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

Aaah he's adorable!

 

I intended to take a nice picture at sunset, and then I got to his island and... it was pouring rain.



Oh well.

 

Yeehaw, Iolis! He looks great in those shorts, hot damn X3

 

Bless the devs for listening to the community and finally letting dude characters have some actual shorts!

 

Thinking about shit is a real drag right now, so have another glam shot



Getting to wear this outfit again for a while is 90% of the reason why I bother leveling ninja to cap every expansion.

 

The lighting is fantastic in this shot.

 

Thank you!

 

Having learned that there's a plugin that allows you to commit visual modding crimes but only have them apply to your own character has me eager to try it out again, but I am in absolutely no shape to hunt down tutorials on how to extract files. (As a certified Picky Bitch, I of course want to make my own.)

 

Modding crimes!



Freckles someone else made + a face texture I tweaked. Subtle, but exactly what I wanted.

Yisun's isn't working out as well, but that's mostly because I can't decide what I want to do with the color fade on his scales.

 

Modding crimes: success



While I'd have liked to do a proper colorpoint fade on his tail, the way the textures are mapped (the main part of the tail uses a repeating texture) makes that impossible. I think I came up with a good compromise, though.

 

I've had a lot of old clothes bagged up and lurking in my closet for years that I never got around to donating, out of feeling obligated to get them to a charity shop or something, and not use the bins that a for-profit secondhand shop has at the mall. Today I finally went and re-sorted them, cleared out all of the actual trash, and am in the process of laundering them to get the musty stink of being in a closet for 6 years out... and then we'll haul them all, bag by bag, to those bins and toss them in. A few of things I'm really sad to lose, but they're just too big and, in the case of the bubblegum pink jeans, I absolutely do not have the skill to alter them to be two or three sizes smaller.

In the process I found a satchel I'd thought I'd lost and one that I'd forgotten about entirely, and hey, soon I'll have my closet space back.

 

As I've grumped about on Twitter, the store has been out of the one kind of bread I can eat for weeks, and at this point I've kind of given up hope of them ever having it again (they have other varieties from the same brand, but all of those have something that makes my guts try to invert, like xanathan gum or rapeseed oil). They're also out of the buckwheat crackers that served as a reasonable substitute -- they've had those more recently, but apparently they don't have the stock to keep up with demand.

I finally gave in and made a loaf of plain quickbread as a substitute. Flour was a mix of buckwheat, brown rice, and teff. First try is a bit more spongey than I like, and while I used olive oil in it for health reasons, I don't really care for the flavor. It's edible enough though, and it wasn't too much of a hassle... for now. It may become one; back when I was making breakfast muffins regularly I grew to resent having to bake once a week, and I don't think I can make one loaf last an entire week.

 

Bread is no longer spongey and overwhelmingly olive oily after a night in the fridge. It toasts up pretty decently, too. There's a bit of a bitter edge remaining that is probably due to a bit too much baking powder -- these flours are dense and need extra lift, but I overdid it a little. Tolerable, though.

There's still the problem of it taking Effort, but... at least I have a staple food and it's cool enough to make it.

 

if you can stomach full-fat greek or natural yoghurt, ive found that works really well as the fat/liquid component in quickbreads, particularly those which use hydrophilic flours like ground flax, coconut flour and psyllium husk.

 

I've struggled for years with having good posture while sitting and having a lot of pain from super tense chest and side muscles, and then suddenly a few days ago it occurred to me to try putting a rolled up towel at the curve of my back.

Posture immediately improved, pain almost gone entirely, and a problem with my legs that I thought was unrelated has also lessened considerably.

Feeling a lot of feelings about this. Also: FUCK gamer chairs. Utter pieces of shit.

 

That said, I need to use a smaller towel/get a dedicated pillow for this so I don't strain my back in the other direction. Ow.

 

Pillow acquired, and while it's more comfortable than the towel by far, now my back is sore in an entirely new way. Meh. I guess I'll just swap back and forth between pillow and no pillow...?

 

I'm not doing the thing I really need to be doing, but I have done a couple of things that needed doing if less urgently and wrote a couple more game reviews, so...? (No, I know, I need to do the thing anyway................)

 

Cranberry-cashew bread this week though :)

 

I promised more FFXIV character lore didn't I? I've been held up by not wanting to repeat myself but not remembering if I already wrote certain things here but not having the mental fortitude to look for it, so... fuck it. If I am repeating myself, just nod and smile.

Today: Families. I have not worked out names for most of their relations, unfortunately...

Iolis's parents were a woodcutter and a herbalist who lived in Hemlock, in the Western Coerthas Highlands. They dearly wanted children, but were unable to concieve for most of their relationship. It was only later in life, long after they had resigned themselves to it not happening, that his mother became pregnant with what would be their only child. As a much wanted only child, his parents treasured him -- never spoiled, because their life was not one where they could afford to coddle a child, but his childhood was one full of kindness and love despite the harsh conditions inherent in being a peasant in a land beset by dragons.

For all he was only 21 when the Calamity happened, his parents were elderly, and the sudden deep freeze and fleeing the advancing ice was very hard on them. On their flight to Ishgard, his father succumbed to the stress and cold, and they had to leave his body behind. In Ishgard, Iolis and his mother were almost turned away, but his mother's skills as a herbalist and Iolis's budding conjuring skills got them a foothold, as they could help the many ailing refugees. However, they did not stay long; a Temple Knight with questionable intentions took a shine to Iolis (who, as a late bloomer, was still small and slender and appeared younger than he was) and along with trying to tempt the young man away, also put pressure on his mother, insinuating that some of her back country mannerisms and rituals looked a bit heretical. However, Iolis was not as naive as he appeared and had voiced his concerns to his mother, who was far from oblivious herself; she had them on a cart to one of the many little villages between Gridania and Ishgard in only a couple of days. There, they lived with his mother's second cousin, who only reluctantly took them in, and there they stayed until she died some five years later. Iolis took to the road shortly afterward.

Fun fact: Lune is not his original surname! With his parents dead and his distant relations not particularly attached to him, he decided to take on one of his own choosing, and as there was no one to scold him for wanting to associate himself with a kinder goddess, he aligned himself with Menphina.

---

Yisun's mother was originally a Thavnarian trader. She had traveled to Othard on business, but the deal went bad when the Garleans she was trading with decided they'd rather just take what they'd agreed to buy. After fighting her way free, she dragged herself to safety and ended up sheltered by the Kha tribe, who are nomadic traders themselves. One in particular nursed her back to health, and some months later she sent a letter back home informing them she wouldn't be returning to Thavnair, due to being quite happily pregnant.

Of his parents, Yisun's father is the fussbudget, while his mother is a jovial firebrand who causes him no end of bother -- which he clearly enjoys on some level, as they have five children. Yisun takes after his mother and then some; it was no surprise to her that he took off on a life of adventure before he was out of his teens, although his father, of course, fussed and fretted and wondered why he couldn't just wait to find some nice girl to settle down with -- surely their tribe traveled enough to scratch the wandering itch! (His mother's response was, "lol. lmao.")

He writes to them when he remembers, which isn't often; it's likely Tataru sends letters on his behalf sometimes. I imagine he's managed to find where the tribe is from time to time and has gone to visit, and on one of those visits, one of his sisters -- the second eldest -- came back with him to join the Scions in a gatherer capacity. (Gameplay-wise, Bat-eredene is his mining retainer.)

---

All I really know about Coco'a's family is that he doesn't get along with his mother very well, and Lalah Jinjal from the Sage quests is his cousin*. That's going to be fun to think about when he can finally unlock it -- I can see him walking past her and she's like, "[Redacted]?! You're alive!" and he speeds up thinking, "NOPE nope nope nope nope! You do not percieve me!!" She's a persistant woman, however, and does manage to get him to stop (possibly by tackling him) and press him into helping her.

* Given how few surnames Mooncats use, he probably has a LOT of cousins, but Lalah is a direct cousin.