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

Cleared Castrum Lacus Litore! \o/ I was getting bummed out after two failures where the group didn't get past the first boss, but tonight I grouped up with a couple of friends to putter around in there, and we lept in when Castrum popped. Our first attempt... also failed to clear the first boss, but when it popped again we had picked up an fc friend and went back in and this time we made it! It was chaos and I had almost no idea what was happening most of the time, AND I had to solo heal it (pick your choice of *internally screaming* memes, that was me). But we did it, and I had fun!

Spoiler: shoptalk about Castrum

Failure 1, I was in top group, but bottom group was *really* slow with dps and somehow we wiped? I'm honestly not sure what happened there, I think they didn't protect the tunnel armor. Even though we had time to try again, people started moaning about how there wasn't enough time and left.
Failure 2 didn't even get in a real try -- I was top and our tank pulled the boss without waiting for a pull time, which quickly resulted in the boss murdering us. People immediately started leaving after that.
Failure 3 I was in bottom group and everything went smoothly. We downed our boss and top was... still at like 50%. We killed so many adds. So many. The colossus came out, someone used death on it, we killed more adds... and we hit enrage, with top still at 20%. *facepalm* Top insisted it was because we didn't hold dps; they didn't understand -- or want to hear -- that it wouldn't have mattered, because enrage is a thing, and the problem was that their dps was way too low. Everything devolved into bitching and complaining so we all just left and did our own thing until the next pop.
Organization for that was messy, and somehow bottom was noticeably slower than top on dps, but we did it! Everything after that is kind of a blur but as far as I could figure out, the hallways work kind of like BA's hallways in that you need people to stand on buttons to make a thing happen, but with an extra prisoner rescuing mechanic.
Andrammalech was a whirlwind of me screaming internally and trying to keep everyone healed and rez'd and OH GOD WHY AREN'T YOU STANDING STILL FOR PYRETIC, I CAN'T HEAL YOU THROUGH THAT OR I'LL DIE!!! That was... pretty rough as a solo healer. :'D
Then the last boss I barely remember because it was mostly internally screaming and trying to do mechanics but not moving fast enough -- I'd noticed when we were standing around hashing out who goes top that people were kind of rubberbanding around me and went 'oh no' -- and AHHH. I'll have to look up a guide because I do NOT know what was happening haha.

But we did it! Me and one of my friends got our first clear! \o/

As for the story... eh. I know the WoL has to stand around with their thumb up their ass a lot in cutscenes, but in the post-Castrum cutscene we had a full blown case of dipshititis and I'm not impressed with the developments.

 

Someone take the FFXIV chargen away from me, I keep making characters I want to play!



I had this guy up and J walked by and said, "That is the face of a friend!" And it is. He looks so sweet.




I had stars in mind when I made her.

 

Me, feeling like crap all day: I must have a headache and feel woozy because I stayed up too late last night. Or because I'm thirsty. Or because I'm hungry. Or because I've been standing up too long.
Me, in the evening, still feeling like crap: Oh, I should take a painkiller. Oh, my head still kinda hurts............. wait a minute...

✧･ﾟ*✧･ﾟ* It's a migraine, stupid *･ﾟ✧*･ﾟ✧

I'm kind of impressed I managed to spend as much time on my feet as I did over the afternoon mixing up cooking, cooking dried beans, slicing vegetables and making stew, and making cornbread, and ran a difficult alliance raid without being a liability, but also concerned that I do this to myself at all, you know? A high pain tolerance is not necessarily a good thing. X(

Anyway. Some new FFXIV glams -- got the Bozja healer coats for both Iolis and Yisun:



... Their coats are different colors, although it's hard to tell. I think I should switch Iolis's from shadow blue to abyssal blue.

Today I was lucky enough to win the tank chest from Orbonne, even though I was on healer:



My boy is so pretty. A_A

 

Winner for the screenshots, witnessed and solidarity on the migraine.

 

The imposter isn't an abandoned character, he's 11 levels higher than the last time I looked. *grumble*

*puts 'Accept no imitations!' in Iolis's Lodestone bio, like that's gonna do anything*

 

THIS WAS A BAD FUCKIN' NIGHT TO HAVE INSOMNIA

*GESTURES WILDLY AT THE NEWS. ALL OF IT.*

OH MY FUCKING GOD

 

Today has been a lot to process on 3 hours of sleep

 

It's so exhausting that so many leftists did not take even one second before they went all out on how a Biden presidency is bad, actually.

Yes, I know you wanted Bernie. (Everyone is acutely aware you wanted Bernie because you won't fucking shut up about it, ever.) I know the Democratic party is a piece of shit. It's also NOT THE FUCKING FASH. Can we have at least a microscopic bit of celebration that we've put up some sandbags and have a moment of breathing room against the tide of fascism?

 

I appreciate people who take those moments to breathe while still sharing messages to keep pushing, and how.

The BIDEN IS BAD AND DEMOCRATS ARE BAD AND YOU'RE BAD FOR FEELING RELIEVED people, however, have yet to share anything of any actual use whatsoever. (And I'm talking about my own personal friends here, who I've had to turn off retweets from.)

 

Now, "Trump Proved That Authoritarians Can Get Elected in America" is a take worth dunking on. What, did the 36 years prior not fucking count, The Atlantic? Or are you just such mewling cowards you can't bring yourselves to use the word 'Fascists'?

 

Two days of peace that the "BIDEN IS BAD AND DEMOCRATS ARE BAD AND YOU'RE BAD FOR FEELING RELIEVED" crowd tried their hardest to spoil, and now that it's Monday we're right back on the GOP bullshit and horror train. I hope that effort to ruin the first moment of peace we'd had in four years was worth it, now that it looks like we won't get any more for quite some time.

 

Shoe problems:

Try on a men's boot. Fits, mostly, but is too wide. Is labeled 'extra-wide', but there's no normal width version.
Try on women's version in the same brand, almost the same style, way better color. Is TOO NARROW. The next size up doesn't exist.

(ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻

I think they weren't real leather so it's probably better I not end up paying 70€ for stylish plastic with a warm lining, but fuck, I hate this. I just want something that has tread and won't put me in huge amounts of pain if I walk a couple of miles. I don't care if they're babyshit brown at this point, I just don't want to spend 180€ (the price of good autumn/winter boots at the store I got my sandals at) unless I absolutely have to ; ; it's so much money...

 

WHY do I keep sitting around without my glasses all day?!

 

Guess who finally got to HW! (I'd let him sit 4 quests away for ages lol))



There's something really satisfying about being a cute lil twink wielding a fuckoff huge sword. :3

 

I've wanted to have one of my original universes be high-tech-and-magic with a veneer of recognizable modern day Western countries over it, but I've been leery about doing it from an ~artistic~ standpoint. But hell, if FFXV can unabashedly do it and have it work even though the overarching story is an overambitious and full of itself mess, I sure as hell can do it.

Not that I wasn't already doing it (I started the current story in 2016 before Plot Problems made me fizzle out), but I had to give myself permission to put in a chop shop just now.

 

LOUSY STUPID GODDAMN FICKLE ACNH BALLOONS

GIVE.
ME.
DIYS!!!!

 

Belated Thanksgiving dinner was a success. I don't really give a shit about the holiday itself, but I liked having a 'everything is grey and depressing so let's have a feast with family and friends' thing in November, because November sucks. Obviously the family and friends thing isn't happening for a lot of reasons, but that doesn't mean the food can't happen.

It's belated due to insomnia making shopping on Wednesday not happen, but the exact day wasn't important. I didn't go super fancy since I am one person with limited energy and also the overlap of foods both J and I like is a bit limited -- just roasted mixed vegetables with a pork tenderloin roast, and apple pie with maple ice cream for dessert. I wanted pumpkin, too, but the grocery store that carried canned pumpkin stopped carrying it... if I'd thought to check earlier than I did I could have ordered some from the import store (at enormous markup), but. :/ HOWever, Aud gave me some money to just buy 3 cans from the import store in lieu of actually shipping me some, so I ordered 3 cans, which should keep me in pie for all of December (since J doesn't like pumpkin).

I am extremely tired out now, so the decision to keep it to three dishes was clearly a wise one.

 

OH, I had a cool dream last night -- I hardly ever remember them anymore and when I do they're usually boring garbage processing, so this one stood out. All I remember now is the broad strokes, but the fine details of dreams are usually random nonsense anyway, so.

I was, I think, a young woman, who met a man who kept covered head to toe who had a strange secret -- he was actually invisible. He could cover up from head to toe to move around in the world and do some things, but he could barely be a person that way. Lighter coverings didn't help; the lighter the clothes the quicker they took on the properties of his invisibility, until he removed him.

Why he was cursed with invisibility was a mystery, but he couldn't undo it, and it caused him a considerable amount of grief. I got close enough to him to learn his secret. We fell in love, despite his reluctance to get close to anyone, and I vowed to find a cure to his invisibility.

During intimate moments, I'd trace his features and the lines of his body and say I knew he was beautiful. He'd go silent at that -- not displeased, but like he wasn't sure how to take it. As the research into curing his invisibility started to bear fruit, he'd warn me that he didn't look like I was expecting, to not get my hopes up.

But I knew he wasn't human -- although he didn't seem to realize that I'd figured it out -- so I knew not to expect a human but something wonderful and strange, in shapes my hands had become very familiar with. And when he was cured and emerged from where he'd been treated, he was surprised when I came to him and touched him all over his face, a smile growing bigger and bigger on mine. "It's you!" I finally exclaimed, grinning, and his eyes welled up.

I don't remember at all what he looked like, other than that he was very pale and definitely uncanny looking.

 

Yesterday in FFXIV, I noticed this comment in my house's guestbook:



The house next door is... my FC's house. :') The person who was in charge of decorating it had made it very nice, but didn't have the energy to change up the decor before she stopped playing, and one of the other officers has just been turning the house into more and more of a shitpost as time goes on because why not? It was legit getting unpleasant to use and while I thought about asking for decorating permissions, I felt like that'd be too presumptuous.
But then an FC friend complained that she legit teleported to a main city to find a material vendor because the FC house is a sensory nightmare and tl;dr her and I and another person are now officers so we can have decorating permissions. The officer cluttering it legit had no idea it was so unpleasant to use, but they're aware that their decorating sense is... unique. :')

I wish I'd asked sooner! I think it was just that nobody really wanted to deal with it and wanted to leave it to the one person who eventually left -- who probably would have been fine with someone taking over, tbh. There may be some pushback against dismantling the shitpost meme art installation in the basement, but that thing has been around since... the founding of the FC? It's kind of ridiculous at this point. The house is a medium so it's not like we won't have plenty of room even if we have to leave the basement alone to appease the old timers, but still.

 

FC house completely redecorated before the patch hit. Friend and I felt like our brains were dribbing out of our ears. Worth it, though; it's a nice place to go into now. I just hope people use it.

Suffering in Sims 4: downloading a bunch of new clothes, then seeing upon preview that the creator recolored them in a way that makes for muddy textures and grainy shades-with-black shadows. Gross. (Also, the default color on every last piece is mustard yellow. Why!!) I have to decide if it's worth bothering to make my own recolors -- she did provide PSDs for recoloring, so it might be worth a try.

I also need to weed through the body presets I downloaded because some of them do really weird things at one end of the weight/muscle scale.