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

There was some FFA thread ages ago that was "describe a canon as if it was a fanfic" and a friend of mine messaged me to tell me they were considering posting a description of FF15 where it was some sort of Radiant Historia far-future OC fic where the authors had replaced a bunch of the worldbuilding with things that were different (because it's THE FUTURE!) but ended up serving exactly the same narrative purpose, but I don't remember if they actually posted it or not.

 

If they did I'd be interested in reading it -- it'd salve the utter disappointment that Chapter 14 is turning out to be. The writing just went completely to shit, and seems to be operating off of a different draft of the story than the rest of the game.

 

It's much better done visually, at least, in the Episode Ignis alternate timeline. At least there they're not afraid to let Ardyn be the ridiculous, dramatic bastard he is at heart.

Also, just to add one final point to all of the levels of bad writing going on here: We still don't know who Izunia is.

 

lsjdfksfjskld Ardyn makes a big deal of it and then they NEVER TELL US?! What the actual fuck, SE!

 

we don't fucking know! prior to getting a name officially, we used it for his brother, but then SE went and named him Somnus, and that was a thing, and... now it's just hanging out there

 

UUUUUUUGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH.

I finished Chapter 14 and well, that sure was a thing. I don't get why they put that campground cutscene AFTER the credits, not... when you're actually at camp. It was good, though. Shame it was marred by everything else. :/

Now for the DLCs... I think I might just go right for Ignis's and leave Prompto's a while. The clunky and confusing reveal of him being a test tube baby or w/e didn't make me in a hurry to find out, even though I love Prompto. I just kinda feel like he should have stayed the Normal One, you know?

 

*fires up Comrades first out of curiosity*

... oh no! it's Skyrim!

 

be also warned that prompto's is a genre shift in gameplay (far more than the other two) into a third person shooter kind of thing

episode ignis is definitely the most plot important though

 

I finished the first run of Ignis's dlc and oh no
FEELINGS ;o;
I still have... questions... about how a little boy is introduced to a littler boy with "ok you have to take care of him and keep him going because he's going to save the world, ok? cool" -- man Eos is a fucked up place! -- but nowIgnis is my favorite. More than Gladio. Sorry buddy, the story did you dirty and turned you into a pissy hypermacho jerk for no good reason.

It was funny that when Ardyn popped up again J, who was playing a game of his own, immediately noticed his voice and said, "Oh it's THAT asshole again?" lmao. (He's so! Grating! They made him come off so snide and creepy and supercilious for no good reason in the base game that I suspect that I'm going to have a hard time not being all "oh cry me a river fancy man, no one cares" at his saaaaaad backstory in his dlc.)

 

I got the second (non-fail) ending to Ignis's dlc and MORE FEELINGS ;o; even though I'm not sure what exactly happened there -- I thought he was going to be the sacrifice, but??? I guess Noctis's crystal healing (heh) nullified that...? Well, it makes as much sense as literally anything else about all this prophecy nonsense, since we're given absolutely no clue as to why there has to be a chosen king or why he HAS to die, other than 'Bahamut says so'. Whoever he is. FFXV's gods are awfully mortal in a 'full of petty-ass bullshit' way, and unfortunately are not rebelled against like I usually expect from a Final Fantasy game.

Oh it just hit me how distortedly Christian this is. A child born specifically to die to cleanse the world? Ardyn and Somnus sound like they had some sort of Cain/Abel thing? It grosses me out because it's presented as so straightforwardly unquestioned and a good thing, even if a lot of it is just damn stupid in retrospect.

 

OH MAN I almost forgot to mention Gladio's anguished scream when he saw Ignis lying there on the floor in front of the crystal... *chef kiss* That's the Good Shit. He sounded more upset there than at any other time in the whole game.

 

oh yeah there is ABSOLUTELY christian imagery falling out the ass of this thing

which, tabata, i think, is the reason

 

He SURE DOES LIKE HIS SUFFERING FOR THE SAKE OF SUFFERING. Give it a rest, my dude.

 

why can't I agree with this four times

 

I inadvertently poisoned myself over the past couple of days and now I have Regrets. :<

There are these big chocolate covered marshmallow kiss things, and they have this little waffle wafer cookie about an inch in diameter in the bottom for stability. I didn't really think about it until I woke up this morning feeling super awful and the corners of my lips cracking -- I always get that when I've eaten wheat -- and after thinking about what I'd eaten the day before, I checked the marshmallow box. Sure enough... two of those day before yesterday and two yesterday was enough to make me wretchedly sick today. I took an antihistamine pill this morning and it helped but I still feel pretty awful.

 

DDD: From that little? I'm so sorry, that sucks majorly.

 

Angular cheilitis is so awful. Antifungals sometimes help heal it, if you've got any balm etc which for the bill?

 

Yeah. It's more than a little freaky how much it's escalated in the past four years (I'm sure I had problems before that I just didn't realize it until it amped way up suddenly). I really need to see a doctor about it.

It's not quite angular cheilitis -- it's not right at the corners but a little further up on my upper lip, and it's just like, a split, but on both sides. I usually put some microbial cream on just to make sure nothing that gets into it will exacerbate it and so long as I don't continue eating the thing that made it happen in the first place, it heals up fast.

 

Yeah, antifungals are so effective in many cases because the cause is often an overgrowth of candida, aka thrush. If it isn’t thrush, that cream sounds fairly ideal.

 

Back when I was first getting the mouth cracks and having no idea wtf was causing it, I tried a few different things, and it was the antimicrobial cream (...where did the anti- part of it go in my other post? weird) that kept it at a dull roar when I was still eating wheat products since I couldn't figure out what was causing it. Before when I got the cracked mouth corners it was always due to a vitamin B issue and Bepanthen helped clear it up, but this was different.

It started all at once, too, which didn't help -- I came down with influenza four years ago and as I was recovering I suddenly had this brand new weird problem to deal with, and I started getting sick for a week every four to six weeks (which was eventually cleared up by removing my tonsils). It's like my immune system freaked out and short circuited and a bunch of stuff went haywire. It's one of the reasons I get Real Mad at people conflating influenza with colds -- a bad cold is pretty bad, but it's nowhere near the level of dire of influenza (which in turn is nowhere near as dire as a 'mild' case of COVID-19, a fact which gets me close to a panic attack every time I have to go shopping).