Greetings, fellow adventurers! After a hiatus since 2019, I’m back and ready to dive into the excitement of Blaugust 2024. For those who are new here, Blaugust is an annual blogging event where participants challenge themselves to post regularly throughout August, fostering creativity and community.
What is Blaugust?
Blaugust, now in its 11th year, is an incredible opportunity for bloggers to come together, share their stories, and support each other. The event was started by Belghast, a veteran blogger and community builder. Over the years, Blaugust has evolved into a cornerstone event for the blogging community, encouraging both new and seasoned bloggers to challenge themselves, connect with others, and share their unique voices.
Huge Milestones in Blaugust History:
- 2014: The inaugural Blaugust begins, encouraging bloggers to post daily throughout the month.
- 2015: Introduction of the Blaugust Prep Week, helping participants get ready for the month-long challenge.
- 2017: Expansion to include various creative mediums, welcoming vloggers, podcasters, and streamers.
- 2019: The event incorporates mentorship, pairing experienced bloggers with newcomers to foster growth and support.
- 2023: Blaugust celebrates a decade of community, creativity, and blogging.
My Personal Goals for Blaugust 2024
1. Reconnect with the Community: Blaugust is more than just a blogging challenge; it’s a vibrant community. I aim to reconnect with old friends and make new ones, fostering a sense of camaraderie and support.
2. Share Personal Stories: Over the past few years, I’ve embarked on numerous adventures, both big and small. From exploring new realms in gaming to discovering hidden gems in my own backyard, I have plenty of tales to tell.
3. Experiment with New Content: This year, I’m excited to diversify my content. Expect posts ranging from deep dives into my favorite fantasy books and games to personal reflections and creative writing experiments.
4. Stay Consistent: One of the biggest challenges of Blaugust is maintaining a steady posting schedule. My goal is to post every day, or as close to it as possible, keeping the content fresh and engaging.
What to Expect This Month
Weekly Themes: Each week of Blaugust has a unique theme, designed to inspire and guide our posts. From welcoming new participants to sharing tips on staying motivated, there’s something for everyone.
Collaborations: I’m looking forward to collaborating with other bloggers, sharing the blogging journey together, and maybe even doing a few joint projects. It’s all about building a supportive and inspiring network.
How to Join Blaugust 2024
If you’re interested in joining the adventure, signing up is easy! Visit the Blaugust Sign-Up Page to register and become part of this amazing community. Whether you’re a seasoned blogger or just starting, Blaugust is a fantastic way to challenge yourself, improve your writing, and become part of a wonderful community.
So, grab your quills, dust off your keyboards, and let’s embark on this epic journey together. Here’s to a month of creativity, connection, and fun!
See you in the comments, fellow adventurers!
Over the last few weeks, I’ve been spending some time catching up on my backlog of games and one I finally finished up was Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice
This Norse based story is extremely impressive but the story isn’t the only thing that immerses you into this dark world as the designers brought together an impressive sensory mechanics system for the game as well. During the start of the game, you are given a prompt to play with headphones so you get the full effect of the simulated three dimensional sound environment. Once you throw those headphones on you will be immersed into a mass sound of voices that haunt Senua who constantly talk to her and brings a very creepy aspect to the game.
These voices Senua hears are a crucial part of the story, and also gameplay throughout as they can help with advice, and also such things as arguing with her, tear her down, and pick her up at just the right time. This mix of voices, paired with the soundtrack and visual story brings an experience that is worth every minute put into the game. Hellblade is also a visually gorgeous game full of darkness, strange lights, and mixed muted colors that fill the world. All aspects of what the creators did tell a beautiful story that truly brings a chill to the bones while playing. One way the developers immersed you further into the story was the mix of audio and visual distortion that brings a frightening effect of psychosis and hallucination that Senua is dealing with throughout the story.
Combat was also a way that brought a lot of interaction with the world and things Senua was a part of. Hellblades combat was a great experience as well giving you multiple ways to interact with the world around you that paired beautifully with the story and progression system. I only encountered a few fights where I felt overwhelmed and unable to handle the battle but that was near the end of the story where enemy numbers and difficulty seemed to spike.
Netflix has recently released one of the most terrifying horror originals to date with an eight-episode French horror series called Marianne.
Emma’s books about a demon’s wife are based on her real life nightmares from her teenage years. Emma now grown up and long moved out of her childhood home goes back to the broken-down coastal town of Elden to check up on her parents. This checkup quickly turns gruesome for Emma as her past quickly catches up to her and the nightmares she had are now haunting her once again.
This series also had excellent camera footage and great use of drones that were used to grab some amazing shots of the rocky coast line, and dead winter trees that really added a level of suspense to the show.
One of the most daunting tasks in blogging is making a schedule for writing and sticking to it! Personally, for me, I am a night owl and most of my writing is done late night after the family has found their pillows. I’ve been blogging a lot over the last few months, as well as spending a lot of time on my fantasy novel which takes most of my brainpower and writing focus.
Doing something a little different for today’s post! I’ve been putting a ton of time into plotting, world-building, and just getting that much needed time into writing on my novel series, so I wanted to share some fun tips I’ve learned along the way about writing in the fantasy genre.
Let’s talk Destiny 2’s latest expansion Shadowkeep for a bit seeing how it launched just over a week ago and the community is quite busy with its current activities. Shadowkeep hit the market with one goal in mind and that was to make its place known it was a place for the hardcore community that’s been with the franchise for years.
That’s not to say there aren’t still hurdles and walls to climb because there are and on of the biggest is for new players entering the game for the first time, or even a returning player who has been out for some time. The amount of material that has been given for someone new in the game to learn and process is absolutely overwhelming such as the leveling systems, upgrade methods, power grinds, currencies and all the tidbits in between. Shadowkeep ultimately is the right direction for the game but only makes that problem of where do I start if I’m a new person worse…..I’ve been an avid passionate player of Destiny since the alpha days of Destiny 1’s launch so I’ve grabbed a hold of this crazy train and won’t be letting go anytime soon. But for a new player, I can see where it would be harder to jump in at this point and time and know where to begin or what to do.
When I jumped in for Shadowkeep’s campaign I instantly fell in love with the story as we get to walk alongside an old veteran of the game, Eris Morn. The story has us visiting Earth’s moon once again to stop a terrible evil that has been unleashed which turns into a story of suspense, and some extremely action-packed moments. With the moon being Shadowkeep’s main setting most of us veterans should feel right at home, but things definitely don’t look the same since the last time our Guardians were on the lunar surface. We first spawn in to see massive gray craters that have been split open, revealing these green ominous lights and rocky hills that have formed all over the surface. Along with the Hive doing their evil magic tricks around the moon, we now have ghostly phantoms located in every corner looming around and even calling out to you for missions which brings a fresh vibe to the new/old zones we all fell in love with from Destiny 1.
Shadowkeep also has a massive endgame list of activities to be had as well along with the new raid Garden of Salvation that just launched a few days ago, and the Vex Offensive which is one of the best events Bungo has ever made. Bungie has definitely narrowed the available sources of “powerful drops,” which dropped like candy before Shadowkeep and helped you level up, but now the systems are more focused on new content and the staples of Destiny which are Strikes, Crucible, and Gambit and that true endgame content. The new artifact system is a great addition that also makes understanding that endgame goal and power level just a bit more hardcore and confusing in a way. Again, Bungie is adding all this content in for a true RPG experience and honestly has done a fantastic job bringing the new systems into place.
The new raid, Garden of Salvation sends us back on a quest to take on the Vex once again and it looks to be packed full of new mechanics, puzzles, secrets and more. Along with the raid we now have a new Vex themed event called the Vex Offensive that I became a huge fan of. It’s a new arena-style event that is quick, fast-paced, and a decent loot grind for a team of six guardians looking to have some fun killing the milk infused aliens. Shadowkeep as a whole has done a ton to improve Destiny 2 and has given it’s fans a massive taste of what’s coming in future expansions and content updates. There is a massive grind at the end of that campaign and story so get ready to pull out those big boy pants and grind that endgame content. This will make things a bit tougher for those new Guardians coming in for the first time because of the added complexity that truly caters to the hardcore Guardians that like the grind game. I’m excited for the direction Bungie has brought things and has set the story up to develop over the next few years. I truly am excited to see where and how Bungie can continue to roll this crazy train out and what they have in store for all the Guardians out there.
Netflix wasn’t shy about showing new things coming to the show as they also previewed a clip of the Robinsons turning the Jupiter into a “Space Sailboat” to cross a sea on one of the planets they’ve landed on. It looks like Season 2 will see the Robinsons exploring multiple planets in the five-planet system they discovered at the end of Season 1, and also find out more details about the origins of the mysterious Robot and where it truly came from. I’m sure throughout the 10 episodes of Season 2 we will see more surprises and mysteries that the Robinsons will have to uncover and of course get themselves out of those tricky situations they are oh so good at.
Since I’ve been back to a more frequent schedule of writing both on my novel and here on the blog I wanted to take a look at some of the challenges of writing fantasy, scheduling time for it and doing what you love.
Godzilla: King of the Monsters quickly sets the tone that it won’t be the same thing we’ve seen in the past. 2014’s Godzilla rebooted the classic king of monsters for modern audiences, but the latest portrayal of the iconic monster gives us huge monsters everywhere within the first few minutes of the film. If you came to see monsters, then you came to the right spot as this film is loaded with a more classic outlook on Godzilla and other monsters from the past.
Monsters everywhere in this film! Besides Godzilla, we get to see classics like Mothra, Rodan, and the Hydra King Ghidorah but this time with a little more classic thrown in that takes you back to their origins. As for Godzilla, as we saw at the end of the 2014 film, he is clearly set on the side of hero and ready to do battle to help protect humanity. If you came to see an award-winning film loaded with Academy Awards and the best acting you’ve ever seen then this isn’t the film for you. This is purely an action-packed monster film loaded with HUGE monsters destroying everything they touch. The human interaction between the monsters is well done in most scenes, between the moments of fear to the occasional understanding that Godzilla is here to help. All in all the actors pulled off a fun and exciting movie that was a blast to watch and fun to see what the director had around each corner.
We came to see Godzilla kick some monster butt, and this film delivered on that more so than any other to date including a massive monster battle including an exciting, final battle between all the monsters. King of the Monsters keeps you engaged with its story, monsters, explosions, and more…..and if you are a Godzilla fan then this movie is everything you could have possibly hoped for. The film looks absolutely amazing with its impressive beasts, to technology it brings. One major thing King of the Monsters did was to give the audiences MONSTERS and a lot of them as the 2014 Godzilla film was a bit lacking, but I’m excited about the next installment…..that is if they pursue the little hook they left at the end of the film.
Ash & Veil 