The Grouch's Trash Pile [Baldur's Gate 3]

Assassin's Creed canonically exists so sure

 

Heavy meteor shower on my island! Dodo code is FJMRB, Celeste was last seen on the SW beach. I'll be open for another hour and a half or so. Pls water some flowers if you come by.

zzz time now

 

This is a delight: an AC player made some of the Yakuza characters in AC:NH. It's hilarious to me how well it works!

 

Looks at the (new?) drama llama in the anti thread

I wonder, is there going to be a point to this budding tantrum about something no one said, or is it going to devolve into yet another pages-long screaming fit from someone who needs a real hobby

 

It was nice to get online and check that thread and and see that no tantrums were thrown and good conversation happened and librarians were recommended. Please! Do ask a librarian for recommendations, then come back and tell them what you thought when you're done with one! I keep seeing posts various places with librarians lamenting that so many of their patrons don't do this. They want to help, please let them!

 

Some rambling about a story I got stuck on that probably won't make a lot of sense to anyone else, but I need to put it somewhere to remember it:

Spoiler

I got stuck because things went off the rails way earlier than where I stopped writing -- I made things too easy, and then came up with a contrived situation to make things harder. It's one thing if I'd made it work, but I couldn't, SO. Instead of having Error bring in all the money they could need when they forcibly join the idiot brigade, instead have them bring enough to help but not fund absolutely everything. They need a reason to run some interesting grifts on the way to... whatever they're going toward. The captured and increasingly agitated ancestor should still play a part -- maybe the idiot brigade doesn't have it yet, but are going to pick it up, quite possibly under false pretenses so they have a reason to be in such a hurry.

 

Oh that's a delight! I wonder if they'll make Majima, I need to show this to my bf haha. He loves the Yakuza series
And as an aside related to nothing, I followed a thread from that link and found the WILDEST culture clash I've felt yet hahaha
This is a japanese vid related to something in FFXIV, I'm not 100% sure what but.............I watched this movie obsessively as a child, it was one of my favorites of all time ahaha, it's so crazy to see it used as a JP FFXIV meme
https://twitter.com/zaikoning_san/status/1264880083388395521

 

Looking at the autotranslation and squinting at the map that comes out, that's something related to Hidden Gorge, but I haven't played that mode yet so I can't even guess as to what. It's kind of hilarious to see Sister Act used as a meme at all, though :D

 

I finally put ACNH down for long enough to knock out the last two tours with Prompto, and I'm finally going to get on that boat.

 

"Those ain't just your bodyguards -- they're your brothers." T_____T

 

I enjoyed the boat ride to Altissa -- it was a lot more fun than the typical game infodump, and it made sense as the boys making sense of what they've been through so far (like the mystery of Ravus's arm and Ardyn's... Ardyn-ness). The banter was also great -- everyone thinks Ardyn is a creep! (I got a good laugh out of Prompto asking Ignis, "What, not your type?" because 1. more evidence that yes homo in Iggy's case and 2. that little "seriously Prompto? seriously" pause before Ignis responds.) My only complaint is that they still don't talk about the lengthening nights... I suppose Dino's dialogue about that could really be meant for post-game and it's for looking back on the happenings in retrospect, but, eh. It's weird enough I'll have to time travel via dog to turn in a quest that I just finished.

I like Altissa too -- it's just as lovingly made as the other areas. Sure, kind of a pain in the ass to get around in, but really gorgeous, even with the throngs of mindlessly bumbling NPCs. All I've done there so far is bumble around, myself, go to that bar, and defeat that demon painting, but. (I was HILARIOUSLY overleveled for Chadarnook -- she didn't even get a chance to change forms. Wailing on her in between two casts of 146 potency quadcast Fira did the job.)

The only environments I have complaints about in this game are the dungeons. Caves don't have to be boring as shit in games, but they all too often are, and this game has a HELL of a lot of caves. (Costlemark and that other Solheim ruin in Vesperpool are essentially caves with masonry, except for their one distinguishing feature deep within each.) Shoutout to Keycatrich Trench for giving me too high expectations for the other caves -- that creepy abandoned fallout shelter vibe was awesome.

The non-cave 'dungeons' are fine, in large part because they involve the lush environments of the overworld. I suppose the Imperial bases are kind of boring, but they mostly get repetitive -- with the caves, it's like... I've pretty much seen a ton of iterations on that exact same aesthetic already.

 

I was debating taking time to dink around on the ocean vs. actually moving on with the story, and decided on dinking around, which was just made totally worth it with random banter.

Ignis, sounding alarmed: Did you remember to put on sunscreen, Noct?
Noctis: Yes, Ignis.

You don't have to mother hen him quite so hard, Iggy...

 

I found one thing I don't like about Altissia (that I have been mispelling because I somehow completely missed that second i and was wondering why the VAs pronounced that double ss as sh...) -- lots of narrow passageways that wind and twist a lot trigger my motion sickness problems pretty badly if I'm already feeling a bit off, which I was due to god knows what. Playing LOTRO with J for a couple hours previous was part of the problem, because it has a lot of winding and twisting passageways, and it lags and judders horribly in any populated area. It's an old MMO, but the servers it runs on seem to be just as old for as well as they can handle player load.

Er, anyway, I was complaining about feeling gross. It's not all LOTRO's fault -- I didn't eat enough earlier in the day, for one thing, although I started feeling weird shortly after I came home from getting my T shot, so ??? Even when I finally ate a sandwich, and then a real meal, I was still almost falling asleep over my switch and strongly considered going to bed at 7 pm. I still feel kind of ennervated and and weird but some food and a good sleep should help. I don't seem to have the same overheating problem I was having last night (not a fever, I checked; I just... seem to be having to deal with some perimenopause stuff, which is making me reconsider my No Abdominal Surgery Please stance re: hysterectomy), so a good sleep might actually happen, too.

 

Witnessed; simulation sickness is a blight.

 

Sudden FFXV thought: Luna is clearly an Aerith expy, and with the white hair, silhouette, posture, and general pretty boyness of her brother, does this mean that Ravus is a Sephiroth expy? I know she's going to die (I did stumble over a spoiler but she also has 'unreachable plot token' written all over her) but now I suspect he's going to be the one to do it.

 

no comment beyond "mercury PLEASE watch kingsglaive"

 

Okay, okay, I found a place I can watch it. XD Saw a comment saying to watch it post-game, but it sounds like I should watch it sooner rather than later?

 

I recommend watching it any time after chapter....... fiiiiiiive? Like if you're in Altissia, that's actually a good time to watch it for context, but if you watch it before the game it's just. Confusing.

 

I definitely would not advise waiting until post game, especially with Royal Edition (which you have if you can fuck around on the boat). IMO the ideal time to watch it is right before Altissia.

 

I was finally able to make myself sit down and watch the movie (which is not its fault, I just have trouble sitting down and just watching... anything), and, huh, that sure was a thing. Ravus sure got a glowup when he got a new arm, huh? That mullet was yikes.

More seriously, it made more blatant the problem this game has with seeing women as people. The four whole female Kingsglaive being skinny girls in skintight outfits who stand there and do... some completely nonobvious magic was bad enough, but Crowe being fridged was fucking egregious. There was no good reason she had to be the one who was sent off and killed, other than that it doesn't seem to occur to the writers at all that women exist for reasons other than to be emotional incentives to men.

And poor Luna, still little more than a plot token. At least she got to do one whole cool thing in baiting one of the traitors into putting on the ring. That was STONE COLD. In a better world with better writers, they would have done something with that quiet ruthlessness.

Also, fuck the Lucii. The headgames they were pulling on Nyx were disgusting. I guess if you're stuck in some weird between space to provide some inexplicable power you'll want to find your amusement where you can, but goddamn. Y'ALL ARE SHODDY WARRIORS OF LIGHT (except for Regis, he's okay).

I got an even stronger impression from the movie that the Emperor is really not sane, on top of being something of a sociopath.

Finally, a big LMAO to Ultros appearing as a daemon.