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

The light blocking curtains are definitely helping a bit, but not as much as I hoped; the high was 25 today and it got up to 27 indoors. Not unbearable, but certainly warmer than I like. I'm not sure if having the doors open for a while in the late morning helped. We've got them open now, bugs be damned, and with the help of my tower fan have gotten it back down to 24... for the time being.

Have I mentioned how much I miss screened doors and windows? Because damn, I miss screened doors and windows.

 

Oh nevermind it's back up to 26. ¬_¬

 

I swear there's something wrong with this fucking apartment

It's 20C and cloudy today. It was 28 inside when I woke up, I sat here with the doors open for two hours and it got down to 24.5. I left and went for a walk while J was in here playing games. When I got back, it was back up to 28.

I am now sitting here with the doors open a-fucking-gain and it's 25.5. I'm sure within an hour of closing up it'll be right back at 28.

Maybe I can shed some heat by turning everything off and lying very still on the floor..... =_=

 

The word for today is: apoplectic.

I may be retiring this thread soon and stepping off of Kintsugi altogether.

 

WHY DIDN'T I TRUST MY GUT SOONER

God damn it I'm mad enough to spit nails that a god damned creep has ruined another of my god damned friend groups, even if the only thing I could have realistically done was get out of there before I sunk so much god damned time into it. Fuck, I feel sick.

 

I'm trying to give myself a little grace on this because I wasn't sure if the weird vibes I got from the creep were just me being an autistic in the middle of a bunch of normies, culture clash, or what. It's always a guessing game with a group of total strangers when you're autistic.

When it started going bad and I got shit for protesting awful behavior, I bailed in a matter of minutes rather than stress myself out trying to 'fix' the situation (which would have only wasted my time and painted a target on my back), so I should give myself that.

Still, though. Still.

 

Stupid thing I did in spring: realize it's been 4 years since I got my eyes checked and go eh, I can wait a few more months.

Result: now it's almost July and I get less eyestrain not wearing my glasses than I do wearing them.

And Specsavers' website gave me an error when I tried to book a time. Sigh!!

 

The fucking solid steel balls on some TS4 creators, man. Charging 3€ a month for early access to their tattoo custom content, and the credit for the images is 'pinterest'. Not only is their greedy ass making money off of other people's art, they don't even know whose art it actually is. (But this means I will feel zero fucking shame when I seperate these tattoos into their component placements, because maybe I don't want to have that arm and face tattoo with that chest tattoo, Wrixie.)

This has been a problem for forever, but it's really bad with TS4 creators as unlike with TS2, most TS4 creators are monetizing their content in one way or another regardless of where they originally got that content from. The ones with really eye-watering 'early access' fees seem to be the ones that steal meshes from Second Life and the like, but it's still pretty egregious that people who are just sloppily bashing some game-provided hairstyle meshes together and lightly rearranging the UV (which is SO MUCH EASIER than it was back in the TS2 days, my god, they don't even have to retexture this shit most of the time) are charging 3€ a month for it.

 

I am, unfortunately, feeling the siren call of making custom content for TS4 in a way I haven't since TS2. This is a dangerous, super time-consuming road to go down, but it's so, so tempting since apparently most of what I want is niche enough content that either no one makes it or the few people that did only made a few things before vanishing. And I understand that content to outfit roving clown gangs (for instance) is going to be hard to come by no matter what, but I'm genuinely surprised that there's one mod that I know of that recolors the shell buildings and objects that decorate the worlds, and that one just makes them pastel. There's nothing that makes them shabbier!

I'm also surprised that so few custom hairstyles are actual variations on styles that come with expansions (so you can, say, have the same bangs on a ponytail, a fancy updo, and a sensible braid as you do loose long hair) but are remixed into entirely new styles... that also don't have consistent iterations so I have to make do with whatever's close enough. And to hell with finding anything that isn't super normie, EA is better at alt fashion than most of the current creators, and that's really damn sad lol

I really don't need another time consuming hobby but I do miss retexturing and remixing meshes (no matter how much Blender makes me want to bite someone), especially since my tastes do run to 'if I don't make this, no one else will' -- even when it's something plenty of other people want, no one else seems to be willing to make it. (That happened pretty frequently in my TS2 days, back when dinosaurs ruled the earth).

 

Why are fine point BIC pens with black ink so hard to find here? I don't want blue ink! I want black! I don't want to order them in bulk! ;_;

 

I settled for the blue since I could find those in a 4-pack a short walk away and I haven't used one in a lot of years, so I didn't know if their quality still holds up. Happily, they're just as good as I remember (my favorite sketching and drawing pen because you can shade with BIC fine points; no other ballpoint pen compares), so... I can live with blue for now.

 

Noticed I've been feeling bad/awkward/"god please don't look at me" every time I go out lately, and I've realized that it's because I'm not actually fine dressing like a boring middle-aged dad, I've gotten resigned to it. I've been wary of looking too gender nonconforming considering... everything... but I need to start wearing jewelry again, wear the pants I actually like even if that means doing extra laundry (I love my long red cargo shorts but there's only one of them) or having to carry a bag of some kind (in the case of my Turkish pants), dress up my head with a bandana or a scarf, and maybe grow my hair out some even if it is kind of annoying to wash and it means the occassional trip to a stylist (ugh, money) to maintain it (maybe it's time for a punk mullet?). Get some more interesting glasses frames.

Shame I can't dye my hair fun colors anymore, but the last time I bleached it my skin freaked the fuck out even though I kept the bleach off the roots. It won't take semi-permenent dye if it isn't bleached all to hell, so unfortunately that's that unless I go back to henna... but idk if I really want to have red hair again. It looked great, but I've got baggage around having red hair bc my henna era was part of my 'trying really hard to be feminine' era. Then again I absolutely hate having mouse brown hair, so we'll see.

 

:( that's the kind of thing that is very dependent on where you live, too. Like, I live in a pretty small, conservative township, and going out into the nearest large population center I always get culture shock at how many visibly queer people there are around.

IDK it.... sucks, it's pretty easy to take the ability to be comfortable in your skin for granted. One of my coworkers being basically a variegated princess orchid of a person in our very drab workshop has also given me a lot more confidence to be visibly queer. I wish you had something like that, tbh.

 

I live in one of the busy parts of Espoo so it ostensibly shouldn't be a problem, but I find nazi stickers on lampposts and benches just often enough I stay paranoid (not so paranoid I don't stop and deface them when I find them, though). I'd be somewhat less so if I didn't need to use a cane but since I literally cannot run from bad situations if they happen, well... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Still, it's not going to hurt to accessorize a little and wear my nicer clothes sometimes rather than 'saving' them to the point I forget I have them. And if I can ever fucking get top surgery the ambiguous presentation thing will be way less of a problem for me :')

But thank you, the good thoughts always cheer me up at least a little.

 

My friend Bleaksqueak sometimes pops into my DMs to shove some music at me, and a couple of hours ago she pushed some Silent Hill music at me and WOWOWOWOW GOOD SHIT GOOD SHIT

We get each other's story vibes pretty well but she absolutely nailed it thinking this would work for my Dreaming Dark universe and HOO BOY does it. Goddamn. I've listened to One More Soul To The Call five times now.

 

Also while I was down the music hole I looked for the obscure little Portland, Oregon band that put out one EP and one album before vanishing off the face of the Earth, Submarine Fleet, and happily all of what little music they made is on YouTube. My favorite is Sea of Chance. I still need to listen to the album, as even though it was uploaded years ago I didn't find it the last time I looked.

 

Because I was not able to get my shit together until I literally could not stand it anymore, I was without my ADHD meds for about a month. Three days back on and I'm not exactly a whirlwind of productivity, but I am able to hyperfocus on dumb shit again! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

More happily, I've been able to actually write, which is a relief.

 

Still stinging pretty badly over losing my FFXIV EU social group a month ago. The other people who also left who said they'd stay in contact with me... haven't, despite me reaching out to them. I'm feeling pretty unlikeable and forgettable as a result.

 

I'm tenatively hype for Dawntrail, but I am incredibly hype for the news that we're getting TWO DYE CHANNELS. FUCKING FINALLY. I'd resigned myself to continuing to pray new items didn't have huge patches of undyeable parts or, worse, huge patches that turn a weird gray for the rest of the life of the game, but this is fantastic.

The cosmetic glasses and eventual furnishing limit increase are also great, and the graphics update preview looks really good so far -- it probably won't fuck with Iolis's face to the point I'm unhappy and need to fantasia him to bunny form. I was genuinely worried after The Secret World's reboot to SWL meant having to re-create my character, and they ditched the face preset he used completely. I'm still mad about that.

 

... Although if the glowup makes his eyebags worse idk if I'm going to be able to take that lol