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

In happier news, working on Traversion continues to be satisfying. It's work but it's also a few friends who work well together working on something cool, so it's also fun. And I'm currently getting paid in character design artwork for the OCs I've lent for background and supplementary characters, which is well worth it imo 8)

It's also got me thinking about some of my old stories again, like Rasputin's -- on the off chance anyone here but Aud read my ancient Zombies in the Spring, that's the one I'm referring to. I've been meaning to rewrite it but had to put it aside since I yanked out a major part of the plot to put it in the background of a different character's story, where it makes much more sense... but left the other one with about 20% of a plot. I figured I could turn it into the straight up romcom it was always meant to be, but only just last night figured out where I really wanted to go with that... and figured out something that kind of makes it tie into the major plot that I put elsewhere! I'm pretty happy about that.

 

I apologize because I have definitely asked this before and forgotten, what DC(s) do you play on?

 

No worries! Aether and, as of a few days ago, Crystal. Kinda hoping preferred switches to Primal soon so I can move one of my many alts over there.

 

I finally gave in after bullying and now have an Aether alt, she's in early SB (my main is on Crystal and I am willing to give you a large, joke amount of gil if you need)

 

If you ever want to coordinate for queue speeding up or w/e, let me know! I play all roles (at an extremely average but generally acceptable level XD). Or if you could use some gil or need stuff crafted.

I feel a little sheepish about taking gil, but ngl I would appreciate it... my lack of glam hurts a little and Mateus's marketboard is. Uh. I don't have expensive tastes for Jai (I don't think, anyway -- it's not like there's a lot of butch clothes to be had at any rate) but the Mateus MB gave me stickershock, let's just say that. I haven't yet world visited to shop around, though.

 

It's been really interesting being on Mateus because it's so lively. Cactuar and Faerie are busy with all the sprouts, but the only main city that's really bustling is Limsa, which is largely people idling; it feels like players mostly stay tucked away in their housing wards or something. On Mateus though, the roleplayers are everywhere doing roleplay things! People not roleplaying actively use shout chat in cities to converse! It's pretty cool and makes me smile, no matter how goofy the actual RP I overhear is. XD

I've been trying to speed through ARR because I don't really need to see it all for the fifth time (I story skipped it on one of my alts), but I took some time to level a BSM and MIN so I could by the Emperor's new accessories myself and make my own dye and glam prisms, and level MNK alongside PLD because the Road to 70 buff is nuts. I only just got to Brayflox and PLD is 43! I'm dithering on if I want to pick up arcanist for the two-for-one DPS/healer special, but it'd be my third character with SCH/SMN and it doesn't fit Jai terribly well, when I can pick up RDM at 50 and AST later... but on the other hand, while I like AST a bit more than SCH, I don't like RDM anywhere near as much as I do SMN. It's hard, and while I know opportunity costs are a thing, I still can't bring myself to buy a level skip. 21€ is a lot... which is partly also why I haven't bought a story skip. That, and I want to see Jai in cutscenes reacting to stuff. Catgirl expressions get fierce!

(I don't need to pick up more than the two jobs, sure, but I enjoy being versatile. I'm gonna grab DNC at 60, too.)

I'm really, really enjoying playing her. I've had a problem with playing female characters for a while because it hits some dysphoric feelings, but for some reason Jai isn't hitting that. It helps I love love LOVE her character design, and that while she's small even at max height, armor still fits her frame well. I feel like they were designed to be kind of 'tomboyish', so many of their animations and poses are relatively gender neutral, and while they can be cutesy it isn't so cutesy I don't feel like I'm not playing a grown woman. It's not quite androgyny but it hits enough of a butch note that it feels comfy -- so even if I wish she could be a little taller and her face a little more angular so she looks older, it's not to the level that I'm starting to look longingly at other races.

(Lalafell are extremely cutesy but that doesn't bother me; they're cartoon hobbits to me, so their exaggerated emotes and goofy little frames just fit them. No, my problem with playing one was that I couldn't keep track of where my own character was...!)

Anyway, here's Ms. Jai Chrysanthos in her babby Hall of the Novice armor:



I had an Idea a little while back for a calico catgirl, but the kind of calico/tortoiseshell cat that has that half-black face coloration. I put her together in the benchmark and was like hey, this really works. Then I ran her through the benchmark wearing the Lionsliege armor (the ilvl 100 one, not the ilvl 110) and was like HOLY SHIT SHE'S AWESOME?!



Anyway after a couple of weeks of thinking about how totally rad she is I gave in and made an alt. :') That armor set is only level 50 so I'll be able to do some Frontlines and grab it soon.

Otherwise I'm still working on her backstory -- I'm thinking Thavnairian, and despite using a Seeker model (because Keeper skintones are too cool-toned for that Calico Orange) is not actually one... or at least, is not from a place that works under the alphabet tribal system. Since there's not a lot to go on re: Thavnair, I haven't gotten much further than that, although I may lift some things from the rp-character-from-an-rp-that-never-got-off-the-ground I took her name from, like being a (now former obviously) head of security for someone prestigious but not necessarily important.

 

Oh, and my internet is finally fixed -- after way too much run around, it turns out it was, in fact, a problem on the ISP's end. :) They had to plug a cable into a different jack I guess??? It only took a week of pestering them repeatedly and finally getting them to schedule a tech to be sent out for them to actually take another look at shit on their end... e_e

Also my new computer is getting delivered tonight!! Which is grand because at some point yesterday my video card hit 83C despite me having jacked the fan speeds up. :') It didn't crash this time, at least?

 

Ah. It spiked that high because the fan tuning turned itself off.

I am feeling extremely done with Radeon right now.

 

Did get the computer on time, was not feeling With It enough to wrangle machines around and set it up until tonight. It's bitty, like half the size of my old one -- which is quite large and tbh mostly empty space. Going to need to get an external optical drive now, though, and tbh still a little salty that internal ones are not only no longer included, there's not even room for them in some of these machines.

So far just been installing stuff; feeling pretty tired, so may or may not get around to connecting up the old machine and moving files off of it tonight. Kind of suprised at the lack of cruft I had to uninstall manually, tbh, but it's probably hiding. >_> (I did notice and yeet Norton immediately, however. Microsoft's own security stuff is surprisingly good, whereas I haven't trusted Norton for a very long time now.)

 

I'm glad I didn't try to start the file transfer stuff until today, because it took ALL DAY. Transferring over LAN is slow, and I also had to organize as I went because my old computer is a haphazard mess after 9 and a half(ish) years of poor organization. Hell, I even had a folder on my desktop labeled "Organize this shit" that I made six years ago. (Shit was, as you might expect, not organized.)

I left a lot of stuff on there that I can't see revisiting; I'm never going to play Sims 2 again, and I can't see digging through all my old files to figure out where I was on the project I petered out on to finish it. If I haven't gone back to it by now, I'm never going to. Same with my Dragon Age: Inquisition stuff -- although I think I will play it again, all the mods I had are ancient and I think the DAI Mod Manager hasn't been updated since well before I last played.

I still need to do some organizing, but that largely my reference folder and my collection of ROMs.

 

I'm pretty happy that my FFXIV Benchmark score went from Very High with a total loading time of 63 seconds (ouch) with many of the settings turned down, to Extremely High with a total loading time of just under 13 seconds with all of the settings maxed. Very nice. I turned many of those settings back down because they don't add a lot to the visual experience for the resources they take up, and why make my GPU work harder than it has to? But it's nice to know my little machine has some beefy GPU muscles.

 

James cat is on special urinary health food, which fortunately wasn't hard to get him to switch to... the trouble is he only likes to eat a tiiiny bit of the soft food at a time so I have to keep putting his dish into the fridge the moment he's done, and then rushing over whenever he goes back to the food dishes to give it to him so he knows he has that as an option, and I have to do this because otherwise Gordon will hoover it all down the second I look away. He's still eating his regular food, but boy is this new stuff tasty and he wants it, too! It won't hurt him but it's godawful expensive and James needs to be on it for at least another two weeks. Please, Gordon, you already get to eat the dry food, just... eat your regular soft food. T_T

We will probably need switch them to dry food that's better for urinary health after this... I hope there's options that aren't 30€ a kilo. (James's food and vet bills have cost 500€ so far... thank goodness for that lump of inheritance money we still have. Thinking I'd better go for a cheaper phone option than an iPhone, though.)

 

I made/updated a bunch of default replacements for sims 4 hairstyles, load my game to go test them, aaaaand there's an update. It feels like this happens almost every time I want to test out some custom content!

 

Oh right, I never did link my dA gallery. Here's what's left of it, for the curious -- I pared it down mostly to things I want a record of having originated with me, and some gift art I thought it'd be nice to keep up.

I think I managed to clean out all the comments with my deadname, and the main page comments should be hidden to everyone, but if you do see something that looks like it might be my dead name, no you didn't!

Someday -- sooner rather than later -- I'll completely re-write Rasputin's story as the weird romcom it was always meant to be...

 

I'll need to get a better picture later, but behold! I got her that armor I had her wearing in the benchmark, and it looks fantasic on her.

Also, I don't know about the rest of Crystal's PVP scene, but Frontlines is hopping and people actually try. I've also discovered that I'm okay at melee in PVP, which was a major surprise. A nice one! But definitely a surprise.

 

While looking for other things I found someone's Sims-related blog that is just bizarrely, breathtakingly nasty toward all sorts of random people in the Sims community, and has apparently been going on with this for twelve years. The About page claims it's for humor, but you know drama bloggers. It's never really a joke, even if it's about something as absolutely petty as another player of a fucking digital dollhouse game.

 

Have a lot of stuff stressing me out that I can't do anything about -- or anything more about, anyway -- so I've been focusing a lot on Jai in my free time. It's been a while since I did the finale 2.0 dungeons normally and I forgot what a miserable experience it is the way it's normally run. I'm glad I was able to run J through those as a 3-man so he got to have fun, not just hurried through by bored assholes who want their easy xp.

Anyway, I've since gotten her through about 2.2. Starting to have a bit of trouble gearing up four different jobs and reluctant to part with too much gil buying stuff off of the marketboard, but eh, I'm mostly being stingy. Reselling underpriced marketboard gear and selling maps, ingots, minions from those few vendors that only pop up after certain FATE chains has alleviated any actual cashflow issues, and I was even able to nab the few pieces of glamor gear I wanted (namely, the casual shorts and the unisex Thavnairian set). She's pretty much set for glam looks, since I don't think there's any other pure glamor gear I really want for her; anything else is actual gear-gear that I'll have to acquire at higher levels.

I'm not going to bust my ass trying to get Jai current; I've still got more runs than I want to think about of Delubrum Reginae to do (which is at least 15, but might be more -- I can't remember), I may as well try to get at least one of the crafter relics all the way done, and I suppose I should finish the Werlyt storyline. (I do not like the Werlyt storyline.) I also need to farm some upgrade tokens, and get Yisun through 5.3-5.55. If she happens to get to current endgame in time, yay... but she's still going to be in stasis for a good while when Endwalker drops!

 

I need new closed-toe shoes that actually fit. Expensive-but-comfy shoe store has some good ones on half-off sale! They come in three bright colors -- purple, blue, and orange! Those are my favorite colors!

.................. OH NO, DECISION PARALYSIS!!

 

............. uh.............

I went to pay some bills, saw the portion of my unemployment that had been held pending a decision (b/c I'd messed up some paperwork from misreading it, good job me) had been paid, and checked Kela and saw I could now file again -- despite never recieving a call that the employment agency said they'd give me regarding what I should be doing should my (admittedly slow) self-study be insufficient.

Aaaand I just checked on the employment agency website (which is a goddamn nightmare to navigate) and the only message there is that it's been handled, there's no obstacle to payment of unemployment benefits.

I've been super stressed about this for over a month and it turns out that for 3/4th of that time it's been for NO REASON?????

 

Shoes I'm considering that they still have in my size:

This or this for violet

This for blue

This for orange

I'm thinking that since my unemployment is un-screwed, so I don't have to reserve my tax return for bills, maybe I should just buy two pairs...? My sandals of that brand have held up wonderfully over two summers with no sign of needing replacement, so two pairs of sneakers would last me quite a while. (No, Sensible Nag part of my brain, somber dress shoes would not be a better investment because I'd almost never wear them, and cheap sneakers will last me one year, max.)