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

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Me: ... It does?!

Turns out I tried to make a Serious, Professional Blog back in 2005 that I was totally for real going to keep up with, I swear! ... It has two posts from 2005. Go ahead and delete that shit, Blogger, no one needs to see 26-year-old me's long-winded and pretentious meta on Jane Eyre.

 

I have a lot of pet peeves when it comes to Gamers, but my consistent least favorite thing is them boasting about how such-and-such game is easy. If they aren't simply full of shit in the first place (looking at you, MMO players), there's a sometimes-but-not-always unstated "when you know what to do." Things are easier when you know how to do them??? Well no shit, Sherlocks!

I put it up there with the dingus behavior of Gamers saying things like Ultimate raids in FFXIV don't take skill, you just have to do them over and over until you learn the fight.

 

I try to avoid sweets when I'm sick because sugar (outside of fruit or honey in tea) tends to make me feel worse, and lo and behold, despite all the frozen meals avoiding sweets did wonders for my waistline. goddamnit lol

 

My vacuum just gave up the ghost with increasingly alarming noises and the smell of burning, which is annoying because we only bought a new head for it a few months ago, but is even more annoying to me personally because I wanted to replace the whole thing when the original head broke, but J was like, no, it's fine! It works fine, it's cheaper to just replace the head! Well. It's a cheap, shitty 60€ machine and even at peak function it had an annoying whine and unwhelming suction and has only gotten worse over the years and I could tell. Now J is like "we should try to find another vacuum that that head will fit" and I'm like. Absolutely not. We can afford to get something that isn't a cheap piece of shit even on short notice (between Gordon's fluff and my allergies we need to vacuum 3-4x a week), so we're going to.

The new head cost 30€ all by itself so tbh it was never worth just replacing that anyway...

 

To J's credit he's gone on a sudden cleaning spree, but I'm still going to put my foot down about the vacuum situation!

 

I woke up today to find that one of my cats peed on a potholder I'd left on top of my mousepad, possibly ruining it (depending on how it smells after it dries from washing). How are you all doing? :')

 

putting a dash of white vinegar where the fabric softener goes in the washing machine always gets rid of cat pee smell for me

or if youre doing it by hand then a baking soda and vinegar rub

 

This kind of mousepad wasn't really machine-washable and my scrubbing with various smell-killing substances was not a success, alas. I think the rubbery foam stuff under the fabric part of the mousepad got too saturated and that, unfortunately, was that. It still smelled rank after drying so into the trash it went. Fortunately, modern mice can be used without one so I'm not in dire straits or anything.

I'm sure it was my neurotic little prince of a cat who has a giant fuss whenever the litter is low or the boxes aren't pristine -- the litter was pretty low because it needed a complete change, and I was feeling too worn out to do it last night. My mistake! Earlier this evening the boxes got a scrubbing and many inches of 100% fresh new litter, so hopefully he won't be tempted to piss on anything overnight this time.

 

If I'm ever rich I'm going to have a second home somewhere in the southern hemisphere I can go live at from November til March so I don't have to deal with this FUCKING seasonal depression.

I take my vitamins and sit in front of my light therapy lamp and take my stupid little walks and it's STILL all I can do not to sleep 12 hours a day and spend most of my awake hours zoned out. I haaaate this.

 

Things have been okay, although yesterday I slipped and fell on my way to an appointment and that fucking hurt, badly enough I had to skip the dinner party I'd been looking forward to that evening.

On the upside, it largely hurts because of stress/strained muscles all down my front, which means my core body strength was sufficient to keep me from flopping backward like a ragdoll and smacking my head against the pavement. This sucks, but a TBI would have sucked much much worse. I'll take it (resentfully).

 

*WRAPS YOU ADORINGLY IN BUBBLE PAPER*

 

Happy to say that my sore muscles have largely recovered, so I didn't even strain anything. Relief! Now just hoping I can avoid any more falls this winter ;_;

 

Catching up with JP Fanfest, I'm disappointed that they're being so cagey about DT's story -- it's hard to get excited about a lot of nothing -- but the other content updates have me very interested. FemHroth look great, too, and one of my alts may get a fantasia -- Jae is a good candidate because of her evolution from an OC who herself is kind of an evolution an absolutely ancient OC that bordered on imaginary friend from my tweens/early teens. We'll see.

Also glad that they took the lighting problem on dark skin seriously and brought up how current lighting looks very bad for dark skinned characters outside of sunny outdoors settings twice. One should not have to have a character as pasty white as Iolis to have them look good in dim lighting (although he didn't look great in dim lighting either, the shaders on elezen are goddamn awful).

 

Really noticed the graphical upgrades on the taller/larger scaled characters (not so much with Hroth & the buns funnily enough, but perhaps because they were introduced later?) The changes to dark skin tones are most welcome. I'd have loved to see them in contrasting lighting, but that was a long keynote speech as it was.

 

Yeah, viera/hrothgar already have higher quality textures (even though they're the same teeny tiny resolution as the others, the aesthetic design is cleaner in general for them) so it makes sense they didn't look tons different. I'm hoping that in non-dev environment lighting the darker skins look less... plastic? The shine is fine, it's not having undertones that gives it that plastic feel, but flat lighting certainly is a part of that.

I'm really chomping at the bit for the new benchmark so we can see how this will all look for ourselves, even though I know it'll be months before we get it... I want it nooooooow! For one thing, I want to know whether or not Iolis is going to be an elezen again or if I'll be thinking up some handwavium for him being a lala/viera now. Not a big deal if it comes to that, and all of my favorite looks for him look just as good on a lala, which is kind of hilarious.

 

Aside from going from tall and willowy to short and round, I've seen sooo many comments over the years from people saying it's so much harder to style a lala, things that look good on tall characters don't look good on them and vice versa, and now that I'm there I can say: skill issue!

Although to be fair I have trouble making an outfit that looks cute on a lala that also looks cute on a tall character, instead of goofy...

 

That's enough lala for now...

Spoiler: Become as bun

I have an Iolis bunny alt so I know I like this look for him, but I'll see how I feel about it in 6.55's cutscenes. Still, it should stay a solid backup plan if the graphics update doesn't thrill me with his elezen form.

I even thought up a headcanon for the switch--

Spoiler: 6.0 ending spoilers

Iolis was in really rough shape after that fistfight at the end of the universe, but what if he was SO fucked up physically from that fight that the Scions had to get the Loporrits' help to rebuild him? And then he comes out half a foot shorter with bunny ears... The Scions aren't sure if the Loporrits got Ideas and took some liberties, or if it was just something inherent to the process.

 

Had let my hair go for a while, considered suffering through months of 'awkward phase' and letting it grow before realizing that with my receded hairline I'd just look like Harry duBois with a weaker chin. No thanks. Went about shaving it and shaved up the sides first to see what I'd look like with a mullethawk. Not terrible, but it'd be vastly improved by being a fun color and not rat pelt brown. Unfortunately I can't bleach my hair anymore (my skin is too sensitive to have hair bleach anywhere near it) so back to the boring old high and tight. Maybe I'll try it again once my hair has gone white/gray enough... assuming my hairline hasn't retreated too far by that point.

I think hats are going to be my only hope. Hats, and possibly headscarves and bandanas. Not baseball caps, trucker hats, or bucket hats, thank you very much.

 

I think hats are going to be my only hope. Hats, and possibly headscarves and bandanas. Not baseball caps, trucker hats, or bucket hats, thank you very much.

I can find you some nice headscarves and bandanas and hats 8)

 

It's my birthday!

I was feeling really miserable this morning; I knew it was in part from making the mistake of checking some fandom communities yesterday and seeing them be miserable bitches about the new FFXIV patch (and miserable bitches in general about BG3 stuff), but I couldn't figure out what the hell else was wrong... until I started wondering if I'm just primed for my birthday to be terrible because I've had so many terrible birthdays, so my brain decided to get a head start.

So I played video games about it for a few hours and now I feel a lot better! And I have a new resolve to stop looking at large fandom communities (and the socmed of a few particular acquaintences) because that's where all the miserable bitches congregate.