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

Being in a Baltic country is rather, uh. Tense. At the moment. There's also something really surreal about all the "Finland needs to join NATO now that Russia is distracted!" talk going on right now.

It's also extremely fucking surreal to see some of this business conducted over Twitter. Ukraine's official Twitter account is petitioning El*n fucking M*sk for aid! What the fuck. Worst cyberpunk future.

 

It's been sims time a lot lately, for probably obvious reasons.

Apollo is up to 8 kids by 6 different women; he had another fling with L and she had twins, so he took those, and the kid he had with Nalani since they did not want kids. He's also had a kid by the aforementioned Miko Ojo, an npc (a now grown up Meadow Thayer I downloaded from somewhere), Kalamainu'u Iona, and unexpectedly Lilliana Kealoha, who kept visiting and flirting with him because apparently her four kids weren't enough. (She recently called and asked if her and her husband should have another child....) It's hilarious, weeks of nothing despite plenty of shenanigans and then a WHOLE BUNCH OF CHILDREN ALL AT ONCE.

I had him start a club with all of his kids so he can do Dad Stuff with them without me having to wrangle individual invitations.

Aqua is now a YA but is staying at home for now, so I built another floor to the house for her to live in. She's currently massively attracted to her magic instructor, Simeon Silversweater, who is unfortunately married to Judith Ward, who is a horrible old hag -- she has nothing but negative interactions with her children (who both ended up with the erratic trait and bottomed out in emotional control), and is either mean to Simeon or banging him, and sends Apollo mean texts on the regular. Look at this bullshit:



JFC Judith, the man barely knows you!

Anyway Aqua is going to steal Simeon from Judith with no regrets, him and his two kids can go live in a nice little cottage away from her, while she grows old alone and can cry into her pile of money. :p

Meanwhile, Apollo has been too damn busy to get it on with anyone; with three toddlers and suddenly thrust into his dream job (acting), he's had his schedule full.

At least for now. :3

 

The club idea worked really well, Apollo regularly gets adoring sentiments for all his kids, Aqua convinced Simeon to leave Judith with very little trouble and got engaged to him, Apollo aged up to adult, aaaand I'm suddenly very bored. Too much happy families daily grind, bleh.

 

Spent some time in FFXIV again for once, working on Sage (fun! I got to be safety dorito in Weeping City today too and people really appreciated it) and amassing poetics for Yisun for a couple more anima relics. Being a summoner main, he already has Mimesis, so I decided that he needs the other two dragon-y relics as machinist is his main ranged and dragoon might as well be his melee (even if it has lingered behind at 70). These are them -- Deathlocke Lux is on the bottom right, Mimesis is third from the bottom, and Areadbhar is sixth from the bottom.

 

I finally wrote some Lorne lore!

Lorne is something of a cryptid. They've long since stopped tracking their own age and, due to their habit of wandering the wilderness and ruins for long stretches of time, are often hazy on what year it is. Due to being viera, however, they appear as a youth, and many mistake their haziness on current events and dreamy nature (not to mention their childlike joy in small things) as youthful naivety.

As a result, it is typical for others to underestimate them. A beautiful daydreamer, gaze usually fixed in the distance, frequently singing to themself; often others mistake this as obliviousness, even stupidity. However, no matter how much it may seem that Lorne's mind is elsewhere at any given moment, a portion of their attention is always laser-focused on the here and now -- for how else could they survive long wanders in the wilderness with naught but their bow for company?

They do not hide that they are quite old compared to most they meet, but it is all too easy for those people to not believe them, until they speak knowingly about having met some historical figure or mournfully of some long-destroyed place. Even the padjali are taken by surprise when A-Towa-Cant's soulstone reacts to them and Lorne says, smiling, that they did get along quite well... they're glad he remembers them.

They're adaptable to the current time as the flow of a river is to terrain, but simultaneously there is a core to them that is timeless -- an ever-shifting but constant, stalwart presence, like the sea. And like they sea, they cannot be bound or controlled; Lorne will not be beholden to any government or organization, or any schedule or rhythm except their own. They keep their promises, but otherwise wander where they wish, when they wish. This sometimes leaves the Scions frantic, as they also leave their linkpearl behind, but whenever they're needed they show up right on time... usually.

Spoiler: ShB through EW spoilers

Lorne remembers bits and pieces of their past lives -- usually songs, familiar locations, little snatches of day to day life. In this life, they awoke to the Echo at a very young age; although Hydaelyn has only spoken to them directly recently, they are familiar with Her voice, as well as the visions. It's convenient to be able to pass off knowledge they shouldn't have of a place as an Echo vision...

They also have dreams of when they were Azem, but it's all very vague, mostly snatches of feeling or song, a few seconds of a scene. This they have no idea what it comes from; unlike their past life memories or Echo visions, these vauge half-memories connect to very little in their waking world. However, when they eventually meet Emet-Selch, they'll be struck by an deep sense of familiarity. They know they've never met him before... and yet have a bone deep certainity they know him very well.

When they aren't thinking about it, something strangely knowledgable about Emet-Selch will just slip out, in that innocent but very spooky way very young children can say insightful things. When they first see his little finger-snap thing, they'll become very quiet and thoughtful, and a while later, say to him, "Oh, you still do that, hm?" In this way, Lorne absolutely torments him without meaning to...

 

Also, thinking about the WoL's fame level throughout the game, and how that translates in a world without photography, much less television or wide-spread instant communication... word-of-mouth is unreliable so their appearance is going to get mangled in retellings (one NPC in an optional alliance raid story says she "thought you'd be taller", regardless of race); newspapers would have to use artists... which means that, inevitably, my shorter-than-average, slightly built, effeminate elezen has gotten the Handsome Squidward treatment in some newspaper portraits and as a result, a lot of people STILL don't recognize him on sight because they're expecting someone on the order of a particularly shapely roegadyn with an anvil for a jaw and cheekbones you could set teacups on, and the mental image of that gives me great joy XD

 

*AAAHAHAHAHAHAHA* <3<3<3

 

You know you've switched mains when you don't even hesitate buying the new one your first tome weapon of the expansion. */payrespects to WHM*

 

I haven't played Sims 4 in a while other than to make sims, but I randomly remembered that the (identical!) twins Apollo had with L. Faba both started a bear phase on the same day, and how cute it is that happened. (They're Orpheus and Phillamon; I couldn't think of any other goofy pun names and decided that L. was extremely done about the whole kid thing and was like YOU NAME THEM, so I went with mythology.)

 

Sometimes I feel like other players are standoffish toward me when I play Iolis and it bums me out, but then I see how snooty and insufferable a lot of elezen players act on Twitter and Reddit and I'm like ah. They've given us all a bad name. (The effeminate glams get me some weird vibes too, unfortunately, but there's definitely some standoffishness even when i'm wearing Just Armor.)

 

As much as I like cryptids and weird things in the woods and etc. in stories, I have just gotten too... something to find potential terror in real weird animals in the woods. It's a critter with a disease, and that sucks, and it's best to get well away and call the relevant authority, especially if it seems even a little like rabies, but it's not like, a reality is unraveling sort of horror. It's just nature, and nature is really gross and sad sometimes. "Oooh don't look at the weird deer ooooh it might be something ~supernatural~" no buddy it's just a sick animal, settle down.

Now, evidence of creepy human activity in the woods? THAT is scary. People will fuck up random strangers just for fun and make up some delusional reasoning for it, and we have ample evidence of that. They'll unravel reality by unraveling you.

 

Old Person Who Bitches About Cryptids Rather Than Do Anything They're Supposed To Do: The Blogette

 

I just read someone say "Heavensward was virtually flawless" and just about choked on my own spit. Is it good? Yeah. Virtually flawless? Not even fucking close.

 

DID I SERIOUSLY NOT TAKE ANY NOTES WHEN I DID THAT PYTHON COURSE?!

Me @ past me: w h y

 

People on Reddit go outside even once challenge

 

I have to wonder how many of these chucklefucks play like, three games and watch some TV and have no exposure to any media beyond that so they barely know how stories even work, much less how to distinguish "I liked this because it made me feel big feelings" from "this is well-constructed".

---

I'm just remembering that I did take notes, but I typed them rather than write by hand, and it doesn't look like I migrated them over. This isn't a disaster, my old computer is still sitting there taking up desk real estate, but plugging everything in and shit is going to be such a pain in the ass.

 

Blessed be the healers who are willing to baby black mages a little, for they're making my leveling experience far better than it would be otherwise -- especially when I get level synced below 70. Copied Factory on BLM is a lot of AHHHH, but Dun Scaith is so much worse b/c all you have for movement is swiftcast and aetherial manipulation. I love AM but I am not good enough at BLM to keep track of party members at the same time to easily pick one to zoom to -- I usually pick a healer that has looked like they know what they're doing, and pray.

But anyway, as a result of kindly attentive healers, I only got died once each on those, and both times it was from someone running their tracking AoE into me. Not too shabby considering I haven't played it since I last leveled it 2 years ago!

 

Fortunately the only hot takes I have right now are about video games, and the current one is that the sims fandom is largely a bunch of whiny assholes who are never satisfied -- like most Gamers. Doesn't matter if it's pixel dolls or manly man war simulators, the twits are all the same.

Like the nostalgia over Sims 2 and 3 -- I've seen people act like those games didn't need mods to run properly, add features, or fix game breaking bugs, but they very much did. Sims 2 had a variety of ways you could irrevocably ruin a save just by doing reasonable things the game allowed you to do, like deleting sims or saving while a sim was on the phone, and you could even corrupt your game files by deleting custom content from within the game as under some circumstances it also enabled deletion of game items. Sims 3 was very poorly optimized and has mods that are pretty much mandatory if you want to run it now, it slows to a crawl if you have more than a few game packs, and it had an EXTREMELY pricey cash shop (and is also ugly as sin even with custom content while Sims 2 still has a certain cartoony charm).

Sims 4 is not without its problems, for sure, but it's a damn sight harder to ruin your entire game and it looks good out of the box. Sure it's outrageously expensive if you buy everything at once -- but if you bought it as it came out, it comes out to less than having an MMO sub would have over that entire timespan. Sure, the kits 'only' have 20-25 items in them... items that take hours each to make, which you get for only 5€, which is a bit more than a third of what I've paid for a cash shop outfit for one FFXIV character. "BuT mOdDeRs MaKe ThInGs fOr FrEe" -- well, Bratleigh, they're doing it as a hobby and aren't beholden to a company schedule so they can take as long as they want, and they don't have to follow any sort of quality guidelines so their fancy hairstyles can have 4x the polygons it should (nevermind that most content makers modify game content and do not create from scratch).

The howler I just now saw was "Remember when EA gave players official tools to make CC?" Yeah buddy I remember, and it was only for Bodyshop content, walls, and floors for Sims 2, and patterns and worlds for Sims 3. You could make new neighborhood maps in Sims 2 -- but you needed another game to do so. For the bodyshop content it was ONLY textures -- you could not import or modify meshes, and you couldn't even apply proper genetic values to skin, hair, and eyes. And for gameplay mods, new meshes, and objects, you have always needed external, fan-made tools for those games. This is literally nothing new.

It is funny to me however that the twitter I saw this tweet on is someone who makes an external tool for making Sims 4 gameplay mods. Pal, did you even play those other games?

 

Look I got four hours of sleep last night, I need to channel my salt into something relatively harmless

 

Look, I loved having access to custom textures for everything in the Sims 3 as much as the next guy, but the game ran like garbage even with limited items on. I very much get the urge to dunk on EA for some of their microtransaction crap, but perspective. I will happily admit I sank more money into Love Nikki than I ever did the Sims 4 for objectively less gameplay and zero ways to get custom content. I still don't regret it, mostly.