Things I'm Passionate About Part 2

Continuing on from part 1, here is the further lists of things I’m passionate about and may become sources of writing for me in the future. As always, I hope you enjoy and draw some inspiration from my ramblings.

1. Beard Maintenance and Health

I grow a pretty epic beard myself, and I’m glad I was blessed with the genes to do so. But even mine is far from perfect. My beard has thin and patchy spots, sun-staining and discolouration, inconsistent greying, it’s overly curly (combing only helps a little and is very temporary), it also grows in strange directions, probably due to my fat neck. That said, I’m really proud of it, enough to let it grow and even do maintenance on it. I shampoo it, and facewash it, I comb it, I even make half assed attempts at styling my moustache, as it’s getting too long and really messes me up when eating certain things (iced cream is a gong show). As such I’d like to start getting into increasing my beard attention; changing my diet to facilitate its growth, getting some supplements maybe and some topicals such as beard oils. I’ve been looking into comb-in fibres that temporarily remove patching (similar to spray on hair). I also might start dying it back to the natural dark-brown or black hair colour of my youth to get rid of the mismatched colour and greys. Coupled with a beard straightener and braided weights when it gets longer (I AM part Viking after all), I might even be able to get it to grow straighter. That and some actual moustache wax to help the styling of the stache.

2. Skyrim Modding

As I said in another article, I LOVE Skyrim. Playing it is fun, but what I enjoy most after so many thousands of hours and years playing is the modding of it to try and get it to do new and cool things, but also to use those mods to port established characters or create new ones in lore-friendly ways. I’m going to start reviewing and discussing the various mods I use regularly and any new ones I find that are amazing and that will enhance your playthroughs of this great game and maybe revitalize it enough to keep you playing and replaying it for years to come. This might make me a huge, crass, marketing shill for it, but I don’t care, I love it and I want you to share the joy. ONE OF US! ONE OF US! Some of the mods I’ll be covering right away are basic tweaks to game functions, like being able to sprint jump. And some animation enhancements that just make the whole thing more fun and interesting. Then I’ll move into some of my favorite atmospheric enhancement projects. I can’t wait.

3. Skyrim Character Builds

I wrote in another weekly series of articles starting on here that in addition to the mods, I love custom character creation in Skyrim. Not just for the roleplaying aspects, but for technical aspects as well and to see how far I can push the engines in the game while also making characters that resemble closely those they might be based upon, while still being friendly to the lore of the Elder Scrolls universe. I’ve created character ports from everything from comics, to other games, to movies, to even books. I’ve made MANY characters straight out of my own mad scientist brain, and I’ve tested and adapted many builds from other creators such as popular YouTubers.

So that was it for part 2. Thanks for continuing this journey with me to explore my strange psyche.