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

I wish Facebook wasn't so aggressively fucking useless, it's the only social media Mom and C use but Facebook absolutely refuses to show me anything anyone I follow recently posted on my feed in favor of a bunch of random 'suggested for you' bullshit, so I have to bully it into letting me see their profiles. Absolute piece of shit website.

Anyway, they're both SUPER super sick. C's post from earlier today said he woke up wondering if they were both still alive. They're on antivirals but I'm still incredibly worried.

 

I sent my mom a message last night, and earlier this afternoon she replied saying her and C are on much less sick but very tired. I'm cautiously optimistic.

In more optimistic news, I finally finished a scene that I've been looking forward to writing for ages and that took me nine days to get through. It drives me nuts that I'm this glacial but it is done and accomplishes more or less what I wanted it to. Now I only have half a book to go... :')

 

I finally finished Phae's FC house. It was a lot of hard work and A LOT of gil, but it's done and I'm really happy with it. Please come visit if you have an FFXIV character on an EU datacenter.

The The Secret World-ness is going to be lost on any non-TSW fans, but hey, I think it holds up regardless.

 

kshfdjsfkahf Wordpress wants EIGHTY-THREE EUROS to renew my sub + domain and I have to pay VAT on it for some fucking reason??

Yeah... no. I'm over it. I'll just run with the free version and to hell with the domain, fuck it.

 

That's like... at least 20€ more expensive than it was when I got this setup in late 2019. Ridiculous. I'd rather have the 83€.

 

*gleeful clapping*

There's few enough of us Secret Worlders out there that it always gives me a little thrill to run across one.

 

J bog BG3 as a gift and was like, well now that I don't have to buy it for myself I can buy it for you! So I spent an hour and a half fighting the first boss (character creation) and came up with a fresh incarnation of my beloved qunari Inquisitor, Beautiful Adaar:

Spoiler: Behold, Kallistos

Now I'll have to work on making him as much of a high-drama grumpy fusspot of a theater kid as Beautiful was. I have a feeling that him and Astarion are either going to be best friends or hate each other completely.

 

So far Kallistos thinks:

• Shadowheart is adorable and trusts her completely, shady relic and shady behavior around relic aside.
  
• Lae'zel is HILARIOUS with the posturing and the grumping. He absolutely respects her as a warrior and understands why she wants to get to a creche -- they really look like the best bet re: their little problem right now -- but fighty frog lady is still very funny to him. Not that he would ever tell her that.
• Gale is weird and kind of suspicious -- who's that cheerfully bombastic all the time?? And where does he get off giving Wyll the side eye, anyway.
• Wyll is extremely admirable -- yeah he does the whole hero thing, but he also seems practical and doesn't have a big head about it.
• Asterion is also hilarious and Kal would keep him around for entertainment value if nothing else, but he's also kind of a scrungly wet cat of a man who Kal can't help but feel a little sorry for.

He's just met Halsin and hasn't yet found Karlach, so no opinions on them yet.

 

omg Karlach is great

It's a real shame I didn't find her earlier (J was like oh there's so many tough fights on the way to get her!! So I put it off, especially since I didn't see any obvious way to get there... then it turned out he didn't even realize there was an enemy-free path along the river, whoops) since she hasn't warmed up (lol) to Kal much yet. He's having a lot of paternal feelings toward her, which he finds kind of confusing.

The party at camp with all the people he's not interested in that way coming on to him (Gale, Lae'zel, and Astarion) was... so awkward. He's actually very interested in Shadowheart but kiiinda fucked it up by being super nosy and suspicious early on, whoooops, so she was very 'go away and party with someone else'. He'd already eased up but he's going to be way more careful with her from now on. He's finding Halsin pretty interesting though...

Speaking of, I'm so pleased that Halsin is a big, beefy guy with a broad, lined face... and he's an elf. Elves aren't allowed to be big and beefy hardly ever!

 

As for the gameplay itself, I find some of its quirks annoying (I wish targeting was a little 'stickier' so I didn't accidentally hit the ground beside the thing I wanted to hit if I'm tired and my targeting is a little off) but in general I'm having a good time, even if I find the combat exhausting because I'm really not good at tactical games. I haven't felt like I need to drop it down from Balanced yet, though, so that's something... but I'm also only in act 1 meandering around the Underdark. :')

 

Every time I see art of Wyll or Astarion without the wrinkles I get sadder and grumpier. :(

 

Aw man, I'm a dumbass and thought Homestuck2 was ALL new content and started reading all excited until I found out it's only the new team for the last 40 pages. I don't really care to slog through the 'open contempt for the reader' parts I know it's gonna end up at to get to the new stuff.

Oh well. It's not like I don't have plenty to keep myself occupied with already.

 

HALSIN!!!!!!!!!!!!

I finally got to a point where I could ask him more about himself and oh, he's SO cute. I love this big, earnest beefwall of an elf :')

 

I made Iolis miniature for Halloween! He's so damn cute like this I'm keeping him lala until 6.55 at least.

 

Clinging to my light therapy lamp for dear life lately. Got one of those little flat LCD ones so it doesn't take up substatial desk real estate, and I feel like this one works better for me. Still: seasonal depression is a bitch. BG3 is my lifeline lately.

Made another character because Act 3 was getting overwhelming with all the sidequests and my head was getting too full and I was forgetting plot beats -- she's an iteration of my ffxiv catgirl, Jai, who is herself an expy of my OC Maddox:

Spoiler: Very creatively named Jae

Jae's ended up more of a straight expy of Maddox since she has more freedom of how she can respond and just kind of ended up in this situation, rather than going out into the world to Do Good; she's also got a closer build and facial scarring like Mad has. Face is still pretty different (Mad has 'droopy' eyes and a prominent profile, where Jae and Jai have different eyes and both have flatter profiles) so I kept Jai's coloring.

She's a Way of the Four Elements monk that I'm speccing into a tavern brawler build because throwing punches, chairs, and goblins sounds like a real good time. I'm not sure how to make her playthrough much different from Kal's since she's a hardass but also deeply caring, while he was meant to be a hardass but ended up heroic because the game has a lot of focus on tiefling struggles and being from an oppressed minority that he cares deeply for, no matter what other dramatics he pulls is an intergral part of his character.

But while OG Maddox is deeply caring she also doesn't give a single, solitary shit about rich people or people in power, while Kal knows how to be diplomatic even when he doesn't like it, so I suppose she'll get into more scraps (especially with her entire 8 charisma lol).

 

I'm sick, but I still managed a couple of runs of Aloalo to get this hairstyle:



... I did take a non-crime tools picture of it on current lala!Iolis, but the picture only uploads sideways, even though the screencapture was never rotated. >:/

 

GUESS WHO'S STILL MOTHERFUCKING SICK

It's probably covid, huh.

 

I developed a sore throat last night that has persisted and feel worse in general, but the covid test I took was negative.

I don't fucking know, man.

 

The sore throat marked the Illness turning into the bad cold J has had (he got sick at the same time and has now mostly shaken it), and I'm wondering what I did to deserve a week and a half of fatigue and body ache windup before the sore throat and snot finally hit.

UGH.

 

On the mend finally, and actually woke up early enough to take my stimulants and wow that helped a lot with the mental side of it! There's just no point in taking them when I've got a bunch of illness brainfog, but there comes a point where it's like, do I have brainfog just because I'm sick or...

I'm looking forward to actually going outside for a walk, although it's snowed and my winter boots still have a zipper problem. I meant to get it fixed a few weeks ago, but being too sick to leave the house kind of put a dent in that. :| I'll also need to be careful not to overdo it, because for me a 'short' walk is 3.5 km and that's. Not actually that short lol