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

The rest of my WoL's have more wobbly backgrounds...

Mimir was taken from his village assuming that he would only see his mother and (sisters? cousins?) very rarely, if at all. He did grow close to his master and the other two boys under his care, but once he was removed from the jungle (and recovered from his fever-induced delirium), he knew he'd never see them again. The merchant who took him to Rabanastre and trained him wasn't really like family, but they did end up maintaining a kind of professional friendship until the Garleans invaded and ruined everything. If he has anything he'd consider family, it's the Ironworks, since he joined them shortly after Cid founded it, and now to some extent the Scions.

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Lorne is a strange case, fey creature that they are. Sometimes they'll flippantly claim that they walked out of the sea, and people who have seen them swim wonder if it might even be true.

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Jai I'm still not sure about, other than some wobbly stuff about being an orphan. Maybe she was originally from Dalmasca or Corvos since Miqo'te don't seem to be common on Thavnair.

 

Lost most of the weekend to a migraine. >:(

 

Man, same. I didn't even go to work today b/c my back was fucked up from migraine pain

 

Damn, that's rough :( I hope you get some relief soon!

 

Putting these here so I don't lose them when my way-too-many tabs inevitably explode--

All the Living and the Dead: From Embalmers to Executioners, an Exploration of the People Who Have Made Death Their Life's Work - Hayley Campbell
From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death - Caitlin Doughty
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory - Caitlin Doughty
Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?: And Other Questions About Dead Bodies - Caitlin Doughty

Besides personal curiosity, these are for research for writing my necromancer, Rasputin, and the culture he lives in, which is very accepting of death to the point that reanimated bodies are a part of everyday life. My seat-of-my-pants half-comedy random bullshit version was okay for the time, but it's unsatisfying (and let's be real, kind of dumb) for the kind of stories I want to write now.

I've had this kicking around for a long time, but one of my recent inspirations was thinking about what a culture that has an attitude about death kind of similar to Dragon Age's Nevarra, but isn't as grim and serious and lock-them-in-tombs about it. I remembered that Rasputin's culture was kind of like this insofar that I originally fleshed it out, but I asked myself, what if I went even harder with that? It's now in what we'd consider a modern world, so why not go, say, solarpunk about it? But I still want to have some cheeky Addams' Family flair... have to stay true to his inspirational roots, after all.

 

I tried to make Fall Drink last night and it turned out tasting weird and gave me a stomachache >:(

I'm going to try it again using spiced chai rather than whisking spices into caramel (the kind I have is not my favorite but it's literally all I can find outside of Twinings' variety, which is being sold for six fucking euros a box, no thanks), and using honey rather than caramel. And if that fails, then I'm going to assume that the apple juice I used is just not good for this sort of thing and maybe try it again some other time with one that is hopefully less tart.

 

Slightly diluted apple juice with a chai tea bag, and then honey added was considerably better, but still not really anything to write home about. I did use my big mug however, so I probably should have used two teabags. Ah well, all out of apple juice now.

 

I've had Sims 4 going a lot for the past few days, but like with most of my playtime, I was tweaking pre-existing sims and fussing with buildings and doing all the other assorted things I do when I make a base save that I'll probably end up never playing. I've also been building some:



Desert Bloom park needed a real oasis, not a sad little fishing hole. Now I just need to figure out what to put in the rest of the park...

 

JFC Rebelle is cool as fuck

Like, okay, I haven't made any art besides pixel art in Actual Years so this is bad, but

Spoiler: bigish image

THAT SHIT IS DIGITAL. It looks so damned close to physical media that I wouldn't know it's not a photo of actual paper if I hadn't painted it myself.

 

Have you tried playing with the paper tilt and drips options? They look uncannily realistic.

 

I didn't get a chance to play with those but now I gotta :O I did play with... I think it was Blow? And yeah, uncannily realitistic is right!

I hope I can get used to using a tablet again... I'm really feeling the space squeeze on this tiny old Bamboo though. "5.8-by-3.6-inch active pen area"... yeeeeah.

 

For the first time in a while I'm just... not very interested in a FFXIV patch. I'm interested in what's in it but playing mostly solo has gotten to be a huge drag again, so lately I've only logged in to set up my island workshops or drag myself through Pandemonium weekly. The prospect of more stuff I will end up having to do alone or with strangers is just a bummer.

 

I noticed Code Vein is on deep sale on Steam and it's been on my list for a while so I finally gave the demo a try. The chargen is nothing short of amazing:



C'mon, who else would I make?

I got a ways into the actual gameplay of the demo too, and so far I like it! I do not, however, like the godawful keybind setup (I'd need three hands to be able to use it effectively), so I think I need to get a new controller -- my shitty Gamestop brand Xbone controller has stick drift and is way too big and heavy, which makes my hands ache terribly. I have a lot of games that would play better on controller anyway, so it's worth coughing up the money for one. I don't know from controllers, though, so if anyone has any advice I'm happy to take it!

 

Come to think about it, I do have a really old generic PS3 controller, I wonder if that would work? XD I'll try it tomorrow and see if Windows just goes 'wtf is this shit' or if I can get it to behave.

If not, I'm going to look into Playstation controllers anyway because I hate hate hate HATE the arrangement of analog sticks and Dpad the Xbox controllers have.

 

Controller results:

Ths PS3 controller still works and Steam kind of recognized it, but even going through Steam it didn't work in-game. I could probably do some song and dance with 3rd party drivers but eh.
The Xbox controller works and didn't bother my hands, to my surprise... but despite calibration making it behave for about 5 minutes, the right stick started drifting again, which made my camera go nuts and I started getting motion sick. >:(

I also kinda hate controlling a camera with a controller, it feels either too fast or too slow... maybe a better controller is better about it?

 

XBox controllers seem prone to stick drift, especially the right analogue stick. I've just upgraded but i anticipate that it will last about a year, like the last one. There are xbox controllers which have a more playstation-like layout in terms of analogue stick position and have a slightly slimmer design, which sounds like it would be better for your comfort in the long run.

Highly recommend switching down the camera sensitivity to use with controller, in order to avoid that sensation of wildly swinging about...

 

Ugh, that's disappointing re: stick drift. But yeah, it sounds like I should hunt down one of those types of controllers since my hands are annoyingly small (especially for someone 5'9"). I have a friend who has literally child-sized hands, I'll ask what she uses, bc while mine are't that small, I tend to be the most comfortable with dinky periphrerals (my favorite keyboard ever is the one on my 10.1" Acer notebook, which almost 13 years old and can't run fuckall anymore).

I did do that, but Code Vein (or its demo, at any rate) didn't allow fine increments, so it was either too slow or too fast, which is incredibly annoying. I'll deal with too slow if it means no motion sickness though!

 

I feel bad on dipping on a family dinner thing, but J confirmed we'd be there without asking me even though I told him, repeatedly, that Tuesday is patch day, and then told him that I had already planned to do patch day stuff. I thought about going anyway since I don't have friends to go with this time, but I woke up with my brain going eeeeeeeee. Knowing that his brother and sister and a cousin will be there, it will be loud, and louder still because his sister, bless her, is VERY LOUD and talks all the time, I realized that I am 1. desperate for peace and quiet 2. still kind of resentful he didn't check with me in the first place (and was like "Oh we should take the rest of the cookies you made on Sunday over there!" -- forgetting that I made them because I wanted them). Like, he absolutely didn't do it maliciously, and he apologized about the cookies, saying he should have planned ahead of time if he wanted to bring something, but yeah. I could see the writing on the wall, and the writing said "Meltdown Impending."

So... nope! I can poke around at patch stuff at my leisure and do other things and it will be as quiet as I want it to be.

 

... ¬_¬

And I just got a third phone call from a number that I answered last time, and I'm not entirely sure what the person was asking because she only spoke Finnish (and said "Oh sorry I don't speak good English" and hung up when I said I couldn't quite follow, can she restate in English), but it sounded like something to do with tax payments, and I'm feeling very suspicious about the whole thing. Send me a fucking letter if it's important.

 

Like 99% sure that was a phone marketer from the Taxpayer's Association of Finland, they've called me a few times post-tax returns b/c apparently I'm in the target income bracket now. If it had been the tax bear, they would have called in English, but TAF doesn't actually have access to your taxation information (such as transaction language)