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Episode 223: The State of the Cast
145 Plays7 months ago
Hello Podwalkers, and welcome back to the Goblin Lore Podcast! All three hosts are back for the second week in a row! Today is a fairly serious conversation about the state of our Mental Health and some of the difficulties we have all faced since we last checked in about this. It's also a great lead in to May being Mental Health Awareness month. We also highly encourage people to come join our Discord (link found in the Linktree below)
CW: Depression, death, pain, chronic fatigue
We also finally have a Linktree with all of our discounts/resources
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As promised, we keep Mental Health Links available every episode. But For general Mental Health the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) has great resources for people struggling with mental health concerns as well as their families. We also want to draw attention to this article on stigma from NAMI's site.
If you’re thinking about suicide or just need someone to talk to right now, you can get support from any of the resources below.
- National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 988
- Veteran's can Press 1 at anytime to be taken to the Veteran's Line
- Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741-741
- International suicide hotlines: A comprehensive resource list for people outside the US.
- IMAlive: Click Chat Now to access a live online network of volunteers through instant messaging.
- TrevorLifeline, TrevorChat, and TrevorText (LGBTQ+ crisis support): 1-866-488-7386, or text “Trevor” to 1-202-304-1200
- Trans Lifeline (US): (877) 565-8860
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Opening and closing music by Wintergatan (@wintergatan). Logo art by Steven Raffael (@SteveRaffle)
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Transcript
Welcome and Podcast Theme
00:00:29
Speaker
Hello Podwalkers and welcome to another episode of the Goblin Lore podcast. This is Taya and we once again have the full compliment of our goblins here tonight. And we're going to be doing a check-in with your host. We haven't done one in about a year. We're going to just see where everybody's at.
Anime and Non-Magic Hobbies
00:00:51
Speaker
talk about what's been going on in our lives. You know, part of our cast is talking about, you know, our mental health personally. And, you know, it's part of it to de-stigmatize, talk about mental health. And part of it is just because, you know, we think it's important to, you know, have these conversations with, and it's part of what makes our cast different from everybody else's. And so, yeah, I'm Taya. Taya transcends on blue sky, pronouns are she, her, or they, them.
00:01:21
Speaker
And I'm going to open up the question for this week is, what are you doing to have fun other than playing magic lately? And for me, it's I've been not too surprising to other people who listen to the podcast. I've been enjoying the new season of anime that's just kicking off.
00:01:45
Speaker
You know, my, my favorite show reincarnated as a slime is getting a third season where a couple of episodes in right now. And I'm really enjoying it. That one's real. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yep. I just assumed that, that I think it's like a game at this point that one of you all are just going to throw them in there and I have to double check.
Mental Health Awareness and Upcoming Charity Event
00:02:05
Speaker
I have to assume that you're messing with me. No, that one's a hundred percent real.
00:02:12
Speaker
And we've talked about this one several times. Yes, we have. Yeah. So that's me. So Hobbs, why don't you take it next since you've already been talking here. Yeah. I'm Hobbs, pronouns he him. I can still be found everywhere on the internet, just about, at Hobbs Q. I also want to say that this is very timely. I had not fully been thinking about this, even though I should. There's my nice language to start off the episode.
00:02:40
Speaker
We're like a week away from Mental Health Awareness Month too. So. Yeah, you know, I hadn't even thought about that, Hob. This is really good timing because it is almost May and we have not discussed anything about what we're doing for Mental Health Awareness Month yet. We have not. I can't say there is a charity event that I'm working on with Beth and some other folk. So Davey and Seth,
00:03:08
Speaker
dm cross who i've done events with previously so there will be a charity event it towards the end of the month that people do want to save a date may 18th and 19th there are very little details beyond that and as a cast we haven't discussed what type of episodes we want to do this month so you know i'm glad we're doing this today because that gives us at least a little bit of time
00:03:32
Speaker
Yeah, it's a good time to check in. It's a good time to check in. So yeah, my name is Hobbskew, or my name's Hobbs, or Thomas, or whichever other name you want to use.
Imaginative Play and Parenting Joys
00:03:42
Speaker
And for me lately, I've been doing two things. One, people that listen to this probably will not be shocked by, which is a lot of Lego.
00:03:53
Speaker
We're still in the midst of, we're actually playing with Lego now though. My kids have started actually doing like imaginative play. So I built the giant tree house I think I'd mentioned on the show and it's turned into Universe Beyond. So you got like Batman scaling up part of it with Spider-Gwen hanging out on the top of the tree and there's like a clone in the shower from Star Wars and Luke's just hanging out on a swing which he needs to do because
00:04:19
Speaker
Man, that guy does not have good luck with a just like a rest period. So we've been doing that. My wife and I are building the Batman, the animated series like mural one. It is a ton of fun. Like it is a lot of fun. And we've been building that together at
Home Gardening Adventures
00:04:34
Speaker
night. But the other thing that we've been doing is gardening.
00:04:38
Speaker
And by that, I mean we're actually growing things from seeds, which is wild to me. We planted all of these seeds, which is kind of a, you know what, we're just going to see what happens this year. We're late getting started. My wife for Christmas bought me or set up a grow room in our basement.
00:04:55
Speaker
We took tons of seed stuff that we collected from our own vegetables last year, or even that we like from our pumpkins or squash that we got from the farmers market we harvested the seeds, and we just stuck them in dirt, basically, I mean a little bit more to it than that but for all intents and purposes we suck it in dirt.
00:05:13
Speaker
made like these soil blocks out of it just like a block of soil looks like a square cube and water them and added some heat and plastic wrap and they are exploding in our basement like we really need minnesota to get its act together because we're getting to the point where we're going to need to move outdoors with it uh it's just exciting we love having fresh veggies and just stuff that we grow ourselves is really uh it is a cool
00:05:39
Speaker
activity for me. I really like that idea of growing things and going through like with the Serrano plants last year, going all the way from growing them, eating peppers, harvesting the seeds, regrowing them is just a really it's yeah that's like probably the closest I get to spirituality.
Reclaiming Urban Spaces for Gardening
00:05:58
Speaker
So yeah, that's a lot. Sorry. No, as that's super cool. And thank you for sharing that as a person who has grown up in a city my entire life, it, it still blows my mind a little bit that Oh, yeah, the seeds that are in in plants are things you can then plant to make more plants. Yes, opposed to going to the seed store to buy seeds at some corporation.
00:06:19
Speaker
Well, we did get some of those because we we didn't have everything. Yeah. But there's nothing wrong with that. But like, that's where my brain goes. It doesn't go well, I could buy a squash and then take those seeds and make more squashes like that. Obviously, it's a thing that has been people have been doing since the invention of agriculture. That's what
00:06:37
Speaker
He did. That's what they invented was putting those seeds back in the ground. But it's, I'm so far removed from that from that time that my brain just doesn't even think about that. And I've been talking a long time. I'm Alex. That's why I was gonna say real quick. Sorry, Alex, because since you interrupted me to think about the fact that
00:06:55
Speaker
part of this this year has also felt very subversive because in Minnesota we have what some people call like a boulevard. It's the area between your sidewalk and where cars parked. It's usually grass and we're digging it up and taking it back. Like we're reclaiming it. I felt very subversive just like shoveling it and like killing grass with the shovel felt amazing.
00:07:20
Speaker
So that was all I was gonna say.
Anime Interests and Relaxation
00:07:21
Speaker
Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. So I'm Alex on Twitter still occasionally at Mel underscore chronicler. I've, I've.
00:07:29
Speaker
I'm not there every day doomscrolling, which is great, but I have not entirely removed myself from the ecosystem, which is less great. My pronouns are he, him. And to answer this question, I have a couple answers too, but I think I'm going to go. One of them will probably dovetail a little bit into our main topic. So I'll go with the anime one as well. Like Tay, I'm also watching that time I was reincarnated as a slime. I really enjoyed the show. That one's a made up one.
00:07:56
Speaker
No, that's the full stock title. I know, I was just kidding. No, the made up one that isn't the made up one, so I was reincarnated as a vending machine and now I wander the dungeon. Like that's a real show that I actually kind of want to get back to, finish watching.
00:08:10
Speaker
It's bizarre, but it was fun. But also like for me, one of my favorite shows, like I really like reincarnated as a slime. I put it near the top, but it's not in my top handful. One of my favorite shows though is, is laid back camp, which is just a show about kids going camping. And it's so like relaxing and chill. And I just, I love that show. And that, that also has a new season this season.
00:08:36
Speaker
I want to go back and rewatch another show that I, another slice of life show that I love that I didn't think was ever going to get another season. It's called Sound Exclamation Point, Euphonium Exclamation Point, which is just about a high school band. And I haven't, it's been years since I watched that show and a movie actually came out that I own and play, right? That I haven't watched. So it's like, that's when I want to go back and rewatch the whole thing before I watch the new season. But so I've been watching a lot more anime, which I,
00:09:02
Speaker
Kind of fell out of for a while. Did you watch Delicious and Dungeon? No, that's on my list. Like, I got to get to Delicious and Dungeon. I finished Birdie Wing this weekend, which was a show I watched most of six months ago, but it's a show about golfers, like these women who are golfing. There's a lot of really cool anime, but as of late, I've been watching a lot of these more slice of life ones just because I need that.
00:09:32
Speaker
That's sort of more cozy vibes. It's not necessarily cozy for all of these, but more sitcom-y to some degree, more just fluffle to their normal stuff. It's just enjoyable stuff. It doesn't have a lot of stakes. The world isn't at stake, you know.
00:09:50
Speaker
lives and kingdoms are at stake. What's up? I need to share with you that today I saw a trailer for Tales of the Shire, which kind of like Animal Crossing meets The Hobbit. Yes. And it made me think of you.
00:10:04
Speaker
I've heard of that. That's when I want to look more into, I will say, despite all of the things I just said, I also watched the Fallout show this weekend and that was really good and it's none of those things. Fallout was so good. Fallout was amazing.
Show and Movie Recommendations
00:10:18
Speaker
I have no problem recommending that show. Yeah, it was phenomenal. I also want to recommend if it's in limited release and it's touring the country, but The People's Joker is a fantastic movie.
00:10:33
Speaker
I highly recommend watching it if it comes to your area. If you like DC universe, if you like queer stories, if you like satire and parody, it's just, it was fantastic. It was mind blowing. It's just really, really cool. Yep. So my other thing, which I will talk about now, we can get into it while it's relevant with our main topic, but I've been building a lot of video games too. That's just a constant for me.
00:11:04
Speaker
That one has been a constant. The anime actually is a fairly recent thing I've gone back to in the last couple of weeks, which is just, it's nice. You have a hobby that you're really into for a while and then you put it down for various reasons and then sometimes it's very nice just to get back to it.
00:11:20
Speaker
start to engage with some of those shows that I've been watching that, I don't know, this season just seems really stacked. A bunch of cool things have come back and got new seasons. Just an interesting dynamic for anime that I didn't realize, especially as a kid, anime didn't come over in the 90s in a very easy to digest. Oh yeah, you could get like two episodes at a time on VHS for $25.
00:11:43
Speaker
Yeah. But now that you can get streaming where you're seeing, if you don't mind watching with subtitles, you can watch the episode like the day it airs with an hours of it airing or less. And even the dub is usually like a week, two weeks behind at most, I think for a lot of the bigger shows. They're about three weeks behind. A few weeks, but that's a far cry from
00:12:05
Speaker
what we've had before but it's it's an interesting where it's different from like the american sitcom sort of culture that i was used to wear and not all the sitcoms but a lot of american primetime television it ran until it was canceled and it was continuous and then it was done where a lot of anime will get one season a couple years later get two seasons a couple years later get another season
00:12:28
Speaker
If they're not one of the big, there's a few big ones that are more continuous. Your, your one piece has been running forever, but a lot of these shows that are smaller than that, which is almost everything have this dynamic where they might run for a little bit. Then you have a two year gap and then the show comes back. And so it makes every new season really exciting because not only can there be new things, but then there can be old things that you really liked that are coming back for a little while, which is a lot of fun.
00:12:56
Speaker
Right. Well, do you want to transition kind of into our main topic and talk about kind of where we're at and how things have been going? Yes, I do. All right. Sorry. Yeah. So for me, it's been a rough six, six months. I don't know how far back do I want to go? That takes us firmly into about
00:13:25
Speaker
September, October.
Coping with Grief and Stress
00:13:27
Speaker
Yeah, I mean starting at the end, or it's funny, I still think of things sometimes on school years, just because I work with a lot of trainees. But towards the end of June last year, I ran into kind of starting with the loss of my grandmother, followed pretty quickly on the heels by the loss of Sheldon.
00:13:49
Speaker
to kind of having just to deal with a lot of grief in ways that I wasn't expecting to. I mean, I guess that's one of those hard things to say, like I'm never expecting to have to grieve or expecting grief to go a certain way or there even being a correct way to grieve, but I just came up against kind of just a lot of questioning of I think my place in like magic community, my place within communities in general, my role is
00:14:18
Speaker
father, you know, I don't know how much I've talked about this on the show, but I've actually had a like pretty close to a phobia or if I've had a very strong fear of death since I was like in my childhood. And I mean, like nine, 10, I would have difficulty falling asleep as my brain tried to comprehend these ideas of either, well, the two things, right? Like either afterlife that was indefinite and
00:14:49
Speaker
Theoretically, me thinking I was going to be a good person, thinking that would be heaven. And at the same time, that's just the concept of eternity was scary. But the flip side would be my brain trying to puzzle through what the concept of nothingness is. And I've always had trouble with that. And I think with the loss of my grandmother in particular, who was my last remaining relative, or grandparent, I should say,
00:15:17
Speaker
struck with this realization that I was very fortunate to have a grandmother into my 40s, I think my mid 40s, and recognizing that I've had kids a lot older in my life, so by the time my kids age, it's not clear that they will have that same sort of life or experience. I still have young parents myself, but it made me just kind of start thinking about those things that like, wow,
00:15:45
Speaker
By the time my dad was X number of age, I was already this. He sat all this time to do these things with me. Like, I may not be able to do that for my own kids. And I think that that did lead into a lot of where my just lower mood and just kind of questioning my role and my place in things has been that just continued into winter in a way that I never really could feel like I was getting my feet underneath me. I
00:16:13
Speaker
could say too that work has just been very stressful. So I think that that's one thing that's hard, right? Like my day job is talking about mental health. And I like to talk about mental health in a way that I'm passionate about. And I haven't been doing that as much in my job just because of
00:16:30
Speaker
admin and bureaucracy and the fact that we're finding ways to implement hiring freezes while taking away funding from the closest thing we have to socialized medicine, which always makes sense to me because they don't want socialized medicine to look good. And we've been running up against that a lot more. There's been some articles that have come out recently
00:16:54
Speaker
about the fact that they're allowing more places like the VA to use community care, which they were using because wait times were long. However, what was happening was the wait then into community care was either longer or there's no oversight. There's no guarantee that the person you're seeing has been vetted really by anything other than they have the necessary degree, which is fine except
00:17:19
Speaker
We're used to a lot more, I think, within the VA in particular, pretty rigorous training and expectations that you need to show historically to work in the VA. And then that's now being used as evidence that we don't need more staff because we had to use community places. And so it just is finally hitting the point of where I'm
00:17:42
Speaker
10 years into my career that I never wanted to leave or work at a different place, not getting to do the work I want to do and it not being clear exactly what our role is going to be while I'm also theoretically doing the job of at least an extra quarter to half person. So I've been very absent.
00:18:07
Speaker
I think that that's the one thing that I've been so blessed and thankful for. I like to remind myself of this and these are the exercises we do as a family, whether it's just daily gratitude or looking at the three good things that I've talked on here before with the family at night, just going through three things that were good that happened during the course of the day and things we're looking forward to, those sorts of things. And a lot of times it's been the fact that I have two amazing co-hosts because
00:18:34
Speaker
You know, there was just times I just, I have, I mean, we've had to miss recordings, which is one thing we would have missed a lot more if I didn't have kind of the support of both Alex and Taya. And yeah, I think that when Taya suggested this episode, I was really excited by that in a way to talk about this openly because, you know, we've been kind of,
00:19:00
Speaker
where I just don't always want to admit that things I think are as bad as they are and or kind of where my head has been at times you know I'm pretty open about it online I talk about it but
00:19:12
Speaker
Hearing it all at once sometimes to me can make it have a little bit more of an impact than I'm aware of. So broadly speaking, that's it. I've taken on new coping stuff. We talked a little bit of the thing about Lego up top has become a mindfulness exercise for me because I was realizing at night, it would just be kind of almost feel like mindless scroll until it was time to get into bed and watch something.
00:19:39
Speaker
The Lego piece, even if we're just having something on in the background, we're watching some TV together, my wife and I, it is relaxed time. By me putting the phone down and maybe just playing with some Lego or building a kit or well, especially when we're we're building things like the Batman one together where we can work on it in stages, which is really nice. I'm much more likely to be really connecting again with
00:20:04
Speaker
just my senses, because that's the whole idea behind, for me, behind mindfulness is being kind of open and aware and ways to engage all, as many of your senses as you can, but engaging your senses has helped me feel a lot more grounded and made it where I felt like I didn't slip into like, I guess, the darker thoughts or just the more unhealthy, unhelpful thoughts about just like hopelessness, because I don't think I've reached that.
00:20:31
Speaker
So that's been one thing that I know that I can say has been a huge coping thing. And it's funny because it's just like with any hobby for me, it's like I go from not doing it to doing it a ton. But this has actually been a nice switch from doing that only really with magic when it comes to that style of hobby. Yeah, you've had a lot going on Hobbs for sure. Definitely.
00:20:58
Speaker
Something I thought about when I proposed this episode is that you would have quite a bit to talk about. And, you know, I similarly had some thoughts on that, too, that, you know, I've got some things I want to talk about, but, you know, I.
00:21:19
Speaker
I think it's important that you kind of talk about the things you found like Lego being a mindfulness thing and engaging your senses as that's, you know, that's really cool that you found that and it is, it is good for that. It's something you can, you know, work on and almost like a trance sort of state where you're just, you know, you're following the directions, you're searching through the piles, you're putting the pieces together and you're seeing what comes out of it.
00:21:47
Speaker
And it's mind blowing. I think about just playing with Lego free and I, and we do some of that. We have a ton of just bolt for playing for free, but even just where kits are versus when I was a kid and watching something come together. And then, you know, I think the biggest thing was for me, I, I, this is not, you know, it's that type of creativity. I think I've said this before, like I can't draw. I, I, I, art is not my really thing crafting in some ways. It's not my thing. I could take photos. I can see things.
00:22:15
Speaker
And I actually built a TARDIS using a set of instructions. I had to deviate so much. That was really cool. And you did that. That was awesome. That wasn't a kit. You put that together on your own. Yeah. So it's been fun to do that. I also want to shout out David, the Goblin Lord Discord, for just existing.
00:22:42
Speaker
That's been a place that when all of this and not sure what I want my relationship to be with, say, Twitter and social media, because I'm still on there quite a bit, but like changing my relationship with that, having our Discord is just amazing. You know, I come to it with this new excitement about LEGO and people are going to be excited. We've had a lot of heartbreak and just some tough times there and just people are jumping in to support each other.
00:23:10
Speaker
You know, the discord is really my biggest remaining connection to magic because I, you know, I experienced, that's where I experienced all the previews now and get to see what cards are being spoiled. I'll let him off of Twitter because, you know, the ma there is no magic community on blue sky. Really? There's, you know, I see a few cards occasionally, you know, when they.
00:23:32
Speaker
You know, one of the big transit accounts will retweet a specific card because of it being interesting or something, but otherwise, you know, I don't see anything. So the Discord is really where I interact with magic a lot at this point. And it's, yeah, and then just all of our other conversations that we have, it's really a great place to be.
00:23:58
Speaker
You know, and it's one of the, you know, the handful of discords that I'm active in every day. Yeah, yeah. Same for me. Yeah, there are very few. I think the guard I'm in one for gardening. Well, it's it's it's Hermit Druids who's like helping me as a consultant for my garden. But people are posting their gardens there, which is kind of a cool thing, too.
00:24:23
Speaker
That's cool. Yeah. I mean, a few discords, but really outside of the one for like my D&D group of friends that we use to coordinate stuff for D&D, like this is the one with an actual like social network sort of thing that I use for that. Like more than anything else, any of the others.
00:24:45
Speaker
So I don't know for myself, if you don't mind me jumping in. I think I similar conversation about hobbies in a different way, as I mentioned about, about video games. So I don't know the last few months I've just been in a funk and I tend to get seasonal depression during the winter. I think this winter.
00:25:07
Speaker
Minnesota weather with all the climate change and things. We didn't get terribly cold and icy, which has been a concern for me in the last few years. I've broken some bones on some ice and that was a real issue last winter where we had a lot of lots of snow and then melting and freezing, melting and freezing. None of that this last few months, but it just was cloudy and overcast and a lot more than we normally get.
00:25:36
Speaker
I know you and I can't remember if we were on air or if we were just at some point when we were chatting, but I know we were waxing poetic as older folks are wont to do about the olden times back when Minnesota used to get like 20 below winters. But then it was at least it was so cold that there weren't any clouds and you'd have nice blue sky and sun.
00:26:00
Speaker
And I don't know. So I've been playing a lot of games recently, a lot of video games. It is my oldest hobby. I remember my dad had a Nintendo Entertainment System in NES back when I was... It's one of my earliest memories is trying to play Dragon Warrior.
00:26:18
Speaker
as, I don't know, a three-year-old, maybe, before I could read. And you can't play a championship like that if you can't read. At least I couldn't. I was bad at it. But my dad played a lot. And so I was just, I would, he'd let me play some. But like I, some of my earliest memories are video games. It's been a hobby that I got from my dad. It's gaming in general. I played D&D because he played D&D. We got into magic together when I was,
00:26:48
Speaker
eight, nine, when we
Family Bonding Over Magic: The Gathering
00:26:50
Speaker
first got into magic. So like, I've done a lot of gaming with my dad over the years. So video games have just been a hobby for me for a long time, but the last... As I've got into other things like magic, you know, you only have so much time of the day, you only have so much money. So I would kind of get out, especially like video games in particular. D&D competes with magic for time, but a little bit less for money if you're going in as a group, you know.
00:27:16
Speaker
You don't have to buy, everybody doesn't have to buy every book. But with video games, especially the last couple years, I've been doing more retro game collecting, just like apparently everyone else was since the COVID pandemic outbreak, at least.
00:27:30
Speaker
Initially a lot of a lot of people were going back to old hobbies I know magic cards old card spiked and things too, but as much as I love these I love it and I think it's a good thing to have fun hobbies I am worried because in the past Being a hobby that can consume a lot of times video games have been an avoidance tool for me I've used games to just
00:27:54
Speaker
unplug for periods of time and just let years go by without really experiencing them. And that's a, it's always a concern for me when I kind of get back into games as a primary hobby, as opposed to the background things. And so that's something I've kind of, it's an actively evolving situation, if that makes any sense. It's something I'm trying to be more cognizant of, but I'm still worried about.
00:28:23
Speaker
Yeah, I think of it when we've talked a lot in the show about intentionality and the difference for you when you are engaging with the game, even if it is still to maybe check out, I think about the, the, oh, it wasn't the, it was the unpacking one, right? That it is kind of a chill out thing and you were engaged in it to a much higher degree.
00:28:47
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. That, that is, if you're looking for a short, but very sweet, cozy, you know, it is literally, it's a game called unpacking. It is literally, all you are doing is unpacking boxes. It's this character's life through all the times that they moved from childhood through adulthood, unpacking all of their boxes into their new, you know, bedroom, into their new apartment, into their new house. And it's.
00:29:17
Speaker
It's a very, I really, yeah, I really engage with that game just because I think it's fun, but it was also super interesting from a storytelling standpoint. You never, you basically never see this character. You never get any dialogue or voiceover from this character. You don't get any, you know, exposition about who they are. You just learn about them from their stuff and the things that they bring with them and the things that they don't bring with them from one move to the next. Yeah.
00:29:47
Speaker
So that's, that's kind of where I'm at. I mean, like, like, Taya, I have not been playing a lot of magic. Some, some in the last. I was thinking about the fact that your dad actually like returned to magic, which is kind of a cool thing. Like that is a cool thing. Yeah. Last year, my dad started playing magic again. He, he sold his collection a while ago.
00:30:10
Speaker
Unfortunately, and during Magix, one of Magix's downturns around the Time Spiral Block era, so he got a lot less than he would have more recently, but the Lord of the Rings set.
00:30:24
Speaker
from the universes beyond Lord of the Rings that brought him back to magic because I mean in part because I'm playing and he knows Jeremy through D&D and Jeremy play so it's like I think it's my friend Jeremy who is our DM but it's like if he didn't know some people he wouldn't have come back just for that but because a few of us were playing and
00:30:44
Speaker
He loves Lord of the Rings like that is one of my dad's favorite properties is Lord of the Rings. Those books, a lot of ways were big for him when he was growing up before he had things like D&D and other stuff like that.
00:30:59
Speaker
And so that was, it's been a lot of fun to get to not just play the game with him, but to kind of teach him, okay, this is a planeswalker. It looks very strange. This is how the card type works. He's trying to wrap his head around that. And also, I talked to him about the commander as a format.
00:31:20
Speaker
He has said it completely unprompted to me. As soon as I explained it, it's like if Commander had existed back when he'd left, he probably wouldn't have stopped playing. Like that is perfect, like quintessential form of magic that we would have played when I was a kid. Like we immediately, like the very first magic I was playing was random 60-card decks, because that's literally what they sold. They didn't even have pre-cons at the time. You got random 60 cards. Yeah, five colors.
00:31:50
Speaker
with no land, maybe three lands of one color and two lands of another color. Yeah, if you're lucky. And we would sit down and play those decks in four or five-person games immediately. I don't think I played head-to-head 1v1 magic until I started playing F&M around the time the original Ravnicus block came out. That was some of the first head-to-head magic I'd played.
00:32:20
Speaker
And so like commander is so perfect. And, and I talked to him about that over the years and he was kind of like, Oh, it sounds interesting, but nothing really pulled him in until he's like, I could have Gandalf. Wait, whoa, whoa, whoa. Didn't keep him away. Oh yeah. Didn't. Yeah. Sorry.
00:32:39
Speaker
No, I know. I know you're being facetious, a word my dad loves, so I'm using that in honor of him in this conversation as well. That's been a lot of fun to get to introduce him to the game or then help him try to hunt down some of the old cards that he likes.
00:32:55
Speaker
he does a lot of camping. He and my mom will meet up with my sister and her kids and, and husband and like, they'll do some camping at different campsites. And so then when they're near these little towns, my dad will go and like, Oh, is there a card shop here? So that he's telling me about this card shop with this couple who runs it in Virginia, Minnesota that he loves and all this. And so it's, it's been fun to see him kind of come back to the hobby. Very cool. Yeah. Hi.
00:33:22
Speaker
When I used to travel for work, that's one thing I would do. I'd be hitting up these little towns in the south for my site visits. I'd always go hit up the local game stores when I was traveling, and I'd always enjoy doing that. That's cool. We'll see this year with cons. If I've been to a con already, there's some more I'd like to go to,
00:33:48
Speaker
Yeah, I just found out I get to miss, not only am I missing Seattle Pride for my work trip, I'm also missing Command Festicoma. So I get to miss, yeah, so my June work trip is basically gonna completely, everything seems to be coming in June this year and that's when my work trip is. Oh, that sucks.
00:34:16
Speaker
Yeah, but that's all right. I get to go visit a partner on the East Coast and then I get to go spend 12 days in Berlin and Prague, so, you know. Okay, well, I no longer feel quite as bad as I did. Yeah. And I guess, well, before I go off video games, you know, I said I was done. I realized one thing that is sort of magic related was a challenge I set to myself because we have the Final Fantasy set coming next year.
00:34:44
Speaker
that I'm really looking forward to. I know, okay, you're big into this series, I'm looking forward to that set too. Yes, I am definitely. You're doing your play through. Yes, I have played, there's only a handful of games in the series I put a lot of time into. So this year, I'm aiming to beat 10 Final Fantasy games.
00:35:03
Speaker
one through six, nine, 13, 15, and 16 are the 10 that I hadn't put enough time into that I wanted to play them again, so that I, at least the non-MMOs, like I just ruled out 11 and 14. I'm like, I'm not playing the MMOs, but I have four of those 10 done so far.
00:35:23
Speaker
I finished 1, 2, 15, and 16. Not really on purpose, like starting from both ends, but that's just kind of what happened. And I'm having a lot of fun with that. I have not done a lot of JRPGs recently. In fact, right now I'm playing Final Fantasy X-2 as a treat. That was one on my list that
00:35:43
Speaker
I'd played, I'd beaten, I'd play a lot when it came out on the PS2 way back in the day. And then I realized, I beat Final Fantasy 12 a couple of years ago, the Zodiac Age, the most recent update for the Xbox One PS4. That was the first JRPG I had finished since 10-2. I started 12 on the PS2, and I was playing Persona 3 at the time, and then I started playing World of Warcraft, and then I played nothing else for two years.
00:36:12
Speaker
and very little else for the next five. When I finally finished FF12 many, many years later, I really enjoyed these games, this series, this style of game. I just haven't played them in a long time.
00:36:31
Speaker
So it's been fun to go back to those. When I finished this playthrough, Marty's scope and things out like in the gaming community, big shocking thing of somebody who's played as many games as many RPGs as me, I've never played Chrono Trigger. I've never played Chrono Trigger as well. Never played Chrono Trigger or Chrono Cross. See what makes it weirder is Chrono Cross was one of my favorite games.
00:36:54
Speaker
I bought Chrono Cross when I got my PlayStation and I was obsessed with that game. And then for some reason, never went back to play the first one that almost everyone prefers. Yeah. For some reason, I just never played either one of those and never went back to play them either when they were re-released. Just fair, but we'll see. When I get through these Final Fantasies, I'm kind of trying to decide where to go in those. That seems like a good place, having never played the first.
00:37:24
Speaker
does seem like a pretty good option. So we'll see where I go there, but I'm looking forward to getting through these Final Fantasies and then whenever we get that set previewed, I'm looking forward to recording an episode with you, Teah, to talk about Final Fantasy and Magic crossing over. Yeah, I was having a conversation with a friend this weekend who doesn't play Magic, never has, not very interested, but
00:37:53
Speaker
kind of, they do follow like what Wizards is doing as a company and you know, I've heard about all the universes beyond stuff and I'm just like, yeah, they've been targeting me hard between, you know, Doctor Who, Doctor Who, Fallout, Word of the Rings, and Final Fantasy next year. I mean, you know, I have, I have
00:38:19
Speaker
Other outside of the story, I've had very little engagement with the mainstream magic sets, but the universe is beyond stuff. It's just had my number.
00:38:28
Speaker
Yeah. The only one that hasn't really been a, you know, a targeted right at me is the Warhammer one. And I mean, Assassin's Creed isn't a home run for me either. I don't really care about Assassin's Creed. So that one, that's a myth for me, but I'm glad it exists for the people who like it. But they, for the most part, they have just been hitting home run after home run for targeting me on these universes beyond sets.
00:38:55
Speaker
Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. Actually, I have a coworker who's big into Final Fantasy plays. Finally, Final Fantasy has their own card game that currently exists and is supported to some
Cross-Franchise Excitement for Magic and Final Fantasy
00:39:05
Speaker
degree. He plays that. He's heard of magic, but wasn't super interested. But then I was telling him that, you know, I'm like, hey, I'm kind of working on some of the games because there's this magic crossover next year. He's like, when next year? I'm like, I don't know yet, but we'll see. So that that might actually get him to check out magic because. Yeah.
00:39:24
Speaker
It's like my dad with Lord of the Rings. It is actually, these things are getting people's attention who are interested in these properties. She said doctor who almost got her to buy a set, but it's just she couldn't justify spending it for something that would just sit on her shelf. Which is fair. It looks nice.
00:39:50
Speaker
But yeah, I guess I can go. It's been a rough year for me and I've talked about it a bit on the show, but I've been depressed a lot and I think a lot of it comes from I deal with chronic fatigue where I'm tired pretty much all the time.
Living with Chronic Fatigue
00:40:11
Speaker
I'm in bed before nine almost every night. I sleep until eight or nine in the morning. I feel like I'm sleeping half my life away because I literally am. And then I'm still tired all day. I'm exhausted all the time.
00:40:28
Speaker
dealt with so many doctors over this. They've never given me an answer other than your fat, lose weight, exercise more, which I've done. I've gone to a personal trainer for a year. It's done nothing. It hasn't helped. Doctors are, they're useless for fat people. They just, they think the answer is to lose weight is lose weight, the answer for everything. Yeah. And then you stop looking for any other answer. And
00:40:58
Speaker
You know, and then this just kind of feeds into my depression because I feel like I can't do anything. I'm tired all the time. I don't want to do anything. You know, I get depressed and then I don't want to do what I'm interested in. You know, I don't, I haven't been playing magic. I haven't been engaging in magic very much. I haven't been playing video games. You know, I haven't, uh, I don't think I've opened a video game since January at this point.
00:41:30
Speaker
And I just, I haven't gotten, you know, just haven't felt like going to my desk and playing or anything. I just pretty much have been either sleeping or watching TV with my partner or partners and.
00:41:48
Speaker
or just doom scrolling. That's kind of all I've been doing for months and it sucks and it's boring and I hate it. And that feels like all I have the energy to do and it blows. And I've been treated with most kind of antidepressants there are. And at this point, changing up an antidepressant again isn't really gonna help when it doesn't treat the underlying symptom of I'm just tired all the time.
00:42:18
Speaker
there's, you know, it feels like nobody's going to help me with that. And I'm kind of tired of dealing with it. And, you know, it's stuck being tired constantly and just not having an answer as to why, even though you're asleep a lot or, you know, no matter how much you sleep, really, I can sleep
00:42:44
Speaker
you know, six hours or I can sleep 12 hours and it's kind of, well, if I sleep six hours, I'm pretty much falling over tired and just going to pass out and fall asleep again. But it's rough and it just makes me not want to do anything. And it's kind of like it's through the support of my partners and doing things I love like this podcast or the things that actually get me through
00:43:14
Speaker
my week, you know, I'm fortunate to have four partners that care for me and have
00:43:24
Speaker
you know, my pets take care of and, you know, I have to do my job. So I have to force myself through that all the time because I'm the one who takes care of my family. So I have to make sure that I can be functional enough to keep my job. And that's really hard to do. And all I want to do is go to sleep sometimes. So yeah, it's been really rough and
00:43:51
Speaker
You know, I just do this every day and sometimes I don't know how I do it, how to manage.
Community Support and Engagement
00:43:58
Speaker
And I just try to, you know, enjoy things when I can. You know, getting out to play magic with friends once in a while or going to a movie, like, you know, like I said earlier, I mentioned the People's Joker. I went and saw that with a friend on Sunday. It was just, it was fantastic.
00:44:19
Speaker
Saturday I spent with two of my partners and it's just those things are the things that keep me going because otherwise I would just be sleeping. That sleep and not feeling rested is something that for me when my depression isn't my worst, that's usually the first sign. My sleep gets fucked up and I also then don't
00:44:45
Speaker
I just want to sleep all the time and take naps and do these things. And then I do that and don't feel any better at the end of it. Right. And I feel like that all the time. Yeah. Yeah. That was before I got my CPAP a couple of years ago, it was really bad. It got really bad for me. And so I bet that really sucks. Sorry.
00:45:13
Speaker
Yeah, I'm just kind of tired of dealing with the whole medical industry over it. And yeah, I think it got worse after getting COVID, but can't really prove that one way or another. It definitely feels like I'm going to bed even earlier than I used to. It's like I.
00:45:40
Speaker
I don't know, could just be getting older too. But I have trouble doing anything. It's like I see all my Facebook friends like going out to clubs and stuff like that on Friday and Saturday nights. And I'm just like, yeah, they're just getting ready to go out. And I'm like, yeah, I'm just getting ready to go to sleep.
00:46:01
Speaker
We need to get you a different comparison group maybe, because that's usually me on a Friday night, is ready to go to sleep. I'm like, can we just go to bed now? I'm good. Yeah. I've been dealing with this for a while, and it just kind of, the fatigue feeds into the depression, which feeds into fatigue, and it's a hard cycle to deal with.
00:46:30
Speaker
And some days it feels like I'm barely keeping my head above water, just, you know, doing the minimum and going to work and spending time with my family. And that's about all I can handle. What I am thankful for though, is that, you know, there is,
00:46:58
Speaker
You know, like you said earlier, you mentioned the discord. It's a great community there. You know, I'm in a couple of other community discords that have been really supportive, mostly, you know, um, friend, friend group discords that have all started that have either started around friends, D and D groups that have expanded out and become a little bit more open local friend groups or
00:47:28
Speaker
friends, polycule discords that have opened up to be more open. It's kind of funny how, you know, even like these small polycule discords eventually become like a local community discord and, you know, have a larger community supported around them, which I always find interesting. It's, you know, the queer community is very,
00:47:53
Speaker
supportive of itself in a lot of ways when there isn't a discourse going on and they're tearing themselves down, which unfortunately happens a fair amount too. Yeah. And our podcast discord is open. There's a handful of patriotic channels, but there's not a lot of activity in there. A lot of the activity, the community activity is conversation in the channels that are open to
00:48:22
Speaker
to the public, if people are looking for a little community, like kind of the vibe we have with the hosts here on the podcast, that is a, is a place that you can come join if you'd like. Yeah, I think we just, we just noted that like prior to, uh,
00:48:41
Speaker
A couple of weeks ago, the last post in the Patreon only channel was a year ago. So definitely. I was going to say the, the, the post was me being like, Oh wait, this channel still exists. I thought I was responding to something that one of the people in discord had said like recently. Yeah. Yeah.
00:49:07
Speaker
Yeah, so yeah, most of our stuff, it's open to everybody. We release the episode a day early usually to Patreon members, but you know, you don't have to listen to my horrible voice a day early. That's fine. I'm okay with that. See, I was going to say, which I don't think is true. However, it sounded good. Yeah.
00:49:36
Speaker
I don't think we get a lot of fans. I will say, actually.
00:49:42
Speaker
There are a couple of people that always respond in that channel when the episode is released early. I mean, with a degree of fanfare. There there there's definitely some party emotes on most of these episodes. That's true. OK, I'll give you a fanfare, Hobbs. Yeah, you got it. All right. It's a fanfare emote. We also have a Hobbs. We actually have Hobbs in Goblin wear emotes. So yeah. Yeah, emotes plural plural. Yeah.
00:50:10
Speaker
All from Vegas. Hello. Yeah. Yeah. I really, we keep it open for a reason. Yeah. If you like what we discussed this episode. Come to come join the discord, you know, you'll get more of this and a lovely community, a really close knit community. It's not, it's not a super busy discord. We like keeping it that way. Yeah. Yeah.
00:50:40
Speaker
There was actually a worry from some people that it was going to get busy after we did the panels last year, thankfully. I think everybody that came to the panels were already people that paid attention to us. We did not have to worry about getting new fans because everybody that came already knew us.
00:51:02
Speaker
And we're okay with this because Alex still thinks that nobody listens. Not entirely true. I understand. I know people listen, but my brain is still.
00:51:16
Speaker
protective. Just every so often I remember that people listen. Well, thank you all for sticking around. We like to do this kind of state of the cast thing every so often and it did end up being very good timing, realizing that we are about a month out from Mental Health Awareness Month. You mean a week out? About a week out.
00:51:37
Speaker
Yeah, week, month, whatever. Units of time. Yeah, one unit of time. One unit of time. From now, we are also rapidly approaching our sixth year anniversary. Yeah, who knows goblins could count to six. Learn to misfact myself right now.
00:52:00
Speaker
to take off my slippers to count to six. I think that's why Goblin Grenade does five damage because that's as far as I could count. And that's our show for today. You can find all of the hosts on Twitter for now. Hobbs can be found at HobbsQ, Tay can be found at Tayatransends, and Alex can be found at Mel underscore Chronicler.
00:52:23
Speaker
Feel free to send us any questions, comments, thoughts, hopes, and dreams to the Goblin Lore Pod on Twitter, or email us at goblinlorepodcast at gmail.com.
00:52:32
Speaker
If you would like to support your friendly neighborhood gobsugs, our link tree can be found on our Twitter account and in the description of today's show. This has everything from various discount codes to the link for our Patreon. The music for today's show was by Wintergotten, who can be found at vintergotten at bandcamp.com. The art was done by Steven Raphael, who can be found at stevereffel on Twitter. Goblin Lore is proud to be presented by Hipsters of the Coast as part of their growing forthos content.
00:53:00
Speaker
Check them out on Twitter at hipsters MTG or online at hipstersofthecoast.com. Thank you for listening and remember goblins like snowflakes are only dangerous in numbers.