Cooking, Dungeons & Dragons, YouTube, and Life

hey. (said spiderverse-ly)

The first draft of this blog post was written in late June (it is now early September) and I really can't help but see how different my writing is right now. If you were to read the original draft you would have assumed I picked up a drug addiction or two (or three) since my last post. Pleased to say that I have not!

Also in the past few months I've made the choice to stop cursing, so the amount of expletives was sort of mind-boggling to read. It's been a very, very hard process to get myself to not use curse words, and I'm not gonna lie and say I don't slip up from time to time, but I more or less don't say anything past "hell".

I don't really mind other people cursing, nor do I really think it's the end of the world if I myself do, but I just found myself using curse words wayyyyy too much. I just feel like it's helped me put more thought into what I say, and better articulate the way I feel about something.

Anyways who cares about all that, I've got gibberish to spew.

I LOVE STARTING HOUSE FIRES

My kitchen post-house fire

One of the major changes between this year of uni and last year is that I now live off-campus, away from the unfathomable hell of living in the same room with a man who smells like unwashed booty mixed with the scent of a drunk person's piss swimming through the Hudson River. I instead am the proud father (roommate) of three beautiful cherubs (my roommates) who are insanely chill, and who I knew ahead of time. I feel like that one Overwatch meme where the angel lady shows up and takes someone to heaven.

Beyond the newfound joys of fatherhood, I now have the kitchen space and time to get back to cooking. Not to sound like a loser who enjoys life or anything, but there are very, very few things in this world that bring me as much joy as cooking for my loved ones.

Almost made me cry

There's just something about the blood, sweat, and tears (and as I'm now discovering, cost) of cooking that pulls me in like nothing else. And before you ask, yes, all of those bodily fluids end up in my dishes. I've spent so long making absolute garbage; the first time I ever tried to make my own dish, I put diced apples in pre-made pasta and sauce and was so ashamed by the result that I left the food-filled pot on the stove overnight and my dad yelled at me.

I think if it was always for myself I never would've liked cooking. It was only in the pursuit of a genuine reaction from my family when I cooked for them that I continued practicing. I didn't want a meager smile that said "this tastes like Jiminy Cricket took a dump and died in your pan but I love you and have to lie about it"; I wanted the real thing (the real thing being a meager smile that said "this is great but I'm not doing the dishes for you").

Sometimes I feel like it's hard to get a genuine response. I always find an issue with what I cook, and there will be occasions where I ask my roommates or family to give me honest feedback; whether out of concern for my feelings, appreciation for the simple fact that I cooked for them, or a lack of cooking knowledge, I usually end up with a vague "it's good!"

I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I occasionally feel reassured by the comment, but I just can't stop the nagging desire to get better. I don't wanna be good, I wanna throw down in the kitchen with somebody's abuelita.

There's so much complexity to flavor that I'm only now really starting to understand. For example, I made some ranch on a whim earlier today, and couldn't quite realize what I found it lacking in. And because I'm a pretentious English major, I'm gonna analogize this with a writing scenario.

You write a sentence: "The dog went into the house."

From this sentence, we have a simple scene. We know who, what, and where. In a similar sense, the ranch I made was discernibly ranch, but it was mid. This sentence is mid. You suck at writing bro. I want to imagine more details. I want to add enhance the taste and add background flavors.

You change the sentence a bit: "The dog ran into its house." I change the flavor profile a bit. I add in some garlic and onion powder, some salt, a little MSG, and some herbs.

I understand the story a bit better. The dog is moving quickly for some reason, and this house is its home. I've started to pick up on some of the background flavors, but there's just not enough depth.

You go even further. "The dog scurried into its home." The word "scurried" changes the mood of the sentence. To me, "scurried" implies some fear, like the dog is fleeing or hiding. I consider adding dijon mustard into the dressing. It would give it a pleasant tang and a subtle kick. But the consistency would thicken the ranch too much.

You try another possibility. "The dog bolted into its home." That new word adds so much excitement and freneticism into the sentence; maybe I can add some vinegar for more acidity and sharpness, but it just doesn't have that nostalgic flavor I love at restaurants.

Being an idiot, I lowkey explained this idea in a way that made it harder to understand, but to the three brain cells left in my head that aren't occupied with the phrase "gurt fingle", this is how I see cooking. Every new combination adds another layer of flavor, in the same way that swapping out one word can completely change the emotion of a sentence.

But that's what I love about food, not cooking; new tastes are a pleasing experience. Cooking, the act of making food, is, to me, not about me getting to experience that final taste. It's about the joy in my friends' faces when they've had a long day and get to have a home-cooked meal, even when they're hundreds of miles from home. I don't pursue a better end product so that I can have a 10% better eating experience, I want to cook better so that I get to see surprise and warmth in my favorite people's expressions.

lowkey feel like that last paragraph contradicts the entire section of me wanting to get better at cooking but tbh who give a gaf, it's my blog.

I'm a nerd. Dweeb, even.

I really don't know where or how it started but in the past nine months I picked up a DnD obsession.

My first interaction with DnD was when I was like fourteen; I played like a session or two with these guys I knew online, and was pissed when my edgy-as-hell character couldn't do like twenty billion damage in one turn and missed every single attack roll.

At some point last school year, I got a YouTube short on my feed of Make Some Noise, an improv-based game show produced by the independent media company Dropout (shoutout my goats, yall should check them out frfr). Again, I have like three regular brain cells left so I was instantly captivated by the shorts, and after a while I started watching some of their free full episodes, though there were only a handful.

Scrolling through their YouTube channel to fill the dopamine-shaped hole in my soul, I found dozens and dozens of hours of free content of one of their other shows: Dimension 20.

To briefly summarize the niche information of the online DnD community in my brain that maybe twelve people worldwide care about, there are tons shows, videos, and podcasts filmed and uploaded about DnD; the ones where people are just playing the game are referred to as actualplay, and Dimension 20 (henceforth D20) is one of those.

I truly cannot explain how much this stupid (endearingly) show changed my life. I have always loved reading and writing. I have always loved games. I don't know how it took me so long to find DnD, which is like both of those ideas if you combined them and then hid them behind the threat of incomprehensible levels of bullying.

The main Game Master (I am not saying Dungeon Master), or GM, of the show, Brennan Lee Mulligan, is one of my favorite storytellers and writers of all time. While I feel like sometimes his style can be a bit more comedic than I'd personally like, I have never seen the talents of improvisation and storytelling be married in such an engaging and captivating way than what he does for his campaigns and characters.

I've watched an egregious amount of that show. I don't even wanna estimate the amount of time.

As a stupid idiot creative writing major who barely has the self-motivation to write for class, DnD is a really incredible training ground. It requires a lot of preparation if you're writing your own campaign (you can use pre-made ones, or "modules" instead), but not nearly to the extent that a full-length story would require, because you build the story with your players.

One of the main things I didn't understand when I watched D20 or another show called Critical Role is that these are shows. They're professionally run and produced by people with years, if not decades of experience in GM'ing, acting, filming, etc.

The biggest mistake I made when I first GM'ed was that I didn't consider who my players were; my friends. My friends are mainly STEM majors who don't care about intricate narratives. They don't want to have a super intricate background that fits perfectly into the storyline and gives potential character arcs to explore. They just want to play DnD.

And that's perfectly fine! As annoyed as I was for those first two sessions I ran (we stopped afterwards because scheduling is hard), I've realized I was putting too much of an expectation on my players to want to interact with and create the world with me. The way I rationalized it to myself is that players are like cats; I have to let the world exist as it is and let them approach it in a way that's comfortable with them.

I've yet to start the new campaign I've been writing, mainly because I'm too lazy to actually finish it. But hey if you ever want to lose respect for me, just ask and I will gladly talk about it until my mouth falls off.

"she bobby on my james til i blast" - pharrell i think

I've been wanting to start a YouTube channel for like a year now. There's like a 50% chance in video production that you develop stockholm syndrome and end up liking making videos; I rolled the wrong 50%.

I'm currently in the process of making a video following my attempts to lock in at the gym over the course of ten(-ish) weeks. So far the only things I've filmed are "progress" videos where I stand in my bathroom with insane bedhead and do little poses to flex my muscles once a week. I have some vague goals for myself like doing multiple pull-ups or doing a handstand, but those seem very distant. For now I've just been enjoying going to the gym with my roommates and eating healthier.

brief side-tangent

I get a lot of cooking content and a lot of gym content in my algorithms, so naturally there's some overlap. Some of the saddest, most kitchencels-coded slop I've ever seen in my life has come from some shredded dude talking about his "high-protein meal prep" that's just cottage cheese mixed with ground turkey, two micrograms of salt, and a drop of yearning for more. 

I go to the gym so I can feel healthy and be more fit, not because I want to look super lean or super huge. I can admit that I'm kinda looking down at these people who have the right to go to the gym for whatever reason or goal they want... but also it's lowkey warranted?

So many of these recipes I see have like twenty pounds of meat and carbs and then like one singular slice of zucchini. What the hell are we doing here. I'll be watching a Jeff Nippard video and then he shares his diet of gruel and protein powder and I just get this wave of ennui.

Two of these are literally slop

I try to keep a vague track of the number of calories I intake, but my main goal throughout the week is to eat plenty of fruits and vegetables, alongside all the carbs and protein I have to grow muscles. I like to meal prep by preparing some ingredients a certain way, like oven-roasting potatoes and zucchini, cooking some onions and leftover pepper I have before adding it to a can of beans I bought, making some lean burger patties or marinating chicken. I also try to keep some raw vegetables and fruits on hand for when I just need a little snack or get lazy and want to add some nutrients to my sandwich.

Again, I'm well-aware that this is entirely self-righteous and condescending, but I see so many people go to the gym and start eating like they sinned in their past life and were ordained to never again experience flavor. Unless you're trying to become a bodybuilder or an athlete (or maybe you just really want some abs, idk man it's your life), I think that the diet promoted in fitness content is really not conducive to your quality of life.

Anyways

Another idea I have for a video is (surprise) DnD-related. I'm working on a campaign right now, and for the sake of myself as a new GM and my friends as new players, I'm keeping the actual plotline minimal so they can choose their own path and the mechanics to a minimum so they can just learn how to play DnD.

For this video, though, I had the idea that it might be cool to record myself developing the worldbuilding, plotline, and mechanics. 

I don't want to go into detail on those elements, on the off-chance I lock in for long enough to actually make the video, but in DnD there are ways for characters to come back to life once dead, the difficulty of which really just varies by GM or by campaign. For this campaign, I was thinking of how strange it must be to be an NPC in Dark Souls or Elden Ring and just see this player character die over and over and over again to a boss (or those goddamned dogs), until eventually they win.

I want death in this campaign to have both benefits and consequences; on one hand, you might come back stronger, and have an easier time in encounters, but new mechanics for combat and narratives might also affect you.

This is just a tentative idea in terms of the mechanics, as I haven't really put much thought into it since I'm still working on something else, but I think it'd be a fun video.

It's just really hard to make video content. I'm very fortunate that I slogged through the process of developing the skills necessary to do so, but the combination of the time it takes, the lack of resources, and my albeit-improving body dysmorphia just makes it so daunting.

Real G's move in silence like Gabagool

It feels very surreal to look back at pictures or writings from high school and realize that only a little over a year ago I was barely crossing the finish line of my senior year (worst year of my life) wondering if life would be better in college.

Yes.

I really love the independence I have going to school in a new part of the state. I am infinitely thankful to my parents and family for the financial support I receive that allow me to go to school here and not have to worry about making ends meet, but I really am at my emotional lowest when I'm living with my family. It's not anyone's fault--I just love the feeling of space and freedom I have now.

I'm currently working as a dishwasher and am in the process of interviewing for a second job at my favorite local bookstore in town. I try to cook dinner for myself, my roommates, and some friends once a week, and I take fifteen credit hours a semester. I've signed up to try out for the tech crew at my uni's sporting events, and I'm planning to take road trips to St. Augustine and New Orleans.

Two years ago, I was sitting in bed praying that moving out would be the cure to all my stress and that my university of choice would be beautiful and amazing and heal my soul (lord knows I wasn't gonna make that drive just to tour it).

Some of that happened. Some.

I think that I'm the happiest I've ever been, and that the people I'm with and the place I'm at, both literally and metaphorically, have been some of the best things to happen to me.

penis