Hi

Hi, I'm Xan. I used to go by Gryph or Starscream in the Creatures fandom. You may remember me from the time I had a mental break and changed everybody's forum signatures to bible quotes. My sense of humor is no better these days, but I also have medication. (Which I'm currently out of, but that's just trivia.)

I'm not using the term 'mental break' facetiously in any way, just so we're clear. I've got fun things going on upstairs. But hey, insanity is the Creatures community ethos, right?

The past few years have been ... odd. I moved from self-hosting, where I did a lot of edgy things I'm ashamed of, to a Tumblr blog, where I made a lot of edgy posts I'm slightly less ashamed of, because they indirectly helped me to meet my current spouse. Small, large, strange world! I also disappeared for months or years at a time, which I've become very skilled at-- it is a skill I am not complicit in the learning of, like my prodigious skill at bashing sensitive fingers and toes into cabinets and corners.

I used to have an a ridiculously large archive of Creatures objects, breeds, tools and files, which I've almost entirely lost over the course of learning my well-practiced 'disappearing for months and screaming' discipline (as well as a lot of fleeing-under-the-cover-of-night, and losing hard drives and other data. Maybe it sounds exciting, but it's actually terrible.). But bygones are bygones-- the VM I have Docking Station running under barely has any space on it, anyway. I'll have to be choosy.

I used to have DS running under Wine just fine. I do not anymore. Unless I get new information from someone much smarter than me, or the time to acquire a much deeper understanding of Wine and/or Win32 (maybe see if I can find some really old GTK source and give the Linux port a go? A big mess, there), I'm considering it a lost cause. It's a shame-- I'm at a point in my computer-using life where I don't really care if I'm running in 16-bit color and everything looks blocky and weird, too. Wouldn't have been a problem. I might post the error logs I have up later, just in case see if anyone wants to cut some teeth on it...

Anyway, if I'm ashamed, crazy, and externally technically challenged, it begs the question -- what am I doing back here?

Counterphobia, mostly. I've been fighting severe agoraphobia, to the point I can't even use email or forums. I'm ostensibly in control on a blog, so it seems like good therapy. Creatures does, too. I'm also easing back into programming, and the more I learn, the more I admire the strange gem the Creatures engine is.

I hatched a norn before I started writing. I completely forgot about them until I heard something like a distressed seagull and recognized it after a few seconds and tabbed over. Learning machine. Right.

... stop that.

I don't really know what I'm doing-- I just know I miss playing, and that I don't want to disappear, in a lot of ways. I'm going to challenge myself to keep an eye on this fellow until he turns grey, I think. I don't think I've ever managed that.

I just gave them a scritch mid-sleep and they instantly became visibly sad, then not. Sorry?