chaosworks.org

16 March 2026

The Drowning Empire

The Drowning Empire series by Andrea Stewart is a trilogy of novels consisting of The Bone Shard Daughter, The Bone Shard Emperor and The Bone Shard War. I was interested in reading this series because it comes highly recommended especially by fans of the Realm of the Elderlings series (probably my favorite book series), and because it was supposed to have a few themes and topics that I’m generally interested in – here, in particular, it was animal characters. I actually pitched The Bone Shard Daughter for the recently founded book club that I’ve been attending, since it was supposed […]

18 February 2026

Growing up with dogs

Losing Bifi made me reminisce a lot about the pets in my life. First and foremost, Bifi is still on my mind a lot, and it still feels unreal that she’s not here anymore. I often still find myself yearning to pet her little head, missing that bond we shared. I want to hold on to those memories for as long as I can, because eventually they will fade. She was not the first pet I lost. I grew up with many, many animals that have been gone for a long time, and my memories of them seem so far […]

6 February 2026

Good bye, good dog

A week ago, we said goodbye to our 13 1/2 year old dog, Bifi. She was a street mutt, named after the African country Biafra by the shelter that saved her from starvation, which in short became Bifi. She was my partner’s dog since she was a few months old, I’ve know her since she was 4, and she became ‘my’ dog as well when she was around 7. Every dog owner will say this about their own dog, but Bifi truly was one of the best dogs I’ve ever met in my life. Not only that, she also was […]

5 January 2026

Shakespeare in the mud

What strange fate has had me slumber upon this gem for two decades? The subject of my thoughts is Deadwood, a TV show first aired in 2004. Being almost 22 years of age does not impede its qualities at all, on the contrary, it is still as valuable as the gold which is cause for its genesis. Deadwood tells the stories of a colorful array of characters as they establish themselves in a camp in the Dakota territory during the gold rush in the 1870s, started first as tents on a muddy patch. The camp quickly turns into a prosperous […]

19 December 2025

Stephen Fry’s Greek Mythology Books

Greek Mythology and I have a complicated relationship. I definitely learned about Greek myths in school at some point, and to this day I still have a fairly basic book on Greek Mythology on my bookshelf. Then came my “wild phase”, and I thought that Norse Mythology was sooo much cooler and more metal than Greek Mythology! In part, my former favorite novel American Gods was also responsible for that. Then a couple of years ago I started playing in a Greek-inspired DnD campaign. That’s when my interest for Greek Mythology really surfaced, because even though I was vaguely familiar […]

11 December 2025

TTRPGs beyond DnD and fantasy (II)

In my previous post, I posted mini-reviews about roleplaying games that I’ve played that are not DnD, but that are mostly fantasy. This post is part two of that post, and lists RPGs I’ve played that are mostly not fantasy, at least not in the traditional medieval fantasy sense. Most of them are still full of fantasy elements or are straight up urban fantasy though. Brindlewood Bay: This is a cozy Miss Marple inspired adventure in which you play a group of old ladies solving murder mysteries. What’s different about this compared to other adventures is that there is not […]

4 December 2025

Fantasy TTRPGs beyond DnD (I)

I’ve been playing DnD for quite a few years now and blogged about my DnD characters about a year ago. A lot of roleplayers are currently going through a bit of DnD fatigue – and while I agree that the combat in DnD can be tedious and frustrating, I still think it’s one of the best systems for long, epic campaigns because the sense of progression you get in DnD is excellent. However, ever since I have started running a regular roleplaying event, which massively contributed to the rapid rise of a local RPG community, I’ve been getting to play […]

27 November 2025

Good and Evil: Baldur’s Gate 3

Is there even a point in blogging about Baldur’s Gate 3? This game is over 2 years old, and surely it’s old news by now? Perhaps, but I’m probably not the only one still playing it, and this game is just something else entirely. I have 467 hours in this game of 4 full runs, but judging by some of the BG3 subreddits those are rookie numbers. I’ve been a big fan of Larian’s games long before BG3 – my favorite game was Divinity: Original Sin 2 before it, and in some aspects, I still think that DOS2 is the […]

17 November 2025

TFW when the biggest achievement of your life becomes your biggest curse

Conversations with recruiters usually tend to go more or less like this: “Are you looking for data scientists?” “Indeed we are! Do you have a degree in data science?” “I have an equivalent degree and over 8 years of experience in data science.” “So what kind of degree do you have?” “I have a PhD in English linguistics, but methodically I worked with data during that time.” [at this point the recruiter’s face usually assumes a puzzled look] “…That… doesn’t really sound like what we need… we’re not looking for humanities scholars.” “While linguistics is indeed often grouped among the […]