, he used a spell called control wind or control winds that, uh, he created a downdraft in like a hundred foot cube, which is more than their entire battlefield on top of this cliff. And it restricts flying in that area, which is pretty good, cuz almost every single thing they were fighting during that battle was a flying creature.

So every time a flying creature tried to fly or started flying, they would have to yeah, pass a strength check or get knocked to the ground. And so there were a whole bunch of swarms of bats with which have no movement besides their flying movement. Uh, and not very much strength  there are actually like six whole swarms of bats just pinned to the ground by that spell along with a bunch of flying snakes and werebats and stuff like that, struggling to kind of slowly March towards a group of eight adventures, cuz we had the four party and they brought in their four allies. So they kind of dunked on that encounter. And that was, that was good because they felt great about it and it wasn’t supposed to be particularly challenging if they had brought all their allies to it.

Desiree: So Vert is a good guy to have in your pocket. If it has anything to do with anything he could do with weather kind of sucks. I can’t ,poor bats and snakes man. Cuz I remember you said a long time ago that the snakes were you’re kind of gook.

Liam: They are

Desiree:  Weapon like at a surprise you’re killed by a snake.

Liam:Yeah. Yeah.

Desiree: A flying snake.

Liam: A flying it’s flying snake specifically. I actually had to dust off the flying snake miniatures I had and I put them on the table and the guys are like, oh, it’s the big, bad of the campaign. And I said only if they survive. There’s this one flying snake that harasses them at any turn.

But only if it’s that snake. These two flying snakes did not survive. So obviously it wasn’t that one.

Desiree:  It wasn’t the magical flying snake.

Liam: No, it wasn’t the flying snake and the flying snake that I generally use for when they roll natural ones. That’s especially when it comes to their familiars.

If they’re familiar, is running around doing a perception check or it makes a stealth check and it rolls a natural one. It generally gets eaten by that flying snake.  That’s happened like twice 

Desiree: It’s like the opposite of a dues machina. It’s just what’s that?

Liam: it’s it’s yeah. It’s the DMS act of God to punish your, uh, familiars failure.

Desiree: I’m gonna hate writing out dues machina. I’m gonna have to look that up. Yeah. Damn me in my transcript writing.

Liam: Oh, that’s yeah, that’s on you.

Desiree: How dare I use big words? Hmm.

So that was all cuz you ran outta the time obviously.

Liam: Yeah, we actually went overtime.  We went almost an hour overtime, which we don’t usually do. We usually end around 9:30 and then spend a little time talking after we wrap it up. But we went all the way to 10:30 because we had like three or more combats during that session.

And we got through that last one pretty quick, but it was still over an hour. The guys did seem to have fun and two of our group are going on a holiday to Scotland. So we won’t be meeting up again for three weeks rather than two. But they seemed to yeah, have a good time before they left.

That potential boss fight that they have coming up., They were pretty clever about their investigations for the areas.  There were two relevant areas in the region that could give them a little bit of information about the monster before they actually fight.  and once they did get the name of the creature, they cast legend lore on it, which this is probably the first time I’ve ever been fully prepared for a legend lore cast in what it does as a spell is it gives you basically all of the lore about that creature.

So long as you’ve got like a name or like general understanding of it, the better your understanding is the more like in depth information you’ll get, but I at least had enough to give them a really juicy lore dump on the legend lo cast of what this creature is, where it came from. And it’s a little bit of its history, which also helped flesh out the history of the region that they’re in and can kind of tie into other landmarks in the area.

So I, I really do feel like I’m building the background and giving these guys the lore of this region. Quite well, especially for them, this has been an area that is almost a complete blank slate when they went into it, they knew it was a swamp. Right. And I knew it was a swamp with history, but I didn’t have that history written in the stone.

And now I have it written and I can give it to the players when they interact with it.

Desiree: Not like swamp of sadness, right?

Liam: No, it’s called the desolate swamp

Desiree: Basically well 

Liam: Yeah, not anywhere near like the swamp of sadness, swamp of sadness from The Never Ending Story is very much  a magical mire in that, like it’s more of a metaphor than it is an actual obstacle.

Right? Whereas this swamp has its own different regions in which a lot of those regions are different variations on swamp or corrupted forest, but the regional variance, uh, because my area, the Crescent Wildlands is wildly magical and very different, it really gave me free reign to make interesting regions that were inspired oftentimes by MMO areas.

So there’s one place, for example, called the pester fields, which is something like a Tundra in that it’s just swarms of insects that are just terrible to trudge through and including giant insects. There’s right. A landmark that they can find that is a literal underground hive of giant wasps

Desiree: Ew!

Liam: Right?

Yeah. Horrible stuff. Very MMO. Right? Practically every MMO has some sort of underground nest of insectoid creatures.

Desiree: Even Star Wars had some yeah.

Liam: Yeah, they absolutely right. They’re they’re in W.O.W.. They’re in elder scrolls online. I believe they they’re all over the place. Right. It’s, it’s kind of a trope. And like, I have the chance of doing it without having my whole swamp have to be like that where there’s another region, which is the mushroom forest.

Right. And there are actual mushroom people that live there.  Micenids are a creature in D and D that are just sentient mushrooms that communicate through spores and can like control people and communicate telepathically when they’re threatened. Like they can mind control people with their spores.

Desire: Don’t lick the mushrooms.

Liam: Yeah. , don’t anger the mushrooms.

Desiree: That too don’t step on them. Don’t eat them. Don’t pick on them.

Liam:  And so the guys have actually helped out the micaden colony and they’re getting, gaining support for their cause from the micadens yeah, from the mushrooms.  Because they helped them out with a problem that they had in their mushroom forest.

Right. And so. All these different kinds of environments that they are slowly discovering, finding landmarks and gaining some significant advantages. They’re building up support from the micanids and from their heroes and using it to gain blessings from the gods, which is another thing that I find a really big win about this current thing that we’re doing is: not only have I really,  fleshed out the history of this region and these guys are really going to feel like more attached to this area and the people that they’re interacting with. They’re getting a real hands on with these NPCs that they have spent quite a bit of time with before, but now they’re basically additional members to the party.

So they’ve got like a really good rapport with these NPCs, with this region. And now they’re getting more hands on with the gods of my world too, because they’re requesting support by spending their resources. They can get blessings from the gods. That’ll help them for an encounter or a day and so they’re actually like going out of their way to request favors of gods that they’ve never interacted with before, just to see what they do.

And that brings some of my more obscure gods to the forefront, besides just like the paladin’s God or the necromaster’s trickster god, they’ve actually started looking at some of the other ones too.

Desiree: Because you have quite a few gods don’t you?

Liam:I do. And they have a rather important place in my world. Not just in the lore, but also they take active parts in the world.

So it’s nice to be able to solidify what those gods are in the eyes of my players and not just in me. Right. So I, I have the lore and I can, I could tell it to them if they wanted to ask, but I much prefer it to be a part of their play experience. Right. Something that they

Desiree: Discover as they play.

Liam: Yeah. Yeah. So  one of the examples of that is this enduring domain that they’re fighting against, especially in the swamp, they worship a God, that they haven’t had much interaction with before, but are now having like a close up interaction with being I see as, the mother of beasts and like, none of, my gods are inherently good or evil.

They’re just like other worldly entities. And so Iseis is worshiped by these people and they are receiving powers from her, their clerics are anyway. But they’re all terrible people,  right. So you can have like evil clerics that worship a neutral God. So long as they still like obey their doctrine.

Desiree: So their gods are more neutral in some ways than yours?

Liam:  Yeah, well, in my somewhat pessimistic point of view and just the way that I make things, I just believe God’s to be assholes in general. And so they don’t care much for the mortals that they abuse as pawns so,

Desiree: vYeah, from all of the lore I’ve seen from different peoples with multiple gods it’s on brand.

Liam: Yeah.

Desiree: In some ways, like, I’m not saying, I believe in multiple gods too, and I don’t believe they’re all out to get me, but, you know,

Liam: I just don’t believe God’s have a, a inherent moral high ground. Like I don’t, 

Desiree: morality’s for humans in some ways it’s not for you know,

Liam: I, I don’t believe humans have a moral high ground either.

I think they’re just all in general, kind of terrible people.  

Desiree: So, so everybody you’re not talking to optimists, we’re mostly glass, half empty people. That’s that’s do we even need a glass?

Liam: That’s for me anyway, I mean, right. My equivalent of the Zeus or like Oden type character is

Desiree: Well they’re assholes so,

Liam: They’re a coward that just uses mortals to try to protect themselves.

Right? The mother of beast. She’s about the cycle of life. She doesn’t care about the constructs of society or laws or rules. It doesn’t mean anything to her. She’s like mother nature, doesn’t give a shit about your culture, right? She doesn’t care. Right? She’s all about. And she doesn’t even really care about survival of the fittest either.

She just cares about the cycle life, death, right. When something dies, something else will consume it and its energy will just continue on. Right. And it’s such an like inherent law. That that’s what she represents. She doesn’t represent like growth fertility and harmony other than how it like relates to the cycle of just like carrying on the world, like so long a as it doesn’t end.

Right. So long is like the energy isn’t removed from the plane. That’s all she really cares about. And it’s the same with my goddess of death. Nell is very much about inevitability, right? Many gods of death,  abhore UN death in most other settings, because it’s something that is generally taken as like removing dead the souls or whatever it may be from the cycle of like, they don’t get to go to their appropriate rest, cuz they’re stuck in a limbo being in some sort of rotting corpse or version there of left on the material plane. So vampires, for example, a lot of, uh, grave, domain clerics and other settings are abhorrent to a grave cleric or a person that worships a God of death.

Nell is like, they’re all mortal. They just extended it longer than a normal mortals life. Right? None of these undead creatures are imortal. They all will eventually die. Even if it’s just when the world itself dies. Right. So she has inevitability on her side. She’s much more about Entropy, right.

Decay. Everything eventually must end. And so that’s her whole deal. So she doesn’t object to UN death because while you might be prolonging the time the soul is in some sort of weird state, her job is just to see that eventually it gets to its final resting place. She’s more of a ferry man than anything.

Desiree: Nothing wrong with that. I like vampires as a supernatural being. So I can’t argue against it. Yeah. And Dori’s very into werewolves. It’s always werewolves verse vampires with us. Right. I don’t know where you sit on that, but that’s, it’s always the thing. That’s the thing on the internet. If you guys don’t know about it, everybody’s like you have to be werewolves  or vampires.

It’s kinda like it’s ninjas verse pirates..

Liam: Yeah. I mean, that’s been a thing for ages right for decades and there’s plenty of media that are based around that. It doesn’t have to be something like Twilight before that it was Underworld. And before that it would like there’s been books about that movies and media for ages.

For me, I think they’re both actually pretty weak monsters. Honestly. I think vampires are significantly weaker than werewolves just because werewolves main weakness is usually silver and the fact that they only change during the full moon. But vampires, I have always been of the opinion that vampires are actually worse than just a normal human.

Like if you were going against a human serial killer or a vampire, I would rather take the vampire than the serial killer. Cuz literally all I would have to do with a  vampire is walk outside during the date. And that is not something that a serial killer would give a shit about. No, but if it’s like, okay, so eventually it turns night, but then you have like the whole list of various weaknesses that have gone over the years of varying degrees of success for vampire of garlic not being allowed to be like enter a building unless they’re invited, uh, can’t cross moving water.

Silver, which is also the werewolf thing. Holy water, stake through the heart. I’m just like

Desiree: Having to count grains of rice.

Liam:  Yeah. If you’re imortal and you die by getting stabbed in the heart, you’re not imortal, you’re just old.  Cause eventually that’s gonna happen and you’ll just die.

Desiree: Wizards and like Nicromancers, do seem stronger than that?

Liam: Yeah. Witches , in my opinion are significantly stronger than both of those monsters because they get to hide their important bit, that keeps them alive wherever they want and they do it knowingly. So they deliberately hide it in some obscure location.

D and D is fun for interacting with those kinds of mythical creatures though. And you get to put your own spin on it when you make your own setting, which is what I have done. That’s why these guys arefighting a nation of lycans and they are not just werewolves. There’s wearwolves, were bears, were bores, were bats, were tigers.

It’s like whatever I felt something could bite something else. Those are were crocodiles, right? It was just like, if something could bite something else, it’s probably got some sort of animal version of it. And it’s been really fun to do have this whole lycan nation of everything I could find.

There’s no were toads.  yet.

Desiree: Well, geese, could you imagine Canadian geese cuz they actually do have

Liam: They have teeth?

Desiree: Teeth.  They do.

Liam: And I don’t wanna make a miniature of that, so I’m not gonna do it. I’ve got were rats.

Desiree: I might have to challenge you at some point to make one. 

Liam: I’ve got were rats. I don’t need were geese.

Liam: Just doesn’t have the ring to it. Not very threatening.

Desiree: Especially for some people who don’t live in Canada. Like the Canadian geese sound really nice and polite, but they’re evil little buggers

Liam: They’re big too. And they’re very aggressively territorial

Desiree: They hiss, they chase you. They bite everybody.

Yeah. No thank you. Yeah, no, not just children. We as adults are scared of them. 

Liam: They’re big birds.

Desiree: I would take a sea gull any day.

Liam: Oh yeah. Yeah. Well Seagull’s like a third the size of a goose.

So that’s like how our session went. And now that I’ve got like the three weeks going into the next session, maybe I’ll finally get off my butt and finish painting a bunch of my half painted miniatures I’ve been using so that like they’ll actually be fully painted.

 I just hadn’t really been feeling up to it for quite some time.

Desiree: Maybe drag your airbrush out, cuz you’ll have to for Elvira anyway.

Liam: I will. Yeah.  That’s gonna be a big project. That’s just why she’s been sitting there. Primed is just how like much paint is gonna have to go onto that minute.

Desiree: She does look good though.

Liam: Yeah. Yeah. She’ll look better when she actually gets some paint on her.

Desiree: Uh, also you said you updated your website.

Liam: I did.

Yeah. I, I finally put some more galleries on there cuz that’s one of the things is I have a ton of pictures on my computer. I just hadn’t put them onto the website. And oftentimes when people ask me about my miniatures in my D and D sessions, I would direct them to a website, but I didn’t have much in the way of pictures to show for it. So now there’s at least a few more galleries on there and I have galleries of the individuals of the party, so that you could see like, who plays, what, and what characters they play.There’s a gallery on there for that.

Desiree: Nice.

Liam:  I also uploaded my rules that I’m using for the gorilla warfare that the guys are doing in the Crescent wild lands. One of the things I’m really excited about is the guys are kind of coming to realize that the people that they’re helping  have forsaken the union of mortals.

Like they forsaken basically all of like society and they’re going to do their own thing because the union literally abandoned them. And so they have in turn, abandon the union and they’re most likely going to start forming their own nation. And the guys have kind of realized that maybe we’re just going to like, stay here.

This’ll just be our country. And so it, it’s exciting to see them get on the ground floors, this sort of thing that if it succeeds after, like we finish this campaign against the, the lycans, there might be a new kingdom in this new world, and these guys will have been a part of forming it. And even if they wanted to stop there and then start a whole new campaign, I would do it like 40, 50 years in the future.

And all of a sudden there’s a fully formed kingdom that they were a part of in history making.

Desiree: That’s cool because technically you’ve written lore about this, but they’re still kind of rewriting it as you go.

Liam: Yeah. Well, it’s not so much they’re rewriting it. They, we are cooperatively writing it, right.

It is a co-operative  storytelling measure, right. Because they could just flub it entirely and then the history of it would be completely different.

Desiree: Yeah. And then that didn’t work .

Liam: Yeah. Well, and then the enduring domain, this like literally this, this evil tyranny formed in the Crescent wildland, and that’s a completely different kind of story, right.

With completely different kinds of interactions with the future adventurers and future stories. Right. Instead of it being this brand new world that this kingdom fought hard for and like established its fierce independence, it,  instead is this like tyranny just across the border from the civilized races that they’re like deliberately ignoring, but can only ignore for so long.

Right. So  either way I think is pretty cool. I would prefer it if the party succeeds, cuz I think they would really tie themselves into the world very well that way, but if they don’t, it still leads to good stories.

Desiree: So yeah, either way.

Liam: That’s kind of how you do have  to DM is make it so that regardless of the outcome success or failure, it leads to an interesting story.

Desiree: It’s just totally like choose your own adventure with the dice, deciding a lot of things.

Liam: It very much is. Yeah even, from the miniature to the macro, the dice make the, choose your own adventure, even for the little things. So even the small decisions can get decided for you sometimes. And if you roll with it, it can be a really interesting adventure.

Desiree: A lot of memes online I’ve noticed, I share them with my husband Doron because he’s a writer and they’re always like, did your character do something that you fully didn’t expect? This is the only way I think you could do that is I didn’t fully expect my character to do that cuz they rolled bad.

Liam: Oh yeah.

Desiree: Or like the person who was playing him completely decided to do something different that I didn’t expect.

Liam; Mm-hmm  yeah.

Desiree: It’s kind of nice.

Liam: I didn’t expect these guys to go into the Crescent wildland. I didn’t expect them to return so quickly, but they did. A good example of what you were just talking about was Gale the character that died previously.

He was a shape shifter, a warlock, very high charisma, very like good at convincing people to do what he wanted them to do. But every time he was put into an important situation where he needed to tell a tale. Or convince somebody that was very important. He always rolled really bad.  like when they were brought before the king of the Allian kingdoms, the dwarfing kingdoms in my world, he was brought to like the child king of the Allian court.

And the kid wanted to hear a story. He rolled like a one or a two, with all of his pluses it still, wasn’t a very interesting story. Right. And that like, he completely flubbed it.  And like that happened consistently every time Gail was put into a, like really important position to tell some sort of grand story or make a big lie.

He always just failed.

Desiree: Choked.

Liam: Right. He choked it up and that is not something that would happen if you were just writing it down. Based on his character traits, cuz there was no reason why he should have failed. But he did,

Desiree: It does make for more interesting characters that way too.

Liam: Mm-hmm 

Desiree: Because why would you write a character who’s that charismatic that would fail at telling a story?

Liam: And  it’s much more dynamic, right? I would think it would be a better story if that was written out in a novel now than if I had just written it, that he succeeded. Right. So the only other thing I’ve been doing is that there’s a class that I’ve made for my world that I am actually quantifying now  like, by writing down the classes, abilities, spell lists and subclasses and things like that.

As the guys have expressed interest in the class outside of me using it for my monsters and things like that, my world has always been one of curses and quirks. That’s been my concept for Adon from the beginning. I wanted curses to be significantly more prevalent and. And I wanted the quirks to be something along the lines of superpowers, especially once the characters get stronger.

So the hex weavers are the ones that are the main people that interact with curses in my world. They construct and deconstruct curses. And the way I have conceived curses to work in this world, is there kind of like a magical code where everything obeys the law of equivalent exchange when it comes to curses.

And it’s all about how you word your curse to get the most power out of it. So it’ll be something like inspired by grim fairy tales and other stories throughout history of some very specific type of curse and some very specific type of detriment and specific ways to get rid of it.

Right? The more specific the detriment and the more specific the way to get rid of it, the more powerful the curse can be. Right? Cause there are fairy tales throughout cultures and history where curses are so incredibly specific that they could really only ever affect one person and, or only really an incredible inconvenience to get rid of.

Right. And I always like that concept and that’s kind of what I wanted to weaponize in my world. And so for example, somebody might be like you can never taste food ever again. And the requirement to get rid of it, which they always had to like, let the person know usually would be that they had to eat an apple every day for 10 years and then they get rid of it.

Right. That’s the sort of thing that you find in fairytales. And that’s the sort of way I wanted to construct or make it possible to construct curses in my world. So hex weaves are the ones that actually make these curses like that, right. Where they would be the ones to construct that specific code of curse and hex weaves are people that can do it on the fly.

So they can do it during combat of which they like are restricting people. Like, for example, the there’s a spell druids have called heat metal, which makes it so that a piece of metal equipment within range of the spell becomes super hot and a person that’s either wearing it or holding it will take damage.

And then they have to, if they can possibly drop it, they have to roll a check to see if they drop it or not. Right. A hex Weaver could do that sort of thing by literally saying that the curse would be in so long as this piece of armor is worn it shall burn all that touch it until it has been laid to the ground

Right? So the condition of the curse is set like the negatives of the cursor set and the way to get rid of it is also set. And it basically is just the same spell, but that’s how the curse gets laid out. Right. So that’s the, the flavor of how they cast their spells.  And it’s all them having to construct that curse on the fly.

Desiree: And then if it was laid down, if they dropped it and picked it back up, it wouldn’t be hot anymore.

Liam: Correct.

Desiree: Or it would be losing the heat obviously takes a while after something’s hot to get cold, but

Liam: Yeah, that’s at least the flavor wise of why that spell would work.  I’m just kind of quantifying how exactly that works in gameplay terms, cuz the way I, what I wanted for the class is I wanted them to be able to put out multiple like detrimental effects or multiple beneficial effects to the allies.

I want them to be a buffer and B buffer in the battlefield. I wanted them to like prioritize and specialize in making people worse and making their people better. That’s kind of what they’re doing.

Desiree:So another one that could make them like better for your guys, as you could say, as long as they see this flag, they get this much more  strength.

Liam:Yeah.

DesireeUntil said flag is unable to be seen or

Liam:Yeah, exactly. Things like that. Right. So I’m just kind of quantifying how to do that mechanically, and writing it down. So if the guys are interested in playing a hex Weaver, it would be there available for them. Um, yeah. And that was , the hex weavers or something I was making for solo quest, which is the single player, tabletop RPG, the system that I was making and still am making of that was one of my classes that I made for solo quest. So.

Desiree: Well, they would be more like actual, physically weak though, because it’s just

Liam: They’re wizards. Yeah. Magical. Yeah. They’re very much like they’re mathematicians except in the old world version of like, people would’ve thought of them as witches and warlocks, cuz these are the people that  you would come to, to remove curses.

Cuz they’re the ones that find out what was the specific wording of the curse that was placed upon you and how can we get rid of it? Right. They’re the people that had all the divination skills , it’s an ancient magic that came from like shamans basically. And some of them have refined it into a studied art, made it more math than they have made it about feeling.

Desiree: So like a mixture of an Alchemist and a mathematician

Liam: Somewhat.

Yeah. I, I kind of was going for that. Like witch slash. I really wanted to focus on the curses. That was what I liked, cuz  I want my world be about curses of course. The other thing was I wanted them to be able to concentrate on more than one thing at a time, right. Because most of the powerful buffs and D buffs in the game in D and D five V you can only concentrate on one spell that requires concentration at one time.

And so most of the really cool benefits and detriments are locked behind concentration. My friend that plays a druid, knows all about that. Druids have a ton of really cool, awesome spells. Almost every single one of them requires concentration, which means you get to choose one and that’s it. Right. And you maintain that one for most of the fight and then the fight’s done and there you go.

Right.  So I wanted this specific class to not  focus on dealing damage, like many other spell casters, but have it be able to do those powerful effects more than just once. So yeah, that’s what I’ve been writing down. What about you? What have you been up to.

Desiree: So I finished buying a whole bunch of stuff to help fill up my stock really, because I used a lot of stock.

I made a lot of stock and then we actually sold out of all my bat wing wallets, which are the ones that have a bat on the outside, like a bat wing to closure.  We sold all five of those. So I sold out. Which was pretty cool and miniature Claudia coffin wallets, which they’re both small. I think that’s cuz like you could fit it in a pocket of a jacket.

Unisex, maybe not in pants as much, but at least in the pockets of, of jackets and stuff. So I wanted to also make sure that I definitely said thank you to everybody who did help me for the market as well. Because last time  I just said thank you to Jasmine, but also her son as well. He also helped out as her daughter-in-law Jade.

So thank you very much for all of you guys, definitely for helping set up and take down. I’m sorry, I didn’t get your names right on the website. I will update it for sure. Was just really tired. And my spelling is not my forte, I guess I’d say. Mom and Dad used to have to bribe me to get a hundred percent on spelling tests.

That’s how much I hated spelling. So yeah.

Liam: Well, don’t look at any of my notes. I don’t even bother trying to spell as long as I can read it. I’m fine with it.

Desiree: I’m trying to be official on my website though, because you know it’s my official business.

Anyway. The website’s up for sure. I have decided to take some of the money from the market that I got and I bought myself a barcode scanner and the one that they sent me cuz square is a little bit backwards. The processing that I use for taking debit and credit cards is called square. It’s just a little square that you can put your debit and credit and tap or insert and it connects to your phone or my tablet.

 It’s actually pretty basic. So it only takes certain types of barcode scanners. There’s a lot of them now.  I haven’t looked in a long time when I did I’m like, oh, they’re like 60 bucks now. And those $60 ones do not work with square. So I had to buy $150 one, which was more of like a backdated version of  one that has to plug in.

And the people that I bought it from off Amazon are from New Jersey and they didn’t have it. So they actually upgraded me for free and I’m like, oh crap. This upgraded one probably won’t work.

Liam: Yeah. It won’t be backwards compatible one.

Desiree: With square. I mean, thank you so much for the, probably a hundred dollar upgrade, but no, after fighting with it for about a day and a half, I feel pretty proud of myself cuz I got it to work.

And then

Liam: Yeah, you didn’t have to contact their support?

Desiree: Well, I did contact them then they told me it should work when you plug it in. Well, it didn’t, but I made it work anyway.

Liam: There you go.

Desiree: So I’m pretty proud of myself cuz I’m also not technologically advanced that much. So I’m pretty happy with that.

So I already had barcodes cuz my friend Teela that I do the markets with, she has her own barcode scanner. So I was using her stuff. I make the barcodes and then she could scan it into hers. Well, now I’ve still got the barcodes. I transferred them over and now I can actually scan them. So I’m pretty happy with that.

It’ll make it all that much faster. When I was at the market, I had to type everything in manually. So that takes longer even though it’s only like a six digit code or you search. Because everything’s got a name so I can get through a lot more, hopefully.

Liam: Well, and your stall was so busy there that it’ll be a big benefit to not have to have that extra downtime of typing stuff in.

Desiree: I did have to repeatedly say, “Sorry, I gotta put it in the computer. You know, this is how I track my inventory. So I know what people like, what sells out so I can make more.” Yeah. This time I’m definitely going for the smaller sized wallets, because apparently that’s it’s kind of intergenerational and intersexual, I guess, because everybody doesn’t matter, male, female, or anything in between kind of like to have something small, cuz it could fit in the pocket.

So yeah. I’m excited about that.

Liam: Well the larger ones would require a purse and stuff like that.

Desiree: They do or like a really big pocket. Who the heck has those, right? Yeah. Even me, I make pockets and everything. I make still don’t have big ones. Right.  I’m excited though, because of the move,  we wanted to talk about it.

Mm-hmm  man. That was a hard one.

Liam: Yeah,  there’s a big,  series of days there.

Desiree: Yeah, I’ve been off work cuz I was laid off for a good eight months before we moved. I wanted to take that time to pack up my old place. But my old place is 1300 square feet. This is 750 plus a spare room. So no matter what I did, no matter how much I got rid of, I did like five trips to Value Village to donate things, two trips to the dump to dump things off.

I got people to take things from me. It still was a lot of stuff. So we got like a 22 foot U-Haul not the biggest, the second biggest cuz they didn’t have the biggest one and it almost didn’t fit to the point where my friend, who was helping me move had to take one of my chairs on her top of her car home because we just couldn’t fit it in there.

And the guys that we had hired to help us, thank God  we got some help with movers on that side. And then our friends helped on this side because they were just throwing things in, literally at the end, they felt so bad that like there’s no space. My mom was like, yes, there is. And starts chucking things.

Liam: Yeah. You don’t tell mom that it won’t fit. She’ll figure out a way.

Desiree: No, we call Mom, mother trucker. For reason, she used to pack up the big two ton trucks for the military. She will find space.  No matter what we’ve gone on road trips where Liam and I are literally just have a Liam and I shape in the back of the car and there’s stuff under the feet,on top, on the side. If we need it, she’ll make a way to put it in there. And she did.

Liam: Yeah. Or if, even if we don’t need it, but we’re bringing it anyway, it’ll find a way in there.

Desiree: It will. Yeah, it will. If mom deems it important it’s in there.   No matter what.

Liam: Yeah. And we did have quite the turnout when you guys did eventually reach up here, mom called out to  quite a few of her friends

Desiree: and they all showed up

Liam: and they all came

Desiree: vand very much appreciate that and call out them.

Thank you very much for that.

Liam: Yeah. Got that truck unloaded and like an hour and a half.

Desiree: Yeah, it took us three, four hours to load it. Even with two extra people’s help, movers on the other side. And we were moving in one day. I wanted to do it all on one trip because we were going 500 kilometers away. Like that’s still

Liam: didn’t wanna have to go back and didn’t want return trips.

Desiree: No. And with gas, the price it is and renting the U-Haul and mileage. I wanted to do it all at once. And even after eight months of packing and eight months of trying to prepare, I was still up all night, the night before with my mother still packing, because there’s just so much. So when we got here, they’re all like, where does this go?

I’m like, I don’t know, just shove it somewhere.  Because we just spent the whole day traveling the last day packing. I don’t care anymore. Yeah. I don’t even care if it all breaks and falls down the hill.

Liam: Like we, yeah, we eventually formed a system. Upstairs, we had the spare bedroom, which is where we,  put most of the stuff that we figured you wouldn’t need immediately.

And so it was, you know, it’s either going on the suite, which is downstairs, or it was going upstairs in this spare room. So that was Desiree’s job for most of the unloading is like, is this up or down, up or down the whole way as everybody unloads.  And then since then you’ve settled into your new place and that’s required a whole lot of unpacking, which is not a small process.

Desiree: Well, like at the end there, we didn’t even have enough boxes for everything. So we’re packing them in garbage bags and they still got garbage bags, but like our suite had like a mountain of garbage bags just sitting in the middle of it. So yeah, we’ve unpacked quite a few things. Moved around, got rid of stuff at the dump again.

Went to Value Village again, like I’m still sorting through everything in the spare room. We finally found like our condiments a month into it after I looked through every single box, cuz I was like, I’m pretty sure something in there is gonna stink soon. Yeah. There was milk and cheese in there.

I’m glad I finally found it. . And I’m glad it was lactose free cheese.  It wasn’t too bad.  lactose-free stuff lasts a lot longer than you think it will.

Liam: It does even lactose-free milk actually lasts. Yeah. Almost twice as long as normal milk.

Desiree: vMilk, and cheese. And there wasn’t even any things growing in it.

So I was quite happy. I’m like, well, I wonder why we can digest it better if it doesn’t grow things, but Hey, whatever.

Liam: Just lacking that one specific thing that fucks us up.

Desiree: Yeah. And every time I go into that spare room, now I have to wear shoes because I literally lost a toe from moving. Cause I keep moving boxes with my feet because I used to work warehouse with steel toes.

Liam: Lost a toe nail.

Desiree: Lost a toe nail.

Liam: Okay. Yeah, because I, I see you still have all of your digits.

Desiree: Yeah. I lost a toe nail and I’m probably gonna lose the other one. I’ve never done that before. So, because I was pushing boxes with my feet.

Liam: Yeah. Like you would with steel tools

Desiree: Like with steel toes. And I totally wreck my toenails.

Liam:I do the same thing.

Desiree: Yeah.

Liam: If you’re used to having to, yeah. If someone asks me to move something around the house or anything like that, that’s the, the first

Desiree: it’s for leverage.

Liam:Yeah. You always use your, your toes when you’re using steel toes.

Desiree: So now I make sure, I at least put on my sneakers before I go into that spare room.

Cause I know I’m gonna do it unconsciously anyway. Yeah. And better not to hurt myself. Right. That spare. Room’s kind of like my nemisis for the moment, because every time I go in there, I gotta fight with it. Literally fight .

Liam:Yeah. But you’re still chipping away at it. And we had overfilled too. It wasn’t just the spare bedroom.

There was  more stuff that  we had a mountain of boxes in the living room there for a while, but that’s all gone now.

Desiree: I am proud of myself for that. And we have worked on the suite because the suite wasn’t completely finished and that’s why we couldn’t put everything in it. And I don’t blame them for that.

They were up till 1:00 AM the morning the night before still putting in the ceiling. So I can’t, you know, blame them for not having , the closet wasn’t finished at all. Yeah.  No walls, no floor, no ceiling,

Liam: no door. Yeah.

Desiree: No door.

Liam: So the cabinets weren’t finished. They are now,

Desiree: The cabinets, not yet because we haven’t got the upper cabinets yet, but, uh,

Liam: I guess so.

Desiree: Yeah, but the countertops

Liam: yeah,

Desiree: weren’t done. And we, we did finish those together. I managed to learn how to, um,

Liam: grout,

Desiree: grout and, uh, lay the tile. So we did that black splash and the tile, which is really pretty. And I will have pictures. I did take some because I was making my friends jealous.

Liam: Yeah. Your suite looks good now.

Desiree: Yeah. So we’ve got , somewhere to put the microwave. We’ve got the countertops, but we don’t have the upper yet. We got an idea from Jasmine actually, and Mom wanted to get rid of my grandmother’s China cabinet, cuz it’s huge. It’s giant. And it doesn’t really.

Liam: It was just taken up gathering dust.

Desiree: Yeah, it wasn’t utilizing the space as well as a bookshelf even could. So there’s the bottom part and the top part, the top part of the hutch we’re gonna use as cabinets over top of my kitchen sink. So I can finally take all the dishes out of the dishwasher and put them somewhere.

Right now that’s where they live. That’s not where I wash stuff. I take it upstairs to wash right now and my plates and stuff that I found live in the dishwasher. That’s okay. I have one, I’m very happy with it. It’s better than moms and it’s really good. It’s very quiet. Same with the fridge. And then they finish yeah.

Liam: Brand new appliances

Desiree: And yeah, lots of pictures. I’ll, I’ll definitely show we have a little bit of a, kitchenette and it doesn’t have an oven. We have a hot plate and then we have a microwave. So  we’re okay with that. I didn’t need a full oven because mom cooks all that food upstairs. There’s enough for an army mm-hmm  Liam says there’s way too much food in this house at all times so.

Liam:Way too much food, especially since you’ve come in. Mom has upped the process, by a significant margin. So there’s been more food in the house than there has been over the last several years.

Desiree: Yeah. And I, I eat a lot when I feel okay. But you and Dori and Dad don’t and Mom is kind of specific as to her diet.

So it’s mostly me eating everything.  Surprised I’m not Jabba the Hut. It must be the stairs. Well, because having to go up and down the stairs all the time,

Liam: I’ve also been eating like way too much because it’s just been available. Right. I eat less. I, I just, I don’t make my own stuff. Right. I’ll just, if I haven’t left my own devices, I’ll eat whatever’s available.

There’s just been so much available, especially baked goods. Baked goods are my big weakness. So, and, Mom has definitely been in a baking frenzy for the last few months.

Desiree: Yeah. She gets “What do I do? You guys don’t have any baking?” That might be a good thing, Mom. 

Liam: Probably is.

Desiree: The way the French say, I love you is “mange mange” eat, eat. Isn’t just like the Italians. Not much different there.

Anyway.  They finished off that closet, which I’m glad for because we had someone coming in to work on it. And my cat really hated that.  yeah, really, really hated that.

Liam: Also gave you a space to put all your clothes and a bunch of your other boxes.

Desiree: Yeah, we got to unpack our clothes. I couldn’t find my clothes for the first week and a half. That was really annoying me.  As a person with Crohn’s I change my clothes a lot, cuz I don’t like the idea of smelling at all. I change my clothes more than I shower. So  yeah. I was glad for that to find my clothes and glad to access to the washing machine too.

Liam: Yeah. The washing machine is so nice. Having lived on my own and especially when you have to pay coin laundry, that sucks. Being able, I do laundry like two to three times a week and I don’t care how big the load is. I just do it. Right. I’m just like, eh, I’m tired of having dirty clothes in my basket. I’ll go clean my clothes. It’s like, not even half load, whatever. I don’t care.

Desiree: Especially with cat hair. I mean, you can’t get it off unless you wash it. You just can’t.

Liam: Yeah. Well, it’ll be, if it’s a piece of clothing that can  attract cat hair, it will have attracted it by the time it’s out of the dryer.

So this is a losing battle there, but , I do like being able to like have two to three pairs of clothing and I just constantly wash and wear those. 

Desiree: I have lots and lots of underwear, but it’s never ever enough. Mm . So if any time it gets close to the point where there’s no underwear, that’s it I’m washing everything.

Liam:Yeah.  When I had to do coin laundry, I would literally go down to the last piece of clothing I had.

 Desiree: Of course you did.

Liam:Right. And then I would do three to four loads all in one, go and then forget one of them overnight in the wash and have to do it again. That was consistent. And so I would do laundry like once a month when I had to do coin laundry.

It’s just so much nicer to have it available to you at any time. 

Desiree: yeah, I’ve taken it over from Dori, cuz that used to be his chore, but it’s just easier and it’s right outside our door. It is and Mom used to sell appliances. So she got us some really good washer dryers and they’re 10 years old and they still work really, really nice.

Liam: Yeah. Right.

Desiree: So that part, you know, I had a washer dryer in my suite in the last place we’re in, but it’s nowhere near as nice as these. They were more like 20, 30 years old. Definitely a big difference. Mm-hmm  and  these ones save water too, cuz they only use exactly the amount of water you need, which is nice.

Liam: Yeah. And they communicate between the washer dryer and all that. Yeah. Very fancy. 

Desiree: and we really like our suite. Have to talk about the bathroom cause Mom and Dad made sure that the bathroom was complete.

Liam: Yeah. It’s the best bathroom in the house.

Desiree: It is the biggest and the, and the brightest and the nicest looking.

Liam: With the bubble tub and everything.

Desiree: Yeah. It’s got a bubble tub. It’s got tile floors and tile on the walls, in the shower. And Mom and Dad did that. Mostly Mom. She’s very proud of herself. She learned how to grout to do that. And then they had tile on the vanity for the sink for the bathroom as well.

And dad made that vanity for the sink.

Liam: They had ulterior motives. The plan is eventually once Mom and Dad get too old to be able to go up and down the stairs. They’ll probably move into that suite. And Dad wants that bathroom. So yeah

Desiree: He does want the bathroom. I don’t think he wants the rest of the suite though.

It’s nowhere near big enough for them. Well, get him an acorn stair lift.  I phone them once. They’ll never stop calling me again.  Yeah, it’s great.  It’s all  one big room, basically, except for the bathroom and then the closet and kittie loves it because no matter what, no matter where we are me or Dori, she can see us. And dad because he had to add the insulation and the soundproofing, my room is the quietest room in the house.

Liam: Yeah, we did very deliberately do that.  Dez is a lot more sensitive to sound than most of the other people in the family, cuz most of us are pretty deaf and especially, uh, or just actually deaf.  But she is more sensitive to sound than most of the rest of the family. And we wanted that suite to be insulated from the rest of the house.

So we went through even in the planning stages, great pains to make sure that it was well soundproofed.

Desiree: And it didn’t have any insulation in it before. This entire basement had no insulation- Liam’s

space.

Liam: Mostly the basement didn’t have walls.

Desiree: Yeah, Liam’s space, my space did not have insulation. I don’t know who made this in the seventies, but I’m pretty sure it was still cold in the seventies, in a basement, in Kamloops, in the winter- idiots.

Anyway, there’s about 12 inches from the outside wall to the interior wall, so Dad made window sills that are nice and big and the cat loves them. She doesn’t get to go outside. She’s in an indoor cat. She used to have like a balcony at one of her old places. And she used to be able to look out the windows and in the other places.

So he made sure she has her own space and she loves it. Cuz we put curtains in front. Now it’s like a cave with a view and that’s hers. She’s very excited about it. She spends all day staring at the neighbors cuz there’s five or six different cats that go right past that window. So she loves it.

Liam:When she’s not trying to get into the rest of the house to fight with the other cats that are half her size.

Desiree: Yeah.

She finally discovered there were other cats and she was very offended by it.  And of course the other cats, especially Morticia is like, why don’t you be my friend? And we’ll sit outside the door and we have to scare her off. Cuz she’s literally woke me up from a nap or from sleeping because she’s attacking the cat through the door  and hissing and pawing at it.

I’m like, seriously, she did that in the windows too. I’m like, you do know that’s a window, right? You can’t get at them.  Yes I never said she was a bright crayon, but she’s my crayon  yeah. 

Liam: She’s cute too. She’s a very fluffy kitty.

And then she gives me shit every time I come back in, cuz I’ve been sewing upstairs instead of down in our space, cuz I don’t really have a table there yet.

We’re still working on it. Dad and I. She gives me shit every single time I come back. Where do you, where are you doing? What were you doing? Why is there another cat out there? Why are you smelling them?

Liam: Meow Meow

Desiree: Yeah. We’re cat people. So

Liam: I hope so. We have enough of them.

Desiree: Yes, we do. Lucky finally made up with me.

 Liam’s cat got sick there for a while. We had teeth removed and she got shaved and we had to give her antibiotics and guess who had to do that? That was me.

Liam: Yeah. You’re the one with the pill. While I held her down.

Desiree: So she hated me for a while there because usually she’d come out and I’d give her a treat.

She doesn’t like to be touched that much, but you know, we could give her treats she’s okay. And it’s taken this long, like, since we moved in March for her to finally forgive me. 

Liam: Yeah, she hasn’t forgotten.

Desiree: No, but she’s forgiven.

Liam: Yeah.

Desiree: You have treats. Okay. 

Liam:  Yeah. She, she holds a grudge that’s for sure.

Desiree: She does. She’s an older lady and that’s okay. Bif got really sick there too because one of our kitties died before we moved. And it was Bif’s friend. Right? Even though they didn’t get along that much, but then we moved and there was a lot for Bif. So

Liam: she was real stressed out.

Desiree: So she, she was sick there for a while too.

And she’s better too as well. Like really? This is not what we need  right around moving. It was a bit of a gong show.

Liam: We had a whole, yeah. We had a whole bunch of vet visits

Desiree: Before and after.

Liam: Yeah. Right when you moved.

Desiree: Yeah. That was, yeah. Well, not fun. And I’m glad the cats, all of them are doing better except for the one that passed away.

Unfortunately, Minou was a good girl, but she got cancer. So not much we could have done.

Liam: Yeah, nothing you can do about that.

Desiree: And she would’ve hated here. Unfortunately, she would’ve hated it here

Liam: She also would’ve been pretty stressed. Yeah.

Desiree: She wouldn’t have been allowed on the bed, which means we would’ve had to find a way to keep her from the bed without having walls to keep her from the bed.

Cuz she had a habit of peeing on it and yeah, that. I do miss her though. She was a good girl and  and yeah, we’re crazy cat people. Minou’s still here in an urn we’re good.  So that was a little stressful, little bit, little bit.

Liam: Yeah.

Desiree: Everybody in my family has chronic illness.  My husband, my mom, my dad, my brother, everybody.

And we all did this big move, so I’m very appreciative of it. And some of our friends that even came to help us also have chronic illness. Like I do not wanna move ever again. 

Liam: Yeah. I haven’t really intended to move.  Since I moved back in, when I was like 24 or 25, something like that.

Desiree: Has it been that long ?It’s like 10 years almost now.

Liam: Maybe I was 23.

Desiree: Then I would be 10 years cuz you’re 34 this year.

Liam: I am. Yep. Going on eight years at Home Depot now. 

Desiree: It’s weird. When you think about that, especially if you could compare like ages of children that you knew, and they suddenly time flies, you know, graduating high school and you’re like, woo what?

Liam: Well we have a janitor that ever since COVID comes in basically like three times a day to Home Depot, to do their cleaning.  So he’s there when we get there when our shift starts at 9:30. So when I come in at like 9:20 or whatever, he’s there and he is there before the store opens at like six.

And so he listens to music sometimes while he is working in the bathrooms and I’m frequently around the bathrooms. So I was coming outta the bathroom one time as I had been listening to his song while I was doing my business. And he was listening to, uh, do you know that song bowling for soups 1985.

Literally the song is about nostalgia for 1985.  And so I was like I recognize the song. I remember when I first heard it, it was a while back. And so I was like, I looked it up on my phone while I was in the bathroom. I’m like, when did this song get released? 1999. Right. And so I, I said that to the guy and I was like, you know, that it’s been more than 20 years since this song about nostalgia for the 80s came out.

And he is just like, yeah, thanks.  thanks for that.

Desiree: Thanks for that.

Liam: So I’ve consistently done that now with basically every song he listens to. 

Desiree: Well, it’s easy a place like Home Depot puts on stuff that, and I’ve noticed this actually more than even on the coast. You guys are 10 to 20 years even further behind  in your grocery stores, as you’re still playing stuff from the nineties. The grocery stores have graduated to 2000 ish in  the coast, but

Liam: Yeah. So they have like turned down the volume on the PA, because it literally is just the same two commercials and no music that just repeated over and over and over again for like my eight hour shift.

Desiree: So dude,  you could, you could kill somebody and blame that.

Liam: Yeah. Psychological torture,

Desiree: insanity.

Liam: Thankfully they did it to find a way to turn the, the speakers down. But yeah, it’s been like that for like two weeks.

Desiree: I remember when I worked for old Navy. Yes. When I was 19, I worked for old Navy. They had two official old Navy CDs, cuz they also came with commercials. Yeah. So there’s two CDs of music.

That’s it! That’s all they would ever play with the commercials in there. And I’m like, I don’t know about you, but I’m never gonna not hear those songs without going Old Navy.

Liam: Well, even if you work at a job that has access to the radio, there are songs that will get so much radio play that you’ll just wanna pull your hair out.

Right. Like I was working at

Desiree: Especially Canadian content.

Liam:Yeah. I, I was working at an office furniture warehouse and we had. I was the manager. I had access to the radio and I could change the, the station, but there were only really  three stations to listen to, even in Vancouver and the rock stations all during that summer played Nickelbacks rockstar.

Like there are three songs that now, if I hear, I just get triggered immediately.  Have to like run away or change the, the tune. My three most hated songs in history, Nickelback’s Rockstar,  when September ends, because that song came out in the summer and it  didn’t end when September ended.

Desiree: And that actually, I, I got the same trigger for when September ends. It was that time, time period.

Liam: Yeah. When september ends and falling leaves by Billy idol, I think, or Billy Elliot, something like that. I don’t know, I don’t remember names, but I remember the, that  song. And then I can hear a single bar from it and it’ll just drive me insain.

Desiree: You just go right up the wall. I don’t think retail workers and, and people who listen to the radio for a living really get enough credit for not murdering people.  because, because of Canadian,

Liam:I didn’t even have to deal with customers. Yeah. I still wanted to kill somebody.

Desiree: Yeah. Because of Canadian content laws too.

They, they only can play certain things cuz it’s gotta be 40% Canadian. So of course the tragically hip, I can barely listen to as well ever since he died because

Liam: The Who

Desiree: Yeah. Yeah. It just because they overplayed it. Celine Dion even there for a while. Oh, oh my God. No more Celine Dion. I love all these people, but no,  just no.

Liam: Yeah.

Desiree: I even love green day, but no.

Liam: Yeah.

Desiree: No 

Liam: Well, and  for the radio for the last like decade, new music stations have not had much in the way of new music.  I have fun listening to new music stations and trying to figure out how old the songs are that they’re playing. And some of them are  like from when I was a teenager, right.

At best. And I was just like, yeah, new music. It’s only 25 years old. 

Desiree: But technically the oldie station can play it if it’s 25 years old. They can play Nickelback. Right. They can play Nirvana.

 Liam: It’s literally, it’s classic rock at this point. So I, I make a game outta that with the janitor now, he’s listening to Eminem right.

And I’m like, all right. So without me is exactly this year, 20 years old,  two decades from that song. Exactly. 20 years old.

Desiree: I actually might have known that because there’s an Eminem 20 years   CD coming out that has all these extras in his best ofs. And like, you can’t do a best of, unless you’re 10, 20 years so

Liam: You can do a greatest hits after 10.

Desiree:That’s true. But it was best of, I think so that’s like 20. So we’ll have to like, kind of got off topic a little bit.  We have to

Liam: That’s so fun to talk about.

Desiree: Uh, round, back up. We like music. We’re not knocking music by the way. It’s just some songs just drive us nuts.

Liam: I’m inconsistent with my appreciation of music, because my, I like music that I can relate something that I enjoy to. I’m not a big fan of artists or even like genres of music or, yeah. I, I don’t really have full CDs that I like that aren’t soundtracks.  I just know specific songs that I like from specific artists and that’s, I think that’s what I like.

Desiree: That’s what you and I, and dad are kind of like, mom’s like specific artists, mom, like artists.

Liam: Yeah. Yeah. Lots of people like artists.

Desiree: There’s nothing wrong with that. And there’s nothing wrong with listening to old music and jamming to them. Cuz you know, all the song, all the  words to the song and all the lyrics.  Nothing

wrong with that.

Liam:The older I get, the more, I appreciate songs without lyrics. I like a lot of video game music and the ones that I enjoy are ones that just don’t have lyrics to them.

Desiree: I didn’t really come to appreciate that until Kingdom Hearts. Yeah. And I’m sure like more of the Asian markets probably has some really good  video game music, but I’m not really exposed to that much compared to you.

Liam: I like synth wave, right? So the stuff that’s like faux eighties, nineties, like cyber punk sort of stuff, that’s kind kind of chip tunes, but it’s too like, well put together to actually have been made in the eighties.  And so there are a couple games with soundtracks that I really love and I’ll listen to like a  a mash of like eight hours of that.

And I’ll just have that as my music that I listen to in the background. Yeah, I generally only do it when I want something to get me in the zone to do like a repetitive task, like painting. So painting generally I’ll need some actual like content to listen to.

Desiree: Yeah. You and I are the type of people that need to actually watch shows, not just listen to music or listen to podcasts.

Liam: Yeah.

Desiree: Well, doing artistic work, we’re multitasking people, which I think is odd for a lot of people, but I find a lot of people say it could be part of like autism or ADD is actually having that noise helps us focus. In some ways. I find that if I just sit and do one thing, I get bored.   Like even doing this with you.

I have to worry about my hands doing stuff that would wind up on the microphone.   So I have crocheted before while doing this, just to keep my hands busy, cuz that’s just who I am. I feel like I need to be doing something even though I am literally doing something and it’s important.

Liam: Right.

Desiree: So I, we watch a lot of shows.

We listen to a lot of podcasts. We listen to a lot of music and there’s nothing wrong with that. I think some people think it’s really odd, but I don’t really know any artists to just sit in the quiet and do.

Liam: Yeah. I think it’s fairly consistent especially nowadays I think it’s becoming even more consistent as a society.

Basically every single person that I work with listens to their own music. Right. And that’s just the same sort of thing or listens to a podcast or an audio book. There’s several guys that listen to audio books while they work. Right. And. Very much the same sort of thing. It’s like, you are doing something, but you also want to be doing something else.

Right. And I think that’s actually something that as a society, we do a lot more of now, not just as creatives, but every person in society. Many people watch or listen to, or do something else while they’re playing video games and I do often as well. Right.

Desiree: Or people who work from home, almost everybody I know who works from home either has TV in the background or music.  

Liam:Yeah something right.

Desiree: Yeah. Depending on what they do for work.

Liam: And like I said, people that are working in a store, right. They’re doing the same thing.

Desiree: Because the store usually has music. Yeah.  It’s interesting to think of cuz so many people would get in trouble if you were in a traditional workspace doing that.

But I find that most.

Liam:Yeah you can’t do it as a telemarketer.

Desiree: No and if you’re on the phones, if it can be heard on the phones or whatever like, I worked at a place we’re on the phones and they let you have your own music, as long as it wasn’t disturbing anybody else or caught on the headphones. it’s actually better that way.

I find you get into the groove. Like he says, when you’re doing an art thing or repetitive motions, repetitive motions, they’ easier I think with a beat  in my opinion.  I don’t work at a traditional job anymore. Thank God. Yeah. I can sit in my pajamas and work.

Liam:I do most of my creating like theory crafting when I’m at work.

It gives me like eight hours to just

Desiree: think

Liam: think about something. And that’s generally why I bring my notebook to work so I can write down stuff I’ve been thinking about during the time I wasn’t on break, while I was out on the floor working and then I can actually put it down and solidify it in my notebook during my break.

And then I go back out and continue thinking

Desiree: Sometimes that happened with me when I was doing the call center job as well. You just note something down because you were thinking about it while you were doing something else and to not forget it,  you write it down. Even then do that with dreams sometimes too, because they’re that abstract.

Liam: Yeah, I do that a lot with like, I’m bad with names, right? So I’ll think of like, okay, I want this name to be a combination of this and this, and I’ll look, look it up. And then if I don’t write it down, I’ll forget it. But I’ll create the name while I’m on the floor. Right. And so I have to write it down when I get back.

But I’ve done that also with like sayings and like languages and stuff like that. Like I do that with a whole bunch of different things. Like I was talking about that class that I was making, I was nailing down the specifics of what would be the spells that they use and how would these mechanics work and all that sort of stuff I was thinking about while I was opening boxes of taps and getting them ready for being put on the shelf or in the overheads.

Right. It’s just repetitive motion, open box, find a place for it, tag it, et cetera. Whole. That was literally everything I did yesterday. 

Desiree: So I do have to wrap this up. We’re going a little over time.

Liam: Yeah.

Thank you so much for listening everybody. I apologize for anybody that I missed saying thank you to, so thank you to everybody that helped us move.

Thank you to everybody that supports our business.

Liam: Yeah, we had a lot of people help move and we do really appreciate it.

Desiree” And thank you to everybody that’s  supported our creative endeavors, whether by bringing themselves over and being part of your D and D party   or who looks on your website or listens to this podcast.

As we like to say, creativity is in everything and everybody can be creative in a one way or another. Creativity is art. So thank you so much for listening. I have my website up now at www.newnerdnovelties.com. There’s Facebook and Instagram, all under my name or New Nerd Novelties. Liam Solo Quest has been updated for his website.

Liam: Yeah, there’s some additional galleries on there that weren’t there before.

Desiree: Definitely listen to us on YouTube Pod Bean and any of the number of groups like audible and kindle that actually come out of Pod Bean and I will be posting this on the website with the transcript. It just takes me about two days to do that.

I just wanna be accessible for everybody.

Liam: Yeah. That’s a lot of extra work that transcript. I certainly wouldn’t do it so good on you, Sis.

Desiree: Yeah,  I, I just don’t think it’s fair if someone’s deaf or hard of hearing, if it’s easier, cuz sometimes we do talk really fast. So thank you so much for listening and don’t forget to own your weird. Desiree signing off.

Liam: Have a good night.