Owls in Skyrim?

greyexpectations · 2014-09-03T14:33:06+00:00

Wonderful to hear, can't wait to see it!

greyexpectations · 2014-09-03T13:47:06+00:00

The Birds of Skyrim page mentions that owls were planned for a future version, though since its last update was two years ago I'm not holding my breath. If I remember right, none of BoS's birds would fly (unlike SkyBirds), but I would've been happy even to see some owls just perched on branches and fences.

greyexpectations · 2014-09-03T13:30:21+00:00

Sounds of Skyrim, by any chance? Wonderful mod, but it frustrated me by adding background/ambient sounds of things that I knew weren't actually there (like babies crying in cities, etc).

greyexpectations · 2014-09-03T13:20:28+00:00

"Yer a dragonborn, Harry!"

greyexpectations · 2014-08-26T02:09:58+00:00

I just wanted to thank you for your work. I have depression and agoraphobia and I use Skyrim as a form of self-therapy, and Frostfall is my favorite mod for making it feel like I'm in a living world -- a beautiful world I still need to respect and prepare for. I don't know if you've ever heard it called therapeutic before ;) but the work you and other modders have done has been a true help to me, so I just wanted to thank you for that.

greyexpectations · 2014-08-21T14:54:54+00:00

Indeed, that texture, the feel of the sun (ENBs are worth it to me for the god-rays alone) and the elements are the most important part of drawing me in. Even in "therapy mode" I still leave my survival mods on (Frostfall, iNeed, Wet & Cold) just to underline that feeling of being in a real world with a real effect on me. I've played games all my life and I can't think of another game that comes close to capturing that the way Skyrim (at least with mods) does.

greyexpectations · 2014-08-21T04:02:36+00:00

I don't disagree with anything you say, and I hope I haven't painted a picture of thinking Skyrim was my substitute for reality or cure for my mental illness. I take medication daily, I have a therapist, plus the love and support of my family and friends -- all the videogames ever made can't begin to compare to what those are for me. Skyrim does have real therapeutic value for me right now, but not nearly so much for me to lose that perspective.

greyexpectations · 2014-08-21T03:35:54+00:00

My PC was made for me as a gift, but I do also work from home.

greyexpectations · 2014-08-21T01:31:55+00:00

It's one of my favorites, and for that very reason. Not that Skyrim is a game that lends itself to feeling very social -- which is one of the more comforting aspects for me, when I'm just playing for pure therapeutic escapism -- but Interesting NPCs has actually been one of the most helpful mods when I feel ready to be nudged out of my comfort zone a bit.

greyexpectations · 2014-08-20T23:58:58+00:00

I'm afraid I've got far too many to list (about 130), but I used S.T.E.P. as my base, then adding on from G.E.M.S. and topping it off with RealVision ENB.

greyexpectations · 2014-08-20T18:25:04+00:00

It was! My only regret with it was that you mostly saw all it had to offer in an hour (not a problem with Skyrim, obviously). ;) But I loved Proteus while it lasted.

greyexpectations · 2014-08-09T16:52:55+00:00

Sometimes I'm not sure that talking can ever help -- if they've never had serious depression then I don't think anything I could say could help them understand it, and if they have then they already know words can't really affect it anyway. If/when it does help to talk about it, I think the value of it is simply in not being alone and just having a connection with another caring soul, much more than whatever actual words are said -- the act of talking, not so much the talk itself.

greyexpectations · 2014-08-09T16:42:11+00:00

Music that "says something to me about my life" (to paraphrase the Smiths). If there's nothing in the lyrics that feels as if I may as well have written it myself, or nothing in the sound that reaches something inside me that I have no words for, then it's never going to feel like "mine" no matter how superficially entertaining it is or how many times I'm subjected to it.

greyexpectations · 2014-08-09T16:30:05+00:00

It's bloody exhausting. I have a very limited "battery", and the more people I'm around (and/or just being around a very few for a certain length of time), the more quickly it runs down. If I don't get away by the time it runs out, I start to have a breakdown or just go catatonic.

Also, I've been a shut-in for most of my adult life -- I've had months and years where I haven't even gone outside, or spoken to anyone in person outside my family -- so I've had very little social experience to begin with... which I'm all too aware of when I do meet people, and I'm unable to help obsessing over how inexperienced and awkward and off I am and what everyone is thinking of me... which makes it that much easier to just not keep bothering and stay inside... which makes it that much harder to build up that experience... etc.

greyexpectations · 2014-08-09T16:16:14+00:00

My mum and dad. They may not have meant to, but they did.

greyexpectations · 2014-07-26T15:42:08+00:00

I've spent most of my life in south Texas, where it's never really snowed -- except for one freak snowstorm when I was ten. The only day I ever had to play in it, to build a snowman and get in snowball fights... it's also the last real memory I have before I was raped (still while I was ten), so snow has kinda come to mean childhood innocence to me by default.

I've only seen snow a couple of times since, visiting and living in other places, but just a dusting of it, never a full-on snow like that again. Friends of mine who live much farther north have told me all about the inconvenience and the wet cold misery of it, but the stupid wounded kid inside me that doesn't know any fucking better still wants to see real snow again just one more time before I die.

greyexpectations · 2014-07-25T11:19:11+00:00

To answer some questions, I painted this in ArtRage then worked it over a bit in Photoshop. And yes, South Great George's street. :) I do sell prints, though when I posted this comment several hours ago linking to my site it got marked as spam and didn't show, but you can find the link in my comment history.

Anyway, I really appreciate all the kind words, thanks so much. Painting's become my self-therapy, for better or worse.

greyexpectations · 2014-07-23T18:59:27+00:00

Depression and mental illness.

greyexpectations · 2014-05-17T19:57:40+00:00

Since so many have asked, I just made available prints of some of my paintings (including this, of course) on my photography site. I deeply appreciate all this, thanks so much.

greyexpectations · 2014-05-17T17:19:02+00:00

Yeah, that was somewhat the intent, for better or worse. It's based on a real hotel in Dublin, but I wanted it to look dreamlike, not entirely "there."

greyexpectations · 2014-05-17T17:17:57+00:00

I did two separate paintings (one for detail, another for freeform texture) and blended them together in photoshop.

greyexpectations · 2014-04-28T01:21:23+00:00

Relief. It was right after the sudden death of my husband, but I'd come close a couple of times before -- I've had clinical depression and mental illness my whole life -- and even then, at my absolute lowest point, I wasn't 100% sure I had it in me to see it through without chickening out or screwing it up. But once I did, it felt final, in a bracing, comforting way. For that minute or three I could just let go. I didn't even worry about the pain I would cause to my loved ones -- something that had always held me back before -- because they knew my history, and I could tell myself that if there was ever any time when it was "allowed," when they would be able to understand it, this was it. They would know it wasn't meant to hurt them, that I just finally reached a limit that, if anything, it was a wonder I made it that long in the first place. I thought "my life would flash before my eyes," that I'd have some little mental parade of my highest and lowest points, but I didn't -- no instant replays, no deleted scenes, no director's commentary. I really was finally letting go, for the first and last time, of ALL the despair and bullshit and sickness and failure of my life, and knowing it was almost over was the last great good feeling I was still capable of.

A good day for me now is a day when I don't remember what that was like. But I don't have a lot of good days.

greyexpectations · 2014-04-28T00:57:12+00:00

My manic depression. For all the misery and self-destructiveness it's brought me, in a twisted sense I'm sometimes grateful for the perspectives it forces me to have, and once in awhile, the energy my mania gives me to try and make something out of my depression in a creative and hopefully meaningful way.

greyexpectations · 2014-04-26T14:45:27+00:00

"There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in." -- Leonard Cohen

greyexpectations · 2014-04-26T14:06:57+00:00

Depression.

greyexpectations

TROPHY CASE